The Exploration

Day 16 Every single being created on this earth was created with purpose. Time and time again, this belief is illuminated in my life. As humans it is hard for us to let people in; to let them see our vulnerabilities. We have things that we feel we must hide. Fear is what never allows our emotional walls to be broken. I believe every person that enters your life enters with something that will help you grow. They could bring you happiness or they could bring you pain. But within both of these traits, there is some sort of growth that blooms. Relationships are key. They are the only thing that keeps us alive. Think about every single relationship that helps you do what you do to survive each day. It is nearly impossible for anyone to survive alone and if they do, they typically only survive, not live. It does take effort though. Relationships are a project. You must feed your relationships if you want them to grow. When I don’t commit to a relationship, it dies. There are times where I w...

  Day 15 Lately, I have been pondering the meaning of ‘home’. After moving from my physical house that I had grown up in, I had a hard time finding my new home. That is when I realized that home is not a physical place. Is it a place or is it a feeling? Or could home be a memory? I believe that home is all of these things together, yet each separately at the same time. Home is relative. The need for home is completely relative to the situation. Sometimes a recollection of a memory can bring me home. Suddenly, I am sitting in the tree fort on a crisp September day. That is home. Other times a warm embrace from a close friend can feel like home. There have been days where I am in my current home and I think to myself “I just want to go home.” Some days my home doesn’t feel like home. Finding a home is an exploration; an exploration of what the mind needs. As humans, we have basic physiological needs that must be met; a home is one of these needs. A man without a home feels like a p...

  Day 14 I am happy to be here. Every single day is a new adventure. I have an opportunity to explore a new realm of myself I have never before seen. These realms have always existed, it just took years to uncover them. The artifacts had been buried. The memories were hidden under a dark cloak of depression and anxiety. It was nearly impossible to remove this heavy cloak and finally unveil the true masterpiece that is myself. You can do this. It may take time, but be patient with yourself. Your true existence will come to fruition. Keep watering your plant. Let it grow. There will be shady days where the sun doesn’t shine and you feel like you aren’t growing at all, but you still grow. It is easiest to grow when the sun is shining, but the strongest plants are grown when the clouds cover the sky. Rain helps growth. Tears will flow at times but these times are needed. Those tears flow into a vat that will one day hydrate other plants. Those plants will experience the same as you. ...

  Day 13 Share what you wish to achieve. Is a goal even a goal if you’re the only person who knows it? If you have a dream that is only shared within, you will only have one person to hold you accountable, yourself. If you share your goals and dreams with others, you have people watching you and walking with you on the journey. We need others to hold us accountable. What happens if one day you give up? You only let yourself down. To some, this may mean a lot, but to others, it is easiest to give up when nobody else is counting on you. The more people you tell, the more inclined you are to complete your journey. It is pressure, but it is positive pressure. It is pressure to complete something that will most likely benefit your being. Without dreams there is no reason to wake up. If there is nothing to live for, then why live? This is an extremely morose statement, but there is truth to it. As beings, we were meant to live. We were meant to care, to love, to smile. In my opinion, ...

  Day 12 What’s important to you? Whatever it is, make it a priority and designate time to do these things. Usually the things that are most important to us are the things that make us the happiest. So by prioritizing your time to do these things, you are optimizing your happiness. Everyone has things they don’t necessarily enjoy doing, but don’t let those things consume the rest of your day. At times, this happens where your full time job burns all energy you have to do anything during the evening hours. To combat this, you must prioritize your time. Find time in the morning to destress. Go for walks during the day. Do yoga at night right after work before you do anything else. These activities will help you put in perspective the stress and length of the work day and realize there is more to life than work. Doing these things will make your life more enjoyable. It’ll make work more enjoyable. If the activity that consumes the majority of your day, your life will become an endle...

  Day 11 Be your own guide. We are the only ones who can control which way we move, which way we grow, so set a destination and reach it. That destination may be further for some, closer for others. The destination may have layovers and pit-stops on the way. There may be speed bumps and stop signs on the way. The one thing to remember is to always keep the key in the ignition. As soon as we lose our focus, the destination seems out of reach. You can wait for hours at rest areas, that is okay. Give it time. The destination will be reached as long as you keep moving. Look out the windows. Enjoy the scenery on the way because soon enough you will realize that the mountains are gone and you can’t turn around. Take every day as it is. So many things are out of your control so take a detour sometimes. Go with the flow. Don’t spite that car that passes you because soon enough you’ll see them with a flat tire and pass them by. Everyone moves at their own pace; find yours. Start your jour...

  Day 10 The sun will rise. Some nights seem to last eternity, but the sun will always rise. The dark days outstay their welcome much too often. Once they finally leave sometimes they wait a while to return, but other times they come right back. The nights will always be there. But so will the days. So make the day last longer than the night. The night is easy to get through if you enjoy the day. Life should be a summer night; it seems like the sunlight never ceases and it is always warm. Though every once and a while winter does come. The days are short. Everything is dark and cold and it seems to last forever. The only way to clear snow is the warm sunlight. You can control that sunlight. No matter how far below zero the temperature goes, the warmth will always clear the ice. It takes weeks of warm weather to completely clear a snow storm, but it can be completely erased. Be the sun for yourself. Be the sun for others. End their winter. Everybody has to go through winter. There...

  Day 9 Pain is a motivator. Every time you get knocked down, you come back stronger. Hurtful words resonate through the walls of the mind, but their echoes are daily forces that drive you to be better. Humans will always remember that one thing that was said to them when they were young that hurt them. That one phrase that might’ve destroyed you at the time will stick with you forever. Something that somebody said that might’ve been such a small, passive comment, but you remember it. Why? Because it hurt you. It was painful. It made you sad. Or angry. Or self-conscious. It happens to everyone. There are plenty of examples of this for me. Many of them killed my confidence growing up. But that pain that I faced now is what drives me today. I let those words linger in my mind so I can get through each day. Not to dwell on the pain I felt, but to inspire me. To spark that fire inside me that makes me want to be the best. I could let those words bury me til I’m six feet under but ins...

  Day 8 It’s always raining. The cloud never seems to go away. Some days it seems like nothing goes your way. From the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep, nothing is right. You feel absolutely demoralized. How often does this really happen though? Once a month? Year? There is no way this is a daily occurrence. You are good at something . In each of those horrible, no good, very bad days, good is buried somewhere. Not everything can be negative all the time unless your mental outlook tells you it is. In fact, I believe things are positive more than fifty percent of the time. Actually, let’s say seventy-five percent instead. This means that three out of four times when something happens to you it is good or makes you feel indifferent. I believe that is a bit extreme too. Not everything is bad. There’s light at the end of every tunnel, although at times the tunnel feels neverending. The sun does break through the clouds eventually and the rain goes away. But do what yo...

  Day 7 Everyday I fail. There is not a single day that goes by where I feel like I have fallen short in some aspect of my life. Maybe I give in to my vices or let my impatience control me. Whatever it is, it causes self-disapproval. This disapproval is what helps me wake up the next morning. Maybe I failed at something yesterday but today, I will win. Today I will put my weaknesses to the side and let my strengths flourish. Here is a mindset that can last a lifetime. A mindset of disappointment will last a lifetime as well, but with that mentality, are you even living? I have seen myself and many others fall into a daily cycle where it’s the same shit, just a different day. “We work to live, then we die.” This is an exact phrase somebody told me. Very uplifting, right? You’re not living if that is the mindset. This specific person has no ambition to do anything, so how do you think they live their life? In shame, disappointment, letdown, depression. What’s the use? Find your dri...

  Day 6 Overplanning overwhelms. Don’t overbook your day. My overproductivity has led to so much unneeded stress in my life. I feel this weight bearing down on me that says I have so much to do although in reality, there is nothing I need to do. It is simply an inner being telling me I’m not doing enough, I can be better. This is not a bad thing at all. Motivation is one of the best things to have, but not when it’s a stress inducer. My motivation has gone beyond a friendly kick in the pants. The limitless amount of things I could be doing hasn’t sparked productivity, but instead, cluttered my mess of a mind. This can be aided. You must think that everything accomplished in the day is a small, personal victory. You have outdone what nature expected you to. You’re living, that’s goal number one: be alive. Goal number two is to provide yourself with the basic physiological needs to achieve goal number one. Past that, everything is a bonus. We mustn’t allow our own minds to defeat u...

  Day 5 I fear mirrors. The fear of not seeing what you expect to see is one of the scariest things we can experience. The feeling of disappointment and regret can demoralize a person. This dissatisfaction leads to day after day of bleakness. It is a continual circle. Life begins to seem like an infinity symbol of woe; ongoing without revival. It is ironic that the same object that produced so much pride for some is the same object that causes self-disapproval for others. The feeling of self-worth focuses gravely on outward appearance. To truly discover internal self-worth, you must find a way to realize all that you have accomplished. Every single person has overcome an obstacle and this is a stamp of success. Finding true self-worth can only be done by comparing you to you. You must see every single day as a form of growth and eventually you will be able to look in that mirror. I used to loathe looking in the mirror, now when I look in the mirror, I see my biggest motivator to ...

  Day 4 Go to that place. Find a space to escape to. There are endless options for where this place may be. It could be a past memory, a place you’ve visited or a dream. Every memory has a feeling attached to it. The smells. The sounds. The feeling of every memory is buried somewhere in our brain; sometimes it is buried deeper making it harder to unbury. There are certain memories in every mind that are easy to access. Some good and some bad. All have their place. Memories of pain. Memories of happiness. Memories of love. They all are significant to the overall journey that every person goes through. Each time a memory is recalled, there is a reason. Although we may not know it, the brain is attempting to tell us something. I find that the times where I most need to experience it, my brain surprises me with a memory that is far beneath the surface. Typically, this carries me through the rest of my day. Why did I feel this? What significance does it have? Instead of overthinking...

  Day 3 Can you find a way out? At times, certain spaces become prison cells. There is no room to flourish. No room to grow. The walls that are the skull around the brain seem to have no give. You must find an open window. An escape. Something to free our brain from its bounds. A truly challenging task this can be at times. Sometimes walls are made of cement and there is no room for thoughts and ideas to permeate through that solid, poreless wall. Other times those walls are paper thin so the thoughts can tear through at any time. A medium for cerebral transportation must be found. For me this was meditation. I could almost travel to a past time and relive the moment. At that moment, every current issue is removed from the headspace and all is calm. You must find a way out, because the way out is the only way to heal what is within.