M.J. Blehart's Blog

Only you can get inside your mind and be who you desire to be.Photo by Diego Lozano on Unsplash

Everyone has their own way of doing things. Some people swear by this routine or that practice and tell you it’s the One True Way. Maybe what they do will work for you, too.

Maybe. But there are no guarantees. That’s because who you are is not who they are. No two people are the same. Alike? Sure. The same? No. Every single person on Planet Earth is a unique individual.

Some people put time and effort into getting to know themselves. They see that self-awareness allows them a degree of control over things they experience. I know that, in my experience, this has made my life a far more interesting trip.

By far more interesting, I mean it’s had ups and downs, good things and bad, and all kinds of crazy happenings. But via my choices and decisions along the way, I’ve steered my life so that I am largely in the driver’s seat.

There are a lot of messages in the world at large that imply you have to be a certain way, own certain things, and make certain choices to have the optimal life. Then, we drive ourselves insane pursuing these things to meet those expectations.

The problem is that what works for you won’t necessarily work for me. And vice versa. That’s because you alone can know who you are. Who you really, truly, are, at your core.

First, however, you need to know your selves.

Your three selves

Everyone is of three minds. This, however, is not the unconscious versus the subconscious versus the conscious. This is a different three-mind experience everyone has, but we often fail to see it. In this instance, I’m exploring the passive subconscious, passive-aggressive egoic, and active conscious minds.

The passive mind is directly connected to your subconscious. It’s the place where your values, beliefs, memories, and habits live. It simply is, just lying there in pools that you only swim in when something makes you reach for a value, belief, memory, or habit. Because it’s passive, things live here that are not true to you anymore. Without active conscious actions, this becomes like the junk drawer you toss random things into and forget about – until suddenly you need that turkey-shaped cookie cutter.

The passive-aggressive mind is your ego. The ego is a construct that comes into being at a time when your conscious and subconscious minds connect. Then, they formed an idea of who you are. However, the ego is often just a snapshot of who you are for a short time and then becomes who you were. Yet the ego believes itself to be your true self. The ego thinks it’s who you are.

It’s passive-aggressive because it’s the ego that sparks brain weasels, causes you to second-guess things, and holds you to a comfort zone you actually would prefer to leave. It’s obnoxious, and infuriating, and it really wants you to avoid active conscious awareness.

Your conscious mind is active. This is when you are present, here and now, and making choices and decisions for yourself. It’s active because you are engaged with your inner thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach before taking action.

Your active mind is you in control, at least right this moment, driving your life.

Photo by Samuele Errico Piccarini on UnsplashYou alone can know who you are

Your passive subconscious mind and passive-aggressive egoic mind are not the truth of who you are. The subconscious holds onto everything like a sponge and only releases it when an effort is made to wring it out.

The passive-aggressive ego knows it’s just a construct of who you were and not who you are. That’s why it fights you passive-aggressively to maintain its false sovereignty. The ego also feeds on outside validation and influence, which is how you get narcissistic assholes with zero situational awareness, let alone self-awareness. But that’s the extreme.

Your active conscious mind engages with your inner being. This is where, from the present moment, you make choices and decisions about who, what, where, how, and why you are.

This is active because it’s not done in the past nor in the future. It’s in the here and now, the present, alone. That’s because the only time that’s real is the now. The past is easily misremembered (look at current American politics for a truly horrific example of where that can take you). The future will be impacted by things you cannot in any way, shape, or form control. But this moment, right now? You can get behind the wheel and drive.

In this moment, you can ask questions that can only be truly answered in the now. These tell you who you are. They include,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What are my intentions?Is my approach positive or negative?What am I doing?

None of these can be answered in the past or future. They’re pure products of the here and now. The answers tell you who you are.

Knowing who you are empowers you

Most of our so-called leaders want us to be passive. They prefer sheeple they can manipulate, influence, and control. They want you at the back of the bus, not in the driver’s seat. Not active.

To do this, they strive to disempower you at every turn. Blatantly, by passing restrictive and harmful laws and policies. Subtly, by creating the “other” for you to fear.

Your passive subconscious and passive-aggressive ego have little ability to resist. That’s why being actively conscious and making choices and decisions for yourself empowers you.

There will be times you need to fall back on rote, routine, and subconscious habit as a defense mechanism. The construct of the ego can be a momentary source of empowerment when needed (and only becomes a hindrance when things change and its efficacy ends). No matter the case, you always have the power to shift into active conscious mindfulness.

This isn’t easy, relatively speaking, but it’s worth it to know who you are, so that you can make choices and decisions to drive your life where you desire it to go. And when you choose wrong – and you will – you can choose anew and change directions. You alone can know who you are. And you are worthy and deserving of that knowledge.

I don’t know about you, but don’t you think knowing who you are sounds better than being someone you don’t desire to be?

This is the seventh-hundred-twenty-seventh (727) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.

The post You Alone Can Know Who You Are appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Gratitude is always a force for good.Photo by Kevin Butz on Unsplash

I know that I’m incredibly fortunate. I have an amazing wife, a crazy but loving family, awesome friends, and acquaintances; I wouldn’t trade them for anything. A comfortable home, a great car, and amazing potential and possibilities available to me. I have amazing people, places, and things both tangible and intangible in my life that I’m deeply, hugely, tremendously thankful for.

I’m not trying to brag, I just want to express gratitude. I’m saying thank you, universe. Because I’ve been incredibly fortunate, and I recognize that appreciation for this is hugely important.

I know people who are struggling. Some a little, some a lot. There are people in my life with physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual challenges. And while I sometimes feel some guilt and shame because of all the ways that I’m fortunate, I recognize that it’s hugely important to be grateful and express that. Openly.

Life’s not easy. I’m in a good place, having a good day. But I have had more than my share of problems, challenges, bad days, horrific experiences, and the like. I’m here now and experiencing many, many of the amazing things that life has to offer. Even the bad things that happen, I am grateful for.

Because I’m in a relatively good position with my life, I strive to do what I can to be of service to other people. And I’m thankful I can do that.

Doing what I can when I can

As I point out a lot, you and I are seriously limited in what we can do for things like politics, bad businesses, world affairs, and all the things happening well outside our immediate circles. Yes, I can vote, boycott bad businesses, attend protests, and the like. That, however, is about all that I can do.

What I can also do is share my philosophy with you. To what end? So that I can show you a perspective you might not have otherwise considered. To maybe help you see potential, possibilities, and new angles you were unable to see before. Additionally, in some instances, I might show you that you’re not alone in this universe.

When you see throngs of people shouting support for a narcissistic cult leader, watch the people elected to supposedly represent you represent naught but their self-interests, and see the dismantling of institutions meant to do good for the many, it’s easy to feel alone. Lost. Defeated. Scared. Uncertain. All of the above and more.

It’s important to be aware of all that. If you’re not aware of it, you can’t do anything about it. Yet there’s a fine line between awareness and inundation. You do not need to be so hyper-aware that you lose yourself and your self-sovereignty in this mess.

This is why I share my perspective on nontoxic positivity, mindfulness, conscious reality creation, and overall self-awareness. Through this, I believe I help people to find their balance, their center, and maybe even their empowerment. Because nobody can empower you – you need to find it for yourself. I have suggestions I share along that line.

A truly ginormous resource is gratitude.

Thank you, universe

Every single self-help guru, religious icon, spiritual leader, and all the philosophies expound the power of gratitude. Saying thank you and feeling genuine gratitude is a tool of ultimate empowerment.

First, gratitude is NEVER negative. Sarcastic and ironic, maybe, but not in-and-of-itself negative. Second, giving gratitude is just as powerful as receiving it.

I don’t know about you, but being thanked always feels good. Like, really good. It feels like you’ve leveled up, been told you are worthy, and it’s a positive thought and feeling combination.

Likewise, when you give someone or something gratitude, you feel the same sensation. Giving or getting, gratitude is powerful. More than that, though, it’s empowering.

So many things in the universe – most of them utterly false and/or artificial – are tools of disempowerment. Finding and/or creating empowering things for yourself diffuses and lessens their influence and harm.

In a world hell-bent on keeping you from realizing your own power, whatever tools are available to you so that you can take what control you can are important. Gratitude is chief among them. Hence, thank you, universe, for everything.

Photo by laura adai on UnsplashMy personal directive

My deepest desire is to help others. If I can show you a way to your empowerment, even if it’s not my way, then I have done the good I seek to put out into the universe. That’s incredibly important to me! So if I can do it, yay!

This has nothing to do with glorification or my ego. This is my love language. It expands beyond my immediate circles to anyone who cares to pause and read what I’m sharing. My main goal in this life is to be of service to anyone and everyone that I can, to help people make and find their way in the world, and be a beacon of reason, kindness, compassion, and empathy.

Thank you, universe, for letting me be here, now, and able to provide this service. I’m grateful to be here, now, in this time and place with this mind, body, and spirit. And to you – thank you for reading.

Saying and feeling thank you, universe, 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 apply mindfulness to express gratitude, which is the most powerful force of positivity imaginable. Knowing that saying and feeling thanks, giving genuine gratitude, is always a force for good, you can use this to take more control of your life experience with active conscious awareness.

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-fifteenth (615) 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.

The post Thank You, Universe appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Finding and/or creating change is tied directly to this.Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

What is a comfort zone? Often, it’s not a place that’s actually comfortable. No, frequently a comfort zone is a place that’s familiar, known, and relatively stable for you.

Your comfort zone can be mental, emotional, spiritual, or physical. Mentally, it might be an ideal, a truth, a belief you cling to (even in the face of it being uncomfortable or disprovable). Emotionally, it might be a feeling or love, connection, or belonging to/with someone, something, or someplace (even though you’re not feeling good about it). Spiritually, it might be a belief in the religion your parents raised you in, or a philosophy you cling to (even if it brings you no peace or comfort). Physically, it can be a person, place, or thing that’s incredibly familiar and seemingly stable (even though you would prefer someone or something new and different).

Comfort zone is a misnomer. More accurately, it should be a familiarity zone or a sense-of-stability zone. Yet the disguise is comfort, and a false sense of security that can keep you small, less-than you are worthy of, and otherwise missing out on your true desires for your life experience.

The idea of comfort versus the reality

Many messages about how life should be are colored by exaggeration, embellishment, and notions that are only true for a select few, but not everyone. Believe it or not, you are 1 of 8,000,000,000 people on this planet. All eight billion people do not find comfort or contentment in the same things. Similar, maybe, but the same? No.

Advertising often tells you that if you buy that car, watch, service, or vacation, you will be a winner. You will look good in the eyes of the rest of humankind, be more worthy and deserving. What’s more, not doing so will lessen you.

Does everyone want, need, or desire a Mercedes or a Rolex? Would everyone be better off visiting Hawaii or New Zealand? No matter what you might believe, the answer is no. That’s because what excites you might not excite me, and vice versa. What he thinks is amazing, she might think is awful. What gets them fired up might bore us.

My overall point here is that what’s familiar and comfortable for some isn’t for all. Yet society bombards us with messages about buying, having, doing, and being to look good among one another. The ultimate path to greatness, or so they say, requires you to be comfortable, at ease, and capable of living via rote, routine, and habit alone.

To be fair, that IS sufficient for some people. But not everyone. I, for one, am never comfortable working a standard 9 to 5 office job or playing a conventional sport like tennis. For me, working for myself and setting my own hours, combined with a part-time gig working for someone else and practicing medieval fencing, brings me comfort.

But that doesn’t mean I’m without a false comfort zone to move beyond.

Photo by Iluha Zavaley on UnsplashThe comfort zone might be a lie

Change is the one and only constant in the universe. Fast or slow, good or bad, desirable or undesirable, change is inescapable. Most change happens well outside of your control.

Apart from protesting, boycotting bad businesses, writing blogs, and voting, there’s not a lot you can do about politics and your so-called leaders. You can do nothing about the changes in weather, traffic, that red-flag idiot your friend insists on dating, or your loved one’s sudden and unexpected insistence that the Earth is flat. All of your control lies inside you and your life, your choices, and your decisions.

One of the great truths of the universe, alongside the constancy of change, is that everything grows and evolves or stagnates and dies. That might be harsh, but it’s still the truth. As part of the inevitability of change, people, places, and things grow and evolve or stagnate and die.

My work as an authorpreneur requires me to navigate a constantly shifting and changing landscape. Traditional publishing isn’t what it used to be, but self-publishing is constantly evolving and changing, too. Don’t even get me started on AI and how it impacts everything. The point is that I need to grow and evolve my work or let it stagnate and die.

Likewise, I’ve been doing medieval fencing for over 30 years. And my game changes, grows, and evolves because if it doesn’t, it will stagnate and die. I’ve watched more than one person’s skills stagnate and have seen how miserable that makes them, so I strive not to fall into the same trap.

My point? No comfort zone lasts forever. It must, because change is constant, evolve. For the most part, unfortunately, change is met with fear and resistance over reason and acceptance.

Fear and resistance vs reason and acceptance

The entirety of the MAGA movement and Trump’s popularity is based on fear and resistance to change. They believe in a world that used to be, which they want to go back to, that they better understood (but that, in truth, never actually existed). The GOP and some of the more conservative Dems use fear of change and progress to create resistance and jam up the works.

Nobody teaches anyone how to handle change. They might teach you things to do, but not how to mentally, emotionally, and spiritually deal with it. When I reached 6th grade in the early 1980s, I attended a pilot middle school that had 1 computer per 3 students. Rather than Home Economics, I was taught typing. We were taught to embrace the tech as it was becoming more mainstream, but not how to handle all that these changes would represent.

Maybe had we been taught to apply reason and acceptance, we’d use the tech we have to grow and change rather than distract and expand on confirmation biases. Who knows?

You, however, are empowered to make choices and decisions for yourself. That means you can recognize if your comfort zone is truly comfortable or if it’s a lie. Thus, you can choose and decide to apply active conscious awareness – mindfulness – to change anything that’s not working.

Please keep this in mind – change is seldom, if ever, one and done. What brings your peace and contentment today might not tomorrow. That’s the constancy of change. Today’s comfort zone is tomorrow’s hellscape.

When you apply reason and acceptance rather than fear and resistance, you are empowered. That’s how you can take the wheel and drive your life where you desire it to go.

Is your comfort zone truly comfortable, or is it a lie?

This is the seventh-hundred-twenty-sixth (726) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.

The post Your Comfort Zone Might Be a Lie appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

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.

The post Stillness, Reflection, and Positivity appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

This step is often skipped.[image error][image error]Photo by Ava Sol on Unsplash

You and I live in a quick-fix society. Everywhere you look, there are life-hacks, shortcuts, the latest pill for weight-loss, cryptocurrency for instant wealth, and so on.

Society almost always focuses on the end goal. To be respected, to be seen as someone, to shine, you must achieve. There must be a visible success you can point to. Fail to achieve, and all that you are gets called into question.

The problem with the quick-fix, instant gratification focus of society is that it’s utterly unrealistic. More often than not, instant achievement is the exception, not the rule. Most people don’t go from idea to success instantly. There are steps along the way.

No path from idea to achievement is straight and clean. All of them have twists and turns, obstacles and detours, and challenges along the way. No matter what the topic is, creating something tangible or intangible, there are steps you take from point “A” to point “B”. And some will be missteps.

No matter who you are or where you come from, it’s almost impossible to have, do, or be anything without mindfulness – i.e., active conscious awareness. To engage mindfulness, you just need to be present, here and now, and look within yourself to see what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, the positivity or negativity of your approach, and your actions.

For many people, however, this inward look shows something they dislike. Sometimes, someONE they dislike. And liking yourself is essential to actively choosing any path for your life experience.

Allow me to share my experience with this topic

I spent most of my 20s and about half my 30s not really liking myself. When I looked at who I was, I found myself lacking. Wanting. There were moments when I shined, but for the most part, I wasn’t very fond of that person.

Why? In part because I kept trying (and no succeeding) to fit myself into various molds created by other people. I tried to find and work the right 9-5 job, the perfect monogamous relationship, the place to call home, and so on. Attempts at fitting into these ideas always felt wrong and kept me from liking who I was.

I lived discontented, disgruntled, and frequently uncertain and uncomfortable. But most of all, I didn’t like myself very much. I was bad at dating, lousy at finding and keeping the right job, and terrible at getting and staying in shape. The single harshest judge of me was me. And I didn’t like who I saw when I turned inward to look at my thoughts, feelings, approach, intentions, and actions.

To change this, to learn to like myself, I went into therapy, got a prescription for antidepressants, began mindfulness practices, and worked actively to learn to like myself.

When I stopped disliking myself and learned to like myself, it all changed.

Photo by Amie Roussel on UnsplashLearn to like yourself

I stopped looking for my flaws. Rather than see all the things about me that were off, I started to look for what was good about me. I shifted my focus from negativity to more positivity and learned to see that I was a worthwhile and good person.

Part of the problem in modern society is an utter lack of focus and education in self-awareness. You’re taught to look out for others, to share, but not to look within and practice any form of self-care. Then, via bombardments of information and advertising, comparison is encouraged, as is competition.

It’s hard to like yourself when all the messages you receive tell you that without that car, the significant other, the right wardrobe, and other specific name-brand trappings of life, you’re not worthy. However, none of that matters.

Who you are has nothing to do with where you live, what you own, the job you do, or any other such thing. You are the person in your head, heart, and soul who deserves love, kindness, compassion, and empathy. Yet it’s hard to see that through all the external messages, influencers, and noise.

The first step to learning to like yourself is to recognize and acknowledge that you are worthy and deserving. Of what? Receiving kindness, compassion, empathy, caring, and love. Even the most monstrous person wants these things (but sees them in short supply and limited, so they practice selfishness and harm others from there).

Liking yourself begins when you work to be consciously aware of who, what, where, how, and why you are. Then, if elements of that displease you, take action via choices and decisions to make changes.

Ultimately, this leads to self-love.

Like yourself before you love yourself

Narcissism and egotism are born of unhealthy self-love. That comes from skipping the step of liking yourself.

Do you think Trump or Musk like themselves? I don’t. Look at how they demand respect and love from others, but otherwise come across as rather miserable. They, and people like them, become narcissists and egotists because they skipped the like yourself step.

Self-love is just another term for self-respect. It means you take care of your mind, body, and spirit. You actively work to maintain your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health, wellness, and wellbeing. But to genuinely work with yourself in a generative, healthy, productive way, you must like yourself.

That means accepting your imperfections, failings, inadequacies, and other perceived ways in which you’re not “normal” or otherwise off. Frankly, aspects of yourself that you dislike can’t be changed until you recognize and acknowledge them. And you can’t change what you can’t give voice to.

You are the only you that is or will ever be. You are here to contribute to the world, which you may or may not know the how and why of. But by liking yourself, you can choose your path and strive to experience the wonders, potential, and possibilities the world has to offer. You are worthy and deserving of that.

Can you see why you must like yourself before you can love yourself?

This is the seventh-hundred-twenty-fifth (725) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.

The post Before You Love Yourself, Learn to Like Yourself appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Apply practical mindfulness to see where you are and what you can do.Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash

Spend any time watching the news or scrolling through social media, and chances are you’ll feel awful. The latest surreal act on the part of the Trump administration, the not-so-Supreme Court’s support of their BS, and the spinelessness and corruption in Congress are just depressing and/or infuriating as fuck.

If you spend any time at all focused on this, you probably feel like it’s all going to shit. That’s what every major and minor news outlet is telling you, at least. This is not normal, it’s truly awful, and it’s all coming apart at the seams.

I’m not saying that there aren’t people suffering and being hurt by it all. There are. You probably know someone who has been impacted by the government shutdown, ICE crackdowns, losing benefits, seeing surreal rises in prices, and like hardships. Maybe even you.

Even with that being true, it’s not really all going to shit. Know why? Because you’re here and you have the power to make choices, decisions, and take action from there.

Disempowerment to the people

The majority of the media outlets bringing you news and information today care more about their bottom line than fair, unbiased reporting. This has gotten worse and worse over the years as the diversity and independence of media ownership have shrunk dramatically.

Worse still, whole swaths of so-called “news” venues are biased propaganda and infotainment. They make shit up or cover from angles that only approach from one specific narrative, as accountability has been ruled unnecessary.

All of this is meant to make the parent company money. Eyes on your channel, be it on TV, social media, or elsewhere across the internet, means advertising revenue and a payday. And one of the best ways to get eyes on your channel is by stoking fear, outrage, and other negative emotions.

Again, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be outraged. What I’m saying is that you need to be mindful of how you channel it and if you’re being disempowered by it. Because in all probability, you are.

People who rely on outside influencers and resources for how to act, who to be, what to do, and so on, cede their empowerment. When your choices and decisions are made for the impression they make on others – rather than how you desire to think and feel – you’re being disempowered.

Disempowered people are easier to sway and point in given directions. Look at Trump’s most ardent followers, the heart of his cult, and you see a host of the disempowered who think their prophet gives them power (spoiler alert – he does not).

To take back your power, it’s important to recognize and acknowledge this. With that, you also need to see how it’s not really all going to shit.

It’s not really all going to shit

You are here. You’re alive. And you are, thus, capable of thinking, feeling, intending, and doing for yourself. You can make choices and decisions to determine what your life looks like.

Yes, you might have limitations due to finances, environment, health, and other factors outside of your control. But the things that you truly, genuinely own and control, nobody can take away from you. Yes, this is all about your mind, body, and spirit.

You, and only you, are in your head, heart, and soul. That means that you alone know who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be. To work with that, you are empowered to make choices and decisions about these things.

I know that you might be struggling, facing some hardship, and maybe hurting because of the state of the world. But you’re alive, you’re here, now, and have the ability to take control of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. That means you get to choose your own adventure via conscious choices and decisions.

But if you’re caught in the quagmire of the narrative that it’s all going to shit, this feels like a lie. Worse, if you have any empathy at all, you likely feel bad seeing people suffering more than you and feel guilty or ashamed that you have it better than they do.

That’s also disempowering. And when you allow that feeling to dominate, you take away your ability to take action and contribute to the greater good.

Photo by Олег Мороз on UnsplashApply practical mindfulness

I have friends who are looking at furloughs and layoffs due to the ongoing government shutdown. I’m sure I know people who are looking at losing food-assistance benefits, too. What I can do for them is limited. But I can only assist if I make active choices and decisions to do so.

That’s what applied practical mindfulness is. You take stock of your present situation, and turn inwards to look at what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, the positivity or negativity of your approach, and your actions. Given that these are the only things over which you have total and complete control, they’re how you can be here, now, to do anything at all for anyone, yourself included.

When you use this for your life, you open yourself to potential and possibilities that you can employ to impact the greater good. But you need to see that the world isn’t all going to shit, because that’s how you can take action to do what you can to make it better for yourself. Then, you can help the greater good, too.

Seeing that it’s not really all going to shit 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 take a mindful, aware look at the world, you can see that it’s not all going to shit. Knowing that you get to choose and decide how you approach life, what you do, and what you give your energy and attention to, you can work with this to take action and find and/or create more good things in the world at large.

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-thirteenth (613) 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.

The post It’s Not Really All Going to Shit appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

An ill-defined line understood only through stillness and mindfulness.Photo by Jannes Jacobs on Unsplash

No matter who you are, what you do, or where you come from, you’re always experiencing things. This happens both passively and actively.

I’ve said for years that there are three primary ways to choose to live your life. They are:

Let life live you. This is passive, allowing rote, routine, and habit to dictate most days. This is neither positive nor negative, but shifts between both depending on people, places, and things.Curl up in a ball and await death. This tends to be passive-aggressive. People in this position expect the worst or ignore the here and now in favor of attempting to restore a past that never was or develop a largely unrealistic future. This is usually a negative approach.Take the wheel, set your course, drive your life. This is active. You consider your options, make choices and decisions, and work here and now to experience what’s out there. This is usually a positive approach.

Nobody chooses only one of the above. Everyone will flit from one to the other to the other from time to time. There are also additional variations for how to live your life that exist, but these are the three primary ones.

Why are they so unsettled? Because of change. Change is the one and only constant in the universe. And you can do little to nothing to control it. Fast and slow, it happens.

That’s why no path is set in stone. You and your desires change. That means that sometimes you shouldn’t stay the course.

This might not be your day

Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, has bad days. Things go wrong. Plans fail. The unexpected happens. Welcome to reality.

Likewise, everyone has times where they live passively, allowing life to live them, because it’s just easier in a given situation. Then, things might turn bad and make the idea of curling up in a ball and awaiting death have some appeal. But then, in time, you learn something new, get out of your funk, and take the wheel and start driving.

All of this might occur over hours, days, weeks, or longer. That depends on you and what choices and decisions you make. Or don’t make.

Everyone has both a conscious and subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is the home of your memories, beliefs, values, and habits. This is where you are, passively, who you believe that you are. Or more specifically, who your ego believes you to be.

Ego is the notion of yourself that exists in your subconscious mind. However, that doesn’t mean it’s your true self. Often, this notion is based on outdated beliefs, values, habits, and even memories.

The ego wants to keep everything as it is. Homeostasis. Hence, the ego tends to resist change driven by active, consciously aware actions. But it’s via mindfulness that you can change who, what, where, how, and why you are.

Sometimes this feels like a lie. There will be circumstances where active change is extra challenging. But you are always empowered to choose your life’s path.

However, it’s never written in stone. And your ego, stable in your comfort zone, might blind you to a need to find a new path rather than stay the course.

Photo by Mārtiņš Zemlickis on UnsplashStay the course or find a new path?

Let’s go back to the only universal constant: Change. Change can, will, and does occur all the time. It may be lightning fast or glacially slow. Change can be both desirable and unwanted (sometimes at the same time). It is inevitable and in-and-of-itself neutral.

When you choose a path, any path, it’s empowering. That’s because you’re opting to choose option 3: Take the wheel, set your course, drive your life. Literally, you’re making active choices and decisions for who, what, where, how, and why you are.

However, no path is utterly straight, without obstacles, detours, and challenges. Then, added to that, what lights you up and brings you joy today might not be the same down the line. Just like what got you fired up 10 years ago isn’t at all what does so today.

Hence, you might find that the path you’ve chosen ceases to speak to you. Now you get to decide if you will stay the course or find a new path.

Any path you choose is an act of active conscious awareness, i.e., mindfulness. Mindfulness begins when you look within and identify what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, if your approach is positive or negative, and your actions. If you find these do not align with your desires for how to live your life, recognizing and acknowledging them mindfully opens the door to changing them.

Via mindfulness, you can see if staying the course is right for you or if it’s time to find a new path. This can be scary, but it’s utterly worthwhile. Why? Because you alone know what makes you tick, lights you up, and empowers you.

You alone can choose when to stay the course or start anew

The only person in your mind, body, and soul is you. You alone can think, feel, intend, and act for yourself. Nobody else can make choices and decisions for you, and who, what, where, how, and why you are.

Yes, there are influencers and gurus and others who offer assistance and guidance. Some are good, some are bad, some just are. Ultimately, you are the final decision maker.

How do you know how to know when to stay the course or choose a new path? By practicing stillness.

Stillness is and isn’t meditation. It can be, but for many, meditation is too loaded to apply. In place of that, you can take time to pause, be still, and reflect on your inner mind, body, and spirit.

This can be done via meditation or just making and taking time to be still. Sit in one place, in silence or with gentle sounds like white noise or binaural beats, and simply be. Focus on your breathing and let any thoughts you have pass through without taking hold of them.

You can start with 2 minutes and add time going forward. But pausing and applying stillness cuts down the noise within and without and lets you get to know yourself. That will help you comprehend if you should stay the course or choose a new path.

Practicing this regularly helps get you unstuck when life jams you up. It also makes it a lot easier to work with both wanted and unwanted change. When all is said and done, all of this helps you genuinely experience and live life to its fullest.

Should you stay the course or find a new path for yourself today?

This is the seventh-hundred-twenty-fourth (724) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.

The post Stay The Course or Find a New Path? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Life seldom presents you with only one choice.Photo by Tania Melnyczuk on Unsplash

There we were, sitting in the living room, chilling on the couch with the cats. The weekend was drawing to a close, and we were going to watch the Sunday night animated shows we enjoy.

About five minutes in, the power goes out. That’s odd. Why is the power out?

We look outside. Apart from the lamp on the side street beside the house being out, everything else appears to be working normally. All the neighbors appear to have power. It’s a beautiful, clear night with low to no wind. We go into the basement. No breakers have been tripped. We have autopay set up for this bill, so that’s not it.

We notify the power company that we have no power. And then we wait.

For some reason, this spikes my ire. I find myself getting annoyed and feeling fidgety. Sitting still is not going well; I’m about ready to jump out of my skin. Why the hell, in 2025, on a perfectly lovely night, am I suddenly without power?

It never ceases to amaze me how many things in my life rely on electricity. And just to add insult to injury, we are still waiting on permission to operate (i.e., turn on) our solar and its backup battery.

It took some doing, but when life handed me this lemon, I couldn’t make lemonade of it. But I realized I had choices to make other things from this lemon.

Choices and decisions under stress and duress

Life frequently hands you snotty tissues, throws your curve balls, presents unexpected potholes on your path, and offers you shit sandwiches to eat. The vast majority of these are utterly, completely, and totally out of your control.

I could do jack shit about my power being out, save checking if the problem was with our system or notifying the power company. Which we did. After that, the limited choices for what to do next were on me.

Get angry about it? Panic about it? Shout, scream, and give in to my baser, less desirable impulses? Or pause, reflect, find alternatives, and work the problem?

I found the power brick I take camping with sufficient charge to power up our phones and my eBook. My wife found the emergency lantern. We poured water for the cats (since they have fountains that run on electricity and thus were out).

Then we found a deck of cards and played card games for an hour. She went to bed while I used my phone to play some games and converse online with a friend.

I could have chosen to freak out about this thing that I had NO control over whatsoever. And I wanted to. But instead, I chose to find an alternative. I didn’t make lemonade from the lemon life tossed to me. Instead, I think I zested the lemon to add brightness to the situation.

Life hands you new and different things all the time

About three hours after we lost power, it was restored. I don’t know what happened yet, but based on observing the crew they sent to look into our problem, I suspect the issue had to do with the new transformer that was installed about 6 months ago when the old one blew up.

One thing I noticed, as I started to feel the negativity and ire trying to overtake me in this situation, was where that was coming from. It was a little brain weasel in the back of my head telling me this was unfair. Everyone else in the neighborhood has power and had a normal evening, so why the hell couldn’t we? Is this another sign of my lack of worth, deserving, and the like?

Cooler thoughts prevailed. I recognized that this was irrational, emotional, and based on beliefs and values that don’t actually ring true to me. I know that life hands you new and different things all the time. Why? Because of change.

Change is the one and only constant in the universe. Nothing, and I mean nothing, escapes change. Microscopic or macroscopic; animal, vegetable, or mineral; tangible or intangible; everything everywhere is subject to and impacted by change. And the vast majority of it is outside of anyone’s control.

Photo by Benjamin BEGIN on UnsplashWhat do I do with these lemons I didn’t want?

Life will give you lemons from time to time, no matter who you are. Sometimes you find yourself simply overwhelmed by them. Other times, you make lemonade. But maybe sometimes you zest them, squeeze them over apples to keep them from browning, or throw them in protest. That’s a matter of choices and decisions you get to make.

How do you make them? Active conscious awareness. Mindfulness is how you look inside yourself to see what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, the positivity or negativity of your approach, and what actions you take from there. Hence, you choose — when life hands you those lemons — what, if anything, you will do with them.

This is a matter of positivity because when it comes to what you can and do control in this life, it’s all about you and your mindset/headspace/psyche. Ultimately, you control your mind, body, and spirit. Hence, when life gives you lemons, you can choose to use them positively or negatively. Ultimately, that’s how you become empowered to actively live your most genuine, desirable life.

Finally, I’d like to express some gratitude. I’m grateful to my wife for allowing me to work out with her my near-freak-out. She understands anxiety far better than I do, and I appreciate that. I’m also grateful to the power company for getting here reasonably quickly and restoring our power. Lastly, thank you for letting me share this.

Choosing what to do with the lemons that life gives you 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 the choices and decisions you can make via active conscious awareness, you can work with the lemons life hands you, even if you aren’t feeling like making lemonade. Knowing that you get to choose and decide how to react to unexpected life happenings, you gain the power to control the only thing you truly can — your mindset/headspace/psyche self — and from there live your best, most authentic life.

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-twelfth (612) 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.

The post When Life Hands You Lemons, Sometimes You Make Something Other Than Lemonade appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

You’re empowered to make choices and decisions to live your life.Photo by Tim Bogdanov on Unsplash

Who is living your life? Is there anyone else inside of your mind, body, and soul? Can another person climb inside of your head, heart, and spirit and live your life? No.

Yet an almost overwhelming narrative from various influencers, leaders, and instructors paints a different picture. They offer a vision of a specific, monochromatic viewpoint of what’s best for everyone. Given that all 8 billion people on Planet Earth are different and unique, this doesn’t hold water.

So they try to shove their perspective on you and me. This is done in both subtle and blatant ways. Advertising, distractions, the blame game. All of these are in the world to get us in line with someone else’s perspective for how it should be.

You are empowered, however, to make your own choices and decisions. Yet, this also comes with its own pitfalls and challenges. What if you make the wrong choice? If you decide on “X” and it turns out “Y” was better, how much will you suffer?

So “they” suggest, instead, that you let “them” be your guide. Allow that politician, influencer, teacher, guru, or guide to show you the way, and you’ll reach a place of contentment.

But then you find that you’re discontent, uncomfortable, and uneasy because you didn’t truly choose that path. Now what?

Make choices and decisions for yourself

When you allow anyone other than yourself to choose for you, specifically in a non-collaborative, non-consenting way, distress will follow. That’s because you are the only one in your head, heart, and soul. Ergo, you alone know who, what, why, how, and why you desire to be. Only you understand your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions.

No matter how deeply you get to know someone, or how close you become, they aren’t in you. They cannot see out your eyes, feel your feelings, hear what you hear, know your aches and pains, experience what pleases you, and so on.

When you allow someone other than you to dictate any aspect of your life, without collaboration, such as with a lover or friend, you’ll end up frustrated and disheartened. You’ll find yourself questioning things because you didn’t make a conscious choice and landed in unfamiliar or uncertain territory.

Yes, this is “woke”. And I cannot for the life of me fathom why anyone prefers to be asleep and ignorant instead of awake and aware. Does anyone genuinely want to cede all control over their life? Maybe in certain moments and at some times, sure. But there always comes a reckoning when you will desire to take the wheel and be in control. In the end, you crave wakefulness.

Making your own choices and decisions is how you take the control you can. The control over who, what, where, how, and why inside yourself.

Photo by Gordon Cowie on UnsplashAwake and aware empowers you

If you’re lucky, you’ll get about 80 years to experience this life. If, as I postulate, the meaning of life is TO LIVE – as in to experience all the ups, downs, and isness of existing – then doesn’t choosing what you can seem more pleasing than ceding power to others? Do you want to just go through the motions, subconscious rather than consciously aware?

To be fair, there are times letting rote, routine, and habit drive is worthwhile. There are certainly times when letting automation run its course is how you get through some challenges, necessities, and obligations. But not all the time.

Awake and aware beats asleep and ignorant because it’s empowering. This is the difference between being open to potential and possibility rather than being closed off due to fear of uncertainty and hopelessness.

There are three primary options for how you experience life.

Let life live you. Mostly go with the flow, allow rote, routine, habit, and the various forces of the world to have their way with you, seldom choosing any given path.Curl up in a ball and await death. Live in fear, rue “those others” who take what you think is yours, pray for the future, lament the lost past, ignore the here and now.Take the wheel and drive life. Apply mindfulness – active conscious awareness – to make choices and experiences for your life.

Everyone will flit between these three options along the way. But mindfully choosing and deciding makes you awake and aware and presents lots more options, potential, and possibilities to experience.

Be here now, awake and aware

One of the other major issues with “they” and “them” seeking to drive your life for you is how they focus on the past and future. They look back to a past that never truly existed (like the one where only white males mattered) because it was purer, wiser, better, greater, or some equal bullshit. From that non-existent past, they present a vision of a future that’s often exclusive, limited, lacking – unless you’re one of the chosen few (which, they suggest, you can be – if you cede your life to them).

What about the now? That’s the key. Here and now is the only time that’s really, truly, real. Only the present is genuine, authentic, and where you can choose and decide anything.

The past has come and gone and can’t be changed. The future is unknown and always in motion. But here and now, you can identify what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, if your approach is positive or negative, and actions to take. Be here now, awake and aware, and you open yourself to experience all that life has to offer.

Yes, some of that will suck. There will be pain and suffering to one degree or another. But there will also be pleasure and joy. Remaining asleep and ignorant means you cede your empowerment and leave yourself open to being depressed, fearful, uncertain, wondering what it is you’re missing, and other discomforts.

The choices and decisions are yours. Wouldn’t you prefer to be awake and aware over being asleep and ignorant? Even when it’s painful, I believe it’s still preferable.

This is the seventh-hundred-twenty-third (723) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.

The post Wouldn’t You Prefer Awake and Aware Over Asleep and Ignorant? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

It’s all much more connected than we realize.Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

I believe that everyone is unique from everyone else. No two people are alike, because nobody can be inside anyone else’s head, heart, or soul but their own.

You alone are in your mind, your body, and your spirit. That means only you can have full knowledge of your health, wellness, and wellbeing. Whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, you are the only one who experiences your life.

Despite the individuality and unique perspective of every single person there is or has ever been, there is a connection between us all. That connection is at the deepest, most base, core level of everyone and everything.

Yes, I’m talking about energy. Everything, everywhere, be it animal, vegetable, or mineral; subatomic particle or biggest, brightest star, is made of energy.

The energy in and of itself is utterly neutral. It’s not good or bad, positive or negative, high or low. Until, that is, we bring it in and send it back out to the universe.

Frequency adjustments

I apologize, but this will get a bit hooky-spooky and new-agey. That doesn’t invalidate it, however.

All energy vibrates at a frequency. Frequencies range from low to high, with lots and lots in between.

Energy simply is. It exists, in its most raw, unprocessed form, at a neutral frequency. When you apply thought, feeling, intention, approach, and action, you start to tune the frequency.

Imagine this to be like an older type of radio receiver. There used to be a knob on your stereo that you could turn, left or right, to tune into the frequency of a given station. Between the frequency, you got static, noise, and nothing terribly coherent. When you found the station, you tuned in to hear the music, speeches, commercials, and all other elements of the given channel.

This can be further associated with positivity and negativity. Let’s say you are not a fan of a certain genre of music. Tuning into a station playing that would make you annoyed and elicit negativity. Conversely, tuning into a station playing a genre of music you love would make you happy and elicit positivity.

When it comes to the frequency of energy, you have the power to tune it into the station you desire. You can dial low for negativity or high for positivity. This applies equally to what you take in and what you put out.

Hence, if you are watching a constant stream of negative, bad news, you are lowering your frequency. This will often lead to becoming a source of negativity yourself, and make it harder to find empowerment, contentment, and the like.

Photo by Eric Nopanen on UnsplashYou can focus your energy and choose the frequency

It’s challenging not to be overwhelmed by bad news, negativity, and the constant stream of overall world craziness. Further, all the pain and suffering in the world can lead you to feel guilty or shameful if you seek to or already experience any good or positivity.

Here’s the thing: higher frequencies empower you. Hence, bringing in the positive and putting out the same makes you stronger. The empowerment you gain from that is ultimately far more powerful than perceived power.

Much of the crazy of the world can be attributed to people seeking power. Specifically, fleeting, artificial, largely bullshit power. Because let’s face it: When all is said and done, you have ZERO control over anyone but you, yourself. No matter how much you might be capable of influence and persuasion, you never, ever have control over anyone else.

Since all you can control is yourself, you get to choose the frequency of the energy you take in and put out. You get to make choices and decisions to work with and from low frequencies or with and from high frequencies.

Whether you believe in the energetic base of life, the universe, and everything or not is irrelevant. Your belief in it or lack thereof makes no difference because it simply is. Energy and frequency are universal truisms. Likewise, you alone determine who, what, where, how, and why you are when all is said and done.

It’s often a challenge and frequently takes work. But I prefer to make the effort and strive to control what I can of my life experience over letting anyone else tell me how my life should be.

Recognizing energy, frequency, 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 the choices and decisions you make, via active conscious awareness, are how you have any control over who, what, where, how, and why you are, you can work with finding and creating relevant energy and frequency. Knowing that you ultimately choose and decide what frequencies of energy to bring in and put out to the world, you can be mindful of this and make informed, consciously aware choices and decisions.

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-eleventh (611) 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.

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