Finding a Place to Make Your Stand

Lighten up while you still can

Don't even try to understand.

Just find a place to make your stand,

and take it easy...

I am not a religious man.  I am Irish Catholic by birth and by upbringing.  However, I only made it as far as First Holy Communion in the sacramental assembly line.  Between communion and confirmation, I opted out.  Ironic is it not how in spite of the absence of a dab or two of holy aqua, I still grew up to become a confirmed asshole.  Can I get an Amen? 

While organized religion makes my hair hurt and seemingly blind allegiance to some invisible higher power does too, I appreciate that each of us in our day-to-day needs to have faith in something and needs to have something in which to believe.  I simply subscribe to the school of thought that we should look inward - and not outward - for such things.  

Irrespective of your physical prowess, the strongest, most powerful part of you is your mind.  Your mind.  Not your spouse's mind.  Not your mother's mind.  Not your father's mind.  Not your employer's mind.  Yours.  The secret to not letting the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy (to borrow a line from the great American philosophers Jackson Browne and the late Glenn Frey) is to exercise your mind, to invigorate it, and to keep it sharp so that you run it and it does not run you.  

This is not some sort of 21st century touchy/feely, jerk yourself off mantra.  It is common sense.  You already know that to a very significant degree, the perception you create of your reality becomes the reality in which you live.  It is for this very reason that you controlling your mind - and not allowing it to control you - is so important.  Your mind shapes your perception.  Your perception shapes your decision-making.  

Every day is an opportunity.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  It is not a guarantee of anything, whether "anything" is a good thing or a bad thing.  It is a blank page.  What fills the page is up to you.  It is your responsibility.  If you perceive that responsibility to be a burden, then you will fill the page with more than your proportionate share of self-pitying tripe and bullshit.  However, if you perceive that responsibility to be the opportunity that it is, then you will fill that page with positive thoughts and actions.  

If you have not yet done it, then I strenuously recommend you familiarize yourself with the work of Gary John Bishop.  Whether you are controlling your mind and making it work for you or it is controlling you and you/it are engaged in a daily knife fight for control of your mental health, he can help you.  

Win Today.  

-AK