Blog
Goals, perseverance, & karma
Setting and achieving goals can be a great challenge, though we know that we will feel far more satisfied when we reach them. Why is motivation so difficult? Going into the new year, many people take this ‘fresh-start’ opportunity to set new boundaries and specific goals that we want to work on. Some don’t bother, and many dreams lay waste after the initial excitement and motivation of the clean slate that is January. But if we know that improved quality of life awaits us, how is it that goals are often not met?
I have grown in many ways this past year, and many of the changes I have gone through have been unintentional. And by that I mean I didn’t have set resolutions to grow in this way, it simply happened due to my reaction to outside forces. The choice I made was in the way I reacted- I chose growth. I became a far more organized person and I created the habit of writing and/or sketching out my thoughts at times I feel are important or necessary to archive. I became more intentional with my life. As proud as I am of these and some other newly developed habits, they were not my goals. Because the most rewarding changes are the ones that you conquer of your own free will. The challenges that require full mental, spiritual, or physical effort– perseverance. Perseverance is a vital life skill and a prime example of ‘easier said than done.’ I learned about perseverance at a very young age, but have not understood the weight of this concept until recently. When you persevere, you are willing to give everything to overcome something. The kicker is, sometimes you give everything to the wrong challenge. A challenge that will not benefit you, even one that may harm your progress in understanding yourself and your wants in life. See, this is where many decide to end their battle and retreat from their goals. But that’s the tricky part- that wouldn’t be perseverance. It is a vital life skill, as I mentioned, and it is never not present. Perseverance is understanding that you gave everything to something, accepting the outcome, and moving forward to achieve your goal. Shifting focus but never minimizing effort. It can be tiring, but then again, if you are intentional with your goals, the reward of personal growth has already begun. And rewarding it is.
Karma is a concept that I have always believed in, though sometimes standing with that belief can be difficult. Unfortunately for a person as impatient as I can be, rarely in life is there immediate satisfaction, which was a hard pill to swallow. All that I can control are my own actions and reactions, and this is what defines us as who we are. In high school, my dad started writing me notecards with a new quote each week. If you’ve read my last post, you understand how much I appreciate art that triggers thought, and finding solstice in the words of others as they relate to your own life. There are two quotes in my collection that I think fit well with this post.
“How people treat you is their karma, how you react is yours.” -Wayne Dyer
“Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you react to it.” - Charles Swindoll
All we have control over is ourselves. We create our own karma. I have to repeat this to myself on occasion because I am the type of person who enjoys the comfort of knowing. Many believe that ignorance is bliss, but I have never understood how that concept brings any security, and I believe the opposite. As difficult as it can be, I have always been the type of person who wants to know all the details in any situation. I realized when I was 19 that the point isn’t knowing versus not knowing, it’s the energy that you give, and what you choose to give that energy to. We control our effort, and we consciously decide where that effort goes. School, jobs, relationships, growth, they all require effort, as do their many subcategories. And as beings who have a set amount of time in the world, we have a finite amount to give. This is why intentions are so vital to who you grow into as a person. The same reason people argue that you are who you surround yourself with.Controlling your reactions is the only way you can lead yourself down the path you want. Because that's all you can do, and you have all the power necessary to do it. One more quote that has stuck with me is one that I think about daily. “Life happens for you.” Not to you. For you. I was told this quote by someone special to me about a year ago, and though they are not part of my life anymore, I can be ok with that because of their encouraging words. Hearing this quote helped me to realize that this is an amazing example of a good versus bad reaction. Are these events that occur throughout your life happening to you or for you? Is your glass half full or half empty? The beauty is, it's your choice. I choose to believe that everything happens for me, and for a reason.
I believe that giving yourself fully to something is a beautifully difficult task, but more importantly, it is a conscious decision. For some, it may come naturally. For others, like myself, it can be difficult to surrender to the effort without knowing the outcome. But this is where we gain strength, this is the part where the growth truly begins to show. As typical as it is, it really is about the journey. The lessons lie within the experience, not the reward. This reminds me of a quote I read earlier today, as follows: “I imagine it’ll feel like the moment everyone forgets whose turn it is during a card game. I think I could soundtrack a whole future with the laughter that comes after realizing the point never was to win.” Living is the challenge we all face throughout our existence. Filling our time on this earth with memories, laughter, squabbles, dancing, music, good food— that is the only way to ‘win’ at this blissfully treacherous game that is being alive. And that is a challenge that will not end until we do. Choose to give in to life. Choose to give yourself fully. Practice Meraki, the act of doing something with soul and intention– the essence of yourself. And with that create your own story, and live despite fear and struggle, for it makes living that much sweeter.
The importance of intentional thought & understanding
As much as I enjoy creating, there is something far sweeter about recognizing yourself in someone else's creation. Art is a reflection of our minds and personal perceptions of the world and the actions of those around us. We are all unique, which is why we crave the validation of being understood while simultaneously fearing that form of truest perception. We all want to be seen, but allowing yourself to be openly perceived is possibly one of the most difficult feats for many. This is one reason many people turn to art, in all its forms.
I began keeping a small journal, something personal to me that I carry with me everywhere. Any time I see something that triggers thought, maybe a quote from a book or a quick zap of emotion, I express it in that journal. I fill the pages with the colors of my mind, and since I started practicing this I have noticed so much more in myself as well as in the people around me. Understanding yourself is essential to understanding others, and the only way to understand yourself is to open up to the opportunity of deep triggering thought. This is not the same as overthinking, which can be a slippery slope. This intentional practice is the act of noticing thought, and mentally controlling your response. Creating the mental reality that grounds you, that is right for you. When I notice myself overthinking, over time, I have been able to stop myself and internally explain to this part of my brain that the script I’ve created in my mind is not that of real life. It’s simply uncontrolled thought and scrambled emotions. And in this, the only way out is through. Learning to break down emotions and their triggering thoughts and understand the ‘why,’ or the root of the feeling, is no easy task, but the reward of understanding is true gold. This is the difference between knowing and understanding.
My favorite thing to add to my journal is quotes, some I have come up with, but many are from books and posts online. Adding these wisdoms and reminders to what I consider to be the physical rendition of my own mind creates a sense of comfort because I know that if someone else explained so beautifully what I felt, they felt it too. Because it feels good to be understood. Intentionally provoking deep and introspective thought is, in my experience, the greatest form of self-care and growth. I watch many, many movies for a similar reason. In nearly any film, there is something personally relatable. Whether it be made obvious in children's movies, teaching a direct message, or in a small detail of a character that is mirrored within yourself. Finding relation in art can allow us to better understand our own actions, intentions, and values, and help us to untangle unkempt thoughts, while creating art can assist in expressing those that we are just beginning to understand. In witnessing similarity, we feel free to embrace the unique parts of ourselves, and we feel safe in all of the tiny details that make us into our own individual units. In witnessing abstraction, we feel free to create our own.
Music, film, photo, performance, discussion, writing, drawing- all and more double as self-expression and a direct line to introspective thought. There is a calm in being lost within your own mind, your own world, while knowing that you are linked to the beautiful minds of others. We are not alone, we are ourselves.
The reality of dreams- if there is one
For some, dreaming is an escape from the grueling reality of day-to-day life. It is an opportunity to run wild with your own unique imagination, with no limitations to what you can accomplish. For me, I dread the nights I dream.
No one knows the science behind dreams. There are many different guesses, but ultimately there is no true answer that lets us know why our minds craft dreams the way they do and why that is different for each person. I either have wildly vivid dreams or no dreams at all. And recently, my dreams have been so vivid that I wake up still convinced an event actually took place, or I can still feel a touch lingering. Sometimes I wake up suddenly because a dream was far too much. I can feel it physically weighing on my mind, like how my eyelids feel heavy after a difficult sleep. The mind is a wild place that will likely never be able to be explained, and I think dreams are the most intriguing and unique function of the mind.
There are a few broad reasons for dreams that have been speculated, but none confirmed.
A mini-movie pulled from various memories
Sometimes, when dreams feel familiar, it's because they are. I can recall cases where my mind replayed memories, sometimes ones that I had forgotten, which allowed me to look back on a situation. Though typically from my experiences, these memories are slightly altered or have a type of dystopian air to them, like something is not quite right but I can't tell what.
2. A reality generated or triggered by an intense emotion
This is the one that scares me the most because this is the speculation that leads me to believe that there is a meaning behind dreams and that they are meant to tell a story or show you something intentional. Being a very emotional person especially after my personal experiences this year it alarms me that my dreams may reflect deeper untapped emotions. As I’m sure we all know, it is difficult to understand and express all of our emotions, because they come about in different ways for each individual. So is the purpose of dreams, these little almost-true worlds generated by our minds, to show us what we really feel? Or is it simply easy to assign our own personal experiences to a similar event in order to find meaning because we want everything to have its proper place?
3. A repressed memory
I believe that this speculation for the purpose of dreams has an aspect of truth to it. Especially for those who have experienced trauma, we know that repressed memories of traumatic incidents can come up in many many ways, oftentimes when you least expect it. Manifesting in a dream could be that memory's way of worming its way out of your subconscious and into your conscious mind. In my case, my dreams are far too outlandish for this to be true, at least in their broader meanings.
4. A premonition
This speculation I believe to be true because if you can have premonitions in your mind it makes sense that they can manifest in your subconscious mind in dreams. But I also think it is obvious when this is true. In my train of thought it is similar to getting ‘a feeling’ about something or intuition- you know when you feel it to be true, and you know when you don’t. I believe that dreams would contain that same feeling of truth if they really represented subconscious premonitions.
5. Intentionally planted by another being
As far as my beliefs go, this one is a stretch, but many people believe in all-powerful external forces that can alter your mind or aspects of life, for example, God or the devil. I don’t believe this is part of the reasoning behind dreams because I think that dreams are far too personal and intricate to be affected by a divine source– I believe the mind is the one thing that is absolutely ours in the grand scheme of the universe and all that exists, and that the imagination is the most underutilized tool. So maybe dreams are our own way of letting our imagination run free. It’s possible that when we sleep, we release control of the creative side of our minds and it generates whatever it feels like. But then what inspires that? How does our subconscious decide (if it even can decide) what to place in dreams? Could it possibly be based on what we fell asleep thinking about? Maybe, but that wouldn’t explain how dreams can get twisted into the most outlandish stories with trying emotions that sometimes (for me at least) end in jutting awake with tears rolling down your face.
I am an ‘expect the worst and hope for the best’ type of person, and I believe my dreams reflect that. If they really do capture your deepest emotions or if they even slightly reflect them, my dreams could be evidence of that. Typically, when I dream of an event, it is usually the worst-case scenario or shown in a negative light. For example, last night I had a dream, (the dream that inspired me to immediately wake up and begin writing this piece at 8 am), and I was surrounded by people that I either don’t like or don’t know, and people who are no longer in my life. I was in a place that I shouldn’t have been, and essentially the events of said event throughout the night led to me emotionally breaking down completely in front of people who, in my dream, only wanted to see me fail. I opened myself up to these people and was made to regret it. Already not a great start especially for someone who deals with a lot of social anxiety in the real world. But I was confident in my dream, which was one positive aspect. Sometimes dreams can allow you to see how life would be in different scenarios and show you how different qualities of yourself would interact, even if the overall experience has a negative connotation.
Now, the part that gets me about all of this is that even though all of these people are not in my life anymore, I know that none of them would act the way they did in my dream in real life. These were people who I let go of on good terms, and people who I once shared important relationships with. People who have made it clear they wish me well. It was my pessimistic mind casting an evil hue on these people, but why? Is there even a real reason? Or was it my imagination running wild? Some may say that this dream represented a fear of opening up to people or a longing for my life to go back to the way it was and to be surrounded by these people in a time when we were together. I disagree. I interpret this as my inability to ‘expect the best.’ The reality of that situation would not have ended up the way it did in my dream, and in that, I am 100% confident. Whether or not this dream had meaning or not, what I took from it is that I do expect the worst, from people and situations, to deter the possibility of disappointment. So maybe it’s not about what dreams are trying to tell us, but rather what we draw from them. Dreams can reflect the good, the bad, or whatever you want them to. I love discussing the fact that each person is so insanely unique from the next, so maybe it’s up to the individual to discover what dreams mean, not the unit. All that means is that we should spend more time thinking introspectively and getting to know our own minds because we are the only ones who can understand ourselves most truly. Let that be a blessing, not a curse. I find beauty in knowing that my own self is something that is solely mine.
So essentially, attempting to find meaning in these glorified memory dumps is useless, at least scientifically. You have to build it on your own. Though if you're like me, you yearn to know what your mind is really trying to tell you, or if it's trying to tell you anything at all.
Mental blocks, nerves, & the meaning of life
To make my point before the article even starts, I’ve put off writing this post for months, and as you will read, my mind is just about everywhere. But that’s okay.
Being a creative person can be difficult in as many ways as it is rewarding. We don’t really have a specific curriculum, or a specific final destination, because that would defeat the purpose. We thrive off of little direction and a lot of imagination. And also a lot of time and effort. Sometimes it’s exhausting, to keep the creative side of my brain moving, and honestly, sometimes it feels like I’m not really moving anywhere. But how can we improve if we don’t try? Because nothing beats the feeling of pride you gain from something you created from a simple idea in your mind. Something tangible (or not) that came from nothing but a little spark in your brain. It really is indescribable. All it takes is effort and will. But, mental blocks are very real and very difficult to navigate.
I know I want to keep this site very true to myself and cultivate it to be a peek into my personality. And I would say that you can get to know someone very well when they’re working through artist’s block. I feel everything flowing in my mind and it feels like there is quite literally a brick wall that every idea is bouncing off of before it reaches my conscious mind. It’s such a strange feeling– understanding that you have aspirations, but not being able to demonstrate that purely because of your own mind. Ridiculous. But unfortunately, very real. So are nerves and anxiety, which I’d say are present in the majority of creative people. Why? Simply put, it is absolutely terrifying to open yourself up and show something that you have created. It’s chilling to be that vulnerable with the world. Honestly, it’s a bit scary to write this post knowing I’m going to publish it. But without that, you can’t learn, you can’t grow. Me personally, I want to grow. I want to push myself, no matter how difficult or embarrassing or downright bad parts of it might be. To me, it’s all worth it. And now all I need to do is swat that anxious devil on my shoulder and throw myself into the world. Easy enough right?
For the past few months, I’ve been feeling like it's hard to create, when in reality, time and time again I’ve shown myself that it isn’t. Everything in my mind is the pressure I’ve put on myself to live up to certain standards when in reality, I’m still learning. We all are. And all we can do is continue to move forward. Whatever your passion, everyone is still a student of life, and everyone is trying to reach their goals. Everyone fails, everyone succeeds. Everyone feels what you feel and everyone misses home. Not a single one of us is completely different from the rest, (an artist’s worst nightmare, I know), but that should provide a sense of comfort in those of us who still give far too much weight to the minds of others, and not enough to our own unique traits. It’s hard to battle the devil on your shoulder, whatever form that may take, telling you that you should be anything other than yourself and that being accepted is the goal. That battle is just part of being human. You have to work through your own mental minefield to achieve your goals and reach your ultimate self, which is what makes everything worth it. It’s what makes us feel alive.
Now, what inspires all of this introspective and headache-inducing thinking? I turn twenty in a few days, and as I’m sure it can be for anyone, this is quite difficult to grasp. I’m sure a lot of people hold very little or no weight to their birthdays, and I never really did in the past, but after changing my life in many aspects due to a few recent events, this birthday specifically has found a very special place in my heart. A new decade, a new chapter. It feels good and very real, and it’s been making me think about what I want from myself right now and out of life overall. I’ve given this milestone in my life some of the weight that was on my shoulders, and it feels freeing. Don’t be afraid, don’t be ashamed. Easier said than done, yes absolutely. Just try, it’s the only way to move in life. This is the namesake of this website, reminding me to put in the effort for the result I want, the result I deserve. And it’s all up to me. Isn’t that terrifying and exciting? Isn’t it all?
Tangent? (kind of)→ Despite what other people may say, so many people won’t like you, and probably for no reason. Harsh? No, actually I don’t think so. But, so many people will love you, and for all the right reasons. These are the people who you want in your life– the people who took the time to get to know the parts of you that make you special, not the parts you might present to the world in hopes of being accepted. And we all do it, to some amount. We all want to feel a part of something, connected to a larger group. But if we all try so hard that we end up not acting like ourselves, what’s the point? How can you find the people you’re meant to be with if you lose yourself in finding them? The answer is you can’t. Which is good. Because, it goes to show that what is meant for you will find you, which is something I’ve always believed. Yes, of course, putting yourself out there is worth it, and taking risks is very necessary. Ultimately, we all have a path, and each one is different— tailored and created specifically for and by you, and only you. Because the balance between selfish and selfless is what life is about. Creating the life you want for yourself, the life you deserve for yourself is the point of being alive. Finding love, happiness, adventure, peace, whatever your aspirations may be. That is the point, the reason to be alive. Create the life you want so that you can continue to create on your own terms. That’s my goal at the very least. So what if you embarrass yourself on the way, so what if some people don’t like you? Why does it matter if you like yourself and you like how you’ve molded your life? In your life, you are the top priority, you are what matters. You can create what you want, love who you want, go where you want, and the most beautiful part, be who you want. And though the path to that is wild and everlasting, if I’ve learned anything in my almost 20 years it’s that everything is ever-changing, and I’ve grown to love that.
And now I’ve successfully discovered the meaning of life. Do the scary thing, do the weird thing, do what you want and what you need. Set your goals, and soar out to meet them. We are all tiny.
Finding the definition of art
I consider myself an artist because of the things I enjoy, which include actually creating art and thinking about the fluctuating definition of art and how it affects people everywhere, as pretentious as that sounds. In high school I did a school research project on my opinion of the definition of art and if it even exists. And honestly, after measurable research and a headache-inducing amount of thought, I still don’t have an answer to my question. But that’s ok. I think the important part is not the actual answer, but the process of getting there. The journey if you would. Throughout this project, I was able to do a lot of inspired deeper thinking on the subject, and if I'm being honest a lot of it didn’t make much sense. But, through this constant and undeniably confusing process, sometimes new ideas and inspirations appear which can allow for a deeper understanding.
Art: Picasso, Monet, Degas, Hemingway, Austen, Pattinson, Hathaway, Ocean, Joel, Tarantino, Nolan. Artists. These figures have earned their title of artist because of the impact of their creations, which are all different. Here inlies the importance of understanding the notion that art may not have a single definition. Creation can be expressed in an infinite number of forms, forms that are continuously discovered. With technological advancements and evolution comes new outlets of expression, therefore new art forms, none of which can be predicted in the present. I think this is the reason that art is so captivating to many. The possibilities are quite literally endless in the world of creation and exposition, which instills inspiration in artists and creators, pushing them to create the next best thing.
The reason for creating art is not always to be one step ahead. Sure, it's fun to put your mind into inventing a new form. But the true meaning of creating art is self-expression. This also contributes to the new forms and versions of art because each human being is so individual in their culture, personal perception, values, and so many more aspects and when an artist creates something in order to express an emotion, it can create new art forms depending on how they chose to express what they feel. This is what is so interesting to me about art: it’s essentially a look into the minds of others and oftentimes creation is the only way to properly express it. But, although the artist might intend to convey one meaning, the interpretation will be different for each individual. This is where it gets slightly complicated. Each individual is a critic in their own right– what we take from an art piece will always differ from our neighbor. So essentially art generates different perceptions that can grow into new creations. Art creates art. It is its own cycle, regardless of the intention during its cultivation.
Pretty much, art is what you want to make it. Create what you feel like creating, and people will perceive it how they want.