The Question Is, How Will This Impact Me, If At All?
Before you get swept up in the happenings of the world, ask this question.
It’s super easy to get caught up in the happenings of the world around us.
If you spend even the slightest amount of time on social media, you’ll be drawn into the world outside, beyond your life. Sometimes you’re only drawn as far as the circumstances and drama of your friends, family, coworkers, and other connections. Other times, you are drawn further out, into national and international events and happenings. Furthest out of all, there are times you get drawn into concerns over climate change, resources drying up, and the like.
These can all seem immense, surreal, and hugely impactful to and for you and your life. However, more often than not, they aren’t. That’s because most of the above things have little to nothing to do with you.
Hence the question. How will this impact me, if at all? The thing we all too easily forget is that what we truly control in our lives is exclusively within us.
All those happenings we experience, both near and far, are not within us. Hence, their impact is often going to be a lot less than we imagine it will be.
How does that even work?
Outside focus is mostly a distraction
Nobody lives in a vacuum. Even the most introverted among us are still among us. You have connections, contacts, affiliations, and the like, outside of yourself. That’s utterly natural, as human beings are social creatures, after all.
The drama of the outside world, however, isn’t yours. It often feels like it is. But it’s not.
The world around us is made of distractions beyond anything any prior generations experienced. Currently, our fear-based society is in the middle of a tumultuous shift. The “norm”, as established only about 100 years ago, is not the status quo, or the norm anymore.
Factory workers are not the majority of employed people in the United States. Even the stereotypical office worker has shifted in lots of ways. Mom is no longer holding down the fort and playing homemaker while Dad is working. One salary is not enough to pay rent or mortgage plus other bills. This reality is no more.
Most people have difficulties with change. Our society is in love with stability, comfort zones, and the status quo. Hence, when a false “norm” such as the above erodes, some people become reactionary and lash out in all sorts of nasty ways.
Most people, however, allow themselves to get distracted away from their fear of change. Those distractions used to be books, newspapers, radio, movies, then TV. Now they have added the internet, social media, smartphones, VR/AR goggles, and other increasingly available, distracting technologies.
Before long, all the distractions, coupled with weaponized fears of change, pull us almost exclusively outside of ourselves.
Without even knowing it, you’ve been distracted by something shiny. What can we do to counteract this?
Ask how will this impact me, if at all?
The easiest thing to ask this of is the matters of the world furthest outside of yourself. Take climate change. Yes, it will impact you. Immediately? Only in choices you make regarding water usage, recycling, if you drive a gas guzzler, and the like. Apart from the choices you make day to day, in the moment, overall climate change is beyond your control.
Now let’s apply this to the next level moving closer to ourselves. National and international events and happenings. By and large, these are utterly not in your control. Will they impact you? Mostly, no. Certainly not right now. They might lead to future changes in things available to purchase or other issues that are hard to foresee. Here and now, however, this likely won’t impact you at all.
Bringing this in another level closer, what about the circumstances and drama of our friends, family, coworkers, and other connections? Some of this will impact us because it will have a positive or negative impact on our relations. Challenging coworkers can make our jobs harder to do. Crazed family can cause hurt feelings. Problems with and among friends can impact who we spend time with and hang out with.
This is the one level where there’s likely to be an impact on you. However, you can choose how deep that impact is. How far under your skin do you allow someone to get? How much emotional intelligence do you invest in outside people, places, and things? When you ask the question – how this will impact me if at all? – these questions provide part of the answer.
The rest of the answer, however, is wholly within you.
Mindfulness and what you control
The one thing over which you have total and complete control is your inner mindset/headspace/psyche self. Distractions and subconscious living will make this appear to be untrue. Yet it is the truth.
Active conscious awareness is mindfulness. You achieve it by being present, here and now (the only time that’s truly real), and ask questions of yourself like,
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What is my intent?
- What am I acting on or not?
- Is my approach from a place of positivity or negativity?
This makes you present, consciously aware, and thus mindful. From this place of mindfulness, you are empowered to make choices and decisions about how you allow this, that, or the other thing to impact you. Or not.
From this place, the question – how will this impact me, if at all? – becomes wholly genuine in that you can see if it will impact your life superficially or deeply. Will it be an issue that only impacts you because of your associations – or – will there be an impact on who, what, how, where, and why you are?
This can make a big difference in choosing your life experience as you traverse any paths. Especially those that take you away from variations on “the norm”.
Will this impact me, if at all?
While on the surface conflict with friends, family, coworkers, and other people in your immediate vicinity looks impactful, it might only be superficial. Why? Because you can only live for you, yourself, and your life.
The distractions we have often create a few pernicious false narratives. The first, and most weaponized and abused, is a false narrative about lack, scarcity, and insufficiency. It’s especially ugly when that’s applied to intangibles like love, peace, joy, and so on.
The second is the false narrative of selfishness. Self-care in the form of saying no to the drama of others, setting boundaries, and the like, is not selfish. True selfishness is a matter of malice of forethought.
The third false narrative is that kindness, compassion, empathy, and being “woke” make you weak. Nothing could be further from the truth. Do you know anyone, yourself included, who doesn’t desire kindness, compassion, and empathy? Unless you know a sociopath, I’m going to guess no.
Recognizing these false narratives allows you to apply the question of impact to you. Will whatever this is shift my life and how I’m striving to live it in an undesirable way? If it impacts me at all, is it a genuine impact or a more superficial one?
By being mindful and present in the here and now, the question of impact on you becomes utterly clear. From there, you can make choices and decisions about your life, and if you need to make take the wheel and make any changes.
When you’re facing uncertainty, do you see why asking, “How will this impact me, if at all?” is so important to your day-to-day life experiences?
This is the six-hundred and thirty-eighth (638) 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 re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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