Stillness, Reflection, and Positivity

Ideas to deal with the madness of the world.Photo by José M. Reyes on Unsplash

I recently finished reading Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday. Having recently completed Ego is the Enemy by Holiday, I was intrigued when this appeared on my Kindle screen.

In Mr. Holiday, I have found a kindred spirit. Both of these books spoke to me in much the same way I strive to speak to you. Plain English, simple concepts, no promises or pretenses. Just a presentation of ideas that are tried and true, to help you cope with, handle, excel, and thrive in the world you live in. Ryan Holiday is a philosopher, one who has studied prior greats from multiple cultures, who works to help distill that wisdom to you and me.

A friend recently told me that I was also a philosopher. While that’s something I’ve worked to cultivate over the past decade, it was both pleasant and validating to get that from an outside source. Thank you.

On to today’s topic. Stillness is misunderstood by most. It’s not silence or sitting in meditation (though both can apply to stillness). What stillness is, when all is said and done, is finding your center, your balance, and a place you can be present in the now, ultimately at peace.

As I continue to expand my philosophy and to help share these ideas with you, I find that stillness, reflection, and positivity are interconnected and tied to mindfulness. That interconnection can help us all handle the madness of the world.

The world seems to be going mad

If you spend any time at all on social media, you can’t miss it. The state of the current American Government, world political happenings, the global economy, it’s right there, screaming so loudly in print, images, and more that it’s overwhelming.

This makes it far too easy to feel sad, depressed, frustrated, infuriated, terrified, distressed, and almost every other negative emotion – sometimes all simultaneously. The world, if you believe the news and various influencers and the like on social media, is indeed going mad.

I am not in any way downplaying or denying suffering. The victims of the Epstein perpetrators, children ripped from their families over insane immigration policies, people treated as lesser because of gender or the color of their skin, are suffering. And that is not okay.

By all means, be outraged by this. But don’t let it disempower you. Don’t allow these horrors to cause you to lose hope, to give up, to feel powerless – because that’s how “they” want you to be.

See, if you feel all that negativity and accept there’s nothing you can do about it, you become disempowered. Which means they get the impression that they can keep doing the shitty things they do, because they see few people standing up to them. But that’s a choice you get to make. Stillness, reflection, and positivity are tools in your arsenal to oppose these negative, unkind, disempowering forces.

Stillness, reflection, and positivity

Let’s start with stillness. Stillness is being utterly and totally present, here and now. It’s being in the moment, of the moment, and present. This can take the form of meditation, deep breathing for a couple of minutes, being present as you absorb information in a book, or being generally calm, balanced, and centered.

Stillness is taking control of yourself. It’s being present here and now, and aware of your mindset/headspace/psyche self. In stillness, you are actively, consciously aware. Mindfulness practice is a product of stillness.

What about reflection? Reflection is also a product of the present, the here and now. When you reflect, you take where you are now and consider where you’ve been, what you gleaned or learned from it, and how to apply it going forward. Reflection is NOT nostalgia, nor anything that tries to turn back the clock or undo what’s done. Reflection is part of mindfulness, in that it’s how you look at the who, what, where, how, and why of your past and consider what you learned from it, in the here and now, and how to use that for your own and the greater good.

Then there is positivity. Positivity is a choice, a decision to look across the flexible cylinder toward the positive rather than toward the negative. It’s not blind to negativity, nor is it of the past or future. Positivity is applying your mindset/heaspace/psyche self, your active conscious awareness, to your approach.

Genuine positivity works with negativity to learn from the bad to find and/or create new approaches to get you from point A to point B, applied in the present. It’s choosing not to allow the overwhelming, disempowering negative messages to dominate your life.

Together, stillness, reflection, and positivity help most optimally experience life.

Photo by Paul Pastourmatzis on UnsplashApplied mindfulness is the balance point

When you practice stillness, reflection, and non-toxic positivity, you gain balance. You become centered. These are key tenets of active conscious awareness. They help you to seek, find, and/or create the potential and possibilities life has to offer.

In the face of a world seemingly going mad, this can feel wrong, selfish, and irresponsible. That’s simply not the case, however. If you have no fuel in the tank of your car, it’s not going to get you anywhere. Likewise, if your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical self is empty, you won’t get yourself anywhere.

Stillness, reflection, and positivity are tools anyone, anywhere can apply. These tools help you to examine the world around you from within your head, heart, and soul. From that examination, you can best determine who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be. If you dislike the answers you find, from stillness, reflection, and positivity, you can make new choices and decisions to change.

Easy? No. There will be times this feels impossible. Worthwhile? Yes. Because you are the only you there is, and you’re not here to merely survive, but to experience potential, possibilities, and all the highs and lows life has to offer. That can then help the greater good improve, too.

Applying stillness, reflection, and positivity isn’t hard

It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness (mindfulness) of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.

When you recognize and acknowledge that you can use your choices and decisions to be actively, consciously aware, you can use applied mindfulness to improve your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health, wellness, and wellbeing. Knowing that you have the power to use stillness, reflection, and positivity in what you choose and decide for yourself, you gain the ability to take control of more elements of your life experience.

This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.

Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity — from the vast cylinder that exists between them — shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. From that dialogue, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.

Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself opens the way for a positive approach and attitude via your actions. This can lead to realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

The better aware you are of yourself, here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you and empower them as well. That is an amazing conduit to help reason to overcome fear in the collective consciousness.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the six-hundred-fourteenth (614) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

Please visit here to explore all my published fiction and non-fiction.

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