The Toolbox

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Technology

As I mentioned in The Prison, having a toolbox is essential to living. Everyone needs a basic tool kit in their homes, it is what helps take of maintenance and small problems before they become big ones. This concept is the same for our mental and spiritual health, we need to equip ourselves with a set of tools to our thinking clear and our minds healthy.

In this post I’ll highlight a few essential tools that have helped me. I will be adding more tools in future posts, but for now here are a few must-haves to get you started:

Your GUT (Guiding Universal Transceiver)

Your gut instinct, or guiding universal transceiver as I like to think of it, is one of the most essential tools in your mental toolbox. Everyone has one, but more often than not, not everyone excises or uses theirs as often as they should. The reason I call the gut the guiding universal transceiver is because your gut instinct is a personal guide for us that “plugs into the universe” so to speak. The age old advice of “follow your gut” harkens true because our gut decisions are often the most profound and personally significant decisions we make.

To exercise your gut, get into the habit of listening to it on a daily basis. How can that be done? The easiest way is whenever a question or choice is presented, say an answer out-loud within 2 seconds of being presented the question/choice without thinking about it. The answer that is instantly fired out is your gut level answer.

Willpower

Probably the most important tool in the box is your Willpower. This power tool is essential not only to existing, but is what governs all of your decisions and thought processes. Read any articles about successful people, for example professional athletes, and this topic comes up again and again. Willpower not merely just the resolve to do something, it is the focus and discipline to actually achieve and it and stay the course to see an objective through. Have you ever decided to set a simple goal, such as say lose 5 pounds? Did you achieve it? The reason you did or did not achieve this goal was due to willpower. Setting the goal of losing weight is the easy part, but doing the exercise is the hard part. If you did not achieve the goal, usually there was an excuse involved or a lack of resolve to meet the goal. If you did achieve it, there was commitment and follow through on the goal that got the desired results.

A lot of people lack willpower in a multiple areas of their lives, and these collectively can add up for large results. Willpower is something we all deal with, and it’s best to keep this tool fully charged. I’d encourage excising willpower in a few small areas as a starting point. For example, if you receive some slightly upsetting news or set a small but inconvenient goal (like lose 2 pounds this week or read a 500 page book), you get yourself into the habit of setting a target and hitting it, building your unconscious mind into doing this automatically. This will help with larger and more ambitious goals, whatever they may be.

The Mind

Your mind is a vastly important and powerful tool that we too often don’t maximize. The mind is what draws unseen connections, processes our memories, feeling, actions, and is essentially the tool we use to perceive our world. The mind is like a sword, in the wrong hands it can cause a lot of self harm and can dull very quickly; but in the hands of a skilled wielder it can be a precise instrument. So how do you keep your mind razor sharp? Feed it. Your mind is constantly hungry and need to be fed. But don’t just feed it, feed it healthy things. You can adopt an all candy-diet, which is technically feeding you but pretty quickly the negative affects of a junk-food diet become apparent. The same thing is true with your mind. Feed it health things such a literature, art and music. Feed it things that inspire it, make you happy and feeling positive, and that from time to time make you think as you process this information. Junk food for the brain is ok in moderation, like watching some TV to unwind after a long day. But if you’re constantly putting things in your mind that are making it dull, depressed, or uninspired, it shouldn’t be a shock to find that your outlook on life is in the same arena.

An important thing to remember is that just like your body, you only have one, so it’s best to take care of it. If you do some thinking and discover you aren’t getting the most mileage out of your mind as possible, should you fret and become depressed? Absolutely not, think of it instead as an opportunity to discover what you’re capable of. There is a world of possibility out there, don’t be afraid to see what your potential has the ability to manifest itself into.

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In summary these are a few tings to think about. In the future I will be adding more tools for the Toolbox, but for now this should be plenty to think about. What “tool” would you add to your Toolbox? Leave a comment in the sections below and share with the world!

Threat Perception

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Threat

In our mass-media driven world of information, there seems to be a prevalent and recurring presence of threats. From the food you eat to terrorist attacks, it seems that our ever dangerous world is becoming increasingly dangerous at an escalating rate.

Despite the exact opposite being true, it seems our media driven culture is more obsessed with tragedy and fear than ever before. Though it seems a little counter-intuitive, I think that since occurrences of such events are becoming less and less common, every occurrence is becoming more sensationalized. Much like the animal facing extincting, like the Tasmanian Tiger, when something is once common and comes closer and closer to extinction, each sighting becomes a more and more sensationalized event.

So what’s the real issue at hand here? To me the main issue is that in a world that is largely becoming socially safer we’re continuously being told that we need to be afraid. “Stranger danger” and ever present threats to our well-being are running rampant in the open, taking each chance to strike on the unsuspecting. This is the world-view presented from a 15 minute news segment.

As a free-thinker, you should assess the world for yourself and not let media dictate your perception on potential threats. Are there harmful people, things and events out there in the world? Absolutely. I’m not saying the world is one magical fantasy land with purely invented hardships. There are people out there that intend to do harm others and unfortunately bad things do happen. But is life and society a 24 hour fear festival where everyone is out to do you wrong? I do not believe this extreme view to be accurate either.

When taking anything into consideration, especially a viewpoint or information, consider the source. If you get a lot of information from the media, remember that the media is a manufactured product, like many things in this world. What is often presented as “truth” is actually a manufactured viewpoint, so always consider the source. Should you question this blog like a major news outlet? You bet you should. Because at least in doing that you’re thinking for yourself and asking yourself the important questions of “Is this something I agree with and believe?” and “What is the intent of the presenter?” Always ask “What’s the angle?” This question can help you discover the motives of ideas and information, and you can decide for yourself if something is helping you or trying to hinder you.

In summary, it is an unfortunate part of reality that bad things do happen and the world can be a hard place to live in at times. But don’t let the fear-based lens determine what you view as an imminent threat. With information more available than ever before, use that to your advantage to find the positive things in the world. You might just find that the world is a much more amazing place than what you’ve been told.

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The Prison

/ The Beaz Kneez / 1 Comment

hands-on-prison-bars

Often times when I am interacting with or discussing things with people, I hear the phrase “I’ can’t,” “I wish” or “I would if xyz.” Aside from having issues with the phrases, I have a major issue with the frequency that I hear them used. To me these phrases are the bars of a prisoner’s mentality, one in which a person is confined and their life is governed purely by external factors. By limiting yourself with the “I can’t” mindset, you’re only hurting your own potential.

By placing a mental limit on yourself and saying “I can’t do xyz” then you won’t be able to ever do it, because you have written it off as a possibility in your mind. They say that perception becomes reality, and I would challenge you to flip the script and drop the headstone at the end of “can’t”  to “can.” Now is this 100% guarantee that you will do xzy? Absolutely not, but you will never know for certain unless you try. Non-action is the mother of regret and the prisoner’s mentality is its father. In order to put things in the realm of possibility, you must first think it’s possible in the first place.

A huge factor that often is the cause of this mentality is fear. Fear of rejection, embarrassment, wasting time, etc. There a infinite reasons to fear any endeavor, but you should never let fear make your choices for you. In the mental prison, fear is the warden, setting your schedule, dictation what is and is not allowed, and punishing insubordination mercilessly.

The question you must ask yourself is who is governing your decisions? Is it you, or is it the warden? More often then not, we have the keys to our own mental prisons but we refuse to use them because the most terrifying thing of all comes with walking out into freedom: Responsibility. When we exercise our freedom of choice and take action on those choices, all of the responsibility falls on us. This can be scary, because that means facing failure, falling short, or many other let downs in this life.

But the thing that fear blinds you to is the fact that while these things may happen, you also still have the freedom to pick yourself up and move on. Would you ever learned to walk if as a baby you just fell down once and stayed down? Absolutely not, so in a lot of sense it’s best to adopt the infant’s mind set – You walk, stumble and fall, but you keep on going and going until it clicks because that’s just what you do.

The two words I live my life by are Without Fear. This is the most powerful phrase I have ever heard and I have internalized it as my personal mantra. Have I made mistakes? Absolutely. Have I been met with failure and disappointment? You bet I have. But I take pride in the fact that I made my own choices, not governed by fear, and I keeping myself up when I stumble.

Take note of your language and phrasing, and notice how others speak around you. Pay attention to what is really motivating your actions. You may be surprised by the results. And be brutally honest with yourself. Fear-based rationalizations and half-hearted justifications will not do yourself any favors.

If you find yourself a prisoner of some sort, don’t fret or lose hope. The mere fact that you’re aware is the great head start to help you take control of your life. As I stated in my reason for having a blog in the first place, my only intent is to provide tools that you can use to help improve your life, and this is the first tool in my life-essentials tool box.

Every house need a fully stocked tool box, and your mind and body are your house. Time to stock up that tool box as well.

freedom

Enter The Beaz Kneez

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Shore of the Dreamscape

Welcome. This is a place to re-frame the way you think. Here is were you find my thoughts and views on this great journey called life.

A lot of people strive to inspire others, and this is indeed a very noble calling. For me, I am not satisfied with just inspiring others, I also want to build opportunities and platforms for them to creatively exercise and express that inspiration. My hope is that this blog will inspire you to look at and explore the way you think, but also to give you some tools and direction on how to express the way you think.

This is a way for me to help give back something and leave resource library that others can access. So now you know what drives me and why I do it.

Are you ready?

If you’d like to contact me about a consult or want to say hello:

TheBeazKneez24@gmail.com