M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 87

Pathwalking 263

This week I continue to work with Pathwalking in Practice.

Last week I broke down the three means I believe everyone lives their life by:  letting life live you, curling up in a ball and waiting to die or living the life you want.  Pathwalking is a means to the end of living the life I want to live the most, and has evolved into a self-help philosophy I believe I can do more with, for myself and for others.

How will I do more with this?  Last week I mentioned the idea of working with actionable items, tools that could be employed in the process of Pathwalking.

The root of the actionable items comes from the process itself, discussed in detail last week.  To manifest our destinies, it takes thought, feeling and intentional action.  As simple as these are, though, in our complex society we require additional tools to help create our focus, and allow us to better consciously create our realities.

There are tools we can employ to better help with our work with conscious creation.  They are not always obvious, they might sometimes seem a bit off-topic, but they can be of great assistance none-the-less.

It is my intent to take Pathwalking outside of this blog.  I want to help other people to live better, more desirable lives, and to find their own empowerment.  This is how I wish to empower myself.  Part of doing this is creating these actionable items, so that I have something to build upon and share with others, a means to the desired end.  This is the act of putting Pathwalking in Practice.

Yes, not everything will work the same for others as it does for me, but I still believe that having tools available to us to aid this process is beneficial, and I believe that part of my personal calling in this life is to not only find my paths, but to help others with the same process.  The blog is only the beginning.  Part of the next step is creating the actionable items to work with past that.

What are the actionable ideas?  This is very much a work in progress, but it will follow the three basic steps to any manifestation – thought, feeling and intentional actions.  This will be an overview, a template I intend in the coming weeks to build up with more detail.

The first is expressing gratitude.  Before we begin to seek something new, before we take that idea and build it up to something more, we need to have gratitude for that which is already ours.

Gratitude is an outstanding base for creating positive thoughts and feelings, and from there creating new things.

To begin this, we must find the things we have RIGHT NOW for which we are grateful.  Size doesn’t matter, tangible vs intangible is unimportant, what IS important is that we express gratitude for what we have.

Then, we need to remember our gratitude, and create a means to remind ourselves to be grateful.  When the outside world is getting you down, or you are having a bad day, having something that triggers feelings of gratitude will help restore positive energies.

After that, we need to check in with things to be grateful for daily.  This is not a one-and-done matter; daily expression of gratitude makes room to gain more things for which to be grateful.  What’s more, we cannot just write-down the things we are grateful for…we need to feel them.

For more than a year I have been writing down from five to six things nearly every day for which I am grateful.  The issue has been that from time to time I have missed a day, and more than that I have simply written down five things, but took no extra time to actually FEEL grateful for them.

So in the interest of putting Pathwalking in Practice, I need to not only continue to write down at least five things for which I am grateful daily, I need to take at least a little extra time to FEEL them.  I need to not just put them on the page, I need to feel gratitude for them, and put extra focus into the process.

Beyond this, it is important to find and feel gratitude as often as possible.  Even when you are inundated with negativity and bad news about the world at large, finding and feeling grateful will keep you in a place where you can be more constructive, and a positive force in the world.

To assist with this, I have been borrowing an idea I gleaned from The Secret.  Lee Brower explains in The Secret that in order to help himself remember to express gratitude frequently, he carries a rock in his pocket.  Whenever he reaches into the pocket for whatever reason, when he touches the rock he thinks about and feels something to be grateful for.

For a few years now, I have carried a stone of some sort in my pocket.  I strive, whenever I reach into my pocket and touch that stone, to think about and feel gratitude for something in my life.  The what is not important…it is the action that matters.  However, I need to make it more of a practice to FEEL grateful, and not just think about gratitude.

Pathwalking in Practice – taking more time and actions for feeling gratitude.  Gratitude for what you have opens you up to what you desire.  Care to join me with this challenge?

 

This is the two-hundred sixty-third entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas and my personal experiences in walking along the path of life.  I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way.

Thank you for joining me.  Feel free to re-blog and share.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.

If you enjoy Pathwalking, you may also want to read my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.

Positivity: Little Things of the Moment

Life is full to overflowing of little things.

These little things are day-to-day items, occurrences, people, places and things that build up positivity.  They are many, they are varied, and all too often they are taken for granted.

The little things are things that bring us moments of contentment, of joy, of peace.  They make us focus on the moment, forget the overarching world situation.  They are of far more power and import than we realize, and they can help us live better, happier, more content lives.

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What are some of these little things?  Things like a cup of coffee, the smell of baking bread, the purr of a cat, the snuggles from a dog, holding hands with someone, cat videos on YouTube, laughter, achieving a goal, a text message from a friend, standing under a hot shower, music on your favorite Pandora station, the trailer for that movie you are looking forward to, and so on.

Everyday items, tiny things that happen which are positives can hold far more power if we let them.  We often gloss over them, take them for granted, and neglect just how powerful they can be.  We are so caught up in deadlines and politics and gossip and work and school and society and these over-arching things that we forget to empower ourselves.

These little things happen briefly, in a moment.  They just are, they feel as if they take little or no time, because we get far too focused on “events”.  Big happenings like parties and meal times and appointments and what we did over the weekend and what we have to do during the week and the like occupy us, to the neglect of these little things in the here-and-now.

We have come to falsely believe in the importance of those big moments.  Weddings, anniversaries, weekends, birthdays, promotions, buying homes, graduating and the like get so much of our attention, and assigned so much importance, that the little moments of every day become insignificant.  The little things wind up neglected for their importance in making our lives fuller, more positive, more worthwhile.

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During the day consider these moments that pull you firmly into the here-and-now.  Nothing is so insignificant that it can’t be used to build more positivity.  Especially now, in these days of such vast and far-reaching uncertainty and concern and outright fear, every ounce of positivity we can generate is a tool we can use to keep the darkness at bay, and live the best lives we possibly can.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action.  Knowing that we are inundated by little events and happenings each and every day, we can put them to good use.  When we relish these little things of the moment, and we let those moments of positivity into our days, we empower ourselves.  When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings in the collective consciousness.  We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings.  When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for.  Gratitude leads to happiness.  Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude.  Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the one hundred fifty-fourth entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

In relation to Positivity, check out my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.

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Crossing the Bridges: One Small Step

To cross any given bridge, you need to start by taking a step, literally and metaphorically.

One of the reasons I began this particular blog post was to help me get my head screwed on straight, while I assess both where I am and where I want to be.  Positivity is a specific topic, and far more general, and while Pathwalking is my life philosophy, it is also a more specific focal point.

What neither address is the more personal picture of who I am.  My specific plans, my specific path, my struggles and challenges and victories and so on and so forth.

At the beginning of this particular blog I explained that I have several different “worlds” I give time and attention to, literally.  But because I am but one man, I have bridges between these worlds, which I am frequently crossing day to day.

Last week I shared some actions I intended to take to cross those bridges, so that I can accomplish more of what I want from this life.  It has been an imperfect start, but I have done better this week with my time management.   I have not done quite as much exercise as I would want, but I have been meditating.  I have not gotten quite as much writing or editing completed as I wanted, but I have done some, and I have been re-reading Harbinger.  My diet has been better, I am working to cut back/cut out processed sugar, and cut back on specific carbs like breads and pastas.

These may not be the grand strides I desire to take across the bridges, but every step counts.  This is something important I need to be more open to.  I have said for years now that it’s the journey that counts nearly as much, if not more than the goal at the end.

Walking the path, crossing the bridge, going on a walkabout, I am clearly a fan of ambulatory metaphors.  This is also true of fencing, but I usually take more of a water/swimming metaphor.  Still ambulatory, though.

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But that’s the thing.  Life is CONSTANTLY in motion.  Just because you are sitting still or resting, does not mean that life is not still moving.  As Yoda said, “Always in motion is the future.”

And that is why it is so very important to be mindful of and grateful for the steps we take.  We are constantly moving, always shifting through time and space, and even when we are not, SOMEONE out there is.   Because this is the truth, we need to be more mindful of the here-and-now, because what the future holds is a mystery, and the past is already behind us.

I am working on being more mindful of my here-and-now.  If I get caught up in berating myself for past mistakes, or questioning steps I have already taken along the way, I can get stuck, and as such find myself taking no actions.  Not only will I get nowhere towards where I want to be in the future, I will spend my time, now, out of focus.  This puts me in danger of losing awareness of my surroundings, and as such quite possibly missing out on important and interesting stuff.

On the other side of that same coin, concern for the future.  Yes, I am very concerned about the state of the government here in the US, and I worry that a lot of freedoms are about to be curtailed, that many will lose health insurance and civil rights, and that the middle class will be obliterated so that the oligarchy remains in power.  BUT – if I focus on all the possible what-ifs of the future, most of which I have little to no control over, I equally disable my ability to do anything useful for my life, here-and-now.

It is important to be mindful of the past and consider the future, but I have written time and again about how this immobilizes us if we give them too much energy and attention.  It’s a societal thing, I think, to lump people into these overarching groups, calling people either forward-thinkers or backwards, nevermind that right here, right now we are all in this time and place together.

What’s my point?  Let me take what I think is a personally important step.

I am a writer.  First and foremost, that is who I am.  For a long time I have been caught up in how people will think of me and my work, and about the variations of what I write.  I sometimes get annoyed with myself for not writing enough, but the truth is that I AM A WRITER.  You are reading my words right now, and maybe you also read my posts about Positivity on Mondays or join me for Pathwalking on Wednesdays.

At the least I write three days a week.  Even though the time of my posts vary, EVER WEEK I put these here, because I am a writer.  Writing is my passion, because there are so many things in my head, so many ideas, so many concepts and thoughts, worlds and characters and plots…I just have to get them to the page.  Since my childhood, this has been me, and I am saying, here and now, that’s who I am.

This is one step on the path, one step across the bridge.  Acknowledging who I am, recognizing my own identity.  It may seem like a small step, but every step, big or small, is progress.

Thank you for being my audience.   And Thank You for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me.

 

GOAL LOG – Week 1:

Diet:  Some improvement in being mindful about what and how much I am eating.

Exercise: Two days of fencing, two days at the gym.

Writing:  The three blogs got written, and I did work on the sci-fi story.

Meditation:  Four days of mediation, never less than 6 minutes.

Gratitude: I wrote five things I was grateful for five days this week.

 

This is the fifteenth entry of my personal journey, the Crossing the Bridges series.  My collectively published writing can be found here.

Pathwalking 262

With the start of this new year, I want to begin working on a new aspect of Pathwalking.

Tentatively, this will be called Pathwalking in Practice.

Pathwalking in Practice is setting up actionable items in order to better work on conscious reality creation.

What is an actionable item?  The things you do to actually walk the path you are choosing.

Everything we choose begins at the same point.  There is a thought, an idea, an inspiration.  Something you read opens up a channel in your mind; someone says something that starts the wheels in your head turning; you are just doing whatever you are doing, maybe driving a car or reading a book or dozing off to sleep or eating or showering or watching TV, and you have a thought.  Whenever it comes, and whatever it is, when you get this concept to work on, it begins with thought.

Thought is the beginning.  Grand and glorious or small and unremarkable, the thought is the beginning.

Many of our thoughts are fairly trivial and commonplace and action requires very little else.  I should get sushi for lunch or I should go to bed now or I want coffee or I need to turn left here and so on and so forth.  These require very little of anything else for action to come of them.

There are slightly more complex thoughts people have that require something further before they move to action.  She’s cute, I should ask her out or Maybe I should take a different route to practice or I should apply for that promotion at work or I want to invest in that stock or I want to tell him I love him and such.  There are some people who need little else beyond these thoughts to take action, but for more of us they do require additional thought, and more importantly feeling.

Feeling is the next step.  Despite the attempts of many to feel little or nothing, it takes feeling to turn a thought into action.  Some people just go with their gut, and act.  They can handle those slightly more complex, but not too complex thoughts, and just go with it.  Some people, though, need to feel it out.  Not just give it further thought, but feeling as to the result.  If I ask her out and she says no, how will I feel?  What if she says yes, how will that make me feel?  Don’t be impulsive, consider the consequences!  You are now working from feeling, before you decide to take action.  This is not a bad thing, it is part of the process to turn a thought into a thing.

Which brings us to the more complex concepts which start as thought, and almost certainly require feeling before we take action.  I think I want to ask her to marry me or I want to move to Portugal and start my life all over or I want to open my own coffee shop or I want to quit my job and run for office.  These things usually cannot be done instantly, they require time and process, so as such you have the thought, you move on to feel it out, and then you take action to make it happen.

As simple as the idea of consciously creating your reality by applying feeling and intentional action to thought seems, for most of us we need more than that.  The complexity of our society and our day-to-day lives mostly make this seem like overly-simplistic, hippy-dippy, new-agey, mumbo jumbo pie-in-the-sky rose colored grade A bullshit.  Hard not to hear that skeptical voice in your head scoff, Consciousness Creates Reality?  Yeah, right…so where the hell is my flying car and the million dollars I want to see in my bank account?

Yet Consciousness DOES Create Reality.  It’s not always obvious, and there are certainly events that happen that make us thoroughly question the truth of this, but it doesn’t change it.  Further, even if you cannot fully wrap your mind around this notion, I believe that everyone has exactly THREE choices for how to live life.

What three choices are those?  I believe they are: 1) Let life live you.  This is what most people do with their lives.  They go with the flow, what happens, happens, and from time to time they see awesomeness occur, but they seldom directly effect it.  2) Curl up in a ball and wait for death.  This can be literal, but more often this is the people who expect nothing but bad things to happen or they make excuses for everything or spend life in prayer for an afterlife, rather than bothering to live this one.  3) Live the life you desire.  You choose your experiences, you strive to get more out of life, you take actions and make choices and fight to have the life you most desire.

Yes, I am generalizing, and yes, we all shift between these three notions from time to time, but I still maintain and firmly believe that one of these concepts usually dominates.  Some people find perfect contentedness in any of these three ways of living, and I would not begrudge them that.  If you are satisfied with the life you are living, more power to you!  But if, like me, you want to live the life you most desire, and its different from what you currently are experiencing, it requires more choices and decisions and intentional actions.

This is what Pathwalking is all about.  I have spent the past five years working out this self-help philosophy concept.  There have been two-hundred sixty-two different posts, espousing various ideas, concepts, ways and means for choosing our own destinies.  Now I want to take this further, and present you with tools to help traverse your path as I employ them in traveling along my own.

I will be working to further Pathwalking in Practice, because I think both you and I will benefit from a toolkit we can use to consciously create the reality we most want from life.

Are you living the life you most want to live?

 

This is the two-hundred sixty-second entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas and my personal experiences in walking along the path of life.  I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way.

Thank you for joining me.  Feel free to re-blog and share.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.

If you enjoy Pathwalking, you may also want to read my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.

Positivity: Expectation

What do you expect for the New Year?

Expectation is a reflection of your mindset, whether positive or negative.  If you are expecting good, exciting, fun and awesome things, you’re thinking positively.  If you are expecting bad, depressing, bothersome, terrible things, you are thinking negatively.

If consciousness creates reality, and I firmly believe that it does, then expectation of positives needs to be empowered more than that of negatives.  I don’t want to create a world of terror, failure, misery and other negatives for myself or anyone else, so I would far prefer to create a world of joy, success, relief, abundance, happiness and other positives.

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I seldom get into the concept of collective consciousness, but I think it’s important, especially in the here-and-now, not to disregard it.  The idea is that when enough people get into a similar mindset, it gives more power to manifesting it.  If we are all focused, thus, on expecting something horrific, the odds increase that we will get exactly that.

Which, inevitably these days, brings me to politics.  There is a great deal of expectation that we are about to see a lot of helpful social progress discarded, corporate greed taken to new heights, and institutional racism, bigotry, sexism and disenfranchisement re-empowered after decades of decline.  While there is all sorts of empirical evidence to support concerns about this, if we continue to expect it we inevitably are working to create it.

I am not saying that we should not prepare ourselves to protest injustices, I am saying we need to give less focus to that which we can only indirectly effect, and instead look at our own, individual lives, where we are here-and-now, and what we expect for ourselves for this New Year.  Do we expect health, prosperity and other good things, or do we expect sickness, poverty and other bad things?

Expectation is a powerful mindset.  So rather than focus your expectation on things that you can only indirectly control, it is not selfish to focus on expectation for our own personal lives.  We can do this without ignoring what is going on out there, but if we can create positive expectations on the individual level, it will be far easier to expand that to the collective consciousness, and turn things around.  If we expect good things for our personal new year, we can use that to build more good things for the collective consciousness.

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Expectation is thought impregnated with emotion.  Add action, and you begin to manifest.  I want to manifest good things for myself, the people I most care about, and the world at large.  I want to empower people to do the same.  I know that feels like a tall order in the current social climate, but that doesn’t lessen its necessity.  Focused expectation will create manifestation, so consider if you want to manifest positively or negatively with what you are expecting from this New Year.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action.  Knowing that expectation is a powerful tool for manifestation, we get to choose if we want to expect positive or negative from things.  When we work on expectations of positives, before we take that from the individual to the collective consciousness, we empower ourselves.  When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings in the collective consciousness.  We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings.  When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for.  Gratitude leads to happiness.  Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude.  Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the one hundred fifty-third entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

In relation to Positivity, check out my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.

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Today and the New Year (2016/2017)

Today.

Today is.  That’s all, today is a day.

The question is, what will you make of today?  How will you treat today differently from how you treated yesterday and how you will treat tomorrow?

As we enter into the new year, and we prepare to celebrate the transition from the one to the other, we should all take a moment to consider what last year wrought, both good and bad, and what we might want for next year.

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This past year was, for many, deeply depressing.  Too many popular celebrities left us too soon, we experienced an utterly distressing election, and have watched a world stage grow increasingly disturbing and more and more uncertain.  But beyond those big-picture matters, 2016 was a year like any other, full of personal ups and downs, wins and losses, good, bad and otherwise.

What do you want for the new year?  I know we all have concerns, fears, and interests in the coming year.  But if consciousness creates reality, then we need to find good things for ourselves, first in the today, then for tomorrow.

There are only three questions we need to ask ourselves to start better consciously creating our reality.

Question one: How are you feeling?  Asking this awakens your awareness, and lets you assume control over your thoughts and emotions.  Question two: What am I grateful for?  Finding things, no matter their size or shape, for which to express gratitude will put you in a more positive mindset, and help further your awareness about how you are feeling.  Question three: What do I want for the new year?  Not the bad things you DON’T want, do not give them any additional focus or attention – examine those things which you DO want.  The things that will help you to live the best life you can.

Today is.  What today is is wholly yours to determine.  You, and you alone, can create your life, and this is an opportunity to create one that is what you want.  New Year’s Eve brings out resolutions in many to improve their lives – but I would suggest we take this chance to instead look closely at the day, and not just make a resolution to do some thing or other next year – but instead find the awareness of TODAY, of this moment, and use that to start off the new year with the most positive emotional ammunition we can horde for a better year.

Happy New Year to one and all!

Crossing the Bridges: The New Year

The New Year is frequently used as an opportunity to get a new start to things.

Many people make resolutions, which amount to often grand plans for sweeping changes.  Years ago, I decided that while resolutions are all well and good, they are soft, non-committal, and easily disregarded.  This is why I started instead of creating New Year’s Resolutions, to take New Year’s Actions.

I began to blog regularly five years ago, as a result of my 2012 New Year’s Action.  I decided that I would blog once a week, and from that Pathwalking was born.  Now, five years on, I am blogging regularly three times a week, and consider this a win.

Last year I decided to create my Goal Log.  This is my Google sheet on which I track my diet, exercise, writing and meditation practice.  Next week it will mark the start of the 2nd year of my log, and it will become a part of this post going forward.

The point of all of this is that with the New Year, I am examining new things I want to do, new actions I want to take for myself.  Having acknowledged that there are some possible challenges due to outside influences in the coming year, this will be particularly important.

I have some concern about feeling selfish in making choices for my own personal advancement.  However, as I noted last week, if I don’t work on my own life, I will have little to nothing to give to anyone else, and will have a particularly hard time assisting others.

So, what are the things I want to do with my life in the coming year?

Let’s start with the things lacking in a specific timeline.  I need to edit Harbinger, the third book in The Source Chronicles series, so that I can send it to an editor and then publish it in the fall.  I would like to finish the space opera I am working on, and maybe figure out a title for it.  I need to pick up where I left off in Guardians, the fourth book in The Source Chronicles.  I started another story I want to work on as well.

This brings me to a definite goal.  When I get Journey of a Thousand Miles… back from the editor, I need to do my own work on it, and get it formatted for publishing.  I need to write/edit these things at least three days a week.  In addition to working on the blog posts, I need to be better about taking the time to write and edit.  I need to act on this.

Along this line are practices I have been trying to turn into a habit for a while.  Exercise and Meditation.  I find that when I take even 4 minutes to meditate a day, I am better focused, more aware, and more capable to get things done in my waking hours.  Likewise, exercising energizes me, makes my body feel less flabby and uncontrolled, and helps clear my head of unwanted negativity.

All of these appear in the Goal Log, and have for a year.  Yet I am still lax about them.  Why?  I can make up any number of excuses, but the primary issue is poor habits and distractions.

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Poor habits generally ARE the distractions, but because I allow them to work the way they do, they have become poor habits along the way.  Because they are part of my regular routine, they are habitual.  I think admitting this to myself is the first step in changing them.

What habits need to go?  In the morning, rather than stumble out of bed and get online to check social media and e mails, I need to start my day, prep my lunch and breakfast, MEDITATE, and then head to the gym for EXERCISE.  This is particularly challenging, because I have been starting off my day with this same action for several years.  Old habits die hard, they say, and they can be particularly challenging to break.

After work, on days I don’t go to a fencing practice, I tend to go home, and veg in front of the TV.  This is all well and good, for a time – but my wife generally goes to bed a couple hours before I do.  During those two to three hours, rather than continue to watch TV, or half-watch while goofing off online, I should be WRITING and EDITING.  Again, I habitually browse social media and half-watch TV most nights, so this is another long-held habit that I am challenged to break.

I both want and need to make these changes.  Why?  Because if I am going to cross the bridges I want to cross and accomplish the things I most want to, I have to do something new.  I have to get out of my current routines, because they are poor.  NOT bad, this is not a matter of good and bad, just poor.  Why poor?  Because I know there is better I can choose.  I need to be disciplined enough to make that choice, and to take the necessary actions I am completely aware of to take this forward.

What action can I take to further this plan?  My coach suggested I begin working with lists.  I know many people who live by lists they make for things, which is not something I regularly do.  However, in light of my prior inability to stick with making the changes I want, I figure nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Positive action for change for the New Year.  Let’s see how I do with this going forward.

Thank you for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me!

 

This is the fourteenth entry of my personal journey, the Crossing the Bridges series.  My collectively published writing can be found here.

Pathwalking 261

This has been an interesting year.

In some respects this goes with the Chinese curse of “May you live in interesting times”.  In some respects it has simply been full of odd and unusual, fascinating things.  In some respects it has just been interesting as opposed to uninteresting…and in some ways it’s very much Joss Whedon’s definition from Serenity: Mal: “Define interesting?” Wash: “Oh god oh god we’re all going to die?”

Much of the latter is due to the outside world, and things I personally can do little to directly impact.  I voted in the election, I continue to stand up for anyone who is feeling unsafe in these uncertain times, and I will continue to do whatever I can to offer support in any way my friends and loved ones needs should matters deteriorate.

What I cannot continue to do is focus on those things, because I can’t directly change them.  I will resist where necessary, call out BS when appropriate (and possibly less so, depending), and I will donate time, effort and if possible money to worthy engines in place to support love over hate, unity over separation, inclusiveness over exclusivity and so on.

What I need to focus on now, however, is my own life, my own paths, my own thoughts and feelings and actions.  If I get caught up in matters I want to change but can only indirectly effect without putting my own house into order, so to speak, I will be of no good to anyone.

What does that mean?  What it means is that I need to turn my focus away from this big-picture stuff, and look at my own life, my own accomplishments, my own thoughts and feelings and actions.  I need to work on me, do what is necessary for myself, and pay attention to this little corner of the world which I call my own.

One of the key matters in regards to this, though, is not to get caught up in self-recrimination, or judgement in regards to selfishness.  This is self-care, not a selfish act.  If I do not work on my own mindfulness, my own awareness and the here-and-now, I will be able to do very little to have any real impact on the bigger picture.

It is impossible for me to ignore the big picture.  The results of the Presidential election and surreal uncertainty borne of that; the tragic number of popular celebrity deaths; the devastation of war in Syria and elsewhere; the rise of arch-conservative powers around the globe in response to the changing world; all of these are noteworthy, all are matters of concern of varying degrees, and some may even have devastating consequences and are frightening.  Yet they are beyond my personal reach, beyond my ability to have a direct impact and effect worthwhile change.

These matters are relevant, but I personally can do little about them.  It’s important to acknowledge that.  But I am not ignoring them or disregarding them…I am keeping mindful of their goings-on, and I am looking for ways that I CAN effect change, whether it’s writing an opinion piece on these matters or donating to a cause to help change them or support something better than them, or some other manner I have not thought of that WILL be effective.

That being said, it’s time to review NOT the big-picture year-that-was, but rather my own, personal 2016.  What has this past year wrought for me, and how will that impact my paths?

On many levels this has been a good year.  I got this new job which has been good for me on multiple levels, published the first full-length novel in my Steampunk series, maintained this blog and Positivity and added a third weekly post with Crossing the Bridges, and strengthened all of my relationships, whether intimate, personal or professional.  I have been tracking my diet and exercise, though I still have a ways to go with that.  I have gotten a long ways into writing a cool space opera I look forward to sharing one day.

There have been some less-than stellar bits.  My weight has been like a yo-yo all year, and my mental state, in especial the last couple months, has been kind of rough.  I’ve had doubt and uncertainty about some of my chosen paths, but apart from that I am working to consider my thoughts, what I am feeling, and from there how I am acting more carefully.

This particular year has been rough for many people on many levels, but it is coming to an end.  I would certainly never tell anyone how to grieve for the things that they grieve for, but I would suggest that we cannot remain focused on grief.  We need to find our strength, and to focus on that if we want to consciously create a better reality.

Mourn the things you need to, but find good things to celebrate.  Everyone has something from the passing year that was not awful, and we need to give that energy and attention, too.  I know that can be difficult, but if all of our attention remains on negative things, we tend to create more things to feel negative about.  Take a moment to give some attention to positive things, because I know that’s what I want to have more of for myself, and I suspect you likely feel the same.

The New Year is upon us.  If we truly want it to be better than the year that is ending, we need to look to better things to come.  May your paths be true and strewn with few obstacles and many wonders.

What do look forward to in the New Year?

 

GOAL LOG – Week 51:

Diet:  Fairly unchanged, though a bit of overindulgence with the holidays.

Exercise: Only one day at the gym.

Writing:  The three blogs got written

Meditation:  One day of mediation, about 7 minutes.

Gratitude: I wrote five things I was grateful for six days last week.

Please note that The Goal Log will be relocated in two weeks to my Crossing the Bridges posts.

This is the two-hundred sixty-first entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas and my personal experiences in walking along the path of life.  I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way.

Thank you for joining me.  Feel free to re-blog and share.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.

If you enjoy Pathwalking, you may also want to read my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.

Positivity: Remember, We Are All One

We are all one.

I’ve said it before, I’ve written it before, but it bears repeating.  We are all one.

We are all composed first and foremost of energy.  Energy, which can neither be created nor destroyed, just transmuted from form to form.  Beneath the skins of so many colors, under the genders we claim for ourselves, we are all made of exactly the same stuff.  We are all one.

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This time of year for some is hugely joyous, while for others it is terribly sad and lonely.  No matter where we fall in that spectrum, there is tremendous positivity that can come of recognizing that we are all one.

It doesn’t matter what ethnicity you claim, what nation you come from, what religion you do or do not ascribe to.  We are all made of the same basic stuff, we are all composed at our deepest core of energy, and as such we are all one.

Recently, we have been frequently reminded of our differences.  We are standing on the brink of tremendous uncertainty and concern for the future because fear of our differences has been exploited to empower a very small group of people, and disempower many.

When we remember that we are all one, when we stop fighting over the petty differences of sex, skin color, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, wealth and so forth, we position ourselves to create incredible positivity, and to build a world better for each and every one of us.

Before we stand against one another, before we further our divisions and our dislike and outright hate, we need to remember that we are, at the end of the day, all one.  We are all the same, and we are stronger together than we are apart.  That’s part of why certain powers want us disempowered – because together we are much more powerful than they can handle.

Do not be afraid of the unknown.  Do not fear change.  Don’t let gender, religion, nationality or political affiliation cause you to think of someone as lesser than you.  We are all one.  We are each made of the same stuff, we are all part of a greater whole, and together we can build virtually anything we can imagine.

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Before you get angry at this group of people or those fanatics or that pack of lunatics, consider a different approach.  Instead of opposing that which we dislike, why not find something to support?  Like attracts like, so if we work on something positive, something better than what we fear we will receive, we can strive to build something we DO want.

We are all one.  When all is said and done, despite the artifice of the things that divide us, we ARE all one.  Consider that well, because it is truly a positive force.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action.  Knowing that we are all one, we can strive to work together more than further that which divides us.  When we work together to build something, we empower ourselves.  When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings.  We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings.  When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for.  Gratitude leads to happiness.  Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude.  Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the one hundred fifty-second entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

In relation to Positivity, check out my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.

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Crossing the Bridges: Optimism for the Future

I’m not feeling it today.

I have attempted more than once to start this post, and every single start has stumbled.  I get maybe an intro paragraph, and then can’t go forward.

Why am I not feeling it today?

Because I have gotten too caught up in outside influences.  Because the madness of the world around me is interfering with my own thoughts and feelings, and I can neither shut it out nor replace it with something more useful, something that will feel better.

I cannot deny that the President-elect frightens me.  He doesn’t think before he tweets, and if he does that makes this situation even scarier.  His followers accept only what he provides them as truth, despite all empirical evidence that he is one of the biggest liars in the history of liars.  We are stepping into more uncertainty in regards to our safety, our security, and our individual freedoms than we have faced in something like fifty or sixty years.

I am attempting to do the things I can do to have any effect on this situation to maintain stability, to help those who are in more danger of persecution than I am, and to keep calm and soldier on day to day.

Because I am aware that consciousness creates reality, I need to work harder than I am to not let the fear take ahold of me.  I know this, I feel this…and yet I am having a particularly difficult time with this.

Now the President-elect has rekindled an old childhood fear.  He’s not just sabre rattling, he’s threatening to restart the nuclear arms race.  After decades of de-escalation, he wants to go back to the 1980’s and begin the madness all over again.

I was one of those sensitive children who was more afraid of nuclear war than any unseen boogey-man.  Growing up in the Midwest like I did, the sirens going off signaled either a tornado, or the warheads flying…and both evoked primal fear in me well into my twenties.

I know that if I fall prey to this, I might as well give in.  I might as well stop writing about taking ahold of my own destiny and living a life I most desire to live, because if I let this dictate how I am going to live I might as well quit.  If I let this fear overwhelm me and dictate my actions going forward, I become everything I do not want to be.

I have many things I still want to do with my life, and this is throwing me off like nothing else has in many a year.  I am finding this particular outside influence to be unsettling me, and I am both scared about the uncertainty of the future and annoyed with myself for letting myself feel so victimized.

I am in control of my own life.  I am in control of my own emotions.  I can and I will overcome this.  I will still live my life, but I will be vigilant for any actions I need to take to keep my worst fears from becoming true.

If I live letting a fear from my past effect my here-and-now, and concerns about an unwritten future dictate my actions, I am not living up to my own beliefs, my own philosophy for this life.  I still think that I can do and be so very much more.

I also need to wrap my head around the belief that in being more for myself, I am not acting selfishly.  In fact, by doing more for myself I will be better armed to take on any challenges that may arise along the way.  The future is not yet written, and while I am concerned about what lies ahead, only in the here and now can I do any good, for myself or for anyone else, and that is something.

Today has been hard.  But there are so many different bridges I want to cross.  Yes, I have been feeling overwhelmed in general, but the outside situation has exacerbated it.  I need to remember, and to remind myself, that I can do this.  I am still in control, and I can overcome the negativity and I can get control and feel better.

We live in uncertain times, and while I am concerned, I am choosing to not let that overwhelm me.  For those of you out there who are also afraid, we are in this together.  I still believe that we have the power to handle this, that we can work together to overcome any insanity the President-elect spews.  I am remaining vigilant, but I cannot live life believing the worst possibilities, in part because that way lies madness, and in part because I most certainly do NOT want to consciously create that reality.

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Today is one day in the chain of days that make up my life.  Not every day is going to be a good day, that’s not the way life works, but I can choose to let the negativity linger, or I can take some kind of action to deal with it, and to move forward.

I know I am not alone in feeling this.  What I want to say to you is this – we are in this together.  But we all need to turn our focus away from opposition to the insanity, and instead support something better, work to build something to overcome this.  Support freedom, support peace, support ways we can work together to help those who are not feeling this fear understand, and hopefully join us in unifying rather than dividing the world.

I still believe that, deep down, we all want peace.  We all want to find love.  We all want to belong.  The fear of change and that which is different is being used to undermine the nation, but I think that if we respond by showing them that they have nothing to fear from change and that which is different, we can do something to improve matters for everyone.  Optimistic?  Maybe…but the alternative is not who I am, and not the world I want to live in.

The old adage goes that it is always darkest before the dawn.  This darkness is a last gasp before dawn, and the light of the dawn will be stronger than the dark overwhelming us now.  I know that’s cliché, I know it’s pie-in-the-sky optimism, but I would much rather manifest something good than something bad, wouldn’t you? Thank you for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me!

 

This is the thirteenth entry of my personal journey, the Crossing the Bridges series.  My collectively published writing can be found here.