My Mind Movie and Videogames

Hello all! Happy New Year :D

It's been a while but today I'd like to share with you a double response to Matt's blog, in particular his two most recent posts (here and here) which I have really enjoyed mulling over and thinking about. Definitely check it out for daily awesomeness!

So the first blog post I'd like to respond to today talks about the Mind Movie that we all have going on in our minds. It's the childish mind which is separate from ourselves that likes to take us away from where we'd like to go with its wants and needs and complaints. So today, I'd like to give you guys an insight into my mind movie, what it tells me and how I counteract it because more often than not, it is wrong.

My mind movie often has me believing that staying up late is a very good idea and that isn't necessarily good because it means I can't always work at full potential the next day because my mind clouds. I feel like my expectations tend to become harder to tackle because it becomes much more clouded by my need to sleep and feel more well rested. It makes me believe that I don't have the energy or the mindset to do what I'd like to do and this frustrates me immensely because although I do feel better after having slept, I lose time and then it just becomes a vicious circle.

The main thing I'm struggling with is priorities. I have so many things I want to do, especially keeping good relations with friends and doing well in school. It makes it hard to make sure that I realise what I need to do to get where I get to now and not just what feels right in this moment. Because as I've said before, all we have is the present moment and if I can't do the right thing now for the future, what on earth will happen to me? How do I prioritise? Grrrr........

I also then struggle with is keeping my mind out of the movie when in routine and when doing things that I can do as if it's the first time but other times I just lose where I am and get lost in the depths of my imagination.

It loves to tell me that I'm doing enough but also that friends don't believe I matter. That I don't really matter in the peripheral but I know how to combat that thought, remembering that I'm always a contribution and seeing the good that I do and why I do it. Mattering is hard sometimes though because once I realise that I'm a good person, it's sometimes hard to believe why I should matter and why I should expect to matter. I think this comes from the investment of time but expecting something in return is where the problem then lies.

I think another of the things that I face is making sure I don't expect anything from strangers too. Just because you give kindness to the world, doesn't mean it doesn't have to give it to you back with that same person. It comes around for sure but it's so important to remember that you are not yourself to everyone. You are who they perceive you as through their world view and through what they value. You cannot control that. I think it's also important to not expect that from friends but how much of what you see of a person is who they are? Sure, their lack of presence could tell you something about them but does that tell you anything about who they are and who they want to be? Not necessarily.
That isn't to say that not looking deeply into the present can't be joyful but I would have to say your imagination can't provide you the joy that you can get in the reality of the moment. If you're truly present, you can't doubt what you experience because it's full of purpose. That's what matters.

Going onto the second blog post, seeing life as a video game and seeing that there are things you can control and cannot control is such an interesting analogy! Constantly not only accepting reality but seeing it as something that you can affect and not just as something that flies by. But that's only if you ground yourself in reality and you see the story as it happens. TOO COOL!

I think that's probably enough rambling for today ahaha, just making up for lost time, I hope you all have a wonderful time doing what you're doing and who knows, perhaps you'll see me around sometime soon!

Oooooh btw guys, I started youtubing. You might have missed that ahah, here's the channel :)

Addiction: My Story - Connor Manning

Hey guys, I hope that you're well.

Before I start off this post, I do want to warn you of trigger warnings about drugs that will follow in this post. If you think this will negatively affect you in any way, shape or form, please click away now.

For you guys who want to continue reading, this post is about a video by Connor Manning that resonated really well with me and continued on from a conversation me and a friend of mine had been having earlier today about drugs and the way that it can affect people. It's a lot different to my usual stuff but it's really something I'd like to share.

Connor's video, for me, really put that into perspective and also added to the opinion that I'd held earlier today during the conversation.

First of all, something I think is worth recognising first of all is that during drug addiction, using the drug becomes the thing that controls your life and that can drain your personality and the awesome person that you would have otherwise have had the potential to be. Using becomes both the best thing and the single most thing you hate with every fibre of your being, all at the same time. And that is probably one of the hardest things that a person has to face during their life. Drug addiction is a plague, well and truly and honestly needs to be understood a lot more amongst the rest of society because without understanding it, how can we hope to improve the situation or understand how it can be aroused?

One thing I learnt from this video that I definitely didn't know before was the fact that you can be predisposed from birth to become more prone towards addiction. I guess this can be attributed to whether your parents used drugs whilst you were developing or whether your parents used before your birth and how that affected their eggs/sperm. It can also be genetic disposition and therefore, it's not always the user's fault if they end up in that situation. However, this is by no means an excuse for their situation, merely a contributing factor, if you will. This is also something to consider as a factor because we all think we understand why users end up how they become, forgive me for not going into details, but honestly, every user is as unique as the person they are. That is something we need to understand as a society too.

I think the one thing I've learnt from both my friend and Connor's video is that these people are in desperate need for compassion and empathy during addiction as well as recovery and they don't deserve to be shunned away from society and frowned down upon because they're quite often normal people who don't want to be in that situation as much as you'd like to be in that situation or perhaps even more so. They deserve to be shown that they are still loved and that people still care and that people will do whatever they can to help them and drag them out. As Connor points out in his video, that's often as much as you can do but believe me, it makes the biggest difference knowing that you're not alone. Kindness is honestly one of the best things of the world and sharing it with everyone is something our society really needs to learn, in my humble opinion.

Addiction, once it's developed and become a fully blown thing, is a mental illness and shouldn't be treated as anything else. However, unfortunately, our society has a stigma towards illnesses of the brain that we don't completely understand, however, this definitely does not mean that we shouldn't talk about it and educate ourselves so we can help others. After all, isn't that the best thing that you can do?

Thank you so much for reading this guys and I hope that you can take something from this post. Whatever you thought or if you want to add something to the discussion or something I should've  mentioned (many things) leave a comment below and I hope to talk to you soon! Take Care :)