Self-Awareness for Everyone MJ Blehart

There’s always something to be grateful for
Even on the worst days you might experience, there’s always something that you can be grateful for. It might seem impossible in the face of sadness, grief, and uncertainty, but that doesn’t lessen the truth.
Thank you are among the most powerful words you can say and feel. They might be equal to I am and I love. Whatever follows “thank you” is a powerful acknowledgment of something that makes you feel good and positive. It empowers you not only to recognize and acknowledge the one item you’re saying “thank you” for, but also find and be grateful for more.
Gratitude is the ultimate fuel for empowerment
When you’re distracted, it’s easy to lose sight of your own conscious awareness. Distraction starts to pull you into mindlessness, taking you away from intent and action. That then allows you to lose yourself in your subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind will often take everything put into it at face value.
One of the best ways to begin to access mindfulness is gratitude. Finding and expressing gratitude for things tangible or intangible is a matter of intent borne of thought and feeling.
Practice empowers
The world needs more empowered people. If more people are empowered, those who maintain the fear base of society with artificial lack, scarcity, and insufficiency become visible.
Gratitude is always positive. It always empowers, both when given and received. Gratitude, mindfulness, and positivity are linked because all are tools of incredible empowerment that, together, can change your life and put you more in control.
This week’s Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool:
Start a gratitude journal.
At the beginning or end of the day (or both) take a moment to write down 5-10 things you’re grateful for. Write them out in complete sentences like, “I am grateful for this life I get to experience. Thank you.” Use both grateful and thank you in your sentence.
After you’ve written them out, read them (preferably aloud). As you read, let the feeling of gratitude that goes with the thought and words sink into your consciousness.
Read them three times each. Note how you’re feeling after you do this.

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Life is impermanent
Life is unexpected and uncertain. No two days are alike. Similar, maybe, but not the same. Change is the only constant in the Universe. That’s because the Universe and everything in it is impermanent.
Buddhism takes a deep look into the nature of impermanence. But outside the Buddhist way, it’s often disregarded, ignored outright, or denied. You strive to create things permanent and enduring, as does everyone.
The reality is that nothing is permanent. Nothing is enduring.
The meaning of life is to live
You are one of 8 billion individual people on Planet Earth. Every single person has one unspoken goal in life. To live.
Think about it. No matter who you are, where you come from, what you know, your goal in life is simply to live. You will go to great lengths to ensure that this comes to pass.
Everything above about what it takes to live is artificial. To live, all you truly need to do is breathe in.
All you can control is your inner being
Nothing at all in the entire Universe will give me control over any of the above. What I do and can control, however, is my reaction to it.
Specifically, my inner being. I control my thoughts, feelings, actions, approach, and intentions. What I do in the face of adversity, pain, suffering, frustration, and the like.
How is this an empowering realization? I can’t control anything external at all. I can and do, however, control my emotions, thoughts, feelings, and actions. This is empowering because it means I can shift my focus and stop trying to control what I can’t control.
What you do control is your thoughts, feelings, actions, approach, and intentions. However, it takes mindfulness and active conscious awareness to do this. The empowerment comes from this realization.
You are the only one in your head, heart, and soul. Nobody but you think your thoughts, feel your feelings, intend your intentions, and take your actions. These are all that you control. That’s a lot because controlling them determines what living looks like for you.
Real, genuine, actual living. Life can’t and won’t always be one given way.
Accept control of nothing and just live
Mindfulness lets you accept what you can’t and don’t control. Then, when you be here, now, you live. You’re alive. Your heart is beating, you’re breathing, and thus you’re living.
“Just live” looks small. But isn’t that, truly, the goal of every single being? Aren’t you on this Earth, here and now, primarily to live?
This week’s Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool:
Is there something outside of yourself driving you crazy? Impacting your mental, emotional, and spiritual health?
Take a close look at it. What is it? What impact is it having on you? Write this down.z
Here’s the question to ask and answer:
What, if anything, can you control about this?
Include everything you can think of when it comes to answering this. Then, take that information, and decide if said thing is yours to control at all and how much power, if any, to continue to give to it.

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Discipline and its uses
The word “discipline” gets tossed around a lot. Often, it’s attached to a concept of doing something with full attention, within rigid parameters, and with no room for mistakes. Too little discipline and shit doesn’t get done. Your art isn’t made, your practice isn’t improved, and you leave a bad impression of yourself.
What if I told you that’s not the truth of discipline? What if discipline is less rigid and more about mindful, consciously aware practice?
A different approach to discipline
Discipline is not extreme willpower to get the job done. Instead, it’s an idea of active, conscious awareness to move yourself and your goals forward.
Life is in a constant state of motion. As part of that, change is the only constant. For the most part, there are three ways to live life.
1.      Let life live you. Mostly you live by rote, routine, and habit, letting whatever happens, happen.
2.      Curl up in a ball and await death. Life sucks, there’s little to no point in anything, the world is coming apart at the seams, so why bother?
3.      Take the wheel and drive your life. You do things to live your life, make choices and decisions, and seek growth, change, and so on.
These are not absolutes, other ways fall between these.
Mindfulness is the core of discipline
There are two lies about how art is made that often derail a burgeoning artist. The first is that you must be uniquely skilled and talented, gifted, born to this world entirely to make your art and be a wild success as a bestseller, storied painter, world-renowned chef, and the like. Only those so endowed are worthy.
The second is that only by rigid, strict, ongoing, never-ending practice and extreme willpower can you succeed or be worthy of calling yourself an artist. Only those who give hours of their life, their time, and sacrifice to it are worthy.
Discipline begins with mindfulness and choosing to do your work.
Discipline is active conscious awareness in practice. Recognizing and acknowledging this shows you that it’s easier to act on your goals and create what your heart seeks to share with the world. Practice is important, but perfect practice through strict discipline is not real. Your work - and the choices and decisions that go into it that lead to doing it- is discipline.
This week’s Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool:
Is there something that you have desired to do but put off doing? Write it down. Also, write down why you haven’t done it yet, any reasonable or unreasonable reasons behind that, and anything else that comes to mind.
Then, work out how to do it. Write that down, too.
Now – do it. Get to it. Discipline yourself to begin.

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Fear is frequently weaponized to be unreasonable
All opposites, like positivity and negativity, black and white, good and evil, are extremes. They’re not, as most would suggest, opposite sides of a coin. That’s because the space between them isn’t so thin as the edge of a coin, but far broader, making it more akin to a cylinder.
Recognizing this is important because you and I live in a fear-based society. From the semi-harmless, like certain forms of advertising, to blatant falsehood and lies, like large swaths of politics and religion; fear is everywhere you turn.
Fear is so deeply interwoven in society that it frequently goes unrecognized.
Reason versus fear
Fear is not necessarily bad. After all, without fear, human beings would never have survived to become the constructive, creative beings we are.
Intangible fear is the main type of fear people experience today. It’s weaponized blatantly and subtly to direct and misdirect you. The only way to combat this sort of fear is not fearlessness, but reason. Reason is looking at the fear and asking if it will truly harm you.
Mindfulness of fear
Mindfulness has two district brands. Internal and external. Part of the nature of this fear-based society is to distract you. Thus, its focus tends to the external.
Active conscious awareness is self-awareness. It’s the key to being aware of you, yourself, here and now. That then tells you who, what, where, how, and why you are.
Choices and decisions
You make choices and decisions every single day. Some are big and especially impactful. Most, however, are small, partially by rote or routine or habit, but still impactful.
When you let fear do the driving, you will be swayed by outside forces. Conversely, when you let reason drive you, you’re practicing active conscious awareness. Ergo, you’re taking control.
Reason in face the fear defeats fear. The more each individual practices reason, the more habitual it becomes. That, over time, as it gains traction from person to person, can turn this world from fear-based to reason-based.
This week’s Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool:
Is there something you’re afraid of? Specifically, an intangible such as success, failure, love, and so on.
Write down what it is. What are you afraid of? Then, ask these questions:
·        What am I afraid of?
·        What do I think will happen if this comes to pass?
·        How do I think this will change the way I perceive myself?
·        How do I think this will change the way others perceive me?
·        What will the suffering be like if this comes to pass?
After you’ve asked and answered these, can you apply reason to them? Not rationalization, reason. As in you look at them, detached, and ask if they might be as awful as you fear?
See if this lessens the fear. Meditate on it if you meditate regularly.
 
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Women are not objects
Women are people, too. When men pass laws that impact women’s rights, body autonomy, and the like, we can no longer stay silent. It’s time for us allies to be more vocal about this.
Women are not baby factories.
NFL Kicker Harrison Butker is an ass who has no idea what he’s talking about.
Men are not better than women just because we have penises.
LGBTQA+ people deserve equal treatment
Who cares who these people desire to have sex with or not?
It doesn’t matter how anyone identifies themselves in the grand scheme of things.
Speak up and speak out
We can’t just sit on the sidelines and ignore what’s going on. Especially in light of this upcoming election. Transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, and other prejudices and biases need to be pointed out and stood against.
Take a stand for what’s right.
This week’s Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool:
Pause and consider your actions. Speak up. Speak out. Get off the bench and the sidelines and take action to support those being marginalized. Be the change you wish to see in the world and be good.

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You’re only competing with yourself
There are plenty of contests out there where it’s all about competing. Yet, aside from such intentional competitions, you’re not in competition with anyone else for anything.
Let me repeat that for those in the cheap seats. YOU ARE NOT IN COMPETITION WITH ANYONE ELSE FOR ANYTHING. Unless you participate in a contest – a race, a fencing bout, any professional sport, a spelling bee, and the like – you’re not competing.
You’re only competing with yourself
Let’s go back to academia. The truth of placement in any given class has nothing to do with competing for grades between people (not in general). The only person you’re competing with when it comes to grades is yourself.
The funny thing is, once you leave academia and move into jobs and “real life” situations, lots of forces tell you both blatantly and subtly about all the competition you’re in now. Except, the truth is, you’re still only competing with yourself.
The lies of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency
Have you been told that “they” are going to take your money, your job, your way of life, and worse?
All of these messages are tied to lack, scarcity, and insufficiency. Here’s the most shocking truth of this. All of these messages are bullshit.
The vast majority of what you’re told is in limited supply, is lacking, insufficient, or is otherwise scarce, isn’t. That’s because most of these notions are completely artificial.
Maybe some tangible things are in short supply. But they can all be replaced by something else with no true detriment to anyone. The intangibles – including peace, respect, love, empathy, kindness, and compassion – are in more abundance than you can imagine.
The only person to be better than is yourself
Human beings grow, evolve, and change throughout their lifetime.
It’s not really competing to improve who you are, how you treat others, and what you do or don’t do. Maybe some people want to compete with their prior self to make themselves even better. That’s not competing with anyone else but yourself.
You can always win this competition, often just by showing up.
This week’s Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool:
The next time you’re not alone, like in a store, on a bus, walking down a street, in an office or classroom, or anywhere similar and mostly public, look around you. Notice the other people. Note how they’re the same as you. Observe how they’re different from you. Most importantly, become aware of these people.
That done, ask yourself these three questions.
·        Am I better than them? (Spoiler alert – no)
·        Are they better than me? (Answer – no)
·        Am I competing with any of these people? (Again, no)
When you’re out and about in the world, and you encounter other people, randomly or otherwise, guess what? You’re not competing with them. What’s more, you’re not better than they are nor are they better than you are.
Repeat whenever you find yourself thinking about competing with others outside of playing sports or the like.

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