You are doing it anyways so get some control
Tolkien was a master at world building. He created for himself a world of his choosing built from his perspective on how the world should work. As a result long term he was able to impact the real world through his books.
But we are all world builders. What should scare you is that you are designing your world whether you think you are or not.
You Thoughts Create Your World
I have found that if you create a world of abundance generally you will have more abundance than if you don’t. When I was younger I lived my life from a scarcity mentality. I thought that as Black man the world was against me and that my goal was to survive.
What a crappy place to live! I lived in fear of my neighbors hurting me. I created enemies of other races whose sole goal was to keep me in my pit. I feared society as an organization trying to enslave me through the prison system and poor schooling.
I created this world. It was a grey, dark, hostile place where joy and happiness was fleeting at best. I had created a brilliantly detailed world. And I chose to live in that world for years.
And it sucked ass!
You Can Rewrite Your Narrative
My story came to an apex several years ago. Sitting in the therapists office I laid out my constant fear and concerns. I laid out how the world was against me and that it was me against that machine because I couldn’t trust anyone around me.
“Sounds like a shitty place to live. You should move.” replied the therapist. It was the most life changing conversation I have ever had. So I decided to world build a different world.
The first approach was changing my mindset from one of scarcity to one of abundance. This was hard because the bank account said otherwise. But I placed myself in comparison to people in 2nd and 3rd world countries and realized that although my life sucked compared to the top 20–30% HERE, globally my life was amazing! I had access to fresh water on demand and fresh food on demand and GENERALLY I was safe. (Lets be clear there is a police murder issue here that is real and not going away.)
In my old narrative it was impossible to truly know who I was because my mothers side suffered slavery. My fathers side was free. I took a DNA test to get close. Frankly I got as close as I wanted to get. Now as a result I got a complete picture of who I was and this lead to hearing stories from my family and those who I had seen as other were actually part of me! So I had been walking around thinking I was one person when in fact I am more complex than that!
Finally, I chose power. The powers that be love to keep people angry and frustrated fighting among themselves. I just decided to be happy…well content. And it was like changing the background from gray to partly cloudy and that made a huge difference in my outlook.
You Can Build Your Future Too!
In Tolkien’s narratives he built a world of people coming together to do amazing things. People of different races, levels of wealth, and power. We as a culture are being pitted against each other and given a narrative of the world to benefit the powerful and the wealthy. They most powerful thing we can do is not listen to them anymore. We can choose joy over anger by turning off cable news and talk radio. We can choose a positive outlook over a negative one by engaging with positive people. It’s not ignoring the difficulty in the world, it’s choosing how we respond to that difficulty in the world.
Call to Action!
- Change your mentality from scarcity to abundance.
- Choose love of people over anger and hostility.
- You can change your thoughts you don’t have to stay where you are.