Benefits of Being Mad - MIE

 Along with existence I received a way of existing, or a style. All my actions and thoughts are related to this structure, even a philosopher’s thought is a way of making explicit his hold upon the world. Yet, I am free, not in spite or beneath these motivations, but rather by their means. 

It does not restrict my access to the world...

It is my means of communication with the outside world.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty - The Phenomenology of Perception, 1945

The Benefits of Madness

Does chaos scare you? I feel it, I feel that out of control notion creates anxiety and starts the cold sweats. I understand when you gaze wide-eyed and want to scream so loud that glass shatters. I’ve lived there; I’ve had that moment. 

Yet I can also say one thing, the time I was really connected to some other power was when I was in the middle of a tornado and I let my body and soul ride it. 

It was chaos, it was madness, it was completely out of control and I probably did go a bit mad in the process, but looking back I can see that it was the moment where the universe and I were in sync. What I wanted, happened. Simple as that.

In the flow of madness.

So what does this mean, that we all need to lark about like crazed loons barking at dogs and doffing our top hats to daffodils? Well, if you want to do that then you should have the freedom to do that, but in this instance no. Yet the experience I had was akin to madness, only in the fact that my actions were questioned because they did not fit the norm. But then that depends on the norm that you should be fitting into. I mean, normal behaviour in Royal Tunbridge Wells is probably not normal behaviour in Chicago. Our actions and behaviours are designed to rest within the social structure around us, and when you break from that structure you are labelled.

Labels include but are not limited to: MAD; ECCENTRIC; WILD; CRAZY; ODD; DIFFERENT; SICK; LOONY; RUDE; WEIRD; MIXED-UP

You know the kind of thing. But I also know, as history would tell us so, that most invention and change has come from the minds of people labelled as such. Simply because they saw something in the world that they did not like and thought to change it.

So the real problem is not that madness is scary, it is that change is scary.

So are people really mad? Certain behavioural issues that were not accepted years ago are now recognised and treated. Where once people shouting in the middle of the high street was rude and odd is now seen as someone with a condition. Although, I see some mothers doing it to their young children and they are perceived as normal!

Madness was treated with barbarism in the 18th and 19th Centuries. I mean, drilling into someone's brain is going to make it all go away is it? I also feel the same with mind-numbing tablets, the fact that you are not behaving in a way that some pompous person deems acceptable in society does not require you to be dosed up to your eyes and left in the corner of a room as a zombie.

During my time of great change (I mean, it is still going on, we should always change), my behaviour was erratic and confusing to some. Yet it was at that time that I placed all of my trust in the universe. At the time I did not know I was doing that, it is only now, after learning, that I see it for what it was. Instead I used superstition and signs to guide me through. For instance, the law of attraction meant that if I had to make a decision I would see numbers, or cars, or colours, they would almost be on repeat. I would play video games and say out loud, if I get through this without losing then I am on the right path; guess what, I got through without losing. I had vivid and clear dreams that, over time, have come true.

I believe that people with depression, and it's splintered groups, are deeply connected to another dimension or the universe or to their subconscious. You can call it what you like. Depression is emotion on a very large and powerful scale. We are emotional animals and some of us feel that connection deeply. When I fall into a depression, I wonder at the sky, stare at clouds and speak to trees; I feel the pain of the world and hear the cries in the air. It is grief but it is also quite magical. If I can steer myself away from the fog that it creates I can feel that fizz in the air, that spark in the breeze. It is our connection to nature. We all have that, you don't need to suffer depression to feel that, but you do need to open your heart and your imagination to believe.

I talk more about this in my novella, The Self-Harming Pacifist, which is available at Amazon. You can also join my new experience, The MI Experience, which is currently online and subscribe to my email list. I promise no spam, but you will get monthly emails about my workshops and shows, as well as ideas and probably crazy thoughts, if you think they are. The truth is, whatever you think, you are right.

Join Me Here

So I say madness is not scary. Crazy comedy explains to us the ills of the world in a much more detailed way than the news sometimes does. A book written in surreal form can be far more truthful of the life that we are living than a biography. Madness is our way of seeing the world around us and coming to terms with it; laughing is the closest thing we have to crying, the two are almost the same and sometimes we do both at the same time. Trust your madness, trust your subconscious, trust yourself, you will begin to see signs if you let go and allow yourself to be guided from time to time.

Zac Thraves is a writer and performer.

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Once Upon a Time on the Outside, Looking In - MIE

 An Introduction

My name is Zac, I am on the outside looking in.

Time is not real. I know that this time of the year most of us are encouraged to renew, make changes, adapt to new habits; lose weight, get a new job or find a life partner. Pressures that we put on ourselves traditionally in January as a new year sets in.

But time isn't real. A new year starts because someone decided on a calendar, it really is just another day in your life. it makes no difference if you decide to diet on January 1st or April 1st, the difference is you deciding to do something. New Year Resolutions form our way to trick our psyche into thinking this is a good time for a fresh start. 

It's good; it's positive and it reminds you that you are a very powerful person. Until you give up. That is the danger. Once you give up and feel crap you look out at the grey sky and the cold weather and all you want to do is crawl into a ball and remind yourself how unfit you are and how you cannot control anything that you want to do.

So that's bad. We find ways to punish ourselves for the things we cannot do. We look at all our faults and problems and see the year ahead as long and perilous journey. Life not worth living.

That's really bad.

So before you add all that pressure on yourself and look out at the bleak winter and feel crap I want to remind you that there is no time. You can change any day of the week that you like because in the great scheme of things there is no day and there is no week. There is your life, and the lives of those that you love. What more do you want? Yes, you may wish to give up the booze, so do it, and if you have a day when you don't then move on from that. There is always another day because it is another part of your life. 

You want to change jobs, that takes patience and you will need to wait while doing work in the background. Same with starting a new project or business. Take the steps, enjoy the journey and don't think or worry about time. 

Time is not real. 

Enjoy the chapters of your life.

Click RIGHT HERE to subscribe to my emotion revolution, asking us to alter how we deal with anxiety and depression. This is linked to my book and should've been a show in 2020. If you join me you will get updates on progress and ideas as I try to change how society approaches mental health. It's all imagination and focus. Join me.

I had a wonderful connection to the universe just today and a problem that has been sticking to me for over a year came to a sudden and wonderful realisation. What was the problem?

Well, I finished writing a book back in 2019 and I really liked it, in fact, I loved it. It is the story of a reluctant hero forced into a quest to save the world and realise the power that lies within him and in all of us. Along the way he is helped by old friends, new friends, gods and people of history, people like Charlie Chaplin and even Captain Kirk. He fights demons in a shopping mall and the mad egocentric businessman who wants to rule the world at the top of The Shard in London. I loved writing it; the story took me over a year to complete and I felt sad when it was over. I felt certain that this was The One. I knew in my heart that if I could get this to an agent and a publisher that an audience would love it. 

Great, but what was the problem?

I had no idea what to call it. I had written this story and any title I came up with didn't seem right. Nothing fit with it. It was a wild and imaginative story that Willy Wonka would have loved and I had no idea what to call the thing.

I put it away; I left it in a drawer and wrote other stuff. I released Spiked Imagination and The Self-Harming Pacifist and did not think about it. But then-

I woke this morning, 6th Jan, with a title as clear as day. I wrote it down and mused on it, it fit. I sat with it and meditated on it and it all seemed to be clear. I saw a path with a title and a book. I had received a literary miracle. What is quite wonderful is that this happened while I'm writing another book which, of course, I'm sure is the one and will connect with audiences and be published but is entirely different to the one I had written that time ago. 

The universe is a strange and amazing place if you believe that there is that power. In essence, I took away time, released pressure; let my subconscious work on it in it's own way. There is always an answer, our lesson is to be patient. 

What is the title I hear you scream at me!

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Welcome to the New You - MIE21

Is 2021 going to be any good? I think the census us 50-50, some say we're going to the dogs, some say this is a moment of great potential for change.

I say that it is up to you. 

Here in the UK, if it isn't Covid it's Brexit, and both are shit.  Any news channel you watch, BBC, Sky, ITV even Twitter, the daily briefs are gloom and crap and dark and even more crap. It makes you want to roll up in a duvet and disappear for the remaining years. But is it the reality? I mean, how many times have they said it's going to rain and it never comes to your door?

National events may trouble us in some form, but certainly not in the way depicted by the fear-mongers of national news. Last week we were warned of a food shortage and empty shelves because trucks were stuck at Dover, I went to my local supermarket and it was full, brimming with food and anything you should want to eat for Christmas. That's not to say that some shelves were not empty somewhere, it just wasn't on the scale that we were being informed about. It could have been one shop in the whole UK for all I know! 

So what I am driving to is, regardless of all the shit in the world, your world depends solely on you and what you make of it. You might catch Covid, you might not; you might lose customers due to Brexit, you might not. All you are going to hear about is the people that are affected, not the ones getting on with it. However, if you make something remarkable out of a desperate situation, then they'll tag you on as a nice story to end the evening with. 

It is all about you. So here we are on the cusp of the a new year for a new decade and while 2020 was not great, we got through it; we survived and lived to make a difference in 21. This is your moment to make a stand, shine bright, be bold, get large, shout out, bang on doors and challenge the status quo. Because one lesson we have learnt, and this is most likely in most countries, is that the old way of thinking no longer works. We need something new and something collective. Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and others have failed in their weak and aged way of dealing with a national crisis, a world pandemic that should and could have united us all against one common cause. Instead they have ensured we are divided to suit their vision of the world. 

That world is dying, we all know that really, and they are in denial. 21 is going to make that different. Covid won't magically disappear in 21, neither will Brexit sort itself; new ways of thinking will do that. The USA, Europe and UK are wheezing old men fighting for relevance, too old and way too tired. Time for new blood.

And that's where you can step in. 

Whatever you are, wherever you are and whoever you are, by changing how you approach the world will begin to change your world. It takes many people and it takes momentum, but once it begins to happen it is impossible to stop. You can breathe new life into your goals, your ambitions and dreams. You can swipe away at the negative news that filters in and begin the day with a positive mindset. I stopped watching the news over Christmas, and guess what, when I returned, nothing had changed, so why should I watch that bullshit daily? It's fucking depressing!

New you = new mindset = new reality. It is quite simple. When you have bad days just ride it and let it float. Don't try to break it or fight it, put a project on hold and do something kind for yourself or for someone you love. Be kind and be true to what lies in your heart, even when the darkness sweeps in and envelops you with a cloud. It will drift away if you pay it little attention. Have some patience with yourself because you won't be firing every day. Understand that some days will be a bit bleugh! Let them go. 

New you. 2021 is time for us all to step forward. We are creative and beautiful and we have something to offer this world in whatever way we are meant to share it. Take the pressure off, success for a writer is a reader, success for a musician is a listener. Believe in yourself and be patient and kind with yourself.

Changing the world is about changing your world. Nothing else matters at all. 

This link takes you to my landing page which introduces you to my online Imagination Experience. For now you click and buy pdf courses, and this will expand into a show and more courses. Join me, all you need to do is sign up to the email and start to get email updates from me. I promise, no spam and no forwarding your details to other parties. I promote confidence, imagination and focus, join my MI Revolution.

The following are links to my books, these are affiliated and I will get a small financial benefit for a click. 

 

 My most recent book is The Self-Harming Pacifist, which details my struggle with depression, suicidal thoughts and, as the title suggests, self-harm. I struggled to fit in to this world, in to society. But I am still here because I realised it is not about me fitting in, it is about creating my own world. I am not super-happy, who is? But I am alive, and that is what matters. 

You Are A Hero - MIE - Join me

 I'm here to tell you: YOU ARE A HERO.

We all have heroes, factual, fictional, historical and perhaps even fragments of many pieced together within the mind. So why then do many of us go through life as if we were the victim, and not as the hero of our own story?

I guess you know someone, or many, in your family or friends of acquaintances, who always ask: 

'Why does this always happen to me?'

A phrase that goes along with 'No one thinks of me', or 'Why does no one ask me what I want'.

You know the sort. I'm sure you do. So here's the rub of it all:

THEY ARE VICTIMS IN THEIR LIVES and they really should be

HEROES!

The single most important thing that I can tell you in life is to always put your needs before anyone else. Well, adults that is, obviously babies are a different matter, but only for when they are babies as there will be a time when they are old enough to also put their needs before anyone else's. 

Oh man that is so selfish!                                                                            Is it?                      Really?

You know if you've been on a plane (remember air travel?) that you are told to put your mask on before you help anyone else. Right? You know why? 

Because you're no use to anyone of you are broken too!                

You're damaged - useless - unfit for purpose - unable to be of any help.

So why then choose to be that person in real daily life when actually you will make your family/friends/acquaintances happier if you placed yourself at the top of the table. They might find it weird at first, but hey, they have put their needs above yours for years so their ego will take a bruising.

So sad............forgive me for not being too upset. 

Energy Vampires are a real thing. Not just from The Lost Boys or Anne Rice, they exist and all they want is your positive energy. 

So, like a knight in armour, a hero, you must build defences and start to repel their forces. Take a shield and slam their shots away; lower your visor and prepare to be drained but your energy is greater so it can defend against it.

the reason they are after your energy is simple: IT IS STRONGER!

You see, you are a hero. Putting you 1st, First, as a champion of your own life, is not selfish; and if your family resist then explain to them that if they too put themselves first then there shouldn't be a problem; all that would be required of everyone is to compromise to what everyone's needs are. 

That's called negotiation and appreciation. Those are born from love and not battle, fear or hate. 

Putting yourself first is a sign of love, for yourself and for others. If you don't love yourself then how can expect anyone else too?

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This is part of my course which is now available online for  just £8.99, amounting to roughly $12. In it I take you through how important it is to see yourself as the hero of your story, your life. We all follow heroes, and a hero's journey is similar to journey's through life. By pitching yourself in the centre as the hero you will find courage, you will find strength, and you will start to find solutions to problems. Why? because that is what heroes do and how they behave. It is all about your mindset. Click on the link to head to a page where you can sign up - 

Sign Up Here to Change your Mind about Your Mind

Change can happen. My course can help you with that and if you join my mailing list you will be part of a new group who want to change how we deal with emotions, and how we can get back to being humans instead of robots. 

Independence is admirable; and imagination indispensable. Quoted from Mary's Monster by Lita Judge. Current read. 

Build your power - enable your imagination - strive for independence. Freedom from the tropes of society, from the work 'til you die ideology. Your life is for living, and living is not sitting at a desk or at a counter for eight hours per day. If you choose to do that, then that's great, but in my experience, not many have chosen that life they fall into it and get stuck and then can't find a way out.

A hero always finds a way out of a situation = Be Your Hero.

Buy my book about my struggles and learnings  from depression: 

How to Survive the Game of Life - Join Me

It's November, here in the UK the nights are closing in dramatically and the wind bites with more vigour. 

 Unhappy? Trapped? Stuck in a Cycle...this isn’t Tron, this is life...join me Click Here for Your FREE Meditation Gift

My new and wonderful online course, The Mindful Imagination Online Experience, is gathering momentum. The process is very simple and all thanks to Mailchimp, which was daunting at first but you begin to understand the way it works. I would like to invite you to join my mailing list and receive an introduction to my online course. Once joined I will ask you to purchase the course, and that is indeed up to you; but here are the benefits:

Modern Meditation = anytime anywhere feel good moments that are quick and easy

Arts to understand your emotions and begin to open up and say hello to the real you inside

Make you the Hero of your story = you are the central focus, begin to love yourself and stay strong

Create your route map to achieving goals using movies, I know, it's true, I have a theory for you

Plus you get an introduction and farewell from me; that's 6 modules for £28.99 - which is about $34. 

👀SAY YES! And come inside the power of your imagination to boost confidence, boost your immune system and help problem solve. It's way cool and my main focus was to make this FUN. The wonderful thing about my style of mindfulness is that you can make it relevant to anything that you use in your life: ALL ART FORMS.

You like soaps and not galleries - cool; you like action movies and not indie cinema - cool. Your choice of art is perfect for your entry into the Mindful Imagination Experience

It's entirely about you and what it is to be you. I want to celebrate you and all your wonderfully crazy idiosyncrasies; I mean, we're all mad to someone.

“Find out who you are and start doing it on purpose.” 💭

Click here for a secret I wish to share with you and how I am achieving the success that I am.

The point is that this Mindful Experience that I created last year was supposed to be a show in 2020 for schools and businesses where I taught in person with music and games and laughter. Well, that didn't happen.

 The truth is right up there. It's all there, right in the above statement. Start living the life you want, and start to believe in it. I know that times are hard and Covid has been devastating for so many people. I understand that lives have been shattered and jobs have been lost. While it is important to acknowledge, it is also important to begin the process of moving forward. 

I have lost loved ones to illness, I know how difficult it is to grieve and shake the emotion off; but I have also learnt that those we have lost do not wish for us to be stuck in a trap. The traps are all about us: 

job

life

relationship

money

education

But there is a way to change things, in fact, if you are unhappy or stuck it is your duty to yourself to begin to chart your way to something different. It may seem daunting, if you are in a bad job or relationship, but all it takes is one step and then a new world begins to open up before you.

Life is precious, and it is also a game. We experience the world in our own unique ways. Take charge of your world, and if you see that it is not how you want to paint it then change the picture. One brush stroke at a time. 

Join me on socials and I will say hello. 

https://www.instagram.com/28zacthrav/

https://twitter.com/28Thraves

https://www.facebook.com/harysMIExperience

To finish for this post, I only want to wish you well. Please stay strong, focussed, and healthy. When things get shit think about the stuff you have that makes you happy. That could be a person, a meal, a film or piece of music. There may be an image that you have which makes you feel good. It is important to feel good, especially when the world may seem a scary and prohibited place. Change is coming, and in order to achieve that change you have to go through some bad stuff. 

The results may be beautiful, if we all stick together. 

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I Could Be Crazy and I Love It - Join Me

 This is about embracing your crazy.

I'm going to be honest with you, life is pretty shit at the moment. I mean from a professional level more than a personal level. The pandemic has reduced my income and debt is mounting up. The recent vaccine announcement offers a glimmer of hope but not until some time in 2021, that feels like another lifetime. 

So why do I keep on creating and imagining and, to all intents and purposes, act as if the world is great?

I guess because my problems are the same as everyone's and if I am going to make my life better I am the one who needs to do it; one thing depression has taught me is that problems are not solved under a duvet. You have to keep believing and dreaming and working out ways to break that barrier, smash down the wall and move on to the next level. 

Life is Mario, Donkey Kong and Bombjack. Life is Sonic and Outrun and Batman. You see, by continuing the dream you open the crazy, and then I ask myself...

why not embrace the crazy.

Doing the normal stuff has got me only so far; it was when I was crazy that I moved further. Let's take Batman for instance as he has just been mentioned. In the stories, Batman is actually one of the most boring ones; the real good ones are the crazies, the Joker, Riddler, Penguin, maybe even Egghead. They may break the law, but so does Batman. The difference is that they go against the flow of society, they don't follow the rules. That's why the Riddler wears green tights, he's not a denim person. 

Embrace your crazy.

Here's some ads, more to follow.

The following are affiliated links to which I will earn if you click at no extra cost to you.

During the lockdown I shifted the focus of my Imagination Show, which should have been doing the rounds in 2020, and created an online experience.

The aim of my MINDFUL IMAGINATION EXPERIENCE online course, created with the idea of mindfulness boosting your imagination, is to fully embrace the person that you really are inside. Through a series of coursebooks, you will understand your emotions, have a handle on what to do when things get too much, draw up a route towards overcoming obstacles and realise that you are the hero in your own adventure. 

For Your free meditation direct into your inbox, just click RIGHT HERE and join the revolution. I will change how we think about depression. 

You see we all look at the world differently; your bad is someone else's good and your good is, well you get the point. It is important to embrace our differences, instead we are in a cycle of society that sends the message that to be different is bad. To be different makes you trouble, an eccentric, mad, or crazy. 

Crazy=Different=Good.

There are lots of crazy people doing exciting things that have the chance to change the world. 

Tesla

Google

Zoom

are three of them and yet the majority of stories we hear about them are negative. Amazon are the same; does that mean that the companies are bad or that the people who they are affecting (the businesses who have sat on their backsides for decades and not progressed) are threatened and so need to whack these newbies around the ear. Sort of like the old teacher hitting a pupil for saying something progressive in class.

Being different is challenging, and I know you are reading this because you feel it too; you are different, eccentric, challenging...crazy. 

Take a look at punk marketing, which obviously takes its name from the punk movement of the late 20th Century; the movement challenges advertising norms and encourages you to push the envelope. There are examples that have fallen into mainstream. One idea is Dominos Pizza, in the US, filling in potholes with their logo. It is brilliant, and they are doing something good. Usually the best and most memorable ads are the ones that do not follow strict advertising tropes. We've been doing this for 25 years, and it hasn't broken before. Think John (yawn) Lewis Christmas ads. 

Read the Huff Article Here

Crazy is good; it's cool; it's growth and it is progress. The most important thing you can do in your life is to 

TRUST IN YOU

I can show you how to do that. I can give you the tools to trust in you and open your eyes to the power of your imagination, the power of your inner crazy. Do you want that? Are you ready for that?

All you need to do to change the world is to change your world. If we all changed our worlds with love we would all then create a world with love. The task is not so daunting. 

Click on the link for my free pdf above and you can join me in creating a new way of thinking and a way towards accepting the whole that is you. Being crazy is one way we are told that we are not the norm and those damaging words lead to anxiety, depression, loneliness and then, for some, harm or suicide. It is just one word that can cause so much damage from lots of words we have that cause so much damage. So we change that, word by word, bit by bit, and we say YES, I am crazy, and I love it! 

Welcome to My Mindfulness: Join Me

Welcome to the first phase of the MINDFUL IMAGINATION EXPERIENCE story. Let's have some fun.

Get your FREE PDF Introduction HERE!

Introducing my BRAND NEW online course available for you to buy. What's it all about? I hear you ask, well, you know, I didn't actually hear it but I did sort of hear something in my mind, perhaps it was you my dear reader; perhaps it was my imagination.

But that is exactly the point.

Sing:

Step One - a FREE pdf outline of me and what I offer, available to download by subscribing to my mail list.

Step Two - pay just $56 (roughly £43)) and you will get a whole course made up of 4 parts from 6 documents. You have an intro, then you have a meditation, then you have a hero, then you have a painting, then you have a framework and then you have a farewell. 

Step Three - tell your friends that you can put your life in order and step towards success by using mindfulness to access and build your imagination. 

Step Four - also tell them that inspiration is all around you, you see it at bus stops, on walls, on the television and in magazines. 

Step Five - believe in yourself and make your dreams come true.

2020 has been a bit shit, so I have spent a good few months re-designing my live show into an online course in order to kick off this idea that you have the power in your hands to change your life. 

The power is truly in your hands. We are told of our limitations in order to limit us; but we truly have an enormous amount of energy and imagination if we step back and believe in what we can do. The truth is, you already do a lot of it instinctively. 

My course is about Mindful Meditation, and I have made that modern and relevant to our techno-driven and busy lives. It is about giving yourself some time to just be YOU, and filter out all the distractions just for a small amount of time.

Many years ago I used to smoke cigarettes. During that time I would stop whatever I was doing and sit down, or find a place to stand quietly, and smoke. It took about five minutes to smoke a cigarette. I allowed myself that time to stop and smoke.

Yet, when I stopped smoking, rightly so I should say, I also stopped giving myself a break. 

It is important not to smoke, I am not advocating lighting up at all; but it is important to give yourself a window of time to stop and re-focus. Now I use music, and in my course I will show you how it can benefit you and how it works. You cancel out distractions and give yourself a little break when you need it. It is wonderful!

My mental health has seriously suffered over the years, in part due to my lack of understanding of it; mindfulness has given me a far deeper and more balanced understanding of who I am. In recent months, as Covid has driven the news and our lives, mental health has suffered again both personally and around the globe. I want to share what I have learned and how it has helped me, and I honestly believe that my health would be worse this year had it not been that I studied mindfulness prior to the lockdown experience. 

So I present to you: 

Here's what I would like you to do. Click on this link PDF FREEBIE IS HERE and then sign up to my mailing list. You are then part of this revolution. Welcome. 

Stay tuned. Here's some messages. The following are affiliated links and I will be paid should you click; it's just stuff that I like. 

The current political chaos in the Western world has really highlighted to me how out of control we are when it comes to making decisions in our lives. Yet I want to remind you all how it works:

If you don't agree with your voted leader, vote against them; rally against them; shout from the rooftops; enter into discussions and don't be afraid to make a stand for what you believe in. This world has enough hate in it, so don't add anymore. Hate is not destabilised by adding more hate but it is dissipated by adding love. Just as you would add a dash of fresh water to a dry cup of sand. Hate is dry, it is born of fear and a barren mind; by reminding them how barren their world is just adds further hate, it adds more heat and that makes it drier. Instead, add love, add some water and some freshness to the scenario. Add a balanced antidote to each cracked part and let the water sink in silently, allow it to flow through each crack and reach deep into the wound. Love is the answer just as water is the answer. 

Finally for this episode I would like to add a sprinkling of nonsense in  the form of a poem I have written. I am a member of the Mid Kent Stanza group, which is run in the UK by The Poetry Society. We regularly meet, currently online of course, and offer ideas and tips on each others work. It is because of this wonderful group of poets that I have been published in magazines and on websites. Check out some of mine at The Ekphrastic Review

I consider myself an okay poet and humbled to have been published. I also write shows and plays and books and the art of writing is what I love doing; I love writing these blogs as much as I love making my videos on Youtube. So I gift you a poem, followed by a link to me being weird on film. Call it a calling card, because my new course is not about being just mindful, it is about you being the true you that you are in your heart and if that person is a little weird, then aren't we all?

Enjoy; peace; love.

My voice is like a marked deer

A rabid hound my tongue

When i cry no-one notices

When i scream it is the shot of a gun

I am done

Twitter = @28thraves - - - - Instagram = @28zacthrav

Zac Thraves is a writer and performer from the UK.

Why Do We Misreport Our Emotions?

 Disclaimer - this blog contains affiliated links for which I will receive a small sum; call it supporting an artist who needs to fund his imagination

I will soon be sharing with you some very cool stuff, a brand new course designed to help you meditate and come to terms with your emotions in our noisy and modern world. 

The world is still noisy, it was even when we were in lockdown; we still had rolling news and updates and social media and negative reporting and it was, still is, too much.

My course will help you to deal with all of that and give you some great tips on using arts to meditate and to listen to your emotions. Listening to them helps you react to them which ultimately helps you to deal with them in a positive way, regardless of the emotion. 

What I don't do is lock them up; ignore them or wish to slay them. My emotions are not a monster or a dark serpent or anything like that. Yes, they are sometimes bad, but they are not criminal and I do not hide from that part of me anymore.

If you want to find out more please follow me on Twitter @28thraves or on Insta, @28zacthrav. I am keeping my course entirely personal and it will be for you. It will also be fun, and you will come away from it feeling ready to stand tall and recognise that you are unique, and you can boss your world. 

We are all heroes. 

So why do we misreport our emotions? It's a question I have pondered for some time now and one that I can't say I have a real handle on. I try to think of us as this:

• a collection of thoughts and feelings
• whizzing about our psyche at lightening speed
• some good and some bad
• some judgemental and some pure love
• clashing and bashing like atoms
• some may explode 
• and all this, our unique personal universe, encased in a body

And then once we filter all of this through our mind and sort it like the postal service sorts letters we place a selection of thoughts into an order, analyse them, and decide which ones to issue out of the body and which ones to leave, store or discard.

We are reporters of our minds.

It's actually quite weird when you break it down, but at the same time it makes sense. Our minds are a bit like that sentence, a sequence of words that sound odd but right. 

We become our own censors; like Trump's censorship code for the internet or back in old Hollywood when they tried to convict so-called Communists. In the UK we had censorship on TV and definitely no sex. You can't have sex that's disgusting!

The trouble with that is the ideas of the censorship distributes throughout our society and into our psyches and then it becomes something that we do to ourselves. We are actively censoring our thoughts and becoming our own thought-police. That is what leads us to misreport our emotions because we decide which of our emotions are right and which are wrong.

What if I told you that all of your thoughts are right, how would that make you feel?

Sex? What's wrong with sex, I mean we need to do for the human race to survive, why are we so prudish?

Suicide? What's wrong with thinking about suicide? 

Self-harm? What's wrong with thinking about self-harm?

Thinking about those are not an issue nor are they wrong; even the act of doing is not wrong. What is wrong is society's reaction to those acts and to people who have done it. We collectively make it wrong which then pushes them deeper into our minds where it can grow into a snarling monster; like Medusa in a lair or the Kraken from the deep. These monsters of myth are our monsters...our emotions, made large.

For example, when a thought comes to our minds about harming it is instantly pushed away and the language used to push it away is that we are bad, that we shouldn't think that, it's disgusting; all those people you would hurt, that's so ungrateful; guilt.

All those hateful words are actually worse than the thought of self-harm; and could lead to the act happening with more force, or worse, with fatal results.

Here's one that gets me (after the harming and suicide thoughts):

I want to make $3000 per month doing something I love.

Now, when I write that or say it to myself I feel bad, because then I think that's greedy; I'm not worth that; I don't have anything to offer; who would listen to me; you should be ashamed of yourself. Rich people are monsters, that is so selfish.

?

It is exactly the same thought process for me to want to succeed as it is to want to die. That is true for me anyway. You can argue that success is great, it gives drive, it's a target. Yet those monsters still appear for me when I think of making money. Because I have been conditioned to think like that in the same way I have been conditioned to thinking that self-harm, or just having depression in general, is a bad thing. 

The conditioning is there from childhood, through school and into working life. And the silly thing is that it is not the fault of parents or teachers, because they too have been conditioned to think like that. It's a problem in parts of society. 

Someone has to change the thinking of the greater society and that someone could be you and I. We can all start to take that step to thinking differently by changing our language, understanding that we are emotional and that we have powerful imaginations that change the world and give us enough to sustain a life. There's nothing wrong for me to want to survive and the only way to survive our current world is through earning money. I chose to survive, and my survival story is in my current book (ad above), and with that I want to survive having a life where I can reduce the stress and succeed by producing something that I feel passionate about. 

Is this not right?

You can do that too. Start to think outside the box, because the box is not of your design. There is only one person who can change your world, and that is you. By each of us doing this individually we can shape a new way of thinking. If you think about changing all of society you may go...WOAH, that's too big!

But actually, if we just focus on ourselves and change our thinking, and share and talk and open up, then gradually it can all change. All of it, forever. 

Just a thought.

I hope you enjoy my fortnightly blogs. Please do follow me on social media and keep a look out for my course which will be downloadable worldwide soon. I want to help us all take a step to a better world.

I recently finished reading this book by Dr Pippa Grange and found it incredibly helpful in giving tips on how to overcome fear. We can all be trapped by fear, mainly for me it is failure and self-worth. Her words and the stories she told of real people overcoming their fears were inspirational, and I do recommend a read of her book. The link is a UK one, I am sure it is also on Amazon.com. Search it out. 

Covid, Mindfulness and Depression; a Personal Story

The following stemmed from a recent conversation over Skype with my father. He lives in South Africa, and we were discussing the pandemic, you know, moaning about the state of his government and the UK government, and the differences between the two. We came to a conclusion that South Africa seem to be responding with more urgency and confidence than the bumbling lot who currently sit in Number 10, Downing Street. However, with all the fear and worry, we sort of fell on a notion:

Can Covid-19 be a friend?

It is a serious illness and sadly many people have died; yet my father and I sort of felt that this is something we are going to have to learn to adapt to and live with, like we do now with the Flu. So I made a list: 

Good things that have come out of the Covid-19 pandemic:

• natures re-set
• no more kissing and hugging everyone you meet
• less traffic
• people avoid you in the street
• internet has no borders
• we are all in this together
• I get to look like Zorro!

Of all those, the one I have not missed is the hugging and kissing everyone; why we had to do this in the first place has always been questionable. Personally it has always been awkward, and thankfully now not socially acceptable. If this ever comes back then I will consider becoming a recluse because I never know if it one on the cheek or two or three and, frankly, I don't care. I don't need to hug every old friend or family member, let's just say hello to each other and get on with it.

What do you think? Is there anything about the pandemic that you think has been good or am I just delusional?

By the way, I do not intend to offend anyone who has lost friends and family to this horrible illness, I send you my thoughts and wishes. By trying to find some positive in an awful situation, I think we can better honour the memory of those who have died. 

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us. Marianne Williamson

 The statement above is perfect for the message I am continuing to put out there. Our light is our fear, our darkness is what keeps us in fear. My book, The Self-Harming Pacifist, is my account of an episode in my life where I was going through serious depression and harm. Yet I concluded with myself that I was sick of feeling guilt and shame over having these emotions. Why should I feel guilt and shame as that only exacerbates the whole thing and makes it worse?

Society does not accept depression, anxiety or any other kind of behaviour that is not seen as normal. Is that right? I harmed myself on countless occasions and I was seen as weird, crazy, mad, at crisis level. I dd not hurt anyone else, only me, just me, I was not beating anyone up or aiming a gun at anyone. Yet I was the mad one. Apparently its fine to start a fight in a pub or fire a pistol at passers-by. 

I am convinced that we can change how we view depression by changing our culture and our reaction to those who have depression. The fact that cases of depression and anxiety are increasing is down to our culture, and not to a 'snow-flake' generation. We are all unique and emotional individuals who react in different ways to different scenarios...and that is exactly how it should be.

Being sad is not wrong; just as being happy is not wrong. The more serious sadness is not wrong, and the fact that we see it as wrong and have to diagnose people with drugs to get over it means that when you feel it, you also feel the guilt, the shame and the fear. Which makes it all worse.

We need to re-think this. I am not a doctor, or a psychologist, but I come from experience and the experience I had was not good; the drugs I had were not good; the mindfulness I learnt and became involved in has shown me a new way of thinking and finally given me an acceptance that I am good. Even when I feel depressed, I am good and that removes some of the depressions power. 

I have a course, coming online soon, that uses the arts to make you feel better about your emotions and anxieties. There is a really cool meditation technique and some ideas to get your life on track and make a positive step forward. It is called The Mindful Imagination Experience, and it will soon be available.

Watch this space. Be kind to yourself and to each other. We can change the world with love.