Synopsis: I lost my job just before Christmas of 2017. Since then, life has been completely different in many ways. More time at home with my wife and kids has given me hope, peace and happiness - things that I would have never enjoyed in abundance had I not lose my job. Losing my job also gave me the courage to question the many beliefs that I thought were true and immutable and a clearer lens to see things from different angles. On the flip side of the coin, it also injected fear in my heart and mind – the fear of going back to my old ways knowing that it leads only to sadness, despair and emptiness.
This is my blog of attempting to capture my thoughts as they travel at the speed of light through the billions of neural networks within the grey matter we call brain and the mysterious second brain we call the Gut.
Since December 2017, a lot of things have happened, and millions of thoughts have plague my “brains”. It seems I have a lot of catching up to do for this blog and so I begin as far back as I can remember.
I do recall brainstorming with my wife on the possible sources of passive income while on a “job hunt” (also my wife knows that given a choice, I would rather work from home doing what I love). If all else fail, then the only option if to go work for Corporate America again. It sucks but that’s what life is. Below is the result of our brainstorming:
- Stock and Crypto Trading
- Part time consulting
- Steeming
- IRA Investing
- Drive for Uber & Lyft
- Freelancing
My wife and I understood that these options will just give temporary passive streams of income and we understand the risks involved. But we agreed to make the most of it and enjoy life as if it's our last days on earth. We figured that given our financial health, we have at least 4 months to survive without a permanent employment (6 months originally but the cost of medical insurance just shot up tremendously and we are helpless on this regard - thanks to the Obamacare).
So far, I have tried all of the above income generation activities except Uber and Lyft and the income have been negative overall. The crypto market took a deep dive and have not recovered yet. Consulting and freelancing have been extremely difficult especially that I’m starting from scratch. Likewise, income from Steemit has been pathetic. My overall diagnoses - we’ve been ultra-positive in our estimation of passive income to be generated through these initiatives. My disappointment lays a fertile ground for negative thoughts to linger.
The thoughts and emotions I’ve experienced when I lost my job still haunts me in both my wake and dream states. Their powers are getting lesser and lesser though as time goes by except when I think about the future of me and my family. Fear and uncertainty fuels negative thoughts but I continue to fight them using a visualization technique which goes like this:
whenever a negative thought appears which is usually accompanied by an image, change the color of the image. Brightly colored images tend to have strong emotional effect so make the color dull to lessen the emotional impact. Also make the image smaller. Imagine the moon pulling away the image from you. Make it smaller and smaller and its color duller and duller as it moves away from you towards the moon until you can’t recognize it anymore. Try this to every negative thought or image in your mind and you will get rid of that negative thought and the emotions and fears associated with it.
The above meditation technique made and continue to make wonders to me. I was an innocent victim of a poorly designed meditation CD that I bought and used over 7 years ago. I did not realized its negative effect on me and my life until years later. I forgot the title and author of the CD but I used it in my daily meditations. I listened to the CD almost every day right before sleeping. In fact, I let the CD play all night long while asleep. Few months after using the CD, I was surprised that all of the sudden my mind was full of negative thoughts. I first blamed myself for caring too much. If you're a parent, you would understand how the mind of a parent works. Almost all the bad things that could happen to your child you breath them on a daily basis. Even the statistially impossible ones like you will be hit by a lightning mid-flight or your kid will jump out of the car eventhough the door is child-locked. Such is the power of the imagination. It is overwhelming and exhausting! My wife said to me one day that I am worst then she is in terms of worrying about our kids. In fact, I am far worst than her. Overtime, I was beginning to believe that these negative thoughts is my nature. I thought they define who I am but I'm glad I was wrong.
About 5 years ago, my wife gifted me with a book on my birthday. She bought it for 1 EUR from a rumage sale. The book is about meditation and visualization and one of the things that really jumped out as I read the book was the fact that in programming your subconcious mind through meditation, one should be very careful in crafting the meditation mantra. That it should be contructed in a positive way and not double negative. This is very important so let me explain this as simple as I can.
Say this repeatedly and see what image(s) invades your brain: DO NOT THINK OF A BLUE ELEPHANT!
Let me guess, you saw a bue elephant in your mind didn't you? It's not that our mind follows just the opposite of what we instruct it to do. It's the fact that our mind communicates in images! At least the right section of our brain.
I feel like I was struck by a lightning when I learned this. It dawned on me that the medidation CD that I used to listen to - the one that turned me into a "negative" person to some extent - was using double negative mantras. I remember fairly well one of the mantras in the CD which is repeated over and over and over: "Negative thoughts have no place in your mind. Whenever these negative thoughts enter your mind, you will reject them". What a terrible matra it was.
Good thing I stopped listening to that CD after I realized its negative impact on me. Since then, I've been very careful in choosing which meditation mantras to use and the results have been amazing.
Back to present, I’ve been asking myself lately whether its time to change course or hold on to our passive income generation strategies. Wisdom from my past is biased towards holding on since I’ve paid a hefty price from my constant and more frequent change in direction only to realize that the decision was wrong. Case in point, I bought Tesla stocks and held them for over a year. I got dispointed with the company and so I sold them. Within a month, the stock skyrocketed. Another case were facebook and several solar stocks with similar lessons learned.
Until next time...
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