I Choose My Own Path To Exercise What Control I Can
The choices you make empower or disempower you.
I’m realizing I need to spend less and less time on social media.
This creates something of a disconnect for me. As part of marketing my books, Facebook and Instagram are important, useful resources. So, I can’t quit them entirely. But I can choose not to surf them.
One of the bigger challenges of walking the indie-author/authorpreneur path is the non-writing elements. The editing, hiring professionals for copy editing and cover art, the layout, going over the edits from the editor, recording the audiobook, and then sales and marketing. These require multiple hats to be worn and different skills applied.
Why bother? Because that’s part of choosing your path. When you choose what path to take in life, you choose to take control. While that can and will have external, tangible applications, it begins with the internal and intangible.
That’s because the intangibles of you are where you have all the control. Let’s take a closer, more in-depth look into what this is all about.
You’re the only one inside your head, heart, and soul
When all is said and done, you’re the only one inside your head, in your heart, and in your soul. That means that you, and you alone, drive yourself from within.
Nobody can make you do anything you don’t choose to allow them to. Yes, that feels like a lie. That’s because certain obligations, expectations, and outside influences insist that you must do, be, have, and otherwise use this, that, or the other thing.
Get that job. Drive that car. Contribute to society as a worker-ant. Propagate the species and have children. Don’t disappoint your parents/religious leaders/bosses/demagogues. Live how, where, and why they – who aren’t you but somehow know better than you – insist. Be this way, and only this way…or get voted off the island.
All of that can feel like the truth of the world. It’s not. You have more control of yourself and your life than any of that gives you. But you do have that control. And it begins inside your head, heart, and soul.
Where? With your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and positive or negative approach. You, and only you, think your thoughts, feel your feelings, intend who/what/where/how/and why to be. Nobody but you can choose your positive or negative approach to anything and everything. Only you can act for you and your life.
Thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and a positive or negative approach are wholly, completely, and totally in your control. You, and you alone, can choose what they are, how they impact you, and so on.
From these, you can take control of your life and choose your path, choose your own adventure.
I choose my own path to exercise what control I can
It’s important to acknowledge the big damned elephant in the room. Everything outside of you is outside of your control.
Wow, do some people resist this reality. Look at all the religious leaders who want you to live only the way they think you should. What about the bosses who demand you do your job only how they envision it? The reason I need to spend less time on social media is the oversaturation of political bullshit as some of our so-called leaders try to force everyone into their twisted, harsh, and unkind mold.
Guess what? They do not control you. Or me. Or anyone at all, for that matter – unless you choose to cede your power to them and let them tell you who, what, where, why, and how to be.
I choose my own path in this life because I desire to make my own choices and decisions for who, what, where, how, and why I am. That’s not always easy, and I don’t always get it right. But by making my own choices and decisions, I take control of my thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and positive or negative approach. Which are, frankly, the only things I can totally, completely, and 100% control.
Yes, shit happens that evokes an uncontrolled, automated response mentally, emotionally, spiritually, even physically. However, after that initial response, you can choose where to go from there. Let an initial negative response pull you down – or – recognize and acknowledge it and use it to be/have/do better. That choice is wholly, completely, 100% yours.
By choosing my own path, I am choosing active conscious awareness and the power of mindfulness to live as best I can. Awake, aware, and in control. Hence why I cannot fathom how anyone thinks being “woke” is a negative.
Control is not a license to rape, pillage, and burn
Trump, Musk, Putin, Netanyahu, and too many other politicians and oligarchs set the worst possible examples. Rather than take control to live their lives as best they can, they strive to force their vision on everyone else. That’s because they think controlling what’s outside of them is more important and real than what they can and truly do control.
Because of these terrible examples, too many people are now disregarding kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring. People think if they are selfish and greedy like them, they will achieve the pinnacles of power they appear to have. Worse, the false lack, scarcity, and insufficiency of things not truly lacking, scarce, or insufficient are used to deny the “other” basic human decency.
In truth, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, can control anyone other than themselves. Taking your own power – empowering yourself – is not a license to rape, pillage, and burn to get where you want to go. Taking control of your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and positive or negative approach is about you, but not selfish.
Ergo, it employs kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring. This always starts as an inside job. Because the only things you really, truly, genuinely control are what lie inside your head, heart, and soul.
I choose my own path to exercise what control I can, but not to be bigger, better, or somehow greater than anyone else. No, I choose my own path to exercise what control I can because then I am actively, consciously creating my reality, choosing and deciding who, what, where, how, and why I am, and striving to live my best life.
You are worthy and deserving of living life as best you can
You are empowered the same as I am. When you focus on the things within your head, heart, and soul, which you alone can control, you open the way to more potential, possibilities, and options.
Despite the messages in the collective consciousness of the “other” being less worthy and deserving of living a good life, they are. Because there is no true “other”. Every immigrant, homosexual, nonbinary, transgendered, person of color, woman, and any other label you place, is worthy and deserving of empowerment. Bullshit laws disempowering people are false applications of control to mold the world into a vision of reality that never has been and never will be real.
You, no matter your race, creed, color, orientation, and whatever, are worthy and deserving of living life as best you can. One way to begin that is by giving yourself control over your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and positive or negative approach. Since it is now and always has been wholly, totally, and utterly yours – wake up and assume control over it.
Remember, nobody is less than you. Nobody is unworthy or undeserving, and despite messages to the contrary, nobody is trying to deny you what’s yours.
I choose my own path to exercise control of what I can because that’s how I do my best to be my best and experience all the wonders, potential, and possibilities life has to offer.
Easy? No. Worthwhile? Absolutely.
Do you practice active conscious awareness – i.e., mindfulness – to take what control in your life you truly can?
This is the six-hundred-ninety-third (693) 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 repost and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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