If you don’t understand the featured image on the post, you need to bone up on your DBZ!
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For the better part of the last 3 or 4 years, possibly more, I’ve been outwardly living under the motto “Always Create”. A simple twitter/facebook/instagram search for #AlwaysCreate will show I absolutely did not create that motto; just merely adopted it.
To myself, there’s no coincidence that specific short phrase started making sense for my personal being at that particular point in time. Committing to that motto was the result of the realization: I had unconsciously adopted a simple plan and religiously put into practice after having faced something I considered massively devastating. In my time of personal turmoil and heavy crisis, I had unknowingly married myself to the idea of harnessing the energy surrounding my situations and directing it toward my goal, which at the time was to become my full self again. I consider myself a creative person so ‘Always Create’ made perfect sense. Using it to perpetuate my momentum, I came to find it was an applicable and constructive method for me to approach everything. It wasn’t until hindsight became 20/20 that I came recognize I had become so much stronger because of the skill I developed in the process.
There’s really nothing in life that doesn’t apply when I say…
Every single situation you’re faced with, negative or positive, provides you with energy.
And like every single situation in life, the energy varies in quantity and intensity. How much energy becomes available to you is typically pretty proportionate with the how strongly a situation impacts you.
When I talk about energy, I mean physical energy. The force that gives ability and enables motion and functionality. Not the more metaphysical style you hear people talk about in yoga and healing, etc. No knock on those philosophies and practices, that’s just not the brand I’m addressing (though, I can see how they could be considered related or even one in the same).
Energy literally provides the ability to act. It is up to you HOW you act, and even when you think you’re doing nothing at all, you are in fact, still taking action. It’s important to realize that. Sulking, laziness and complacency are actions, albeit wasteful in terms of time and energy. Raw emotion can lead to a lot of waste.
Not that emotion is a bad thing, but when I see people react to situations through raw emotion, very rarely am I able to consider it to be anything but a waste of energy. Sometimes emotion and innate instinct is what a situation calls for, but life overall demands more grace and tact than a knee-jerk swinging of a wrecking ball. A quick win in life only matters if you have a plan that follows it, otherwise it’s a wasted, stagnant victory.
Having a plan is essential. I’m coming to find that most people don’t even if they think they do. Not a real one that they’re dedicated to. Nothing that dictates the direction of their future more distant than a few weeks or so. When you have a plan, there’s ultimately a distant goal in mind. If it’s a true plan and a positive, realistic goal, you’ll find yourself with a legitimate desire to achieve and succeed instead of just fondly thinking of the idea of achievement and success. I call the latter, false ambition. If all of that is in place, the last piece resides within you…
You need to learn to how to control yourself in reaction to situations. If your plan and goals really matter, then so does finding out how to, then consistently, direct the energy of your situations toward your goals.
Life is pretty simple if you accept the natural way of things. The past exists because life moves forward. You can dwell on what’s behind you forever, but you can never be totally sure what will happen next. Life is about perpetually seeking solutions and creating results, not just recognizing the situation taking place and the situations that have taken place. Analytical processing helps steer future decisions, but life is about forward-thinking and not just stating the obvious of what was or what is.
Rehashing the present or past situations over and over again will never move you forward. In short, complaining gets you nowhere. You waste time and energy by letting yourself do it. Beyond vocally spouting your displeasure, you need to recognize that complaining has completely evolved through social media. Social media can be the best tool in the world to spur change and encourage progress, but its best disguise is being a complete distraction while seeming like it’s providing positive opportunity or quick wins.
Social media is the king of fake quick win battles. Pumping out post after post, story after story, isolated example after isolated example of things that aren’t right with you, your possessions, your work, your family, your relationships, your political agenda, the world, etc. is ultimately a waste of your energy. That is the online version of an emotional response to a situation and often includes very little tact or grace. It’s easy to bait people into discussions and debates, which start the cascading comment threads of great waste, but it gets you and everyone involved nowhere. As much as it appears to not be, it’s a distraction from progress. It’s a waste of energy and maybe worse, it’s a waste of intelligent idea space.
Progress is made possible through true awareness then action. Not just one or the other. No progress is gained by perpetuating awareness that people are already largely aware of. What do you or anyone else gain to provide a momentary place for people already in agreement, a place to further agree, or for giving chronically frustrated people a place to air out their frustrations? Frustrations they wont even think about once the next distraction comes along. Those are the emotional reactionaries you can do without. Unless people are offering solutions that they’re currently exorcising and creating positive results with, everyone is simply just running in place. You can’t gain momentum doing that. You can’t ride waves treading in still water.
Positive awareness is best served through providing tangible results spanning from your plan and actions. In more simple terms… “The numbers don’t lie.”
Writing about how you direct your energy is difficult because when I want to be specific, it’s actually unnecessary because directing your energy literally applies to and affects every single living situation you’re a part of. That’s why self awareness of how you direct it is so important. As kids, your parents most likely tried to teach you to control your emotions via… before taking any action, stop and count to 10. That’s fine as a child where your reality and future are pretty much what is, what’s just beyond the immediate present, and the main goal is only to be good/not get punished. As an adult, we need to be acting through honest answers to honest questions we ask ourselves…
This is my situation. This is the goal. Is this going to help bring me closer to my goal? If not, what will? And after that step, what next?
You can’t stay ahead of other people and situations if you can’t even get ahead of yourself.
If you’ve seen the movie The Martian, you may have heard one of the most realistic speeches ever uttered about directing energy toward meeting your goal. If you don’t remember it or haven’t seen it, here it is…
This is space. It does not cooperate. At some point, everything’s gonna go south on you and you’re going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem and you solve the next one, and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home. ~ Mark Watney, The Martian
Change out “space” for life, and “come home” for reach your goal, and you pretty much have everything I’ve been saying, summed up in few sentences.
Realize your situation. Realize your goal. Waste no time, thus no energy. Have a plan. Begin working toward your goal. Avoid distraction. Create, ride and perpetuate momentum. If you hit a new road block, rinse and repeat.
At the close of 2015, I find myself being not only aware of myself and how I direct my energy, but now also aware of how so many other people around me direct their energy as well. I feel fortunate that I have developed a firm grasp on my emotions and am able recognize who does and does not around me. But it is because of all of this that I’ve come to a new realization, one that I may not have been able to reach had I not repaired myself and made myself more capable as a result. This new realization is why I took the time to direct my energy into writing this for everyone and anyone willing to read…
I care. I care a lot; certainly a lot more than what I let on and make visible on display. I care about people that probably don’t even know that they ever grace the synapses and receptors of my brain. I care about what was and what’s now, but I care a whole lot more about what could and should be. And ironically enough, I don’t really care how cheesy all of that might sound to some of you out there.
Things aren’t great but they’re not terrible either. Things can always be worse. And in kind, things can definitely always be better. If we want to find solutions together, we need to collectively learn to be solutions-minded and effectively direct our energy toward reaching our goals.
Seeing is believing and talk is cheap. Drop your labels, assumptions, generalizations and “-ism’s”. Progress depends on people being more unified than that. Contribute with intentions to actually help. If you have something you believe is worth saying, make it constructive to encourage moving in a positive direction. Don’t derail yourself and others with distractions and complaining. If you’re achieving successes, perpetuate your momentum. Riding it will only get you so far before you slow to a hault. Positive goals breed positive results, which create positive environments. Value intelligence. And if it helps you as much as it helped me…
#AlwaysCreate.
Every human being has a basic instinct: to help each other out. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it’s found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don’t care, but they’re massively outnumbered by the people who do. ~ Mark Watney, The Martian
I care.
Happy New year everyone.
If you’re not already but care to follow along with calculated randomness, follow me on facebook, twitter and instagram.
By: Eli Rebich
