Personal Meditations no. 190

“If there is no joy, then what is the point?”

Embrace the Within.

LIfe can be the utmost mess and misery that we can find OR it can be a wonderful joy that you get to experience daily. This all is determined by your perspective. When this all started fourteen days ago, I was a mess physically, mentally, and spiritually. I knew that in order to impact my mental state that I had to do something about my physical state. So, I started a routine of getting up every day and exercising my body and my mind. As the days rolled on and I started caring more about what I was doing and became more intentional, I started to gain more knowledge about how to get better at the routine, what to use as fuel, how to lose fat, how to think better about my life, and eventually how to get myself aligned. There is a great deal of joy in my alignment. I don’t wake up needing pots of coffee and cigarettes. I don’t wake up dragging myself out of bed hungover. I don’t wake up exhausted and looking for a reason to call off from work. I finally reached a place where I am happy about my life and I enjoy even the messiness and stupidity that comes with living in the world today.

There is a lot of mess and stupid out there that can bog me down. I can choose to let those things enslave me and rule my mind and spirit. BUT, I would rather choose to be joyful and live a better life every day. And that means getting up daily and working on making me better and no one else. It isn’t about changing the world or changing my neighbors or changing the laws or changing the leaders or changing the school or changing anything else BUT me. I get to change me daily and I have to take that part seriously.

I can complain and live a less than life. I can walk around a total mess and feel like a total mess while eating garbage and thinking it’s going to change or I can be the change every day. I get to choose that and no one else. Getting things together this late in my life is probably a midlife crisis BUT it is an effective midlife crisis that didn’t have me focus on buying a fast and flashy vehicle, it didn’t have me focus on leaving my family and finding something or someone else . . . . I started with focusing on what I could change and going from there.

I can change what I eat. I can change if I work out daily. I can change what I think about. I can change what I read and hear. I can change how much importance I give to things in my life. I can change my physical routine. I can change my mental routine. I can change my spiritual routine. And I can choose to make that change every day or I can choose to not.

I cannot lead a life that is without joy. That is not what I am choosing for myself, my family, my community, and my world any longer. There are enough miserable people out there and I am not going to be one as well. I get to choose joy. And I choose that joy daily.

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

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