Personal Meditation no. 180

“Your beliefs are your actions. What you say is just what you think.”

Embrace the Within.

Continuing with that seed from yesterday that hopefully landed with you, folks are easily caught up in what mattered yesterday. When you start changing your focus, you have to be willing to let those things that were in the past go. When you thought those ways and worried about those things, you were a totally different person. If you want to be who you were, then keep worrying about the things you once worried about. If you truly want to change, then you have to let those things go.

I find that this is one of those things that just takes time and practice. You have to retrain your brain because your brain, as I have pointed out endlessly, is not on your side in this one. Your brain wants to go back to those easy decisions, those easy reactions, that well-worn rut. Change is mind changing, life changing, and paradigm changing. Change makes your brain make new connections. Change makes your life go along a different path. Change makes you consider new perspectives, ideas, and modes of thought. Change is reflective, introspective, and adaptive.

I was scared fourteen days ago. And fear is a great motivator. BUT fear led me to ownership. I was afraid because I wasn’t doing enough. I was the one to blame if I ran out of food. I was the one to blame if I couldn’t do something as simple as produce. I was the one to blame for sitting on more than enough land to provide for my needs and not putting in the work. I was to blame for thinking someone else was going to provide for me. And the change grew from there.

Never underestimate the power of radical self ownership. When you start holding yourself accountable, there is no one else to point the finger toward BUT yourself. So, I started planting seeds and failed miserably. And that could be the end of the story of change. BUT it was not the end of the story. When my father-in-law asks me about what is growing in my greenhouse, when my father asks me about the raised beds, when folks compliment the eggs my chickens lay, when I get to make my breakfast salad from greens I am growing in my yard, when folks want to see my plantation . . . I know I didn’t make the wrong choice.

You can always choose to do things the easy way. You can just go out there and consume and consume and keep taking. Or you can choose to produce? You can be a burden on your community or you can be a benefit? You can take or you can give? You get to choose. You just need to hold yourself accountable for that choice.

I used to think it was fine to rely on going to the store until things changed fourteen days ago. Sometimes the store doesn’t want you there. Sometimes the rules change. Sometimes the folks that say they care about you and have your best interest in mind really don’t. And you have to always be prepared. I learned that lesson back in the 1980s and it carries with me to this day.

We all had choices to make when the fourteen days began. We all still have choices to make because things seem to repeat themselves in time with rhyme. So, what are you going to choose?

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

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