I absolutely believe we make our own reality, moment to moment. We live in a world of probabilities, and nothing exists except in our minds when we aim our attention in a specific direction.

It’s not in the sense of closing your eyes and wishing you had $1,000,000,000, then opening your eyes and all of a sudden you’re sitting in your living room covered in money. I mean in the sense of you’re tired of being sad, depressed, anxiety-ridden, stressed, etc., then you just observe yourself feeling the shit you’re feeling, and be like “That’s it. I wanna be happy, content, relaxed, etc. I’m tired of feeling this heavy.”

Sometimes I know I have to figure out a way to deal with some phone calls about bills I don’t want to make, or sometimes my 2 year old daughter decides she doesn’t feel like eating all the food I just made for her and wants to yell about it, or maybe I know I have a long, tiring night at work tomorrow because we’re doing tedious inventory cycle count. I make sure I catch myself feeling the feelings I am feeling, and then I’ll chuckle out loud. Literally. I’ll instantly think about the size of our observable universe (it’s estimated that the diameter of the observable universe is about 28.5 gigaparsecs (93 billion light-years, 8.8×10²⁶ metres or 5.5×10²³ miles) then think about the shit that can’t be seen or detected too, and realize how all that matters in whatever uncomfortable moment I am in, is the good in that moment. Whatever purity is in it. To see it. I’ll think about how lucky I am to even have a healthy, amazing baby. I’ll realize how comforting it is that I have food. That I am breathing. That I exist at all.

This is all AS magical as you thinking that wishing for millions of dollars might make it all appear, except that the magic I be doing is real. That’s the thing about the mind. You control it. Nobody else does. Others might be able to influence your mind, or situations may make you feel like you can’t help but think about the fucked up shit you’re thinking about, but you’re ultimately who decides what you think. Whenever you think about anything, that triggers chemical reactions in your brain and body. Those chemical reactions are what we call emotions. Feelings are emotional states, or reactions. You control those, too.

I’m not weird for wanting to be able to control my own emotional state, or for learning how to do it. I think other people are weird for thinking they can’t help how they feel. I’m not odd for feeling ok about something that could be depressing or upsetting to somebody else. A lot of people laugh when they’re nervous. This is the “inner them” reaching out to soothe themselves. I do that too, except I can choose when to do it. It doesn’t just happen unconsciously and I’m not aware I am doing it. I’ve been creating my self-soothing mechanism for years.

This kind of control of my waking state also translates from, and into, my dreaming state. That’s another story…