Beach Diary #1

April 27, 2017

“Tell me the story about how the sun loved the moon so much he died every night to let her breathe..” unknown

And so the story goes…one day I woke up.

I decided in that moment that I was going to stop letting myself get in the way of the person I wanted to become. I was tired of feeling stuck in my own emotions and thoughts, I was frozen in time, refusing to let go and move forward. Living in the past and worrying about the future will cause serious damage to your mental state. I was sick and I could not remedy this with medicine or counseling, as much as these things did help steer me in the right direction, the final push was found within myself.

Beach Diary #2

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

”Not until we are lost do we begin to find ourselves.”  — Henry David Thoreau

Who am I? What do I want?

I have absolutely no idea! Tough question to ask when I shut myself down and everyone around me for so long. I always felt like I was watching someone else live my life, and I couldn’t move or say anything to make things different. I wanted to scream at the person living my life, I wanted to wake her up from a bad dream. But she kept walking through life like a zombie not even questioning what she was doing or where she was going.

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She didn’t plan any parties, she didn’t go out on the town, she kept to herself and didn’t have people over. It took a strong personality to drag her out of her trance and push her to be around other people. She began to come out of her shell, and that was the beginning of finding her true personality…with many hiccups along the way of course.That person was lost in a way that she could not feel part of a group or feel like she belonged. She still didn’t know exactly who she was.

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Years later, here I am thinking I found out how to belong to a group and have consistent friendships. But I didn’t know what I wanted. I knew I couldn’t be happy working in an office building for 8 hours a day and only going out for drinks in my spare time. I started to slowly keep to myself again, but this time I focused on finding out what I love to do. I painted, I wrote, I taught myself how to edit videos. I found a love for photography. Now that I spend so much time experimenting and learning what excites me in life, I have lost friends and feel more distant from the outside world. I begin to feel lost myself…

Sometimes I feel like I don’t know where to start. I tell myself I am not good enough  to take my creativity to the next level. I tell myself a lot of stupid things. But I keep going forward, because if I stop I will fall back down the stairs to never reach the top. I want to reach farther than ever before, I have to believe I can do it.

-A Mindful Beach

 

Sonder….

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them.” – Henry David Thoreau

Have you heard of the word sonder? Sonder is found to be a type of slang word verified in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, created by John Koenig. You will find poetic and unique new words that create imaginative thought. I was truly inspired by definitions created by thoughts and emotions, rather than traditional meanings found in a standard dictionary. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is comparable to the Urban Dictionary of not so official words, but a unique way of speaking to express ourselves.

Discovery of the word sonder opened my heart and eyes to see people differently. The very definition tells me that everyone is living their own story with unique issues and insecurities, and even a difference in how we all view the world. NO movie is exactly the same. Some may rate a movie a 5, some may rate that same movie a 3. Does this reveal that the movie is great or mediocre? We all see things differently based on our own perceptions and reality. So, before you judge someone for anything, remember their movie just isn’t your taste, and you don’t have to watch it. Judgment comes from a lack of understanding, lack of knowledge, different perceptions, past experience, and different backgrounds. We each live our own story with different characters and different choices.

Now that you know we are all living in our own movie, remember you can write your own story, make edits, change the mood, change the scene. What is the next scene in your movie? Lights, camera, ACTION!

Focus

 “Always remember, your focus determines your reality.” –George Lucas

I always hear the term focus in life. Focus on yourself, focus on the good things, focus on your goals! Staying focused seems to be the key to being successful in your personal and professional life. This is something I have struggled with for many years. 

So, how do we focus? What are the best practices and tools we can use to keep focus? Mainly our brain. The brain is a powerful tool, most of us fail to realize we have control of how our brain functions. Think about where your mind wanders, you might be hungry and thinking about making food, so your brain registers this and it might tell your body to get up and you will start to make food for yourself. Your thoughts dictate your action. As far long ago as I can remember, I believed my constant thinking and being stuck in my own head were holding me back. What I failed to understand is that I was doing it to myself and holding myself back. We make conscious decisions every day, including where we let our minds wander. Simply put, we can control our brain and our focus.

I can say a special book or class can tell you how to control your focus, but success is more in how you choose to think and what you do about those thoughts. Keeping focus requires us to observe our thoughts and decide why we think the things we do, and to decide if those thoughts help or hurt our goals. Thoughts that ultimately hurt or hinder our progress are not to be ignored, but dealt with and understood in order to move forward. Ignoring repetitive thoughts can consume space in your brain and interrupt your focus. 

Face your thoughts and write them down if needed, confront whoever can be causing these thoughts. Maybe you had a fight with a loved one and continue thinking about what happened, those thoughts will keep rearing its ugly head, stealing your focus yet again. These thoughts and feelings will not go away until confronted and either resolved or at least understood, in order to release them from your brain storage, leaving more room for important thoughts geared toward completing goals in your life. Declutter your mind and focus will come.

The Quiet Ones…

“The quieter you become the more you can hear.” — Ram Dass

John Francis gave a vow of silence for 17 years. I encourage you to listen to his inspiring story to understand his purpose and impact on the world. Listen here: Ted.com – John Francis Story

Fork in the road…

“You can either choose to go left or right…choose wisely.”

I finally know what a fork in the road means. You come to a fork in the road and must choose a path, either go left or go right. Each path leads to a different destination, a different outcome, a different life. It doesn’t have to be literal in the sense that you are physically walking and choosing a physical location. It can be a mental decision…..what if you can control your own destiny by deciding which thoughts to accept and which to ditch. You already know that by choosing the most positive thoughts and ditching the negative, unhappy ones, life is a much better place to be. Choose wisely when you come to a fork in your thoughts, choose the right direction, in fact you can choose to go left or right.