{"id":52,"date":"2016-01-30T00:18:04","date_gmt":"2016-01-30T05:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dubmentality.com\/?p=52"},"modified":"2016-01-30T00:19:19","modified_gmt":"2016-01-30T05:19:19","slug":"inner-monologue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dubmentality.com\/?p=52","title":{"rendered":"Inner Monologue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dubmentality.comwp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/img_0511.jpeg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dubmentality.comwp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/img_0511.jpeg?w=840&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\"><\/a>&nbsp;<br \/>\nDo you ever stop and wonder what your destiny is? &nbsp;I believe in fate. &nbsp;I believe in karma. &nbsp;I believe that all of our actions are essential to the events that have yet to unfold. &nbsp;I don&#8217;t think I always stop and consider it when I take an action but I believe in the effects that are caused by that action. &nbsp;Every day, we have a chance, or a choice if you will, to alter our future. &nbsp;We can create our own destiny. &nbsp;Some days are better than others and some days make us question what &#8220;this&#8221; is all for. &nbsp;&#8220;This&#8221; is a broad generalization of life and our individual purpose. &nbsp;I haven&#8217;t quite figured out mine and I don&#8217;t know when or if I ever will.<\/p>\n<p>The Butterfly Effect is a very interesting concept to me. &nbsp;The idea that the flap of a butterfly&#8217;s wings could cause a hurricane in some distant time and place. &nbsp;It&#8217;s a concept that you can probably use to trace your current position in life back to various decisions you&#8217;ve made in the past. &nbsp;It is rational when thinking backward but it doesn&#8217;t seem to possess the same power when thinking forward. &nbsp;It&#8217;s hard to intentionally make a decision today and understand the full payoff in the future. &nbsp;You can make what you think are the right decisions and hope for future benefits but the right decision today may not be the right decision in the future. &nbsp;So what are we to do?<\/p>\n<p>The common sense thing to do is to make the best decision in the present and let it play out. &nbsp;And to me, that&#8217;s what &#8220;this&#8221; is all about &#8211; &nbsp;Letting life play out by making what we think are sound decisions in the here and now. &nbsp;Sounds logical, rational and pretty unoriginal. &nbsp;I&#8217;m not intending to break ground with that statement. I&#8217;m actually reminding myself on a day, when things went every way but the way I wanted, that the decisions I made to get here were sound when I made them before today. &nbsp;That&#8217;s a very difficult thought to force into your head when things aren&#8217;t going well. &nbsp;The natural thoughts are, &#8220;what did I do to deserve this?&#8221;, &#8220;how do I overcome this?&#8221; And sometimes even &#8220;are you shitting me with this?&#8221; &nbsp;It&#8217;s almost insane to tell yourself, &#8220;let this play out and see what happens.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That really seems to be the play though, in my mind. &nbsp;Don&#8217;t misread that to mean that we shouldn&#8217;t make amends or correct mistakes. &nbsp;Standing up and saying you were wrong about something is showing true humility and a desire to get better. &nbsp;It also makes sense though to flap your wings again in an effort to create a new effect. &nbsp;Turn your focus away from the negativity going on and find something positive to latch onto. &nbsp;Sometimes that means closing the door on something or someone that doesn&#8217;t seem to be providing you with the fulfillment you need. That&#8217;s when you have a choice to alter your destiny. &nbsp;It&#8217;s almost never easy but almost always necessary. &nbsp;These are no doubt the moments that ripple throughout your life.<\/p>\n<p>In those moments, it then becomes a time to rely on your own belief system, whatever that may be, to help you make those decisions. &nbsp;No matter what that belief system is, know that your heart is always true to itself. &nbsp;It will tell you all you need to know if you quiet your mind and listen. &nbsp;In your darkest hour, that is your mightiest struggle, quieting the mind. &nbsp;But it is the key. &nbsp;I don&#8217;t know where tomorrow will take me or what my purpose is on this earth. &nbsp;If I knew, the decisions would be easy. &nbsp;What I do know is that I will serve a purpose.<\/p>\n<p>So tonight I lay down with the following in my head, &#8220;You woke up thinking it was a normal day but it didn&#8217;t go as well as you had planned. &nbsp;In fact, it was a pretty crappy day. &nbsp;Realize that there are some choices to make. &nbsp;It&#8217;s time to make the choices and then, if you&#8217;re lucky enough, you wake up tomorrow and let it play out.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; Do you ever stop and wonder what your destiny is? &nbsp;I believe in fate. &nbsp;I believe in karma. &nbsp;I believe that all of our actions are essential to the events that have yet to unfold. &nbsp;I don&#8217;t think I always stop and consider it when I take an action but I believe in the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dubmentality.com\/?p=52\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Inner Monologue&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7912A-Q","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubmentality.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubmentality.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubmentality.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubmentality.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubmentality.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dubmentality.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"https:\/\/dubmentality.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubmentality.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubmentality.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubmentality.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}