Now imagine another person who is calm and content.

Think about which of those you’d like to be.

We are free when we have freedom to change.

We have freedom to change when we know the truth about what was modeled, in front of our senses, as little children; before starting school.

The good or bad feelings we felt as a little child, replay easily in our everyday lives. This is the colored lense with which we see the world. Our own particular take on it, our perspective.

I’ve spoken about having lived in California for six years during my 20s. It is the land of the weekend transformational seminar. I was able to stay close to myself to truly need only two of those seminars during those six years.

I couldn’t help being attracted to this title: “How To Create Your Own Reality.”

In a nutshell, the way to create your own reality can be illustrated as follows.

Imagine a dream you wish will come true. Everyday or several times a day, think of the details of your dream and continue to refine it. Say yes, in everyday reality, when you have a choice to say yes, to little elements of your dream. This can be very entertaining.

While you are refining your dream, keep a sharp eye on reality. Just observe it. Little by little (or right away) you will see your dream coming into fruition. As it gets more and more real, there will be a building of tension.

Most people give up, being very uncomfortable with the tension. This is what Paul Simon spoke of in his song, “Slip, Sliding Away.”

If you can ride it out, you will bridge the gap between your dream and reality.

Think of that tension as a taut rubber band between your two index fingers. One finger represents your dream, the other, represents reality. As the rubber band takes on more and more tension, it will in time break. At that point you will need to realize your reality is what you asked for in your dream. Your dream has become your reality.

As always, feel free to leave a comment below. I love to have conversations with my followers.

With COVID, our focus is directed inward. We can be with family, care for our home like never before; be very, very careful, practice a skill, explore the internet and read. Its as wide as your imagination.

I am continuously reading something. This year, during our family’s 43rd annual camping trip, I was reading, The Spell of the Sensuous, Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, by David Abram.

I understood, quite some time ago, how we are one with the world and the Universe.

This book describes how to be far more connected to Nature and every living thing in it. In his words, our eyes and the texture of our skin takes-in the nuances of the shifting wind and the nourishment of a rambling brook.

He goes on to suggest that we got the word, “rambling” from the nature of the brook itself. That we got the word, “wow” and “bang” from lightning and thunder. And that we operate at this sensitivity level.

Calling ourselves emotional has been a stifling label. We can set ourselves free from it. We are naturally sensitive, just as are the birds and the butterflies are sensitive. We get our sense of flying from all of nature traveling by flight.

David Abram, a summa cum laude graduate at Wesleyan University, he holds a doctorate in philosophy from State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Watson and Rockefeller Foundations and has a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.

He has traded sensory information with indigenous people in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Americas. As an ecologist and a philosopher, his writing has influenced the environmental movement in North America and abroad.

This is his first book. Its lyrical, poetic, and intellectually embracing. It startles our senses out of habitual ways of seeing and hearing for a wider, fuller engagement with Nature.

He traces the steps of Rene Descartes, from the 17th Century; followed by Edmund Husserl in the early 20th Century, followed by Merleau-Ponty in more recent times. They all developed the idea that our earth is animated with life that flows to us and from us.

We are communicating with it and it is communicating with us. It’s a rich exchange.

Amazon has The Spell of the Sensuous. It is published through Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House, New York.

Anthropologist Edward T. Hall , explained about social distance back when being in-person, within breathing space, was not such a big deal. He developed this chart for where to stand to”be in-someone’s space.”

He describes, Public Space as someone being beyond 4ft from you. Social Space being as close as 1.5 feet away up to 4 feet out. Closer than 1.5 feet is being in your Personal Space and closer that that as your Intimate Space.

It makes sense. especially now when your distance away from another person in stores, the post office, the bank is so critical. Dr. Hall developed this chart after making world-wide studies of social behavior.

Yes, you guessed right. Even Dr. Hall admits his research has been extended by technological advances such as the telephone, walkie talkie, and television, among others. Hall’s analysis of social distance came before the development of the internet, which has expanded social distance exponentially. I believe we have gone full circle, no pun intended.

The Coronavirus has brought our attention back to how we act in public. We were so used to shuffling along, squeezing in-between one another to get to the front. Loving the crowd at concerts, political events, our kids school performances. I think I’m gonna cry.

When I went to the grocery store early this morning, when it opened , since that is when the store is the most clean; I saw so many sad or stressed-out faces. We hear and gotta get it through our heads that we are in this together. We must put-on our thinking caps to create what we want for a new social structure. Fear just doesn’t work for me. How about you?

I love people. I’m one of those people who needs people. I’m praying this virus gets under control as soon as possible, saving lives and giving me permission to stand closer and even hug.

We also feel our history, our personal history, often and in many ways.

Growing up had two chapters. The first chapter was abundant. Dad was a successful lawyer in his own practice. We had a five bedroom, three story brick house on two lots in Allen Park, MI. We had everything, very often new clothes, lots of food, dinners out, and many vacations. Year by year, time went on . . . then, life changed.

I was awake at night to hear Dad’s abuse of Mom. His deep booming voice minimizing her natural goddessness. And then a thump and a quiet sobbing. Shocked and deeply sad, I had a decision to make. As a 12yr old child, did I allow this intel to minimize me, after all, this was my mother and father!  Or did I wait, use time to see how it turned out, keeping my thoughts to myself.   I chose the latter, like most 12yr olds in the 1960s.

Mom and Dad were divorced in less than a year. We moved from that house, plenty big for eight, into a house too small for the six of us. Now we had one pair of sneakers, one pair of boots, minimally just what we needed. Consequently we had to keep our clothes clean and ready to wear again, day after day.

The most profound change was with dinner. Pre-divorce we were required to be on-time, face and hands washed and seated at 6pm. We heard a passage from the Bible and learned a new word weekly from the dictionary. Dad would quiz us through the week to correctly pronounce, spell and recite the weekly word. We had to share what happened to us and how we felt about it. And we had to be excused before we left the table.

Post-divorce dinners only happened when someone complained they were starting to get hungry. Hand washing was only when my sister and I thought our younger brothers’ hands were “too gross.” What was served was often over- cooked from a slow-cooker Mom started before she went to work. Or it was something I could devise from little bits of left-overs and flavors hidden deep in the fridge and cupboards. Again, I chose to experience this as early training for my future career as a fine dining chef or as “the gourmet chef” in our big Italian family. What happened that day and our feelings about it were now left unsaid at dinner, to built up stress. Instead, we would talked it out in private one-on-one. Sometimes the tension got very heated, depths-of-our-soul types of emotions.

Pre-divorce and post-divorce both had positive and negative aspects and life lessons. Far beyond simply being fed, communal dinners nourish in a total feeling way. It does this in many forms, often indescribable. As long as people have face-to-face contact, and especially if they’re tightly linked by an emotional bond.

It’s a tradition worthy of preserving, resurrecting, or creating new, now.

Start from where you are.

From my heart, let me express to you how much choice you have every way, everyday. As a kid, and still today, I use my imagination to keep growing, keep flowing along. Very little needs to be ingested, it’s up to you. 

Well, many times it doesn’t happen. There is some kind of disconnect between what we intend to do and what actually happens. This disconnect can disappoint people, shake-up relationships, derail a promotion at work, lose a job, cause a bad review, harm a friendship or cause a love-loss creating heartache.

Its a matter of clarity and will power. Make it easy on yourself and just be clear on what you truly can do yourself, and very mindful of what you promised someone else. When you say, I will ______(do this particular something). JUST DO IT!

Start slow; start with following-through once, then, advance to trying it once-a-day. As time goes on you will develop a habit of following-through with what you said you would do. There are big pay-offs.

You’ll notice people trust you more. That’s a nice thing. Over time the benefits grow, exponentially. People will compliment you, choose to spend time with you, it goes on and on.

Thoroughness, following-through is best when the thing to do is for yourself. I have heard that one should not cross themselves. That is the same as telling yourself you will do something and not doing it, then, pretending it doesn’t matter to you. Believe me, it matters. It wears you down. I’ve been there. I’ve done that.

You are born with an independent free will that has power. Take it out from the place you have had it tucked-away, shake the wrinkles out of it, dust it off. Give this power some fresh-air and sunshine, or a good shot of expresso. Get it in action.

You go . . . avatar.

Wardrobe Tip for Today: When your favorite winter jacket’s zipper insert starts to fray there is a fix. You can sew it so it stays strong and does not get worse, requiring installation of a whole new zipper. That is a huge hassle or a big expense. So check out this series of photos and leave a comment is you have questions.

Not everyone thinks they can affect life. Going through the public school system with its polar right and wrong answers and no in-between, the commonly programmed emotional response is to shy away from affecting anything.

You know how this applies to you or to someone you know.

You have an imagination, that you do know! But do you know that no one else needs to know. You can imagine the opposite of your actual reality. You can imagine yourself in a totally different space and even a different time. You are able to imagine anything. Given time, this muscle, if I may call it a muscle, will strengthen. You can get very good at imagining things or places to calm you and comfort you. Remember: No one knows what you’re thinking. And no one needs to know. Comments like, “What are you smiling about?” can be diverted with “Oh, nothing.” Don’t let on that you have a secret or they will tease it out of you. Your imagined world is YOUR OWN.

With your imagination you can make alterations if reality doesn’t fit well.

Search my blogs to find Creating Your Own Reality, (How to instructions).

First comes Imagination, then comes Creativity. Creativity is the hands-on making of what you have imagined. You can create your own reality. Follow the steps on how to do it, don’t skip or alter any of the steps. Doing so will disconnect you from your ability to create in this way.

Darling one, you are one very powerful creator in your own life. Once realized you can do anything. Simply research it, then decide if you want to follow through.