Some of us seek for answers out there, up there, anywhere but in here. We look for signs from up above hoping to find a path to love and true happiness. We want a quick fix, a helpful guide book, 5 top tips and “how to” hacks. But while we persist, we often resist the very thing that is and has always been the path to wholeness and mental well being.

Think of it like this: all of us love a shiny new car, we love to polish and shine the exterior, we love to take a spin around the neighborhood to share our excitement. But when it breaks down on the road, we don’t sit there and hope for a miracle – to fix it, we are forced to look under the hood.

Everything we need to live our best lives and to truly be happy in our own skin – is found under the hood. We must be willing to look inside, to explore our thoughts, motivations,  perceptions and beliefs. To get clarity, we must be willing to be vulnerable enough to sit quietly with our own thoughts, without distracting input from outside voices.

While helpful insights and other’s revelations may spark a sense of curiosity and desire to change – true transformation is exclusively an inside job. No one can make you change anything about yourself until you internalize it and have your own revelatory aha or come to Jesus moment.

Ironically, it is that very thing “fear of being introspective” that often hinders us from being freed from anxiety, self doubt, negative internal dialogues and all other causes of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Some people are so scared of what they will find, they find it easier and safer to project negativity onto others than to reflect and deal with their own broken parts.

Desire to change is lifting the hood. Awareness is inspecting all the parts of your internal engine. Clarity is accepting the faulty wiring. Choosing is the elbow grease required to do the necessary work to get the engine running smoothly. Gratitude is turning the key with a fresh, new perspective: it’s not the showroom polished exterior that makes you happy – it is the confidence in your well-oiled machine that makes the journey much more fulfilling and enjoyable.  Freedom is the wide-open road ahead offering fearless exploration of your deepest self, trusting your own built-in navigation to make this life experience an amazing adventure. Here’s to Happy Trails!

There are a lot of things I’m not particularly fond of these days. But one of the main ‘not so great’ trends is the incessant need to group and label one another. The constant use of “they” and “them” is so damaging to our collective psyche and yet every night on news talk shows this is the pervasive narrative.

“Those people are destroying America, they have an agenda, they hate your way of life and honestly they hate America.” This is a narrative that is being peddled every single day.

I don’t know about you, but I am not part of a “they.” And honestly when I connect and engage with people as individuals, I discover most people gravitate towards the middle and don’t want to be boxed in. And while someone may align with a particular ideology more than another, with deeper investigation it seems most us us have no desire to be radical anything.

So who are the “they”? I guess if you are to follow the logic of the group and label mentality – “they” are the collective fringes of our society. They are the radicalized folks who find their identity and safety in a group mentality. “They” are people with an agenda which is counter to everything you supposedly believe and stand for.

As the divisive narratives go: “They” are the crazy far left liberals who want to have open borders and take your guns away and replace all fossil fuels with renewable energy sources or “They” are the insane far right conservatives who are racist and homophobic and want America to be white, right and Christian. These are the two extreme narratives.

After watching a documentary last night on white supremacist groups spreading like wildfire a message of hate towards Jews, blacks and anyone who isn’t white – I realized once again how dangerous and destructive a labeling narrative can be. It is truly scary how potent this message is for those who feel their way of life is under siege. Their mantra being “we won’t be replaced.”

We all fall prey to this desire. It is built into our DNA to gather into groups for social interaction as well as for built-in protection which larger numbers provide when facing an enemy.

But we aren’t fighting off tigers and lions anymore. Our biggest enemy today in America is a created one, a false narrative which fuels a mindset of hatred towards “they and them”. Those people are out to get us – those people who don’t look like me or speak like me, they are the enemy. Those people with brown skin who don’t pray like me – they are my mortal enemy. Those people who don’t want what I want or think like I think – they are the ones who make me feel like my way of life is under siege.

This is where we are. And honestly, this is where we always have been. It is only when the non-reactive, logical, calm and clear minded “greater good” independent thinkers stand up and reclaim a different narrative; that things change for the better.

It is going to require our voices, the normally introspective and peaceful personalities to begin to be the loudest voice in the room. Rational minds must prevail. As of October 2017, Gallup polling found that 31% of Americans identified as Democrat, 24% identified as Republican, and 42% as Independent.

The 42% must speak up. The silent majority MUST NOT remain silent any longer. We must be willing to connect with people who dominate the conversations on the radical right and left. We must be willing to educate with logic, statistics, facts and non-emotion based scientific arguments.

I hope that I can find the courage and conviction to stop the labeling, to refuse to be coerced into “they and them” narratives, to be strong in the face of bullying tactics, to be calm in the torrent of divisive shouting matches, to be an individual who brings people together by highlighting what we have in common as opposed to weaponizing our differences. I hope that I can.

I hope that you can too.