You Choose How You Approach the Unknown
This is a necessary element of mindfulness.
The year is coming to a close. A lot has happened in the world, and much of what’s occurred has created a surreal amount of the unknown.
A great deal of the unknown we’re facing is scary. Certain people about to take power are expected to abuse it, and there is no telling how that will impact people like you and me. All I know is that the unknown is hugely, massively uncertain right now.
What can you and I do about this? Did you vote in the elections? Will you actively do things to protect the marginalized, the disenfranchised, and those with increasingly silenced voices? When it comes to the big picture, that’s more or less all that you can do.
So, what about in your daily life? This is where you get to choose how you approach the unknown. Approach is an utter intangible, but wholly necessary part of mindfulness.
How does it work? Before I get into that, allow me to drop a few truths here.
Potentially uncomfortable truths
These are important because they tend to be misunderstood. What’s more, they command a lot of focus and attention despite being largely untouchable.
For starters, you can do jack shit about the big-picture issues. All that stuff on the news – the economy, the incoming administration in the US, the Israeli/Palestinian horrors, the war in Ukraine – you can do nothing about it.
Apart from the aforementioned voting and acts to protect those being threatened (like attending protests, giving money to worthwhile charities, and so on), you can do nothing for the big picture. That’s disconcerting – but the truth.
What about zooming in and looking at the people around you? You can hold conversations, discuss things, and make plans, but you have ZERO control over the people around you. There’s nothing you can do to control them, their beliefs, values, habits, actions, and so on. Sure, you can help influence and sway them to your arguments, but you cannot control them or predict what they will and won’t do.
There’s nothing you can do about the big picture. You have no control over anyone or anything outside of yourself. This feels hugely limiting and also adds to the sensation of uncertainty and facing the unknown.
This is where mindfulness comes into play.
You get to choose how you approach the unknown
The following are the things over which you can exert real, direct control. This is not everything, but all of it is in your power to control.
- Thoughts
- Feelings
- Intentions
- Actions
- Approach
Each of these is utterly yours to control via active conscious awareness. Mindfulness of your conscious self.
Remember, your mind is divided into 3 parts. The Unconscious mind is how your heart beats, blood flows, nerves fire, and general breathing occurs. The Subconscious mind is where your beliefs, values, habits, and memories all live. Your Conscious mind is where – here and now – you access your six senses to read these words, hear noises in your environment, smell, taste, sense, and touch the physical world around you.
When you engage your conscious mind, you become actively aware of who, what, where, how, and why you are. Beyond the physical and your six senses, you have thoughts, feelings, intentions, approaches, and actions.
Most of these are self-explanatory. Thought is your idea/understanding/consideration of a thing. Feeling is what and how you experience it. Intent is the why behind choices and decisions you make. Action is what you do.
Approach is the angle from which you work with things. Do you come at problems directly or indirectly? Are you heading towards this, that, or the other thing from a positive or negative mindset?
When you face the unknown, you choose to approach it from a place of “this is going to suck” or “this is going to rock” or even a less specific, fatalistic “this is going to happen.” Choosing your angle of approach is likely going to impact the outcome.
Approach and optimism, pessimism, and realism
Though it’s much easier to consider approach from a place of positivity, negativity, or neutrality, this is where broader concepts often come in. Optimism, pessimism, and realism all play into approach.
Optimism is positive. Pessimism is negative. Realism can be neutral but tends to get colored in positivity or negativity.
However you approach things, there is never One True Way. Likewise, perfection is in the eye of the beholder. Ergo, even with the most positive, optimistic approach, shit happens.
Choosing the angle of your approach is part of mindfulness and active conscious awareness. If you choose to come at the unknown from a place of fear, pessimism, and negativity, it’s most likely that poorly is how it will turn out. Conversely, if you choose to come at the unknown from a place of hope, optimism, and positivity, you are setting yourself up to experience the potential and possibilities in the unknown.
Approach is a choice and a decision you make. You can’t ignore the negative or pretend that bad things don’t exist because that’s not how anything in the Universe works.
How you choose to approach the unknown determines the energy you bring to it. That informs you if you are doing what you can to take control – or – allowing the unknown to make decisions you will have no choice but to react to. The choice is yours.
How do you choose and decide to approach the unknown?
This is the six-hundred-seventy-eighth (678) 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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