Wanzology

What You Were…

  Happy Wednesday, it's WANZOLOGY!!! I know, I’m silly, but I get to be, as you get to be. Hope you're doing well today, and I'm glad that you've joined me for another episode of WANZOLOGY. And as per usual, we are taking another chapter in the progression of #THEBOOKOFWANZ. If you have not gotten your copy yet, I suggest that you go to amazon.com and search for hashtag the book of Wanz, all one word. It's dope.

For today, we have a very interesting quandary:
WHAT YOU WERE WAS NEVER AS GOOD AS WHAT YOU COULD BE. NOR AS AWESOME AS YOU ARE AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT.

It is a fact that time waits for no one. It is also a fact that if you're reading this, you're alive and breathing.
Given these two facts, this thought came to mind. If time is always passing, how can one live in the present? This is a great question for a mind unsettled. A mind that thinks it can figure out anything, or already knows enough. This is a great question for anyone. Because some moments are better than others, but each has the same characteristics. As soon as you recognize it, that moment becomes the past, and you refer to it, not live it. Let me say that again, as soon as you recognize it, meaning a moment. That moment becomes the past, and you refer to it, not live it. No one can live any moment more than once. Once a moment comes, it leaves, and a new one takes its place. So again, how can one truly live in the moment?

Now what about those moments when you're not at your best? For some, that's when they wake up hungover from a night of partying. For others, it’s when they find themselves suddenly out of a relationship or fired from a job. In all of these, some of us criticize ourselves for being stupid or dumb. Even more of us take those words and believe we actually are those things. Feelings are not always truth in any situation. Feelings are an interpretation of reality we perceive. How we perceive it is the problem and the solution. What if every moment was an opportunity? What if every coming moment was chance after chance to be better than the moment that has just passed? Would that change your perception? Would each moment take on a different significance? The reality is this, every moment that you experience is another chance for you to say, do and be whatever you'd like to say, do or be. Because you have a life, you also have the power to do exactly that, control what you say, what you do, and who you'll be at any given moment.

Can you be more awesome than you were in that worst moment that happened? That depends on what you learn from those less than stellar moments we all have. You have the power to be more than you were then, better than you had been in the past. You may need to do a little searching, find some honesty, and find what was really going on in that less than stellar moment, instead of relying on what you thought was going on. Isn't it worth it though? Doing that work is an investment into being better than you were. Even if that moment just passed you by, the opportunity is there and you have the power.

Well, that is some heavy duty ‘shizinit’, Idn'it? But I started considering moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day. It's very interesting to me how all these things compound on each other. They're built from little things, little things. I have a friend who tells me,
“Hey, don’t sweat the small stuff, but remember, it's all small stuff.”

Now I haven't quite mastered that one yet, ‘cause I still get a little sideways every once in a while. I think everybody does. But the work on the inside, I think is understanding when you get a little sideways and the sooner that you understand that you're sideways, how do you correct it? How do you take control? How do you relieve yourself? In the reading today, I really am captured by the line,
“What if every moment was an opportunity?” What if…? When you think about it, every moment is an opportunity. You can change direction. You can stop what you were saying and, say something different every moment is an opportunity. To do what you ask? I don't know. Depends on where you're at. It depends on what you're doing versus what you want to do versus what you have to do. I mean, I could make it really, really complicated and go into this weird metaphysical realization of how time actually affects our mind, and why? But I won't. Because simple is always better, right? And even as you're listening to the sound of my voice, with each word, a moment passes. With each moment you're breathing in or breathing out, there are certain involuntary things that are just happening. In you, around you, to you. And at any given moment, you can change your focus and look at some of those things on the outside or even on the inside. But it still is up to you. You control the lens of your perception, what you're looking at, right?

If you're in a car right now and you're stopped at a light and there's other cars in the intersection or wherever you're at, everybody trusts that everybody else is actually going to stop, stay on the right side of the road and follow the law. Trust! Huge trust! Because it only takes one person to screw that up, right? Suggestion: don't be that person.

But the truth of the matter is, we tend to forget how much we control how our life works. Life does not happen to us. We're just a leaf on the stream. We're just floating with it. And every once in a while, we stick our little leaf hand into the water and it changes our direction, but we really don't have a choice because the river always runs one direction, just like time.

So consider this, consider the next five minutes, you can do, say, be anybody you want. Anybody. Anything. In the next five minutes. But you can only do it for five minutes. Nice little brain experiment, huh? What happens if in five minutes you decide, I am the best, ’fill in the blank’, that has ever been, period, and just keep repeating that to yourself for five minutes. Now, there's a subconscious brain that's gonna go, “You lyin. Oh, you so lyin right now.”, and then there's another part of the subconscious that's going, “How could you say such a thing? That's so arrogant. How could you do that?” And still, there's another part that says, “I don't think we can live up to that. Why would you say such a thing? I mean, look at us!”. That self-judgment man, that inner voice, it’s dangerous, unless you realize what's happening, your perception is now, like, on fire. Because you've seen, not one, not two, three different perspectives of yourself.

Two words. Now what if you just changed one of them? Just one. How about that one that says, “Uh, how could you do such a thing?” The answer is, “I don't know, I just thought I could.” Nothing wrong with that. And what about the one that's like cocky and arrogant? “I am the best ever!” Well, you can look at that and say, well, no, I'm not the worst and I'm not the best. I'm just me. No more, no less. What would happen then? How would your perception of yourself change? Would you believe yourself? Give yourself a break? Maybe even believe what you're saying to yourself? It is not easy. Self-talk is like a skill. I'm talking all the time in that cavern inside the space between my ears. Never a dull moment in there. Something's always being talked about, always, whether I'm watching someone else, or watching myself, or trying to remember something I forgot, or figuring out what I want to eat, where do I want to go, prioritizations, did I finish this correctly, did I mess up, did I really, really piss somebody off, or just a little bit? Who needs my help? How can I help them? These are all things that are going on, all at the same time, and you know, we all do that. If you're paying attention to what's going on the inside of you, in, in your head, never a dull moment, something’s always chirping in there, something's always going on.

Now, do you think that you can harness that energy and direct it towards a goal? Objective. Aspiration. You could, but that's up to you. There's a song that I have, that I wrote a while ago, called “I Will”, and it's about a girl that I knew a long time ago, when Facebook was really new, and life for her was just terrible.
She was gonna check out! She was gonna take her own life and just check out! We had a phone call, and in that phone call, I just told her,” I don't understand. All the reasons that you love to be here, don't matter as much as the fear that is driving you to leave.”
She goes, “Well, all my friends have deserted me. I don't have anybody. I'm just all alone.”
And I said, “You know what? As long as I'm drawnin’ a breath, I'll be that person. I'll be that person to stand by you. I will.”

And in the middle of that song, the words go like this:

You can stay in your room just like yesterday
With the same old walls staring back again
While the life you wish for keeps passing by
I know it's tough, it'll make you cry
The choice is still yours, it'll always be
You can either stay there, you can leave with me
One thing's for sure about the great unknown
You don't have to face your fear alone…nope.

(sung)
If you need someone to stand beside you when the world has let you down, I will, I will
When you need direction to follow someone, like the way
I will, I will (end of singing)

it's one of my favorite songs. You can find it on my Wander EP. Just go to thewanz dot com and you'll find that in the music section. But it gets me thinking about this whole thing about passing moments, right. You can drive yourself nuts worrying about what's already passed because once it's passed, you can't really do anything about it.

So what's next? The next moment? And the one after that? And the one after that? Each containing the opportunity for you to either be better, not care, or be worse. The choice, as always, is yours. So choose wisely.

Cool. Thanks a lot for hanging in, man. Thanks for hanging in people. I'm blessed. I am so blessed to be here and blessed that you're checking me out. Hopefully you will spread this love and get some other people to listen to it. Coming soon will be a WANZOLOGY webpage. And I think I'm going to put a blog on it that discussions like this, can carry on until the next episode so that not only can you talk to me, but you can talk amongst yourselves I think that'd be great. I think that'd be very great, I think you'd be awesome.

Right on have yourself a day. Not a good day, not a bad day, just a day. Because you get to be here. Never forget that. You get to be here.

Talk to ya later. Bye.