Create your Best Life as an Advanced Talking Ape – Post Pandemic Planning

Who creates the world? Not the planet itself, but the fabric around it that we live in? The tiny space between atmosphere and sea level where our entire definition of life unfolds. Do we, the average and moderately powerful, middle class, Netflix-watching human beings actually create anything or are we victims of every outcome?

Be the ape

A good friend of mine often refers to me as “a talking ape on a rock that’s hurling through space”. I appreciate his honest opinion. When I think of myself as a talking ape on a rock, I feel a bit better about not knowing how this process works and my personal responsibilities feel less critical. I’m just ape. What do you barbarians expect.

The flip side of ape-life is the realization that we do have some type of awareness and existence. They call it ‘alive’. I continue to wonder what or how this is possible.

Controlling creation

As the somewhat more advanced form of ape, we can create our own future. Perhaps not the nitty gritty details but our collective existence; we can be the drivers of what is to come. This is a concept that has wrapped my tiny ape brain in knots on more than one occasion. The paradox of considering that I could create some elements of my future and not others is confusing. It is so confusing that I’ve gone through periods of considerable distress while trying to dissect exactly what is possible to create and what is not.

Filled with SUDs

My sister recently taught me about a thought process or concept called Subjective Units of Distress. SUDs. It is the best terminology I’ve learned in a while. Subjectively, I am experiencing a unit of panic. That panic is causing distress. It is subjective and thus not real stress but perceived stress. Perhaps it could be viewed as an objective unit of distress by someone else, however, given that my thoughts are not public (I’d be in prison), it is only reasonable to label each unit as subjective.

Distress by unit seems much more manageable than being in a constant state of distress. Perhaps one day I’ll pass this unit and no longer have this particular unit of distress. I will select another subjective problem to feel distressed about and it will be wonderful. This is a personal dissection of a term that I heard once and asked no further detail on.

Creation through intention

Even though the full concept of creation it is a question with no answer, I continue to feel the irrational urge to science the shit out of life itself and write a text book on the exact layers of existence we have the ability to control and how to manage the rest. Written by apes, for apes.

What I have found is much of our power or strength in creating anything is contained within an intention. The intention itself has much more power than our mind would want us to believe. An intention, even if it goes against what the ego wants, can manifest into a belief and then reality. For that reason, intention is often difficult to hold strongly because it is the first step to making a change. The egoic mind hates change. It would prefer the devil that it knows to the devil that it doesn’t.

Take your power back from you

The power behind intention is beyond the capabilities of the mind alone. Intention is what directs the mind, which is why the ego does not feel comfortable with intentions that aren’t aligned with the past. The ego is you, as is your higher knowledge. In order to set an intention that is completely new, the ego needs to step back. That is the crux of the struggle; both feel like they are occurring ‘in the mind’. Do we really know what’s occurring in the mind and what’s not? Truly? What exactly is the imagination?

Sometimes the circumstances of life force us to change our intentions. If the circumstances have a big impact, they shift will parallel that. My personal intentions will immediately change if I am faced with a sudden, significant change in circumstance; such as, realizing I have no coffee at 6am or coping with the worst outbreak in 102 years for months on end as a single parent with zero sanity. Shifting circumstances, shifting intentions.

The juncture that creates the future

The purpose of all this rambling about intention and circumstance is the position we are in now as a collective group of talking apes. We all have to create our own unique and individual futures after a global crisis. We are in two phases right now and they are intersecting. That juncture is our future. 

Decon

The first phase is destruction. Our house burnt down and is still burning. It has mostly been decimated already and we’re alive. If you are reading this, your house burned down but you made it. There are still burning pieces of drywall and your past that are searing in front of your eyes. The fire is slowing but it isn’t out. You are safe but you need plan. That’s the first phase; we just watched our house burn to the ground. We are mourning what has clearly been lost, including stability and normalcy.

Recon

The second phase is creation; the foundation of a reconstruction process. Within the process of destruction, there is a natural thought form that arises in all human beings and that is because of the survival instinct. It’s like a universal gift that forces us to really, really give a fuck. I struggle with that. It’s annoying.

Anyway.

Our second phase is the outcome of the intersection or juncture we’re in now. Destruction means reconstruction and our mind naturally floods with hope of reconstruction. Perhaps not right away as some houses were burned more than others. These are the varying impacts of the global crisis. Ultimately, all of humanity will be collectively pausing (also called forced isolation and quarantine) and then reconstructing. What will there be when the pandemic is over?

There will be what we believe there will be

The answer to that is nothing and everything; whatever we believe will be, will be. Nothing will be there because it is gone now. The normalcy that was pre-pandemic will not return. Normalcy will. It won’t be the same. It can’t and shouldn’t be because that isn’t how life works. Nothing is a fixed object. Society as a whole is a construction. When we have mass social disruption and damage, there is no other way forward than reconstruction. Within the circumstances of today, the reconstruction process will be the biggest overhaul of humanity we have ever seen. Why wouldn’t it be?

No threat has ever paused the world for so long and impacted every single layer of existence; physical, emotional, mental, economical, political, etc. You name it – it was impacted by the pandemic. Even my dog is going through something right now and all I can do is continue to encourage her future intentions. The dog park will be back. The nervous energy will settle. You will sniff butts without public health restrictions. I promise.

Why change?! IT’S BEEN TOUGH! What do we want?! DIFFERENT STUFF!

What do we want? I think we should all want different outcomes. One across-the-board intention is not what anyone needs to hear. I’m willing to bet that most people at this stage of the game do not want to hear someone telling them what they want via the media. We have equal voices and it is time to stop looking at others to think for the collective. We are the collective.

We also don’t need to be told that our intention is to go back to normal, if normal is defined as how we lived before. We should not aspire to go backward. The only way is creating a new future; not recreating the old one.

How to create – using my failures as examples

I used to think that when new things came into your life, that’s when you made the decision on whether or not to commit to them. If I received a new job offer, then I would decide if I wanted it. If my problems disappeared, then I would feel happy. Shockingly, in order to land at ‘happy due to problems being solved’, I had to take a much more active role than I thought. You mean, I won’t get emailed my future? No one is going to tell me how this is done? Like…am I supposed to be running this show or what?!

Yes….

Over time, my mistakes began to become clear as I became a victim of my own circumstances and believed I had nothing to do with it. I may not have asked for the shitty circumstances, but I also didn’t ask for or work for anything better. I asked for nothing; nothing of my external or internal world. I didn’t do any deep inner work because I had no idea what that was and my life felt out of control. I was floating, then drowning, then floating and so forth. I was relying on external causes and conditions to bring circumstances to my life and I hoped they were the ‘right’ circumstances.

The shift for me was learning that before the circumstances came, I had to make the commitment. The decision. The intention.

It feels backwards but it’s actually forwards

I found this shift in mindset to be challenging to maintain because the habit of waiting for life to happen felt safer. Somehow, it felt like I would be less disappointed if things didn’t go well. No responsibility for this ape! My belief was that if I tried to create my own future and it was shit, then I would feel a sense of loss, distrust, confusion and even self-hatred. Perhaps, it would feel hopeless because I had tried and failed (we’ll call this a subjective unit of distress – based on my personal, unprofessional interpretation of that term). Failure is my most difficult, uncomfortable life lesson so I try to do it all the time.

Parking in a new life

I began slowly experimenting with making decisions before I understood the ‘how’ portion of the process. I set simple intentions, such as, getting an amazing parking spot. I became a parking spot magician. I am now the designated driver or VIP passenger in all outings because of the deep trust my friends have in my parking spot powers. It was a great place to start because I was able to experiment with intention (and feel the outcome of strong intention vs uncertain intention).

After enough practice, I was able to feel what the process of making a strong intention was like and committing to it as a firm decision. The challenge was allowing the ‘how’ to unfold completely out of my control AND figuring out what to do if the outcome was not what I intended. It was and is a complex process because of these two factors.

The ape-life takes work

It takes practice to be a talking ape who can create a future with certainty and trust, while holding it in an open space. Allowing that creation to grow with intention and action, but not too much interference. The irony of it all is that the intention and the interference are all states of mind. Thus, creating anything begins with the mind, could be disrupted or distorted by the mind and the outcome is completely subjective. I love being a talking ape. It’s so easy.

I found that the method that led to the most awareness of what I wanted for a future came from imagining my future self. Not a future self that is in another lifetime or even decades away. Maybe one year (I felt that was reasonable to mentally commit to). What could my future self be? And how can I start showing up as bits of pieces of that person now, until the puzzle pieces come together?

This is the process I am in right now. My house burned down (I live in a condo in real life and am referring to the pandemic). Now I want to build it again except I’d like it to feel different. Even though right now, I have no evidence that my future will unfold as I imagine, I can definitely guarantee to myself that my future will not unfold as I imagine if I don’t imagine anything at all. This is how I trained my mind to create.

Future you is your intention

Envisioning your future self and then ‘acting’ like your future self can be an empowering practice. It is a commitment the mind makes and bit by bit, the commitment begins to integrate into your every day reality. Eventually, you grow into this future self, notably different than you imagined and probably better.

We’re actually not that great at imagining our best life. Sometimes, the intention of living your best life is more effective than honing in on a very specific outcome. At a point, we have to realize that as a talking ape, we don’t have all the answers and maybe there is an even better future. We imagine a future and then it comes with an enhancement.

Pandemic – the real deal

With respect to the pandemic, I think there is a misunderstanding about how it will end. The virus won’t go away but we will learn to manage it with tools. It’s the same as any novel problem. Every problem solver has to be an innovator when no one has seen the threat before. We will get through it. The question that we have to ask ourselves now is, what do we WANT that recovery and reconstruction process to look like? There no sense in worrying about when the pandemic will end. It will end without you noticing a definitive ending, unless you live in the world of infectious disease control. What’s important to remember is that it will end; all things do. The end is not a switch though, it is an evolution.

Your work is not to read the newspaper and worry about COVID-19 numbers (unless that is your literal work). Your work is you.

Your personal pandemic

Metaphorically, the pandemic is also happening inside you (aside from the whole infection part of the deal). We have all been forced into isolation in some form or another and have faced a global emergency. The destruction is inside us all. What happens around us, happens inside us and vice versa.

You may have noticed things emerge that you thought were resolved, buried, no longer problematic or even new challenges within yourself. This is the time to work on you; to face these pop ups. And while doing so, look to your future self. Your future self is our future world. What does that look like to you?

Everything that I just listed has been a part of my personal pandemic. What I thought was resolved suddenly exploded into new layers, that which I skillfully buried in my psyche managed to crawl its way out (asshole); things that were no longer problematic felt like an albatross sitting on my face and I had new challenges, breakdowns and losses. Things that I never thought would happen did. I felt suffering in ways I never had. I felt my personal relationships differently; some became stronger and brighter than ever. Some crumbled in my heart until the pieces were so small, I knew I could never put them together again. Not in the same way. I hold hope for reconstruction in all areas; inner and outer existence. 

Social reconstruction

If I try to look at society objectively and on a wide scale, there are as many beautiful moments as there are moments of suffering. The weight of loss and destruction is enormous but we are alive and must carry on.

Can we do the work on our inner selves and by doing so, begin to set intentions for a better future? Or do we turtle and wait until someone outside us says, “the pandemic is over. You can come out.”?

The question is, do you want to take this opportunity of deconstruction and use it as a reconstruction? Or do you want to wait and then go try to live in the pile of ash that was?

Social media is a disaster. Literally.

I recently turned off my social media accounts. One of the most bothersome elements of social media was that no matter whether a comment was negative, positive or neutral, someone lashed out in response.

I recall making a comment of support toward a person that I admire and made absolutely no mention of anyone else, anything negative or any statements of confrontation. It was two lines in support of one individual.

Forty-two weeks later, people were still commenting and for the most part, attacking my opinion or arguing with one another.

Forty. Two. Weeks.

I think of moments like this and remind myself that I don’t want to go back to normal. Normal was complete horseshit. I’ve added that to the burn pile. No wonder we needed to be separated; humanity was like Octomom with five year olds throwing Lego at each other and total chaos in every room. Everyone leave – go to separate rooms, stay there and calm down. It’s a fairly normal, longstanding response to constant fighting among apes.

I mean…children.

And by children and apes, I mean humans.

The time is now

As we inch closer to the one year anniversary of the declaration of the pandemic by the World Health Organization, perhaps it is the time to evaluate our future. I feel confident that the outbreak is shifting and that we will persevere. We will find ways to control the virus and have the opportunity to tell our story of how we got through worst outbreak in over 100 years. We will get there. The question to ask ourselves isn’t if we’ll get there, it is not even how we will get there. The question is, what does ‘there’ look like?

If each of us can begin a creation process, we will collectively create a future. It is up to us to determine what that future looks like. This is the time to reflect on yourself. Changing our future doesn’t mean external changes; those are natural symptoms of inner change. The work is YOU. There is no fixed self and you can emerge from this storm in any way you want. What’s your intention? What does your future self do? How does he/she/it/they navigate the world? Are we ready to drop the gender labels now that we’ve made it through the entire alphabet and a few numbers too? Anyone think it’s time to be a human being and that’s enough?

Today is the start

Begin your reconstruction process. If we don’t have a new destination, we won’t have any direction to go except our old path. Decide now. And then begin your work. Trust in the fact that you can make a decision about your future without knowing how it will unfold.

All of my best life outcomes have come from intentions that manifested into reality in a way I could never, ever have predicted. If my intentions were locked to my own ideas, my life would be shit. That’s why the intention is held in an open palm and not a closed fist. There might be an enhancement coming up for you and you’ll need to be open enough to bring it into your purview.

That which was not there before but will be there in your future is the beautiful mystery of life.

Please share, take good care and wash your dirty underwear.

That’s all, folks!