M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 98

Pathwalking 220

Trying to align my beliefs, emotions, thoughts and actions is an interesting challenge.

In order to manifest anything, I know that I have to combine thought with feeling and then take intentional actions.

That’s a major oversimplification of the process, however.  It is much more involved, and the pitfalls can be overwhelming.

What am I going on about?  Let me explain.

I have successfully manifested things in my life.  I have managed to make things happen through a combination of factors, but I know that I was still at the core of the manifestation of these things.

I healed fully from injuries that didn’t just leave me scarred, but could have left me disabled.  I was able to get a car when it looked from every angle like that would be impossible.

These are, admittedly, two very different things – yet they are still connected.  It is in figuring out HOW they are connected that I can work on manifesting again.

Recently I came across a new resource, which takes a more in depth look at Universal Laws.  I don’t need to get into detail about that here, but there was one point in particular that struck a chord with me.

Manifesting things is not what anyone really wants.

As I analyze the unconnected healing and acquisition of my car, how are they related?

When I was injured, I did not accept any outcome but total recovery.  I would get back full usage of my body, I would be as capable as I was before I was hurt and partially made out of titanium.  I persevered, I pushed, and I made a recovery so complete that unless I show you the scars or tell you what happened to me, you would not know.

Here’s the new factor in this.  Why did I accept no other outcome?  Because I wanted to feel good.  I wanted to still have the freedom to fence, to hike, to explore the world around me.  I wanted to have experiences similar to those I was able to have before I was badly injured.

When I needed to replace my dying car, I knew that I could make it happen.  Despite financial woes, despite no apparent way to make it happen, I knew without a doubt that I could.  And as such I wound up with a newer, more efficient and mechanically sound car, and payments not much higher than I’d been making for the dying car.

Here’s the new factor to this.  Why did I know I could make this happen even when it looked impossible?  Because I wanted to feel free.  I wanted to be able to go to work, go to spend time with friends and go places I needed to go without concern.  I wanted to be free of an unwanted association the old car trapped me in.  I wanted to experience things that a lack of reliable transportation would deny me.

What I am seeing anew is that it was not about acquiring the thing nor about recovering from the injury so much as it was about what having those things would mean.  I didn’t just want to heal completely because I wanted to be without the injuries I had taken, I wanted to remain capable of being free and able to have new experiences I might not otherwise be able to have.  I didn’t just want to replace my car for the sake of a newer car, I wanted to remain capable of being free and able to have new experiences I might not otherwise be able to have.

The connection, ergo, is that manifestation is not about the material or immaterial thing I am trying to manifest.  It goes much deeper than that.  It is really all about underlying feelings, desires, and actions.

Why do I want the things I want?  Because having them will offer me more freedom, joy, happiness, contentedness, space for creativity and building positivity.

For example – I would like a new job.  On the surface this is because I want to earn more money, and I want to work somewhere that utilizes any number of my skills and where I feel appreciated.

Why?  On the surface because I will be more able to pay bills and contribute to my household, and I will experience being part of a team, making use of my abilities and taking pride in my work.

But when I go deeper, the why leads me to being freer to create, being more able to do things I enjoy with friends and family, and have new adventures and explore new experiences on any number of levels.

Even knowing this, however, the challenge of aligning my beliefs, emotions, thoughts and actions remains.  But knowing that the end result is by no means the end, maybe I can better coordinate my process.

I have done this before successfully.  I know I can do it again, I just need to consider the pieces on the board, and move them around in the best way I can to achieve my goals.  Knowing that the goals are themselves steps to new goals and ideas and options, I think I might have more to work with.

Have you manifested things material or immaterial for your life?

 

GOAL LOG – Week 10:

Diet: I am keeping with tracking my diet.  I can see where I need to make changes, now it’s just a matter of making them.

Exercise: Fencing happened, got to the gym only once, but I took a 2.5 mile walk on one day and did some pretty aerobic hiking on another.

Writing: Four days of writing.  A day short of my goal, but writing happened.

Meditation: I spent at least 3 minutes meditating five days last week. This is a good thing.

I need to continue to work with using the goal log to improve my choices and get into the mental and physical shape I want to be in.

 

This is the two-hundred twentieth 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 personal 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: Holidays and Celebrations

Everyday can be a holiday.

That means that every day we can find something to celebrate.

There are so many holidays out there that have very specific meanings.  Beyond that, there are feast days for Saints every single day.  So why do we only choose to celebrate on these specific days?

Halloween, Presidents’ Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Arbor Day, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Barthdays…these are just some of the familiar holidays.  Then there are more obscure ones like Talk like a Pirate Day and today being Pi Day.

Why do we reserve celebration for holidays?  Why do we feel the need to slog through the rest of our days, hour by hour, in order to celebrate during just those specific times?  Why do we take such pains to reserve joy?

When all is said and done, I think we all want the same thing, but via different routes.  We all want to be happy.

I don’t mean euphoric, out-of-body, head-in-the-clouds happy, I mean happy as opposed to depressed, sad, low, discontent.  I mean that sense that you are content, lacking anxiety, pleased with life, feeling positive.

Everybody wants to feel good.  Everybody wants to be loved.  Somehow we have been taught that love, joy, celebration, and happiness all come in limited quantities, and we need to hold to them tightly.  Somehow we have come to believe that there is not enough happiness for everyone, so we need to be greedy with ours, and not share because there’s not enough.

This is untrue.  The universe is abundant, and there is more than enough happiness to go around.  Happiness is probably the one thing that EVERYONE is entitled too.  But it’s not something limited, something that has to be earned, it is something to be shared, to be spread, to connect and unite us.

No, you can’t be happy all the time, and that is partially because we need to feel the opposites in order to have balance.  But that does not mean we should only feel happy rarely.  We have the right to feel happy more often than not.  Why do we accept so easily that we need to put limits on this?

You don’t need a holiday to be happy.  You can celebrate the littlest things if that brings you joy.  Happiness is not to be reserved only for the rich, or only for those who earn it – it is for everybody, and there is more than enough to go around.

So let’s all eat pie this Pi Day to celebrate.  And then Saint Patrick’s Day later this week.  And then Random Happiness Day Just Because – whenever.  Celebrations create positivity, and with positivity we create happiness.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action.  Knowing that we don’t need a holiday in order to have a celebration, we can celebrate whatever whenever we want.  When we find more things to celebrate, we build more good feelings and when we feel good 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 eleventh 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 219

Anger is a fascinating subject.

I have a lot of anger in me.  Some is, at least as far as I am concerned, completely rational and likely justified.  Some, however, is old, long ignored, semi-forgotten…but still there.

While fear is probably the biggest obstacle I face as I walk my path, anger is a close second.

I have not written much about anger before because I work very hard to keep my anger in check.

Unfortunately, that does not release it.  That just redistributes it elsewhere.

Yoda said it well.  “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”

The connection between fear and anger is easy to disregard, but it is still problematic nonetheless.  I am realizing that I have to release my anger in some form or other, because much like my fear, it cripples me.

As with fear, I am not saying that we can and should be without anger.  Anger is a natural experience, and we are all going to get angry at times for different reasons.  It’s important to not deny the feeling, but equally important to do something about it.  Holding on to it does not get us anywhere useful, and generally worsens the feeling.

Hard to avoid the current election insanity in the United States.  There is so much fear and anger being wielded like forks and spoons at a banquet that it’s just become accepted that this is how we should feel.  It is hard not to look at it and be disturbed by it.

We get mixed signals when it comes to fear and anger.  We’re expected to hold onto them, to let them dictate our actions and influence our choices.  The thing is, both fear and anger tend to rob us of rational thought.

How do you let go of anger?

This is the question I am looking into here.  I am very surprised just how much anger I am holding onto.  Some is recent events, some is based on expectation of future events, and some is old, old stuff from the distant past.  I never really explored the depths of my anger, and didn’t realize just how tied in with my fear it actually is.

The what of my anger is not important to this discussion.  The important aspect of this is acknowledging that I have this pent up anger, and that I really need to figure out how to let it go.

One of the reasons this is as pent up as it is goes back to my past.  I used to release my anger in some relatively unhealthy ways.  I feel it important to point out here that I was never abusive to anyone, but inanimate objects were known to get tossed around.  I smashed a couple cordless phones.  I punched a few walls.  I used to rage at traffic (and sometimes I still do, actually).  I would get VERY loud and very threatening.

I don’t like this about myself.  So I worked on means to calm myself.  Meditation, redirection, finding ways to keep my anger in check.  What I am realizing now is that while I have for the most part not reacted to my anger as I used to, I am bottling it up more than I realized.  As such it is causing me as much anxiety and dis-ease as any fears I contend with.

I need to find an outlet to release my anger.

These are the options I am going to be exploring.

Write it out.  I need to accept the things that have been, are, and will be making me feel angry.  That’s first.  Once I accept this, I should sit down and type out in detail what I am angry about.  Shout via the keyboard, rage, release.  Angry letters written to people I feel wronged by, angry rants about these issues.  FOR ME.  These should not be shared, because this is wholly my own issue.  But putting words to it should draw it out.  Might need to print this and burn it or tear it to shreds to release it.

Shout it out.  Primal screaming can be really useful.  I can find somewhere I can scream and rage until my throat is raw and I feel spent.  I can go into an entire rant to myself about the things angering me to get them out of my system.  Again, this is something to be done on my own, but I think it would go a long ways towards getting this negativity from my system.  The important thing is to verbalize to release.  Probably best done when I am all alone in a safe environment.

Run it out.  I need to do something physical specifically to release my anger.  Might need a punching bag.  Might need to run at the gym.  Might need to skip rocks off a lake.  Might need to swing a sword around and drive out the anger.  Anything that will release this pent-up emotion and let me move forward.  Physical action specifically to clear away anger can be done.

Anger cannot be avoided, it should not be denied.  But it should not be allowed to simmer and linger and fester because then you wind up down the line with issues that will make any path you are trying to traverse more complicated.  Anger, like fear, is a destructive negative emotion that we need to experience, but we also need to release as soon as we can to make way for constructive positive emotions.

I have some work to do.

How do you cope with anger?

 

GOAL LOG – Week 9:

Diet: I am still tracking what I am eating daily.  I really need to be more conscious of my choices.

Exercise: Fencing happened, got to the gym twice and broke out the Wii Fit one day.  I still need to increase my exercise routine.

Writing: Five days of writing.  Goal reached.

Meditation: I spent no less than 3 minutes meditating three days last week.  It’s a start.

Now I need to work on using the goal log to improve my choices and get into the shape I want to be in.

 

This is the two-hundred nineteenth 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 personal 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.

New book – Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better

I have an idea.

What would happen if we decided to think before we speak more frequently? Further, this being the 21st century and all, what if we decided to think before we post?

Why? To change the discourse of our society for the better.

All too often we are inundated with anger, with hate, with negativity. What’s more, we tend to spread it out further by talking about these terrible things and posting about them online.

What if instead we change the conversation to more constructive things? What if we don’t spread our anger across the internet, but instead spread messages of encouragement and hope and love?

That is the entire premise of Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better. This short book I have created explores just that – taking five easy steps to think before we speak and post in order to change the course of our world.

Please check it out in Kindle and print format. My hope is that this simple idea can spread and improve things for everyone.

Positivity: Be Happy

I want to be happy.

Don’t you? Doesn’t that sound like a fantastic idea?

What do we have to do to feel happy?

That’s the challenge we all face. In especial when we’re inundated with conflict and messages of exclusion and hate and fear. Hard to find happy when there are so many messages that are the opposite.

It is time to take back our power and do what it takes to be happy.

It might be something grand, like taking a vacation or relocating to another country or selling off all your possessions and walking the earth. To each their own.

It might be a bit easier than that. Go online and look for silly cat pictures. Watch dogs and other animals do ridiculously cute things. Go outside and sit in the sun. Go outside and sit in the rain. Walk in the woods. Do anything physical. Put on a movie or TV show or any video that makes you feel good, that makes you feel happy. Spend time with loved ones. Eat chocolate. Read a book.

Why do we deny ourselves opportunities to be happy? Because we have come to believe that we don’t deserve it.

We have been taught that happiness is something earned. You can’t just have it, it is not your right it is a privilege. You have to work to be happy. You have to put out effort and struggle and sacrifice to be happy.

This is completely backwards. Happiness shouldn’t just be some reward, it is everybody’s right. We all deserve happiness, we all should be able to find happiness in whatever forms we can. It doesn’t need to be some reward for a job well done or hard work, it should just be something we are all worthy of. We are all deserving of happiness.

What makes me happy is probably different from what makes you happy. Nothing wrong with that, but we have to recognize that nobody’s happiness should be at the expense of anyone else’s. You being happy does not detract from my being happy, so we should all have opportunities, means and options to be happy.

Positivity builds happiness. Feeling positive leads to feeling good, which is a key to feeling happy. It’s pretty close to impossible to feel happy when you are dealing in negativity.

Claim your happiness. Don’t be afraid, do whatever you can to feel happy.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we all want to be happy, and it is not something we need to earn, we should take steps to do things that make us feel happy. When we work on being happy, we make ourselves feel good, and in the process 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 tenth 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.

Pathwalking 218

This has been a particularly challenging week for me.

As I strive to walk my chosen path I am finding the obstacles along the way to be frustrating me more than usual.

I could blame the cold, though overall the winter has been mild. I could blame the grey cloudy days, though I’ve now experienced several days of sun.

More importantly, though, placing blame is not going to give me any resolution to my predicament. It is in my best interest to own up to the problem, and explore how to resolve it.

What’s my problem? I am feeling blue. I am feeling fearful. I am doubtful. I am finding myself inside a negative headspace, and I am not using the tools available to me to get out of it.

Yes, there are tools I can use to try to change my feelings and as such shift my thought process. I know them, I have written about them before, I am just finding that for whatever reason employing them is presenting me with a challenge.

Why? Well that’s the question I need to answer. Why am I sabotaging myself again?

I’ve explored this issue before. I know what it will take to walk the path I want to, but I manage to sabotage myself and not get where I am going.

In this case, it’s not at all a conscious effort. I am feeling low, and not taking the steps I know that will help make me feel better.

Problem identified. Now comes the solution.

I need to get back to daily meditation. I’ve set up a reminder in my phone, but haven’t been bothering to actually take the time to meditate. I know how this makes me feel, I know how it clears my head, so I need to do it.

Exercise. Yes, I have been getting to the gym twice a week. I need to increase that, and also supplement it with other activities that will help to clear my head and get my blood flowing. I have a Wii Fit, time to employ it and get more exercise.

When I am feeling doubtful, put my thought elsewhere. I need to replace my doubt with something positive. I can use attitude shifters to alter what my mind is stuck in, employing devices that I know make me feel better.

I say again and again that one of the few things in my life I can take control of is my feelings. Nobody but me can make me feel any way I am feeling, period. So when I know I am feeling doubtful it is up to me to find something that will take that away.

Along that line is the feeling of fear. I can put a name to most of my fears, but I know that fearing these things will only keep them manifesting in my life. As such, I need to work on the things that alleviate my fears, and to take actions that will make me feel empowered.

I have discussed this at length in more than one post, both in Pathwalking and Positivity. It is a matter of getting control of my thought process, examining what it is I am feeling, and then taking actions to help me get where I want to be.

For me the problem has usually been a combination of taking action and aligning how I am feeling. Focusing on thought I can do, but feeling and action are where my challenges lie.

What do I do to fix this? I began the goal log at the start of the year to try and see what I am eating, when I am writing and exercising. I need to really apply this and use it for more. The question becomes how and in what manner?

First – I need to not just write down what I am eating. I really do need to focus on how much I am eating, and when. Am I eating because I am actually hungry, or bored or sad? Getting my diet under better control will help me feel better.

Second – I need to add at least one more day to my exercise program. Exercise is healthy for mind, body and spirit, and I need to take that more into account and use it to my advantage.

Third – I need to add meditation to the goal log. At least five days a week I need to set aside some time and meditate for a minimum of three minutes. This will allow me to work on my focus, and to calm my mind so that I can do more with getting ahold of my feelings, and considering actions.

I need to stop letting doubt, and fear, and uncertainty control my feelings. I know this, I have written about it before, now I just need to employ the tools I have to control this and do more to truly walk the path I would desire to be on.

Thank you for continuing to read my ramblings along this journey, especially on a week like this when I am both late in posting and coping with a more personal matter.

What do you do when your feelings are leaning towards the negative?

 

GOAL LOG – Week 8:

Diet: I continue tracking what I am eating daily, though I was away over the weekend and didn’t mind my log. Still working to improve on my choices.

Exercise: Fencing happened, got to the gym twice and was walking and hiking all weekend.

Writing: Three days of writing. Need to improve on that.

 

This is the two-hundred eighteenth 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 personal 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 in print and for your Kindle.

Positivity: Leap Day

Only once every four years do we get this extra day.

There are so many things we can do with an extra day. It is an additional twenty-four hours of possibility, potential, opportunity and all manner of positive things.

We are all obsessed in this society with time. Linear time in particular. Because we all have schedules for our days we are constantly chasing time.

Time to get out of bed. Time to eat breakfast. Time to go to work. Time for a break. Time for lunch. Time to go home. Time for dinner. Time for that TV show I enjoy. Time for bed.

As such time feels as though it is constantly slipping away from us. We are frequently looking for more time, because we often run into the familiar problem of “I don’t have enough time.”

This year has provided us with a WHOLE EXTRA DAY! That’s an additional twenty-four hours of time! Thus this is an opportunity for us to take advantage of the extra time and use it to do something positive, something that will make us feel good.

It’s just another Monday. This extra day means nothing. If that’s how you want to approach it you’re absolutely correct. I prefer to try to see this as a special day, an extra day upon which I can create something positive, a day of more time that I can take advantage of and find positivity in.

For a select few this is the only day on which they get to celebrate their actual, factual birthday. Imagine being born on a day that only comes about every four years? Sure, you pick a day to either side of this special day to celebrate, but your ACTUAL birthday is only every four years! You get to be considerably younger than the years may tell.

This is all about approach. How do you approach time, how do you see the hours, the days, the weeks and years go by? Is it just an endless, routine, set stream? Or do you seek to find something extraordinary in the ordinary? Just because it’s another Monday does not mean it is not nor cannot be extra special, since it’s a whole extra day of the year.

Time does not need to be an enemy or a point of contention, it can be something we can all use to create, to discover new things, to explore our world and to build positivity.

Let this extra day be a day to experience some fun, some joy, some happiness. Make Leap Day a special day where you allow yourself to enjoy all the possibility and opportunities before you.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we have this whole extra day this year, we have an additional opportunity to seek positivity. When we do what we can to make use of all of our time, we can better enjoy our day, and in so doing 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 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.

Pathwalking 217

Today has not gone as planned.

It has not gone badly, just not as I intended for it to go.

What do you do when you have a plan or an intent for your day, or your week, or your year and it gets derailed?

How can you still choose your path when you are clearly off of it?

I have said more than once that sometimes the diversions on your path are actually where you need to go. Sometimes these twists and turns and forks in the road redirect you somewhere better than you intended.

Of course, conversely, sometimes they lead you somewhere you really DON’T want to be – but that doesn’t mean that you are not supposed to be there.

How am I still walking on my path when I am somewhere I don’t want to be?

This is one of the more challenging aspects of Pathwalking. There are a number of things in your life that you can control. However, there ARE numerous things over which you can exert no control at all.

If you planned a grand hiking expedition and there is a hurricane, or you suffer an unexpected injury and have to utterly change your plans, or the person you were working with completely flakes out on you, this can force you to change your path, as you have no control over these things.

Due to circumstances beyond your control your path has to change. A lot of the time this is where people lose their desire to walk a path of their own choosing. You think, to hell with that, it didn’t get me anywhere – or – that was a total failure – or, worst of all – see? I have no control over my destiny what-so-ever!

I know how frustrating this can be. I have had the plan in place because I thought the path I was on was right and true…and then it was gone. Not through any direct action on my part, but due to the unpredictability of other people and events.

What is the point if you are still a victim of circumstance?

That right there is the point. Victim. Are you a victim, or do you instead choose to find a new opportunity? Just because things have not gone according to plan does not mean that you have failed, or that you are a victim – unless you choose to be.

Too many people allow themselves to be victims in this life. They blame this that or the other thing for their circumstances and they don’t choose for themselves but to suffer. People accept things that they actually could change, but because in the moment it seems bad or because of long-term after-effects they believe they are powerless.

We all have bad days, we all have instances where things go horridly wrong. I certainly did not choose when I was crossing that street over fifteen years ago to be hit by a car. I did not choose to spend that time I spent bound to a wheelchair for transport. I didn’t choose to experience all that pain.

What I DID choose at that time was to not be a victim. I chose to fight. I chose to struggle and persevere to speed my recovery and return my life to my control. I chose not to curl up in a ball and wait for death, I chose not to just let things happen as they may, I chose to push, to fight, to press and to accept nothing less than total success.

Today may not have gone as I’d planned for it to go. That’s why this is being put out as late as it is. However, rather than lament this I am working with it, and adjusting accordingly.

I can’t control the weather. I cannot control other people and their needs and expectations and emotions and actions. I cannot control anything but what I am thinking, how I am feeling and what I am doing. I can only control these things about my life, but in knowing this I can choose if the path that I was on is no more what I am to do next.

This is where it is so vastly important to be mindful of the here and now. Awareness of where you are at is how you can adjust when where you want to be changes, or when something you have no control over shifts matters in a way you’d prefer it didn’t. Because you are awake and aware of your immediate circumstances you can change with more ease than if you are living in the past or only for the future.

The journey is often of more important than the end result because so many things beyond our control can effect it. People, places and things can greatly change our paths in ways we didn’t expect. The dream job offer in paradise, the unexpected love interest, the failed relationship, the surprise inheritance you didn’t count on can massively alter your plans and also change your expectations and circumstances.

When your path does not go as you would want it to, be aware of whether you allow yourself to be victimized by that, or to choose to move on and make different choices. Because you have control over how you feel, and how you think and act based on your feelings, you always have options, and new paths before you.

Do you allow circumstance to victimize you when what you’ve planned doesn’t work out?

 

GOAL LOG – Week 7:

Diet: Tracking what I am eating daily. Starting to improve on my choices.

Exercise: Fencing happened, got to the gym twice and I took a good long walk one day as well.

Writing: Six days of writing. Managed to surpass my goal.

Progress happens!

 

This is the two-hundred seventeenth 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 personal 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 in print and for your Kindle.

Positivity: Words

Think before you speak.

How many times have you heard or read this phrase? How many times has it been directed at you?

I believe if more of us took the time to follow this idea, we would live in a world that is less divisive, less angry, less full of fear.

All too often people just speak off the cuff. They don’t consider their words, they don’t care just how powerful they may be. Yes, I am very specifically talking about politicians here. So much of what comes out of their mouths is so very phony, so completely false that it is deeply disturbing that we empower them to do anything.

Words are powerful. They can start war or bring peace. They can spark fights or they can calm nerves. What we say is so much more important than we often give it credit, and yet we are frequently watching people flounder because of half-truths, denials of reality and lies.

The importance of being awake and aware in this life is that you don’t just do whatever comes to mind. You think it out, you consider your actions. I recently felt inspired to post this to Facebook:

Encourage instead of criticize.

Love instead of fear.

Suggest solutions instead of pointing out problems.

Be proactive instead of reactive.

Be accountable instead of seeking blame.

If we each take a moment to shift our approach to our life experience to the above, I truly believe we could make the world a much, much better place.

How often do you read posts from people that get you angry? How often do you see things online that make you sad, or fearful, or otherwise disturbed? We have become so enamored of facing off against negativity that we don’t realize how much more powerful using positive statements can be.

This is a matter of approach. Think before you speak in 2016 can also directly translate to – Think before you post. Before you put that negative statement out there on FB or Tweet it or share it across the Googleverse, THINK about the impact you are having with whatever it is. Do you NEED to add to the anger, to the fear, to the loathing, to the ever-present negativity out there?

Taking positive actions, like thinking ahead before you speak/post/share can change the world.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that words convey immense power, we can choose to use them to build or to destroy. When we consider our words carefully, thinking before we speak or post online, we can make the choice to use words 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 eighth 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.

Pathwalking 216

Find your happy place, and enjoy some time there.

We all have them. That place that we get to where the world is perfect. That spot where we are in absolute contentment, feeling alive and whole and where time can just stand still and we feel as if might want to live there forever.

That is your happy place. I think there are many different happy places for most people, but they are not just an abstract idea or a thought, they are a place where you are without care, without worry, without fear, in harmony and content and, dare I say, happy.

We live in a world that is far better at telling us why we should be angry, why we should be upset about this thing or that thing, why we should resist, fight, and generally be distressed about this thing or that thing. Doesn’t matter if it’s the economy or politics or celebrity shenanigans, we focus on the upsetting, disturbing and the negative.

It is hard to feel good when you are inundated with so very many reasons to feel bad. It is hard to be happy when the world wants to make you angry. It is hard to be building anything together when the world suggests you should tear it all apart. It feels like a struggle, it feels like we have to put so very much effort into every little bit.

That is why we need to allow ourselves to spend time in our happy places. This is why we need to retreat to these places where we are deeply contented so we can recharge our batteries.

What are these happy places? For obvious reasons these will be different for different people. My happy places are not going to be the same as your happy places and vice versa. Certainly there will be overlap and similarities, but what makes me feel best is not likely to be the same as what works for you.

Let’s look at some general happy places. Lying in bed cuddling with your lover. Just sharing the intimacy, no worries, no cares, just floating there together in calm. Standing under the shower letting the water run over you. Just listening to nothing but the sound of the spray and being utterly in that moment, no concerns, no demands, just time. Reading that book that just sucks you in, absorbing you so deeply into the story that you lose all track of time and forget even where you are physically doing that reading.

Finding that happy place is something I have taken for granted and forgotten the importance of. Last night I was on the road home pretty late, not a lot of cars on the road, it was a dark but clear night. I was cruising along, blasting some of my favorite music in the cabin of my car, and singing. As I rolled along a one-lane highway singing my heart out, I realized I was in my happy place. I had no concerns, I had no worries, time just flowed and I was in that perfect peace, that great comfort where I was relaxed, in the moment, and happy.

That’s one of the key things that makes up your happy places. These are places not in the then, but in the now. Happy places are immediate, they are a moment in time in the here-and-now where you are utterly content. You can’t necessarily plan for them, you just find yourself within them.

I didn’t set out to do anything apart from drive home last night, but in that journey I found one of my happy places. When I got home I was at peace, I was feeling revitalized, I felt as if I could take on anything that came my way.

All too often we forget about our happy places. All too often we reach a point where we know we have to move on from that place, and rather than give thanks for that time and leave contented, we feel cheated and we leave right into a less positive state of mind.

What this boils down to is one of the main elements of Pathwalking I often return to. It is so very, very important to live in the now. To be awake, to be aware, to be present. My happy places are great and wonderful spaces I arrive in at that moment, and they are to be savored, but they are not necessarily where I can live, much as I may want to. Knowing that they are there, knowing that they can be brought out at any time, I can seek them out and find them again.

Further, in knowing that there are these happy places and that they are ever-changing and always in motion because they happen in the now, we have infinite room to find and create more.   There are new happy places to be found, to be enjoyed and to cherish after they have gone. We should not lament their passing, we should express gratitude for having them.

Gratitude is one of the keys to manifesting. When we are grateful for things and show that gratitude, it usually leads to more of those things. To reach more of those happy places, whatever they are, we need to be grateful for them after we have left them.

We all have bad days. We all face trials, deadlines, matters we’d prefer to avoid, times when we wish things were better than they are. Nobody is alone in going through that. But we all also have the ability to find our happy places, and to feel the joy and allow ourselves to experience them when we do.

Why do I want to walk a path of my own choosing? Because it’s not just about having control over my own destiny, it’s about finding what makes me happy in this life. I want a life of new things to learn, endless possibilities, joy and happiness. There are always experiences to be had. Having spent some quality time in one of my happy places, I think I have a better understanding of how great that can be.

Where are your happy places?

 

GOAL LOG – Week 6:

Diet: Still tracking what I am eating daily. Seeing I still need to give more consideration to my choices.

Exercise: Fencing happened, and got to the gym twice. Still need to exercise more frequently.

Writing: Five days of writing. Look at that, I met my goal last week.

I need to make more of this process.

 

This is the two-hundred sixteenth 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 personal 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 in print and for your Kindle.