The problem with “energy doesn’t lie” and “trust your gut” memes is they don’t account for how social conditioning, prejudice, fear of change, trauma and anxiety can feel like inner guidance. Exploring our feelings with discernment is key so we learn to tell the difference. 

DURGADAS ALLAN DURIEL

Life would be so much more predictable in a vacuum. 

And also, probably more dull and non eventful.

Given the continuous stream of experiences, circumstances, eventualities and outcomes these bring to our existence, one’s ability to surf the ever rising tide of distraction, circumvention, annoyances and obstacles that cross our paths is continually challenged, even on the best of days.

How then to find a true course in life that is predictable and reliable enough to wager one’s life on such a course of action? Do we trust our gut and pray that energy does not lie? Do we search for deeper truths and continuously shine a searchlight into all of the dark, murky corners of our existence, aiming to find that perfect combination of truths that are reliable and bankable?

Perhaps we are better served to avoid a master plan and play it all by ear? Given the continuous stream of unexpected variables that play counterpoint to all of the best laid plans of mice and man, are we not perhaps wiser to generate an overall game plan with contingencies while simultaneously working to accept that whatever we are projecting as a course of action must be completely malleable so as to allow for the unforeseen?

In the time that I have been sharing these musings with you, Covid struck and we were in lockdown, businesses were failing, people were dying, and the true course of action for most companies and individuals became completely uncertain. Biden won the election (spoiler alert… it really did happen), we had the opposing party plan a coup to take over our nation with a violent mob attacking the capital, Russia invaded Ukraine and started the largest land war in Europe since WWII.

Each of these four monumental occurrences are strong enough to fully change the course of events for millions of people in a heartbeat. 

These moments are not anomalies. They have been happening throughout each of our lives, and each and every one of the massive shifts of world consciousness that arise from these experiences have cast significant ripples in the reformulated plans of large segments of society.

It strikes me that perhaps the only reliable scenario for contemplation is the one in which we have a master plan, accompanied by a series of contingencies and supplemented with enough elasticity as to enable our ability to survive in the face of countless obstacles, distractions, disappointments and fear-invoking stimuli. In the act of exploring our feelings, we are able to discern truth from fear, reality from propaganda and find our true internal compass to guide us through the storms.

Only then may we rely on our internal energy to guide us to safe harbor. 

Happy Wednesday!

If people don’t make an effort to be in your life, don’t try so hard to be in theirs. It’s not worth it.

We all have gone an extra mile for someone in our world with whom we wish to develop a deeper relationship, be it personal or professional. 

In this time, we exert energy trying to make the circumstances “perfect” so that the other party might adopt a more favorable impression and thereby grow a deeper attachment, need or desire to engage.

In almost every circumstance in which this transpires, there is an imbalance in the dynamic between both parties that is usually unlikely to cure through any traditional approach, and even less likely through nontraditional approaches.

When we find ourselves working to make everything “just so” and the other party is still not in balance with the equation, we are almost certainly destined for failure. It may begin to evolve in the right direction at first, but usually, without exception, the imbalance at the outset gives way to the final chapter, which is not the vision that we are expecting, having gone the extra mile to make such a relationship work.

There is an internal delusion that we are more than likely casting that says, “if I go to this effort, they will recognize this and their perspective will change.” So we expend the effort to win a client, friend or lover with high expectation of a victorious outcome.

So why is it that in most cases, it does not pan out?

I believe there are internal dynamics that generate balance at the outset of such a relationship. If the other party is not valuing you on par with the way that you value them, then what is going to ultimately make them value you on the level that you expect?

If you believe that it is the things you will do, the things that you might say, or the opportunities that you expect to provide, you are more than likely missing a bigger picture as to why there is an imbalance in the first place.

It may be considerably more prudent to size up the situation from the outset and see it for what it truly is and then recognize from prior experiences what your probable outcome will be.

In doing this, we are more grounded, standing on a firm foundation of understanding, paired with a realistic appraisal of the situation. 

Is all of this to say that it is not valuable to go the extra mile to try to bring the right relationship to fruition? Not at all.

But it is to say that we are most wise to see circumstances for what they truly are and when the reality is plain as day, any form of delusion to the contrary is wasting time and energy. In which case, our time, energy and expenditures are best focused on other efforts than trying to win a battle or relationship that cannot be won.

Happy Sunday!

Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.

GEORGE ADDAIR

Strange how fear controls us.

It is the primal variable that drives the fight or flight syndrome. 

It is the voice in our heads that vocalizes every last worry, trepidation, consternation and terror.

It is the voice that confines us, reduces us, disconnects us and leaves us as spoilage rather than victors.

And why is that?

Because the fear of what can possibly go wrong has been reinforced empirically since day one of our lives, and in most cases, it outweighs the positive reinforcement that prior successes have had. A negative lesson, like Hot, don’t touch! Is reinforced with pain when not heeded. A positive lesson is reinforced with praise, which feels amazing, but is it truly as powerful as the lessons punished by pain?

Probably not.

I discovered that being an entrepreneur was valuable at about 7 years old when my parents let me set up a lemonade stand in front of our home. In retrospect, it was kind neighbors who saw this kid trying to be an entrepreneur and stopped to sample my brew. They were all very kind and supportive, and I made a profit and all of that felt good. So when I learned how to make candles a couple years later, it was a natural progression for me to set up a booth in front of Safeway to try the same experience.

Every time I see a young child selling anything, regardless of whether I want it or not, I stop, and pay them double or triple their asking price, and do it with them making one promise…. When you get a chance later in life, I want you to stop and do this for another young child who is trying to follow this path. Pay it forward. They always smile and agree, and I hope my positive reinforcement helps them get past the fear that would normally tell them how wrong their idea is.

If you are looking to accomplish something of magnitude in your world, your fear is your single biggest obstacle. It is more likely to jump in and control you than you might imagine. Watch your mind the next time you happen to entertain a far out idea and detail the steps your mind will make to defeat the idea as problematic. It may well be that the idea is problematic. Many of them are. But some are genius, and your fear does not always allow for that. Your fear and self doubt could defeat the single greatest idea you have ever come up with, just because you are in the wrong mood.

I use the digital notepad on my iPhone for these moments. When that lighting strikes, I am recording it in writing for another frame of mind. Perhaps a judicious frame of mind to temper my wildest concepts and perhaps a more enthusiastic one, when I find that there is a chance that perhaps the last one was more genius, or more importantly, when that last one connects the dots with something else that I am doing, and suddenly, I see where and how they connect.

Fear can save your life. 

It can also destroy it.

Find your filter deep inside to process fear and allow it to do its job to save you, but when you contemplate that it might be in a scenario where it is totally holding you back, just remember… Freedom comes from being at ease with the certainty of uncertainty. 

Things will be uncertain. That is ok. Just believe in yourself and keep going with everything you’ve got.

Happy Tuesday!

Love yourself when you’re tired. Love yourself when you’re weak. Love yourself when you’re confused. Love yourself when you’re broken. Love yourself until you’re restored.

We all go through phases like this. Moments of uncertainty and doubt rain down upon us like the heaviest of thunder showers. When they do, life feels insurmountable and desperate. We hunker down and hope for the best and try our absolute hardest to understand that this is most likely a phase that will pass.

Beyond taking refuge and leveraging our internal optimism to carry the moment, there are other options at our disposal.  One of the most valuable of those options is perhaps the simplest of them all… and that is to love oneself during the experience.

It sounds so esoteric as to be almost valueless when it is read as words on a page. Whereas in practice, it is one of the most valuable of all of the remedies at your disposal.

Loving oneself takes numerous forms depending upon whom we are speaking about. There is probably as many expressions of this as there are people, so it is clearly not a “one size fits all” remedy.

I believe that loving oneself starts as a basic concept that orchestrates a series of thoughts and behaviors that are personalized remedies for the turmoil, doubt and fear that we are experiencing. As a first starting stone from which to leap, loving oneself must start with forgiveness.

In fictional circumstances, the protagonist is always going through a series of challenges in order that they might prevail. Those challenges come with regular setbacks. In most cases, the audience is not aware of the mental process that the protagonist uses to regroup and accelerate beyond the current obstacle at hand. All that we really know is that they backed away long enough to get their head on straight and then they confronted the issue a second time and surpassed it. So during the period in which they backed away, what exactly is the process that facilitated their ability to conquer the problem at hand?

As children, one of our first lessons on this topic comes from “The Little Engine That Could”. In this children’s story, a little locomotive is trying to get up enough power to climb a mountain. This story teaches us that in that moment of necessity, the Little Engine starts to recite, “I think I can. I think I can!“ And sure enough, the hill is climbed. So undoubtedly, part of the recipe is positive thinking. But, in many cases, before the positive thinking can be applied, there is an earlier stage that must not be overlooked. That stage is self-love.

Do you love yourself?

What were several of the last things that you did to demonstrate and prove to yourself that you truly do love yourself? What acts of kindness have you extended on your own behalf that reassure your scared inner child that you’ve got their back?

Are you taking care of them in what you choose to put into your body? Are you ensuring that your body gets proper regular exercise so that it might last a long time? Do you take a moment in your busy schedule to take mental inventory of your thoughts and fears so that you might assuage them with reassurance is that carry weight? Do you believe in your innermost private thoughts that you are worthy of such self-love? Are you willing to sacrifice certain pleasures in your life in favor of making sure you are really taking care of yourself mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually?

In those moments where there is only you and the mirror, you are faced with a blunt moment of honesty. Anything less than brutal honesty is not truly watching out for yourself in a way that you might.

I use the moment of looking oneself in the mirror with regularity because it is truly the only moment of core honesty. Anything less than core honesty in a moment like this is just wasting time. If you choose to delude yourself, you are only postponing the inevitable and that accomplishes nothing other than procrastination.

Some of us are prone to setting insanely high standards for ourselves. These are wonderful for ensuring that our aim is focusing on goals that are worthy of whom we truly believe that we are. That said, lofty goals and high ambition are equally dangerous when they are not readily achieved because our focus has seen only one possible outcome for the energy and effort that we are opting to expend. Anything less than that desired outcome feels like a failure. But perhaps that is not the case.

Like the protagonist in the fictional stories, our pathway to success is not usually a straight line, rather it is a series of connected moments and experiences which cumulatively deliver us to our desired endgame. 

In order to love ourselves through these disjointed experiences, we must be willing to accept that it is not one defined path that will ultimately deliver, but rather, it is a mindset that recognizes that when things are becoming more difficult, we must look within to prevail. 

Proper nutrition, exercise, spiritual awareness and an inner determination (just like “The Little Engine That Could” are the recipe. Even in the moments when none of these appear to be readily untapped, it is usually one of them that is the key to making others come to fruition. For example, if you are in a very low frame of mind, try going for a walk somewhere tranquil and rejuvenating. During this walk, you will most likely experience a cathartic change in your thinking. It might be minuscule at first, but it is clearly a starting point and that facilitates so many other parts of the equation. As a result of that healthy walk, you might be more inclined to put proper nutrition into your body upon your return. Because of that walk, some of the things you might have been thinking about may have taken a new perspective during your respite from whatever stress you have been going through. Wherever your first incidents of relief are coming from, you may very well discover that they open the doors to other choices and behaviors, each of which are part of loving yourself into that next stage.

Strong ambition is not an easy path in life, to the contrary, it is often times one of the most difficult. By definition, that is what ambition requires. In order to develop the proper arsenal of resources to realize your personal ambition, loving yourself is clearly the cornerstone to all of it. Make some time every day to do something incredibly kind for yourself and watch how you blossom in the process. 

Your personal restoration is the key to the recognition of whatever ambitious goal you have set before yourself.

Happy Thursday!

Finding our footing in times of need is a life skill that all of us must shoulder when the moment arrives at our door. The moment comes in countless forms and for myriad reasons, far too numerous to count. Some are small, while others are larger than life. In many cases, the scope of the problem is in direct relation to the person experiencing it. I am certain we have all counseled someone going through something that we, on the outside looking in, see for what it is, and see the solution as clear as day. But when you are the person who is weathering the experience, it is as vast as can be imagined and the impact it is having on us can be incalculable. 

When those moments in life hit, they literally take our breath away. It feels like having been punched in the solar plexus, and causes a moment of sheer panic, whilst we gasp for air. In that moment of panic, where the air is not instantly forthcoming, our world is spinning completely out of control. Everything feels massively overwhelming. That is the point in life where this aphorism is of most value. Circumstances appear to be overwhelming, the cause of the circumstances seems indomitable and we are looking everywhere for that metaphorical life raft. 

The ability to stay calm under pressure is not a skill that any of us are born with. It is a learned skill that is honed from each of our experiences that we ultimately conquer. If we look back at our life path, we all can recollect moments that felt as if the whole world was falling in. What we did to grow through that moment and emerge a better person on the other side stack up in our collective consciousness as resources from which to pull when our next circumstance rears its ugly head with intent to destroy our current happiness. The second time that a similar problem from the past arises, we are better at taking it on than the first time, and so we move through life, working and evolving as beings, trying at every stage to distance ourselves from the fears that overwhelmed us at an earlier age. 

We grow by exposing ourselves to dangers of our own choosing. In those exposures, we discover ever greater internal resources that were not present earlier, and use them as the staircase to rise above the danger and elevate us to higher ground from which we may take personal inventory and then expose ourselves to the next round of dangers of our own choosing. 

Winnie the Pooh not withstanding, A. A. Milne was very adept at finding some of those most precious moments that defined our youth and gave us cause to mature and grow wiser. I remember we had When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six in our home when I was growing up. I would look through them, but they never really captured my attention until I was an adult, looking backwards, in warm remembrances of my youth. 

In the end, the core strength we all rely upon is our belief system. The brain is omnipowerful and the warehouse of stored experiences we amass over the course of a lifetime is far more expansive than we might recollect without a guided journey showing you how many of these moments you may have prevailed over and how you were most capable of finding your internal strength at a moment where you were metaphorically gasping for breath.

Life is most certainly not easy. But the journey that sculpts us is fascinating and delivers so many unique moments of value as to color a lifetime in a rainbow of experiences from which we blossom.

Happy Tuesday!

If you like what you are reading in the blog, you will even love the book more. Take a free preview below and watch the Sizzle Reel. It will give you a sense of how this book might be of help in your life when you are looking to make some tough decisions.

Specially priced at $11.11 for those who are tuned in.

My mother put this aphorism in my book, when she wrote it for me at age 19. At that age, I do not think I was looking at things through the same filter of experience and accrued knowledge that I view things through now.

BUT…. I believed the aphorism with all that I had. Why? Because I wanted to believe it.

SO…older and wiser, I now come up with lots of “what about” and “what if” scenarios as my more critically-thinking mind takes on the same aphorism 42 years later. I find numerous ways that the aphorism could not be true, as in the…. What if my wish were to be a hawk?

Here’s the point of my using it today, with a picture that is “woo-woo” as my non celestial friends would readily point out…..

What you desire, you manifest. Forget the absolutes. Forget the what ifs. Forget the yes, buts…..

If you want something with everything you have (and it is within physical probable reality to be accomplished), you will achieve it.

At age 19, I read this and at every juncture in my life, when things got really hard, and I was scared, I came back to this one. I can’t explain why. Perhaps it is the same comfort that others find in reading psalms. There is something about knowing that others have experienced what you are going through and that they are reporting back from further up the trail that you can do this! You CAN ACHIEVE ANYTHING IN LIFE YOU SET YOUR MIND TO.

Last night, at dinner, my dear friend Ramsey, shared his incredible joy that he is heading up to Berkeley in about 60 days. He reminded me that when we were at his brother’s graduation two years ago that he was looking around with a feeling like “it could never happen to him” and he reminded me that I shared with him on that day that soon it would be he in this situation. I do not think he believed me at that moment, but the thought stuck, he worked tirelessly to achieve it… and suddenly he is accepted to Berkeley and on his own path to stardom.

Voices of encouragement could not be more important in life. They really matter. They carry a magic that is incomparable and they deliver courage in doses that are immeasurable.

I have a phone call today with another friend’s son who I spent some time mentoring about 15 years ago when he was in high school and very interested in The Illusion Factory. Today he and I are talking about taking his tech company that he has built since that date, and Sizzle and doing a joint venture. It gives me tremendous joy seeing how young vibrant minds are stimulated to catapult into their dreams…..

You may have to work for your dreams. You may have to work harder than others. You may constantly be facing total defeat in the process. But as I watch Ramsey on his quest and I watch Chris taking on the math and logic for artificial intelligence in his quest, I see the generations behind me acting just as I did when I was young…

Focus and determination being used to overcome fear and anxiety so that their wishes will come true as well.

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. IT IS OMNIPOWERFUL.

When we are exposed to something that makes us afraid, the lizard part of our brain triggers and we are confronted with the fight or flight syndrome. That is the natural biological response to being afraid. What then, is the mitigating factor that converts our primal desire to run into a forceful determination to do exactly the opposite?

When all of the triggers in your brain are shouting for you to get out of danger, what is it that perpetuates the devout reason to do exactly the opposite? Depending upon the circumstance that is causing the fear, It can be a host of reasons that propel us into doing something that is deemed as heroic or altruistic and thereby judged as courageous.

Courage comes in many flavors…From facing the prospect of getting a shot in the arm, going to the dentist, undergoing an uncertain medical treatment or enlisting in a position of service to your society in which you could potentially end up putting your own life on the line for your duty… and millions of other examples.

Sometimes courage is motivated by love, and other times it is motivated by duty, honor, committment or a devout and intense persistence to prevail, no matter what.

Regardless of the motivation, at some point in the equation, something deep within confronts the fear and disregards it as being the primary factor and instead overrides the lizard brain with a new set of directives which are a forcibly exerted onto our actions at that moment in time.  Sometimes, this courage can take hours, days, weeks, months and even years to build to a decision point. Other times, it can happen in a millisecond. How interesting then, that something of such significance can play out in such a diverse range of time periods. Does something require more courage if it takes you longer to summon the courage? Not necessarily. I read an article on Facebook about a champion swimmer who witnessed a trolley car fly off of the rails and plunge into a river. He dove 30 feet down into the darkness and kicked in the back window of the trolley car and did not stop until he had pulled all of the people out. After personally suffering many wounds during and after the experience, he was the same man who passed by a burning building years later and rushed in to drag the inhabitants to safety, only further causing more damage to his body. What drives this level of heroism? Would you be capable of doing this under those circumstances? I question if I would be capable and in truth, I have real doubt that I would. I suppose, those are the decisions that arise in the moment and none of us really know for certain what we might be capable or willing to do under those circumstances.

From “No Peaceful Warriors!” (1991) by Ambrose Redmoon:

As a real, live, initiated, trained, experienced, traditional, hereditary warrior with thirty-seven body scars and a trophy or two on my belt, I find such expressions as “peaceful warrior” offensive, trivializing, and insulting. “Peaceful warrior” is far more than a contradiction in terms. The function of a warrior is to eliminate an exterior enemy presence . . Cowardice is a serious vice. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one’s fear. The timid presume it is lack of fear that allows the brave to act when the timid do not. But to take action when one is not afraid is easy. To refrain when afraid is also easy. To take action regardless of fear is brave.

In “Of Mice and Men,” Slim says, “Ain’t many guys travel around together … I don’t know why. Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.” 

In the harsh world of the migrant worker, an aphorism is born. One that casts a shadow on the human specie since the dawn of time. Are humans at their essence benevolent or selfish? Are they seeking to be their brother’s keeper, or are they hoping to quickly take that which their “brother” has?

Leading up to and subsequent to the verdict yesterday, I have heard moral arguments from both camps and both camps have validity. I think being in law enforcement would be one of the most difficult jobs to find a continuous equilibrium within. Everyday you are in a potential war zone. In some precincts you are encountering the worst of the worst every day. Never knowing if your life is on the line. Talk about stress!  Is ever’body scared of one another? Probably…. And perhaps for good reason. Those officers go to work daily, trying to make their way through life. The things they see, encounter and have to quell are larger than most of us will ever encounter. They must live life with a certain quality of post traumatic stress that is indescribable. So can they be fully blamed for seeing the world through the filter of… Is this the person that is going to end my life at this moment? I would have to believe that that fear is so real and palpable as to change a personality over time. Lots of feature films on this topic.

Conversely, the systematic prejudice that stems from having a law enforcement community going to work with a daily knot in their stomachs over the fear that today is potentially the last day of their life, has gone so far as to put various ethnic minorities into a position of having to be terrified with the most rudimentary encounters with law enforcement. This, combined with racial prejudice has created a needless fear in the law-abiding citizenry who are just trying to fend their own way through life.

The society must continually work to evaluate processes, programs, causes, symptoms and ultimately the ramifications of the choices the prior generations have left for the current society to cope with, process and improve. 

Given that the human specie is the most dangerous of all animals in the kingdom and more vicious than a wild bear, great white shark and a lion combined, we are continually trying to find balances between freedoms and valid controls that limit the freedom just enough to keep the majority of people safe.

It would appear that almost every day now there is another mass shooting. The United States continues to shrug and say that there is no solution to this, while most of the rest of the world are not dealing with it because of proper gun control measures.

If we do not start seeing the world like Slim and recognize that perhaps ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other, then we will never have a mass understanding of how and what can and must be done to protect the majority of the population from one another. There are no simple solutions. No question. But being ostriches and burying our collective heads in the sand is equally dangerous and harmful.

Public discourse that is productive, accurate, noninflammatory and meaningful is the only path out of this quagmire.

Happy Wednesday!

Can you remember the first time you tried to do something that scared you? Probably not. It might have been something benign like stepping onto an escalator, or walking off of the curb into the street, approaching a dog, or???

Some scary things are incredibly real, and through empirical knowledge, we discover that fear is valid and that can reinforce our behavior in so many ways in life going forward.

Other scary things are not real. Or they do not come to pass. They haunt us like a skeleton in a closet, waiting to pop out at a moment’s notice… dying to reinforce our innermost trepidations.

They come at us in all walks of life. In relationships with parents, family, peers, instructors, employers, clients, etc. Or they show up at the proverbial crossroads where we are making a significant decision about our lives and we are wondering whether or not to take a chance…..

For most, the choice is very obvious… take the road that is certain, do what is expected, and reinforce those doubts with good, solid common sense. And in most cases, that is the wise choice. (Maybe)

For the rest, it is the decision to take the road less travelled. Choose the unexpected option (the one your heart is begging you to take) and metaphorically GO FOR IT!

“Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run

There’s still time to change the road you’re on.” (I hope so!) Robert Plant 

Once you have leaped off of a cliff…. You have eliminated most of your other options. You are all in. You will either fly or die and those odds are incredibly daunting to most people. So it is natural that most will not pursue this option.

If you do not take risks, you risk taking your journey through life without some of the greatest of life’s experiences… that unquenchable desire to continue to excel past our comfort zone into the unknown. You may feel more comfortable, more secure, more on solid ground, but perhaps in that choice, you have lost some of the most influential moments that can shape you into becoming who you are. Or more importantly, who you believe you are destined to become.

Same with risk taking in life. I felt awkward sitting in front of my house with my home made lemonade stand at 7 years old. Who would stop to buy a glass of lemonade from me? 

Conquer the fear. It loves to dominate you. It lives rent-free in your brain. Smile at it when it shows up, it is trying to keep you alive. And then put it in a box and start figuring out how to fly, because you have jumped off the cliff, so being proficient at flying is now your only option.

Happy Tuesday!

When you are lost in darkness, everything is overwhelming. Your perspective is decimated by lack of tangible visual stimuli and as a consequence you find yourself in a void of despair.

Despair is immobilizing in so many different ways, sometimes it feels like the best you can do is keep trying to put 1 foot in front of the other without any core substance to give you faith that somewhere, somehow, the light will turn back on.

40 years ago today, I was in film school and shooting photos in my photo studio in my father’s house in Woodland Hills. There was a knock at the front door and as I casually opened the front door, I was greeted by a black man and a white man both wearing women’s stocking over their heads and a gun was put into my face, a pillowcase over my head, and rope tied around my neck and I was told that they were going blow my head off in the next minute if I did not give them what they wanted.

I won’t spend time this morning sharing the details, suffice it to say they were trying to steal drugs from the wrong house. They had the wrong address. And it was all I could do to beg for my life and hope that the gun to the back of my head was not about to be my last and final feeling on planet earth at age 21.

Spoiler alert, I did not die that day. 

But I got right to the edge and knew in my brain that it was all about to end.

The post traumatic stress was unbearable. I could not sleep because I had a recurring nightmare that was beyond horrific, and every single day, I would have to live through that same nightmare. The darkness was my enemy and I hated it.

My take away from all of this beyond the tired adage: that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, is that if you are in the darkness, there must be a candle. There is always luminance to be found through some methodology or resource.

I have always celebrated April 1 as a second birthday for me and as a result of having not died on that day, I use the opportunity to treasure every aspect of my life and go to deep gratitude for all the things and all of you people who make my life feel so full, even though I am leading a solitary existence during this Covid insanity.

I found the irony that 40 years later to the day, I was suddenly eligible for a vaccination to keep me from dying from Covid. While I am certain I will sign up to get the vaccination, my fear of dying decreased considerably having already looked death in the face.

If this experience taught me anything, it taught me that I am capable of surviving if I just keep my wits together. It was not violence or self-defense that saved my life that day, it was words and logic and keeping my head in the game no matter how scared I was. And it unquestionably was a motivation for one day becoming a second-degree black belt, if for no other reason then I never wish to be a victim again. Ever.

Cursing the darkness accomplishes nothing, earning the black belt, and studying how lucid dreaming could overcome the nightmares, lights the candle. There are ways in your life to overcoming whatever darkness is oppressing you.  Don’t settle for being a victim, always take your self-respect back.

Happy April 1…. it stopped being a Fool’s Day for me 40 years ago🌈