You will talk yourself into being negative if you give yourself a chance. I can be utterly in awe, a good, positive thing , right? And then the mind chatter can start and I will work myself into being angry. It’s like a switch flips, keeping us in a constant state of upheaval. It isn’t our faults that we do this, but it is our responsibility to change it. Usually my peeve will be with people not seeing things the way I do.
Do they HAVE to? Well, in my world it feels like they just might have to do. I’m pretty sure that this would be where people would tell me, and rightly so, that you cannot MAKE anyone do or think ANYTHING. They would be right. You certainly cannot MAKE anyone do those things. BUT (and I know that grammatically BUT negates everything that came before it ;)) however, you can repeat, repeat, repeat until people get it. BUT why would you want to do that? The demon in Storm of the Century said repeatedly, “Hell is repetition” and to my summation, never truer words. HOWEVER, that is how we learn. Even our shampoo says rinse and REPEAT. Our medications say REPEAT as needed.
“Repeat as necessary,” that’s the one. As necessary? Why is it necessary to repeat so frequently. I have my ideas on this, and obviously I am here to share those thoughts. WE get so caught up in cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias that it is next to impossible to change anyone’s mind. To be able to change one’s mind and accept, welcome even, a NEW thought or paradigm is hella hard for most. I know that I don’t change my mind easily. BUT I CAN. If I am given good information and logic, I can rap my melon around nearly anything, and I can think some amazingly offbeat things.
Everyone is concerned with being ‘right.” I always think of the saying, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” I think we all want BOTH, but none of us are right all the time. Though there is a trick to being right, at least outwardly more times than not. You just have to think logically and find out what it is that makes you correct. My mama came to me several years back and said, “Well, I guess you were right.” She sounded a bit defeated and maybe a little shocked. Lol I told her that I probably was but she would need to be more specific. Not that I can never be wrong, I just make sure before I open my mouth that I am well informed. She told me that that seemed a bit full of myself and I said, “Oh I am not always right, I just make sure I am pretty certain that I am before I go to running my mouth.” Once you are sure enough that you have good information and it resonates with you and your gut (mine is pretty spot on when I listen to it, which is another issue entirely) you can spread your truth to others. You cannot depend on your Confirmation Bias though, only looking for things to confirm your “rightness”, you have to look at what you think and why, what others think and why, events OTHER side of your argument. Why? Because as an English major I learned to argue a point whether I beLIEved it or not. You can literally write an argumentative paper on anything and prove your point for BOTH sides of any argument. Debate is based on this as well. But if you gather your materials for both sides and make a decision based on the information and the resonance with you, you will find that more times than not you will tend toward the middle path (If you want some good reading on that see Gerdjieff and Ouspensky).
The middle of the road is only a bad place to be if you are literally in the middle of a busy road, just standing there dazed and confused about what is going on, and we have collectively been standing in the middle of a rush hour freeway for some time now ALLOWING untrustworthy people, even professionals to tell us how to feel and what to think, and that everything is alright as long as we follow their directives. Everything is obviously not alright. We have come to place a premium on beautiful lies rather than ugly truths with little to no attendance to the fact that even the lies aren’t even all that pretty anymore. We are like turkeys. When it rains, a turkey will look up comfortable in their awe at the rain so much so that they drown. We do this when we desire the comfort of a lie over truth. We need comfort so badly that we cease to be able to CHANGE OUR MINDS because admitting the truth is so painful. As my maw maw used to say, “We are so smart we have circled back around to stupid.”
It may seem at this point that I have veered off the path, but bear with me. Lol Yes some things need for us to see them in a true light, and that may seem negative, but once we admit that there is a problem then we can set about creating a solution. For me that looks a lot like just FOCUSING on the positive while knowing where the proverbial train is on the tracks so I don’t get plowed under by it. Literally the only thing we can change IS our mind, our thoughts. We don’t have to accept things that we don’t want or like for ourselves. You cannot live someone else’s life but you can decide for yourself what is okay with you. Boundaries. Big AND small ones, worldly and local. Don’t accept the lies that you know are not truth. Here comes the hard part. Holding the change. Falling back into what I and others call wrong thinking is REALLY easy. We fall back into old habits, old paradigms. We have been gifted us uninformed indoctrination by well meaning (or not) parents, friends, family, enemies, teachers . We are all given stories told to us by these people about how things cannot or don’t happen for us based on THEIR indoctrinations. Things like circumstances, caste, being from a small town, being from a not so influential family. And people WANT you to believe these stories and to believe yourself powerless because when you give up before you even start, then you aren’t realizing your potential and it makes it okay for them to do the same. I am convinced that most people do not do this maliciously, though some do, but they do it because if they can talk you into believing it, then they can remain in their comfortable rut. The devil you know is often far less frightening than the unknown one.
I don’t say any of this to say that I am pristine and untouched by wrong thinking, far from it. I have been guilty of it and touched by it, and have sadly been guilty of paying forward that particular brand of sabotage. I tend away from it now, though I wrestle with the demons of feeling like I am failing when others are doing better (in my eyes) than I think I am. The torment hits when my mind is trying to convince me that people don’t deserve it MORE than I do. Funnily, nobody deserves anything MORE than me…or YOU. The point here is that for as simple AND complicated as it all is all at once, “DO THE WORK.” This has become trite and cliche I think, but is nonetheless true. YOU have to do the work, minute to minute , hour to hour, second to second IF you need to to control your thoughts. You have to steer your own thoughts, right your vessel. If you trust someone else to pilot your ship and they wreck it, ARE they truly at fault? You ALLOWED it. You cannot simultaneously relinquish your responsibility and blame someone for doing EXACTLY what you allowed them to do. Sure, you can be angry that they weren’t good stewards, but ultimately you must accept SOME of the responsibility.
If you are looking for the negative, you will find it. If you are in search of the positive, you will find that as well. Either way you are making an effort, so why not put your eggs into the basket without visible gaping holes? Take back your power. Don’t let people live rent free in your head. Evict them and their flawed paradigms. Observe and don’t get dragged into their misery. It’s hard sometimes. Not really though, we (I) often get dragged in by the force of our own INTERNAL NARRATIVES. We have all been sold victimhood as a virtue, and “silent” victimhood as even more virtuous (until recently anyways), and itemizing our victimization is rewarded with the validation from OUTSIDE of ourselves even when the slight is perceived rather than actual. Put you foot down if someone is threatening your peace. Don’t take it, or simply walk away, no need to be unkind. My brother used to tell me, “People will do to you what you allow them to do.” And he was right, and knew from personal experience.
Pat yourself on the back if you deserve it, and give yourself a swift kick when you deserve that. Take responsibility for your own shit. Stop blaming everyone and everything for choices that you continue to make. Put your anger where it belongs and make it useful. My mama used to tell me that I could go out and have all the fun I wanted to have, the fun was mine, but so were the consequences. She did me a favor. Don’t keep getting yourself arrested and expect to be bailed. AND if you are an enabler, know that bail is generally jumped by repeat offenders and you may lose your 'currency' only to end up rationalizing bad behavior, not only on the part of the bailed but on your part for constantly enabling when you should have allowed them to rise or fall on their own. Sometimes letting someone figure it out on their own is all you can do, most of the time, in fact,
as parents well know.
Stop throwing herbicides on the garden of your mind and being shocked when the “good” plants also die. You can only tend your gardens with care and intention. Don’t blame people for being poor gardeners, not all of us are, but we can learn to be. Sometimes the people trampling your garden aren’t being malicious, they just don’t know what they are looking out for to NOT trample your tender seedlings. However, nobody should be angry at you when you point at them and politely ask them to step off the new growth. It’s your garden, you did the work, and they should respect that and never trivialize that even if you are simply growing dandelions. They may see weeds where you see food and medicine, GOOD MEDICINE.
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