Personal Meditation no. 193

“It’s not all in your mind but if you don’t control your mind, then the rest doesn’t matter.”

Embrace the Within.

Do you get a lot of emails? I get a lot of emails and I spend a lot of my time just deleting emails that I don’t want. I get bombarded with all these emails that I don’t remember signing up to get and I don’t ever read much more than the heading when they appear in my inbox. For years I have just sat passively and deleted them. That is until today. Today, I started to scroll down to the bottom of those emails and click the unsubscribe button. Rather than mindlessly letting these emails appear daily and deleting them daily, I chose to purposefully get rid of the clutter because I like my messages to be meaningful.

There is a lot of spam out there hitting my inbox. And now I find a need to scroll down to the bottom and hit unsubscribe. I am not going to choose to get emails from all over the place and merely delete those messages, I am going to get to the source and cut that off. For years I have needlessly wasted time just deleting emails when I could have simply scrolled to the bottom once and clicked unsubscribe. How much time have I wasted with those emails filling up my inbox? How much energy was wasted daily deleting these meaningless messages? How many meaningful messages got lost in the mix with the mindless scrolling and deleting? I will never know BUT I can assure you there are lots.

The world is full of solicited and unsolicited messages filling up our inboxes and spam folders. So many messages on billboards, radio, television, YouTube, Spotify, Hulu, Facebook, Twitter, and all places near and far. There are so many messages that are not meaningful. So many messages that I try to delete. So many messages that can get overwhelming. So many messages that bombard your mind. So many messages that influence you in all the effective ways and hack your mind and ruin your soul.

For years I have been studying and teaching influence and even I fall for the techniques because the techniques are well-crafted, tested, and easily replicated. The techniques work and are repeated and even those that study the process get worked. It’s overwhelming. All the information, all the messages, all the advertisements, all the bullshit, is so overwhelming that it makes life more difficult to understand. The background noise overwhelms the meaningful and the overwhelming abundance of garbage information and garbage products and garbage ideas just gets to be too much for me to decipher and make meaningful. So, my brain goes back to what it’s programmed to do. It takes shortcuts and goes back to the paths of comfort and routine.

And that is where I needed to change. You see, I can cut down on the spam in my inbox. I can cut down on the messages I receive. I can avoid so much technology and influence BUT I can’t eliminate that supply. I can shut down as many sources as I like and just as a hydra another set of heads will appear in its place. So, the change needs to come from both external and most importantly internally. I needed to change my brain to another routine. I needed to change my thoughts to not fall into having another cigarette. I needed to change my thoughts to not eating another fast food option. I needed to change my thoughts to not hitting the snooze button. I needed to change my thoughts. Changing the routine and the paths of my brain took time. IT wasn’t an easy process. BUT it was something I could change. I used to waste so much time working on changing the ways of the world when I should have kept my focus on changing me. And that is what I am working on today. I am going to keep unsubscribing from the meaningless in the world and changing myself into something meaningful.

Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyBodyMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain #EmbracetheWithin

Personal Meditation no. 192

“There is a lot to be thankful for if you know how to look. There is a lot to be angry about if you fail to look correctly.”

Embrace the Within.

I do not understand how folks can awaken everyday to the beauty and splendor of being alive and choose anger, violence, and hatred. I wake up and want to do better. I hope you do as well.

BUT, you are going to find that many folks are out there just trying to figure it all out with blindfolds and earbuds on them to shut out the beauty and the joy and the abundance and to focus on that echo chamber. I feel sorry for them and I pray for them to see and listen.

I see folks that hate their lives walking around on replay and looking like the better part of them died. I was once like that. I once had to start a pot of coffee and smoke a few cigarettes in order to get ready for the day. I once had to start another pot of coffee after my commute of smoking several cigarettes to animate myself through a day. BUT, I never hated my job. I enjoy teaching and I get excited about doing it every day. I am going to teach here, there, and everywhere. That is what I do.

What I did hate was the way I felt and it spiraled and swirled and churned and fermented and worsened until the fourteen days. And the fourteen days were enough for me to hit the reset button. It was about time to go back to factory resets and get this thing figured out. I needed a hard reboot to get myself back on track. I was slowly getting back to the person I was in middle school. I was watching wrasslin again. I was reading comic books again and watching the comic book movies I always dreamed about. I was back in the video game realm and playing games that looked better than I could have ever dreamed about when I was in middle school. I returned to reading what I wanted to read and learning for the sake of learning. I was getting thankful for the life of going to church every week and learning the stories and lessons of the Bible. I was getting back to being what made me into me.

And I didn’t get there by choosing anger, violence, and hatred. I got here today by choosing to no longer be angry about everything that happened in my life. I could have chosen to get angry about all the authoritarian evils of the fourteen days. I could have chosen to act out like a child and choose violence when things were said about me or my beliefs. I could have chosen to hate the people that did not understand where I was going with my journey and that insulted me or blocked me or threatened me. I could easily choose those things today. And I did consider those things as acceptable fourteen days ago. I was ready to be angry about the government BUT I chose to work on me. I was ready to be violent about change BUT I chose to work on me. I was ready to hate my neighbor BUT I chose to work on me. And God chose to work on me as well. Those are things to be thankful about yesterday, today, and forever.

This week we are reading a portion of Maya Angelou’s book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and there is a part during Marguerite’s graduation where she considers that she never thought she would make it to graduation. She always thought some random accident would happen to prevent that day from happening and despite all that she has seen in life she thanks God for delivering her to that spot. I think we get fatalistic like Marguerite sometimes. I know that I used to think that good things were not meant for me because of the government I lived within, because of the society I lived within, because of the culture I lived within . . . BUT focusing on what I could control changed all that.I am thankful that in spite of all that I have lived in my life that I get the chance to change. Just like Marguerite sitting on that stage, I get to be thankful for being where I am today.

There is a lot to be thankful about today in my life or there is a lot to be angry, violent, and hateful about in my life. I get to decide for myself how I am going to see it.

Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyBodyMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain #EmbracetheWithin