M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 93

Positivity: Rest

Everybody needs a chance to rest.

Whether it is merely a few minutes, a night, or an extended vacation, rest is essential to our wellbeing.  We might have things that need to be done frequently, but we still need to rest and relax from time to time.

Despite negative connotations in the idea of rest, such as slacking off or laziness or other similar perceptions, there is enormous positivity in resting.

Resting allows us to change our focus.  Resting allows us to recover from strains physical, mental and/or emotional.  Resting gives us a chance to restart, to alter our approach, to examine where we have been, where we are and where we are going.

So how come our society doesn’t seem to like us to rest?  I suspect that this is borne of the incessant need to always be productive, to always be doing something, to always be in motion lest we be perceived as inferior, and as such we get passed up or passed by or otherwise fail.

It often feels like our society rewards people who never stop, never slow, never seem to take a break from action.  However, we are only human.  We all need to take breaks, to collect our thoughts, to rest and recuperate, to take new directions and actions in our lives.

Rest can take any number of forms.  A few minutes reading Facebook off your phone at work.  A walk outside in the sun.  Grabbing coffee and chatting with friends and/or coworkers.  Meditating.  Falling into your favorite spot on the couch and watching something on TV for a while.  Playing a game.  Taking a trip to the beach and lying in a hammock with icy beverages for a week.  Rest in all of these forms is hugely positive.

It’s important to recognize the difference between rest and distraction.  Rest is just that, a break, a pause, time out or time off for a period.  Distraction is taking a new action or following a new process that is just a different form of busy work or pseudo-productivity that does not provide the break from stimulus we need for our greater positivity and overall wellbeing.

Nobody can go twenty-four-seven.  It’s just not possible, we all need to rest, which is different from sleep.  We need breaks that allow us to shift ourselves physically, emotionally and intellectually or some combination of these, and allow ourselves a chance to discover lots of means for positivity.

Rest is good for our health on every level, and should not be something we deny ourselves.  We all deserve rest for our wellbeing, and from our wellbeing to build greater positivity in our lives.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action.  Knowing that everybody needs to rest, we can seek out and find mean to take these necessary mental, physical and emotional breaks.  When we allow ourselves to get rest, whether its short breaks of lengthy vacations, we uncover better means to 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 thirty-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.

Pathwalking 241

It’s that time of the year again.  As you are reading this, I am on vacation.

I wanted to look back and see what I wrote last year at this time.  That, in turn, led me to read what I had written the previous year during this same week.

I didn’t stop there.  I paused and took a quick look back to all of my previous Pathwalks that were posted while I was on my annual vacation.  This year is my fifth.

Why does it matter that I still Pathwalk while on my vacation? This is the question I find I must pose to myself.

The first thing I should mention is that this is the twenty-first year I am attending the Pennsic War.  I have been to every consecutive one of these grand events during that time, alongside ten to fifteen-thousand others, for the past twenty years.

The Pennsic War is a two-week long event of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a world-wide medieval re-creation society I have been a part of since college, twenty-five years total this fall.  I have made amazing friends across the world in the years I have participated in this game, and this event is one of the biggest and most colorful.

I generally attend for about ten days total, and spend those days walking all over the place, fencing, shooting archery, and enjoying the company of some of my favorite people.  Many of you who read this might even be with me, or possibly facing me across the field.

When I created Pathwalking, it began as part of a New Years’ Action.  Rather than a resolution, when 2011 became 2012, I determined that I would take an action, and that action was a weekly blog.  It has been more than four-and-a-half years, and I continue these weekly posts, exploring this philosophy I continue to develop and work to improve upon.

Ok, so what?  Well, one of the things I most enjoy about attending Pennsic is that, being medieval re-creation, we dress in time-period appropriate garb, and use the event to escape the pressures of our modern society.

Twenty years ago this was quite a lot easier.  They used to bring in banks of pay-phones, for which there were still usually lines, to accommodate ten-thousand people checking in at home from time-to-time.

With the popularization of cellular phones, which themselves have evolved into incredible micro-computers, it is easy to remain connected to the real world, and still keep tabs on the wonders of social media, and of course the news.

Personally, I choose to use this vacation to escape from the modern world.  This is why, while yes you are reading a new post, I wrote this ahead of time and set it up to post on this day, while I am offline resting, relaxing, and having a good time with friends.

Yes, I have an iPhone and can totally connect to Facebook and G+ and Twitter.  I could even connect a larger wireless device and still write this on my vacation for posting.  However, I choose to disconnect, because this is part of my reset process.

In a past year I wrote about how disconnecting from time to time is a very helpful thing.  I mean, looking at the awful political climate here in the United States, let along other world happenings; it is rather soothing to be able to disconnect and escape from the insanity.

Yet it is important to me that I keep up with my action, and these weekly posts still go on.  It is extremely important to me that I maintain this unbroken chain, and that I keep the action I took for myself going.  Four and a half years on, I have not missed a week, and strive to keep going with that.

So what’s the point of this rambling post this week?  I want to say thank you.  Thank you for continuing to travel with me on my path.  I created Pathwalking for my own need to find my own way in life, and decided to share because I thought it might be a helpful notion for others.

However, as I have continued this through the years, knowing that I have touched others with these posts, and my ideas, I am even more grateful that I have you to bounce this concept off of.  You are why it is important to me that this post is still here, even when I am taking a break from the so-called real world.

I have written a lot across these posts.  Two-hundred and forty-one weeks, as many posts, a lot of different topics of focus, sometimes a different angle on a previously discussed matter.  While I take my vacation from my job and from the instantly-connected world, and social media, this is too important to me to let go, because you are so important to my path.

This might be a bit sappy, I suppose, but I still feel I need to express to you my gratitude.  Thank you for reading, and I hope you will continue to travel these paths with me, as you explore your own.

What do you do on your vacations?

 

GOAL LOG – Week 31:

Note – I am not maintaining my goal log during my vacation, but still want to leave this here.

Diet: I am probably not eating my best, but likely burning it off with the walking alone.

Exercise: If this is a typical Pennsic, I am walking miles every day, and fencing, and shooting archery, and getting a ton of exercise in.

Writing:  Likely little of this is happening.

Meditation:  Unknown.

Gratitude: I hope to be maintaining this.

 

This is the two-hundred forty-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: The Zone

Seek things that can put you in the zone.

What is the zone?  The zone is that place where you are in perfect harmony with the universe.  You aren’t thinking, you are just being.  Whatever you might be doing while in the zone is often effortless, seems impossibly easy, and is immensely positive.

A lot of different references to the idea of the zone have been made throughout history.  Miyamoto Musashi in his Book of Five Rings referred to the zone as “the place of no mind”.  Some people call it the void.  Some call it nirvana.  However you might refer to it, the zone is the ultimate place of the here-and-now and nowhere all at once.

Too often we get focused on the past or looking towards the future.  We neglect being in the now, we don’t mind where we are at this moment.  Or, conversely, we see the now based on the results of past and future, as we feel down or concerned or anxious or nearly any other negative feeling.

When we are in the zone, we are completely present but still detached.  Athletes reference this state of being most frequently, that place where the muscle memory takes over and instead of overthinking you just move through.

Meditation is a great way to get yourself into the zone, but by no means the only way.  When you are sitting still, when you are taking a walk, when you are working out at the gym, when you are showering before going to work you can get yourself into the zone, perfectly present yet detached and able to generate immense positivity.

How can you be both present and detached?  By not letting emotions, in especial negative emotions, dominate your thought.  We often get caught up in our emotions, concerns about past actions, worries about upcoming events, coping with people or events we dread either past or present.  But when we are in the zone we can be in the present in thought alone, detached from emotion.

Yes, I frequently write about the need to think, feel and act to manifest.  However, its easy to overthink, overfeel, and even overact.  You think past the idea to the pitfalls and potential problems.  You feel good about one thing, but bad about how others might react.  When you act you do so beyond just intention, but into unnecessary steps that either do not help or in truth hinder the goal.

In the zone you can be wholly present but detached, and that is always positive.  Why?  Because it is a place of peace and utter calm where action and thought just feel good, and no other emotion intrudes.  We are ultimately empowered when we find the zone, and we should strive to be there more often.

In the here-and-now in the manner getting into the zone brings us, that is what pure positivity feels like.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action.  Knowing that we can all find ways to get into the zone, or the place of no mind, or the void, whatever you call it, we can strive to reach it.  When we get ourselves to that place, we can feel pure positivity, and with that 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 thirty-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.

Pathwalking 240

I frequently write about energy.

I believe that everything, at its core, is energy.  That is the center of the Universe, that is the point of origin for all.  We begin and end as energy, neither created nor destroyed, frequently transmuted.

Over the past half a year plus, I have been working to meditate more frequently.  Why?  Because meditation is the ultimate means to connect to source energy.

What is source energy?  Source energy is pure energy in the air, surrounding us, penetrating us, binding the galaxy together.  Yes, it is The Force, but it is still a very real thing.  Nevertheless, source energy, or universal energy, is the ultimate.

We are made of energy at our deepest, most intricate level.  Everything we can see, touch, smell or otherwise engage with is made of energy.  And of course, the devices that connect us across the world utilize energy in a wholly different form.  It is everywhere, and it is constant, and it cannot be created nor destroyed, just transmuted and repurposed.

Meditating, as I explained earlier this week in Positivity, is a great means to allow one to connect and disconnect with the universe.  On the one hand you can seek out your own inner thoughts and manage them in new ways, while on the other you can utterly lose yourself and join source energy for a time.

However you choose to meditate, this is an ultimate chance to pause, to get ahold of yourself, to experience the world while connected with everything at its most base existence…and yet be disconnected from it all.

Why does connecting with source energy matter?  Because it provides us with an opportunity to ultimately examine ourselves.  Not just the past and present, and not the immediate, touchable here-and-now, but our core, true, intentional selves.

What does that mean?  In Billy Joel’s The Stranger, the opening line is “Well we all have a face that we hide away forever, and we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.”  The thing is, we don’t just wear faces for other people, we wear them for ourselves, too.

Sometimes this is a necessary evil.  When you get out of bed after a restless night of insomnia, stub your toe, then drop the cap of your toothpaste down the drain and burn your tongue on the first cup of coffee,  chances are you might just spiral into a terrible day.  However, if you work to leave that all behind and put on a different face, you don’t show up to work carrying with you that crazy, no good, terrible morning.

You choose to put on a different face in part for yourself, so that you can do what needs to be done, and in part for everyone else, so that you don’t present to them a bitter, angry, flustered person nobody would want to be around, yourself included.

So we are constantly putting on different faces, different attitudes, and as such leaving behind our genuine selves.  Frequently, who we really are is covered under a different persona that has been cultivated to help you walk the path you have chosen.

Connecting with source energy allows us to get ourselves beneath the faces we wear, under the surface and deep into our core.  We get to venture to a place where, merging into Universal energy, we needn’t wear even our skin, so we can be our most real, most genuine, most true self.

This is not always easy.  Sometimes when I meditate, getting into the zone is challenging.  There are times I can neither focus nor unfocus, and I might just sit there quiet for more time than truly getting to merge into that source energy.  But I strive to achieve this goal, because I love the ultimate freedom deep mediation opens me up to.

When you go to source energy, you become energy.  This is where we begin, it is where we will end, we simply have transmuted into this meat suit we present to the world, fat, thin, short, tall, black, white male, female, or what-have-you.  The real, core you and me is energy, and meditating connects us back to source energy, back to the core of it all.

By converging with source energy, we allow ourselves to be fully, completely and totally open to endless possibilities.  We are ultimately free to experience both the little and the grand things.  We can find the answers to almost all of our questions, because when we are one with Universal energy everything is possible.

This is why energy is so important.  When we recognize that we are pure energy at our own core, and we seek to connect to the energy at the core of the universe, we can find calm, peace, contentment, and all the answers we could possibly desire.

I am striving to meditate daily because I find that the sensations I experience when connecting to Universal energy are incomparable.  I find that if I mediate in the morning my day feels more connected, and I feel as though I am better able to manage everything the comes my way.  If I mediate in the night I find that my sleep is more restful, and I am better able to do things like write these posts or work on other necessary projects.

When we recognize that we are energy, and that energy is the root of it all, we can make better choices and more happily traverse the paths we have chosen for our lives.

Do you connect yourself to core energy?

 

GOAL LOG – Week 30:

Diet: I am still eating fairly decently.  Had more sugar this past week, feel I need to cut back further on that and on carbs still as well.

Exercise: I was a bit of a slug this week, apart from a night of packing up the car after a day up and down many stairs.  Otherwise, not my week for exercising.  Next week is Pennsic, so TONS of walking, fencing and exercise on the horizon.

Writing:  See above.  And next week will probably be little-to-no writing, as I will be away and focused on other things.

Meditation:  Seven total days of meditation, no less than 5 minutes each day.

Gratitude: I wrote out 5 things to be grateful for every day.

 

This is the two-hundred fortieth 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: Meditation

Meditation can do a lot of good.

We live in a world of almost endless noise.  Everywhere we turn we are inundated with information, with calls for help, action, and choices to be made.  People often can’t just be content with the sounds of nature and carry music or employ some other distraction.  Noise everywhere.

Mediation is often misunderstood.  The word alone, for many, conjures images of people sitting cross-legged, palms up, chanting “Om” repeatedly.  This is a valid form of meditation, but by no means the only one.

Meditation is taking time-out to let your thoughts just flow about while you work to connect with source energy.  You try to find balance, find stillness, find a connection to the Universe.  It is not necessarily quieting your mind, but that is frequently an effect of the practice.  Meditating can change your state of being.

Some people do meditate cross-legged in the classic lotus position.  Some meditate from a chair.  Some people meditate lying down.  Eyes closed or focused on a single point, you focus on your breathing, or a noise or music in the background, or energy flowing into your body, or some combination of all these.  You connect to something more out there, and as such you connect more with you.

This is an amazing means to generate positivity in our lives.  We can use meditation to work out unpleasant thoughts and negative energy and draw in happy thoughts and positive energy.  Once you have taken the time to begin meditation, you can thoroughly build from that foundation.

Meditating gives focus, can clear the mind, and opens channels to different energies.  This is an opportunity to create new positivity.  This can be a really simple but effective means to an end.

Yes, everybody is busy, and yes, time as we perceive it is frequently at a premium.  But it is not necessary to spend all that much time in your day, relatively speaking, to meditate.  All of the studies and medical and scientific and metaphysical experts say that even a few minutes a day is seriously good for our mental health.

Finding just five minutes in the sixteen plus hours you’re awake every day to meditate may seem challenging, but the reward in positivity you can build with that short but powerful span is worthwhile.  In a world full of so much negativity, we could all use more tools to generate greater positivity.

Every tool we can employ to make our lives better can be used to make our world better overall.  Taking time to connect with source energy is a stronger connection with yourself.  The connection with the self that comes with meditation, whatever form you choose, is pretty magnificent.  When we connect more with ourselves, the connections we have with others only get stronger.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action.  Knowing that everyone can practice meditation, and that it is a relatively simple act requiring not much time at all, we can make use of meditating to generate positivity.  When we close out that noise and focus on connecting with source energy, we better 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 thirty-first 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.

Pathwalking 239

While you, and you alone, can choose and walk a given path, you don’t necessarily need to do so on your own.

The key is to know the difference between allowing someone to offer guidance, advice and help versus control, obstruction and discouragement.

Nobody knows everything.  Plain and simple, nobody knows everything.

Because that’s the case, everyone needs to seek help, advice and assistance from time to time.  While we may each have our own expertise, there will always be something we do not have familiarity with, and we may need to learn.

One of the best things about this life we have is that there is always something new to be learned.  There is always something I don’t already know, which I can study and learn and gain new experiences from and with.

So how do you find assistance, and determine if it is helpful or hurtful?

There are three distinctly different ways in which you may be aided in the path you are working on.  To be fair, I am generalizing here, but this is still an important consideration.

First – help from a person.  You look for an expert in the field, a guide, a coach, or an assistant.  You take an inspired action, and you choose someone to provide the help you need.

This can take several forms.  You hire a coach, you have a sit-down conversation with a confidant, you engage a contemporary, you dive into a philosophical discussion with a stranger at the pub.  Whatever form it takes, you have actively sought out this help, and are trying to get answers, assistance, and maybe even direction.

The challenge is to not give away your power to another.  Sometimes the answer you receive will not be the answer you need.  How will you know?  You will know by how it makes you feel.

If you feel that the information the helper you commiserated with does not resonate with you, consider seeking other advice.  But if you didn’t get the answer you wanted, but your gut tells you it’s still the right info, consider what to do with it.

When you choose to seek help in this manner, you have to keep in mind that some people will have their “best intentions” for you, and in the process attempt to control, obstruct or discourage whatever it is you are working on.  You alone are inside your own head, so only you can decide if the advice you receive in any way aligns with your thoughts, your feelings and your actions.

When you seek out help in whatever manner you do, remember that you are still the one walking the path, you just needed information to continue, or options to make the best choices, or an alternative perspective to your own, or something else of this nature.  If you are seeking help in order to let someone else control your path, it’s a question of how strongly you believe in the path you have chosen, and whether the time has come to choose another.

Second – help from a passive source.  I have read any number of books on all kinds of different topics.  Some have been in the holistic self-help pantheon, some have been more business oriented and professional.

There is a vast wealth of information out there, and as such numerous tomes have been written about nearly every topic you can imagine.  However, some of that information is wildly speculative, some of it is outright incorrect, and some of it may not resonate with you.

I have read or listened to any number of books on the concept of consciousness creating reality.  Some have had a greater impact than others, and some have been in a language that resonated more with my own thought process.  Each has value, and each has given me assistance on my chosen paths in different ways.

I only want to caution you in giving all your power to the ideas of another.  When you read something that makes sense to you and speaks to you in whatever manner it does, just check to make sure you are empowering yourself, not passing your empowerment away.  How does what you have read make you think, feel, and want to act?  That will tell you where you are at.

Third – help from random sources.  This is the trickiest to make use of, and this sometimes requires a leap of faith.

How do random sources work?  You put your trust in the universe to give you guidance.  An omen, signs and portents.  For example, you are watching TV, and a commercial for a product that you really could use on your path comes on.  Less obvious, a character on a program makes a statement that resonates with you, and opens a new channel of information.  As you are driving down the highway a billboard inspires you, or the name on a semi-truck somehow answers a question you’ve been asking.  A random phone call from a friend shifts your path as you needed.

Once again, the caution here is to be careful not to disempower yourself.  Pathwalking is about empowering ourselves, choosing where we want to direct our lives and the destiny we want to walk to.

Seeking for help is not a weakness.  Everyone needs assistance from time to time.  Know that you have choices, and you can get what you need to achieve the goals you’ve set along your path.

Where do you turn when you want aid and advice?

 

GOAL LOG – Week 29:

Diet: I am still eating pretty decently.  The only downside was having a sugary cereal in the house, and not wholly resisting its sweet crunchiness.  Onwards and forwards.

Exercise: Fencing happened twice last week.  I need to increase my activity, as apart from some walking that was pretty much it.

Writing:  Two days of writing.  Working to ramp this back up, though I’ll be largely off for a week-and-a-half when I go on vacation.

Meditation:  Six days of meditation, at least 4 minutes each day.

Gratitude: I wrote out 5 or 6 things to be grateful for six out of seven days.

 

This is the two-hundred thirty-ninth 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: An Amazing time to be Alive

We live in an amazing time.

We have the technology to communicate across the globe instantly.  We have miniature computers we carry around on our persons that began life as portable cellular telephones.  We have cars that can stop themselves, and are equipped with cameras and indicators for blindspots.  We have produce year-round from every climate in our grocery stores.

Right now we are being bombarded by fear of all the change that this technology represents.  There are people who see globalization as a change of their way of life so vast and unpredictable, they take a reactionary stance.  That’s why the Brexit vote went the way it did, and that’s why Trump got the nomination as the Republican candidate in the US.

What they cannot see is the incredible Positivity in the broadening of our world.  We are capable of learning more about other cultures, virtually exploring other places and even traveling the world than any other time in history.  We live in an amazing time, because we are all capable of choosing anything we might want.

The positivity in the possibility of this world is immense.  However, too many people’s fears are being played.  The minority who fear this amazing world are shouting as loudly as they can, trying to hold on to the small, comfortable piece they fear will be taken from them.  They see a world that is so vast and inifinite, that they fear being lost in the endless possibilities instead of relishing them.

We need to show these people how much better this new world can be than the old.  When we let go of nationalism, racism, misogyny, bigotry, and all other fears of the “other” and work together, we could develop this world on unimaginable levels.  When we don’t let our skin color, sexual orientation, nationality, social class, money, or religion divide us, and we work together, we could end poverty, find cures for diseases, and visit the stars and explore beyond what we already know outside of our world.

Change can be scary.  Some people prefer to keep to their relatively small, comfortable place in the world based on an identifying factor such as gender, religion, nationality and so forth.  Some people see a world so vast and infinite that they huddle instead inside the familiar, afraid that they will lose the small things they have.  What they cannot see is that if they let go of their fear they could have exponentially more of the things they most desire.

We live in an amazing time.  We have endless possibility before us, tools like nothing the world has ever known, but for some this has been too much, too fast.  Rather than resist them and allow their voices to grow louder in fear and anger, we need to love them, and raise up our voices louder than theirs in hope and joy.  We need to show them that they will not be lost in this sea of possibility, because we can help guide them into this bigger, better, amazing world.

Carl Jung said, “What you resist persists.”  Instead of responding to negativity with negativity, let’s start spreading more joy, more love and more positivity loudly and proudly, and build together the potential of this amazing world we have before us.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action.  Knowing that we live in an amazing time that some people fear, we can take a new approach to show them the positivity of it.  When we more loudly proclaim our love and joy over their fear and anger, we can help empower them by empowering 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 thirtieth 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.

Election 2016

I am sorry if this offends you, but I feel rather strongly about this, so I am going to say it.

This is the reality of the situation.  We have two choices for President.  Trump or Clinton.  Unless you agree with a self-aggrandizing, hate-mongering, sexist, racist narcissist, it is in your best interest to vote for Clinton.  She may well be the status quo, and a corporate shill, but that is of far less import than we give it.  I know a lot of people thoroughly dislike her, and for that matter I am not her biggest fan either.  But we have ONLY these two choices, whether we like it or not.  She is the best of them by far.

America has two choices for President this year.  I am sorry if you are a supporter of one of the third party candidates, but the sad truth is that they can’t win, because the system is designed to stop them from doing so.  Want to change that?  It won’t change from the top.

This is the truth, whether you want to believe it or not.  You cannot change the system from the top down.  The continued failure of the theory of Trickle-Down economics has proven that.

Thus, you can throw away your vote for President if you so choose, but the statement you are making by voting for your third party candidate might as well be a shout in the middle of the dessert, because it will have the same effect.

Want to change the system?  Since you can’t do it from the top, let’s address the much, much larger issue at hand.  Congress.  The President DOES NOT MAKE LAW.  Read the Constitution, the President signs or vetos laws, but DOES NOT make them.  That’s Congress’ job.  And they are not doing their job.

We have an embarrassing, useless, obstructionist body politic right now.  There are so many people in office who just should not be there.  They are focused on meaningless drivel, and doing nothing to address important matters that could improve the lives of the people they are supposed to represent.  Their elections are the ones we should care the most about.  They are the people in office we should REALLY concern ourselves with.

Do you know who your Congresspeople are?  Take a look at the lawmakers, people.  These are the people we should be focusing on, not the people running for President.  I believe that ALL of the House of Representatives is up for election this year.  Want to change the system?  Get rid of these nimrods and get in new blood where it counts.

Want to support a third party?  How about a third party candidate for Congress?  Bernie Sanders is NOT a Democrat, but he understood that to have ANY chance he had to run for President as one.  We need more independents and third party men and women in the House and the Senate.  THAT is how we change the system.

It might seem like a bleak reality, but that’s what we have.  We need to accept that, and choose the less frightening of the two choices before us.  Meanwhile, let’s turn our attention towards the scary, do-nothing people in Congress, and start making the change that would do our nation the most good.

We CAN change the system.  But we have to work our way from the bottom to the top, not the other way around.

Pathwalking 238

My path is good for me, but probably not for you.  As we are not in competition, I would be happy to help you along your path in whatever way I can.

Competition is a fine thing in certain respects.  My baseball team versus your team, track stars running for the best time, fencers fighting to best one another, and for that matter most competitive sports.  Competition in the everyday, for the most part, is unhealthy.

This is not just a straight-up notion, either.  We become competitive on a number of different issues, in a number of different ways that are disempowering.

First there is the obvious.  Competing for jobs, competing for food, competing to be classier, richer, smarter than anyone else.  This is the fruit of lack mentality, of the belief that there is not enough of insert-object-x-here for everyone, so we have to struggle to get it for ourselves.  I would bet that your social media channels are as clogged with this sort of competition as mine are.

Then there is the somewhat less obvious forms of competition.  They got ‘x’, so now I should have ‘x’.  I had to struggle to accomplish ‘y’, how come they didn’t have to work half as hard?  Why do I get paid two-thirds of what he gets paid for the same work?  This is the competition of resentment, of wanting our own slices of the same pie but seeing the pie as finite rather than infinite.

What it all boils down to is the same issue.  We live in a society of lack mentality.  The people whom we place in positions of power, and the media empires bombarding us with so-called news and information, are continuously telling us that we have to get it now before supplies run out! and such.  We see this world as being full of limitations, we see that there is not enough of this, tha,t or the other thing, and we are set-up to struggle to have the things we want.

Why?  Because this disempowers us.  If we are disempowered, they can control us.  Or, at the very least, they can work hard to direct how we think, how we feel and how we might act as such.

Look at the elections in the United States at the moment.  Or for that matter, look at the vote on remaining in the EU or not that happened in Great Britain.  People in power play on our fears, play on the things we are concerned the most about, like jobs and money and security, by telling us how we need to take back what already belongs to us, and that if we do not make or unmake these changes or avoid these people we will have even less.  They present us with a tiny pie and claim this is all there is, and there is certainly not enough to go around.  Grab it, any way you can, and never mind the consequences.  They’ll handle everything for us.

How incredibly disempowering is that?  And yet a stunning number of people believe it to be true.  There just is not enough, we’re all in competition, get out of my way because I WILL get what is mine before you can take it from me!

This is not the truth.  This is the lie that could unravel our entire society if we let it.  We compete where competition is unnecessary because we allow ourselves to be disempowered, and we believe that this is a universe of lack, insufficiency, and exclusion.

The truth is very much the opposite of this.  We live in a universe of more-than-enough, we live in a world of abundance, and we have the power to receive whatever we want.  But we have to start empowering ourselves, and we need to recognize that this is not a competition.

Your path varies from mine because you are experiencing this life differently from how I am.  You want to do things that I do not want to do.  You find fun where I don’t.  You may hold any number of beliefs that vary from mine.  That is ok.

The universe is full to bursting with abundance.  Any lack or deficiency is our own making.  We are not in competition to outdo each other.  We can have all the wealth, love, happiness and even power that we might desire.  To get it, we have to empower ourselves.

What do you want from your life?  What makes you happy?  What makes you feel full?  From the spiritual to the physical, the intangible to the tangible, we have different needs and desires, and there is no need to compete for them.  In an abundant universe they are already out there, waiting for us to take hold of them.

How?  By taking back our own empowerment.  We have to stop going with the masses, stop allowing a very small few tell us how it is or how it should be, and we need to consider what we individually want, and how we might achieve it.  Instead of searching without for the things that will make us feel safe, secure and happy we need to turn within.  We need to recognize that each and every one of us has the power to create the world as we most want it to be, and that doing so does not need to deny anyone else their wants and needs.

Look at the things you think about and talk about during the day.  How often are you focused on the concerns of others instead of your own?  How often do you give away your empowerment to another, to an issue outside of yourself, to concerns and fears and anger?  Are you focusing on things that you can take control of to better your own life, or are you focusing on things you can really do little to nothing about?

Be your own empowerer.  Don’t be concerned so much with the paths of others, and focus instead on your own.  This is how we can change the course of our society, by working from within instead of trying to force change from without.  We are not in competition…unless you care to duel in the fencing lists with me.  We can strive for our hearts’ desires without having to compete to get them.

Are you focused on your own paths, or the paths of others?

 

GOAL LOG – Week 28:

Diet: I am still eating pretty well, still eating less bread and pasta and the like.  Had some ice cream once last week, and am happy to report I don’t really feel like returning sugar to my diet.

Exercise: Fencing happened twice last week, as did archery one day.  I do need to get back to the gym and to increase my overall exercise.

Writing:  Two days of editing.  Finished what I was working on, but I need to continue to work on writing and editing.

Meditation:  Four days of meditation, at least 6 minutes each day.

Gratitude: I wrote out 5 or 6 things to be grateful for every day last week.

 

This is the two-hundred thirty-eighth 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: Fun

Everybody wants to have fun.

What I consider fun you might not, and what you consider fun I might not. But so long as my fun does not interfere with your fun, and vice versa, what’s wrong with anything we are doing in the name of fun?

Yes, of course there are exceptions to this.  If you find fun in doing things that hurt other people, or humiliate them, or otherwise hinders their life, that’s not cool.  Fun at the expense of another is not the kind of fun that’s alright for all.

Fun is an expression of joy.  When you are having fun you are feeling joyful, and joy is the ultimate expression of happiness.  When all is said and done, I think everyone simply wants to be happy.  Not the giddy, lost-for-words ecstatic happily-ever-after happy, I mean happy in that sense of feeling whole, and complete.  Happy as opposed to feeling down or, for that matter, unhappy.

What I consider fun is not fun to other people.  Writing for me is fun, and I know lots of people for whom writing is, in fact, painful in some way.  I love trivia games, I know people who cannot stand playing trivia games.  I know people who will happily spend the weekend watching sports on TV, which is not my idea of a good time.  I know people who consider an afternoon on the golf course time well spent, but this doesn’t do anything for me.

What do you find fun?  I don’t think we ask that of ourselves frequently enough.  We get so caught up in the things we have to do, the responsibilities, the obligations and the necessities, we neglect fun.  And fun is something we need.

As children we played.  That took all kinds of forms, some social and some less so.  We ran around kicking a ball, we played tag, hide-and-go-seek, or we explored the backyard alone creating adventures with our actions figures, or having adventures with invisible friends playing spy.  We played, because we were having fun, and as kids that was the end-all-be-all of our existence.

As adults we frequently neglect that we still need to play.  It may take on different forms, but not necessarily.  Sure, I find a long drive on a windy country road in a sporty car a joyful idea, A movie night with my friends is always fun; but I also still want to climb up that tree and hike around that rocky path, imagining I’m an adventurer, or being a medieval persona and playing with swords.

So long as what someone else considers fun does not involve ruining mine or other people’s fun in a malicious way, I say game on!  Life is too short to get easily offended, and we need to stop letting petty nuisances turn into real problems, and stop letting ourselves care so much about others and their thoughts and actions, and care more about what makes us happy.

Are you having fun?  If not, why not?

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action.  Knowing that we all want to have fun, but what we consider fun is going to differ, we can accept that all fun is not the same to everyone.  When we remember that other people have the need to have fun, and that they seek exactly what we seek in that, we actually 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 twenty ninth 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.