Life’s great journey

Life’s a Journey, not a destination…

We all walk through life, wanting to do and be something, wanting the best for our loved ones, and hoping to find happiness and some semblance of personal success. This is near-universal of all people, around the world, and all in all, many individuals who do not have those things I’d mentioned, will take one of these routes;

  • Scapegoat – Blame their problems on someone else, or some other group of people.
  • Try harder – Realizing that in general, what you put into life, is what you get out of it. 
  • Focus – That is to focus on what’s most important in their life and improve things.
  • Gripe – These people would rather complain, act like a victim, and yet do nothing to change their lives. 

Why is any of that important? Because often people move from one to the other, losing their path along the way and finding it elsewhere… this is the journey of life. Life is a great adventure, it is a cherished gift that many no longer afford as they leave this world. The journey of life is chock full of ups and downs, highs and lows, good and bad times, but without the bad times, the good times wouldn’t feel as good. Life can be many things to many people, but it is always changing, that is in fact, the only constant in life that we can depend on. So let’s make a list about life so far, shall we?

  1. It is a journey, an adventure.
  2. it’s full of good and bad times.
  3. Change is a constant.

Three things we should explore more before moving on…

As a journey and adventure, we never know the outcome of our actions, our words, or our work, until we see it in its fullness in front of our own eyes. This is unto itself the reason why we should attempt to do good things and be a good person, because religion aside, doing and being good, breeds good for yourself, and the same is true for doing and being bad/wicked. It’s this unexpected nature of life, that makes it adventurous, left up to fate, and that creates the future outcome from every choice we make today. The more we do in our life, the more we alter the outcomes within our future; actions, words, interactions, choices, works… these equate to what one’s future will be like…

…but sometimes bad things happen to good people!

It’s those bad times, those times when life seems unfair, and you feel like you’ve been beaten to your knees, that you stand up again and find better times ahead, or a new appreciation of better times, and people in your life. Without the bad, we wouldn’t appreciate the good, or might even overlook the good in our lives, or take those we love for granted. No one is immune to having hard times fall upon them, times that make us question everything, times that feel like our bitter end, but those times do not last forever. 

…Circumstances change, people change, everything changes, sometimes for the better, sometimes for ill!

Change is a constant, it moves us through life, transforms the world, alters our perceptions, and transmutes one emotion, into another. Change is inevitable and inescapable and as much as some people fear it, without change there is only stagnation, which sits at the throne of death. Change helps us move through bad times, change lifts us out from suffering, change can be a truly positive thing, but it can also be negative depending on the change. Good and bad changes coincide with what I’d mentioned, but situations can often be improved or altered to be different with changes. 

 

Learn to expect and love change and life

So we know change happens, for good or ill it happens, but it doesn’t always have to choke all joy from you when it’s negative. You can prepare for negative changes to a degree to lessen their impact on your life, this is referred to as “prepping.” I’m not talking about the doomsday bunker having, 1,000 years of food storing prepping, I’m talking about common sense prepping. Have some money stashed away in case something unexpected happens, have a power generator, dry foods, and water stored, in case of a natural disaster, these are common sense prepping ideas to lessen the impact of negative changes. Once you’re better prepared for the negative, the positive will take greater meaning and place in your life.

Weigh the ramifications of the actions you take, think before you speak, work for what you desire, and set a clear path for yourself, this will help steer change closer in your favor. Being prepared for most negative eventualities, while working towards actively seeing to it that more positive changes come about, is how one begins to get a handle on life and effectively learns to love change and love their life. Knowing that change is constant, learning to prepare for it, expect it, and even control some of the outcomes of it, makes change a lot less scary, and a lot more fun and adventurous. 

 

Get rid of the negative

Negative thoughts are one of the most destructive things a person could fall into, destructive to the self, those around you, and life itself. Negative self-talk is amongst the worst of all aspects, followed by two aspects mentioned earlier in this article, scapegoating and griping. So let’s examine these three aspects of negativity that affect every aspect of our lives, from the self to our individual lives.

Firstly, negative thought leads to negative self-talk which destroys self-confidence, leads to a negative self-image, hinders relationships, keeps one from attaining any degree of success or enjoying success when it is attained. This is the cornerstone of depression, which seeps into every avenue of life and turns it into a daily struggle to find the will to exist, let alone to truly love and enjoy life. So how do we stop this? You have to be conscious of your thoughts, conscious of your inner dialog with yourself because your inner dialog is in fact a dialog with your subconscious mind, which controls just about everything about you. When negativity enters your mind and you recognize it, quickly shut it down with the thought of “that’s B.S.,” and think of something else or engage the mind in some other activity that shifts that thinking away. 

No, what I mentioned isn’t easy, in all honesty, it can be very difficult, but you have to work at it, mindfully and willfully work at it and in time you’ll start to see the fruits of your labors. This can be life-changing, it can change literally every facet of life for the better, you just have to put in the work. Oftentimes, when making a willful change is difficult, people resort to scapegoating and gripes, this is often due to people lacking the ability to take responsibility and accountability for their own lives. The difficulty in making changes often results in the individual giving up and blaming others or complaining about what they in all honestly, can change themselves. This is the biggest pitfall in this process and one that is wholly avoidable if you begin deleting negative thoughts and self-talk. 

Stress can become a major influence in life as well, if you have difficulty deleting negative thoughts and self-talk, stress and unexpected changes can occur. I tend to tell a lot of my wellness clients this;

“Can you control what is causing you to stress, if yes, then why stress about it, if no, then why stress about it?”

Stress doesn’t make a situation better, it keeps it from getting better and keeps you from enjoying the here and now, enjoying life. Stress can cause a host of physical maladies, which in turn adds to one’s stress and worries. Stress is a horrific monster in which the more it is fed, the more it devours the person’s physical and mental wellbeing. Don’t let stress steal your joy or keep your work on yourself from happening, stress isn’t beneficial to literally anything. 

Negative people are the final piece to this negativity puzzle and a difficult one to eliminate. Negativity much like misery loves company, and so those who are negative tend to project that onto others. Negative people will tell you doing something you like or something that is positive is dumb or not going to help, they will often degrade your ideas or be dismissive. Those negative individuals will be a drain on you, on your mental health, on your life and no matter who it is, you should cut them out of your life or at least minimize interaction with them. I understand that cutting people you might love out of your life hurts or isn’t entirely possible, but you must weigh whether having them around is worth the sacrifice to your wellbeing. 

 

Conclusion…

Life is what you make of it… what efforts you put into it directly correlates to what you’ll get out of it. Put positivity out there, think, and do positive things, more positivity will flow in your direction as an outcome. Every thought, action, word, has the potential to be life-changing, couple that with combating negativity and negative change and you’ve got a recipe to cook up a great and joyous life. Life is an adventure, life is ever-moving, ever-changing, and is a journey to be experienced in its fullest capacity.