What Do You Know (You’re Just a Kid) Ch. 4

Do you want to know what I think?
I think you know more than you think you do.
So, in answer to the question, what do you know?
The truth is you know everything.

I remember being told that a smart person knows what they don’t know.
I agree.
Sometimes, we know too much or we think we do.

Do you want to know the best advice that was ever given to me?
Stay out of your head.
This is great advice. Maybe this is easier said than done at times and yes, the head can be an amazingly dangerous place to be. But the truth is we can think ourselves into chaos.
We can create stress and cause our own nightmares.
But more than this, we can create a predictable future just by assuming that our worst fears and biggest concerns are not only real, but also inevitable.

Stay out of your head, kid.
This is great advice.

You are in the driver’s seat now. You are about to be privy to a brand-new world. So much is about to happen for you. But in the moment, here we are.
It is morning here on this side of purgatory.  We are in a way-station or a momentary pattern whereas, at some point, life is going to pick up speed.
Days are going to pile up and one day, you are going to look back and wonder what happened.
Where did the time go?
What happened to all the tomorrows I thought we were supposed to have?
They run out pretty fast.
Trust me.
You are going to wake up to so many different things.
You are going to graduate from one chapter in life to the next.
You are going to ask yourself if life is real.
Did that really happen?
How is it that we were just here yesterday yet years went by like the blink of an eye.

It is true that time moves fast.
But not when I was closer to the beginning of my life. No, I am certainly not closer to the beginning anymore.
I am moving towards an older age. And that’s fine, so long as I choose to age gracefully.
It is also true that we seldom think about the future or plan ahead. When you’re young, the future sounds like something that belongs to old people.

I never thought I would be this old.
I never thought I would be an old person at all. However, age is just a number, right?
I never thought I would be in my 50’s, let alone, be the person I am now –
I am aging, but not too badly.
I still love loud music. I love to go fast. I love to rage and yell and have a good time.
However, my version of a good time is not the same as it was 20 years ago.
I don’t need to stay up late anymore or break the dawn and be out after the sunrise.

Admittedly, some of my most favorite and special moments took place during the mornings that came after long nights – and we went to diners and ate and laughed about the night behind us.
I don’t do this too often now.
But I do like to be awake when the dawn arrives.
I love to see the sky’s first light.
I always will too.

The fact is we all evolve. We grow and we change.
Some of us will mature, not me though.
I’m still searching to find who and what I want to be when I grow up.
Sometimes, we take on the characteristics of people who have influenced our life which, at one point, we swore that we would never be “that person” yet here I am – that person.

I am older now. I am new to a lot of things and still, I have been around for a while, which means I have earned a few notches in my belt.
I have seen my share of ups and downs. I have earned my place at the table.
I work for a living. I have a position in a company. I have a small, but trusted circle of friends and influencers who I choose to share my life with.
I no longer need the approval of the crowd. However, I do appreciate the approval from my loved ones.
My family is not what it used to be. Then again, this is what happens when we age.
Nothing is like what it used to be.
Life changes. People change. Landscapes change and so will homeowners.
Friends will move away. People will pass away and yes, this is sad. But sad or not – this is life and hence, life is very true.
Friends will change and so will our association with the past and the present.
I know this is true.
I know this is part of what I was told when I was a kid.
This is partly why I was told, “You’ll understand when you get older.”

I do understand.
now . . .
I also understand that, in part, I have changed but in part, my core is still the same.
I am still me which means that my past and my compilation of memories and experiences, as well as my programmed life and the maps of my subconscious ideas and habits are all connected and wired in the background of my assumptions and biases.

I know that experience and memory are not always honest.
My interpretation is not always accurate or true to the intention of what people say or what people mean.

I know that my fears and worries have led me astray And yes, this has happened on more than one occasion.
I also know that we talked about the things we would say to our younger selves, if we could.
Remember?
We talked about the idea of reaching back to our younger self and offering a piece of lifesaving advice.

Stay out of your head is a good piece of advice.
Remember that you can think yourself sick.
You can think your way into a situation or paint yourself into a corner.

Don’t do that.

The worst thing we can do is waste our time assuming what other people think or feel.
Even worse, we can degrade ourselves and think ourselves into a state of uselessness.
Stay out of your head . . .
We cannot worry or wonder about the next or upcoming rejection.
We cannot worry if or when someone is going to walk away and never come back.

We cannot worry so deeply about an upcoming moment that we forget to enjoy or live in the here and now.
Where are we?
Where are we now?
Aside from a midwinter’s day in Purgatory, or aside from my location, Eastside, Midtown, which is somewhere that I have been for more than two decades, working for a living, so-to-speak, where are we now?
Where is our head?
What are we focused on? But more importantly, is our focus helpful or does our focus degrade our best possibilities?

There are words that we hear in life. For me, some of these words are connections to the parts of my unfortunate youth and the regrettable yesterdays that held me back for way too long.
There are words like “potential” and “ability.”
I used to hate these words.
I recall them from the days when I was unable to think or see clearly.
I was either stuck in my head or otherwise, I was out of my head and nothing made sense.

I was unable to stay out of my own way and yes, I thought my way into crisis mode.
I did this all the time.
I thought too much and worried too often or too deeply.
This is where my “thinking” errors began and the symptoms of my emotional or intellectual misconnections took place.
I enjoyed myself too little and missed out on too many things.
I was far from present which made it nearly impossible to enjoy the times when life allows us a certain rite of passage. I forgot to have fun.
Can you believe that?
I was too busy being stuck in my own head.

Do not allow this to happen.
Be mindful that thoughts are not real.
But I digress.

I think about words that I would hear. I would hear them with a cloud of resentment and with contempt in my heart.
I would hear people tell me about my “potential” as if it was this thing that was so far from me, yet this is who and what I was supposed to be –
My potential.
“You have so much potential . . .”
I remember hearing this from teachers and adults and different people with different levels of authority.

In my eyes, this was them telling me that I was letting myself down.
My interpretation of this was that I was failing myself – or that I was a failure.
This was them telling me that I was being educationally, spiritually and emotionally lazy.
I saw this as the problem but this only a symptom.

No, I was not living up to my potential. However, I was potentially living up to the other expectations or predictions of the people who I believed (or allowed ) to put me down or swore that I was going to fail or be a loser for the rest of my life.
I was so deep in my head with this that rather than defy them, I behaved in a way that would prove them right.

“Stay out of your head, kid.”

I invested in this side of my potential instead of the other side which again, I see this more as a symptom than the actual problem.
I see procrastination as a symptom.
I see all of this and the responses that are less than our true ability as a symptom of something deeper than the surface-level problems or oppositional or other defiant disorders that I was labeled with.

I was reacting.
Better yet, I was overreacting.
I was at war at all times because I was lost to an assumption and to a hardwired bias.
This is what led me to believe that either something was so different about me or that I was so absolutely flawed or “wrong.”

This is life when we are stuck in our own head.
So, stay out of it.
We wait for the next thing to go wrong.
We expect the impending doom.
We fear everything. We fear the worst and more, we expect our fears to all be true – and that eventually the predictions play out without us ever realizing that we put the wheels in motion.
We project this.
We prepare for this and meanwhile, we miss the world around us.
We lose our focus.
We lose the chance to laugh or to dance or to enjoy the moment because yes, life is going to be tough and there will be good days and bad days.
But the days could be better.
We don’t “Have” to prove ourselves right when it comes to the worst things possible.
Life can be better and more to the point, the more we improve and the better we are and the more we improve our thinking and steer away from our thinking errors, the better we can be, consecutively and ongoing.

Stay out of your head. Do not feed the fears.
Feed your opportunities.
Replace thought with action.
Work opposite of your worst side and allow your energy to shift to possibilities (not the problems).

I was told to let my obstacles become opportunities.
At the time, this was unrealistic to me.
But I am not where I was anymore.
I have improved which means now that I have improved, even if I slide back to an unfortunate thought, nothing is ever going to be as bad as it used to be.
I do not have to “go back there” because I have trained myself and learned to move away from my fears and move towards my best possible defense.

I am a fan of Sean Stephenson who said: Never believe in a prediction that does not empower you.

I cannot say that I liked when people would tell me that I had “so much potential.”
I used to see this as an insult.
I see this differently now.
I can be better. In fact, I am better now.
This side of purgatory is not the same hell as it used to be.
Not by a long shot.

Stay out of your head, kid.
Don’t play that movie out.
Stop thinking yourself into crisis.
Change your thinking by changing your behaviors.
Change your behaviors to change your feelings.
You can do this, one act at a time.
But understand something – you can’t stop.
You can’t quit.
Keep this train moving and never allow yourself to be derailed by an imaginary problem.

Change your feelings to change your emotions.
And next, you will have found that by one action at a time, you have changed your entire life.
But more, you saved your own life better than any hero ever could.

This means that you are your own best hero.
And that’s what your potential is.
Save yourself.
Don’t wait for anyone else to do it.
Stop thinking the symptoms are the problems.
These are only the reactions and the consequences of something which lies within.

And me –
It’s not that I didn’t have “potential”
It’s not that I wasn’t reaching for my personal best
The problem within was the root to my thinking errors.

Strengthen your identity.
Understand your worth
and when you do, you will realize that nothing in this world is beyond your reach.

Stay out of your head, kid,
at least until your head allows you to become your own superhero.
Then you can climb back inside your thoughts and rescue yourself – one day at a time.