This was me giving advice as a teen, and to be honest, I’ve been asked for direction by older people since I was a kid. Not until much later in life did I realize that I didn’t have pride in my life, I had skills, was the smartest student, the crazy one of the bunch, the joker and also somewhat disciplined. It was one day that I realized that people keep on coming to me to hear my point of view of things. At first it seemed to me that I had a large amount of friends relative to others, but it slowly dawned on me that they actually come to me for advice. The advice I’ve given my friend came to haunt me, “What do I take pride in in my life?” Is it my kids, business or achievements? Well of course I’ll take pride in my kids, and take credit every time they crack a joke. I would be full of pride when they came home scoring A’s, why not, “Wasn’t it i who raised them right?” But that requires a lot more work especially since not every day is a source of great pride. Business wasn’t really making any progress. To my friends I would never complain and actually say that I was content with what I made, but in my heart there was just no pride.

Achievements are what finally brought that about. Writing my thoughts, studying topics, helping others see change, those were truly satisfying to me. After personal therapy and self realization, I found myself speaking with clarity about mental health subjects, love and relationships to my understanding, God, people enjoy hearing smart things and interesting core ideas that lie behind them all. I started observing the world around me and connected to the innermost wisdom of the things that came up. Early on I would ask myself, “David, you’re smart, why aren’t you a millionaire?” and I never seemed to be able to find the answer. After some inner work on myself I started observing the triggers in my mind, noticing them arise seemingly out of nowhere, retracing the steps and fixing them as they came. I started noticing how anger was easier to quiet down than heartbreak, at least for myself. I knew in my heart what I needed help with and what I could overcome on my own, pinpointing what really bothers me became natural.

But the next step was inevitable, and I started analyzing everything. I was a great study in school and have exercised my brain in thought since an early age, so this was just automatic. I regained clarity in my mind by removing so many stresses that have occupied my mind. I like to think of the brain as a Simon game. We start with red, red blue, red blue red, red blue red white… We start with a thought about furniture, we think of furniture and the room, furniture room child’s bedroom, furniture room child and child’s smile when he sees it, repeat all to the next thought until we hit “buy now.” There are thoughts in our mind that keep on repeating, we never forget about the original color and we keep our minds stressed to remember the pattern from then until now. When someone has done a terrible deed, they can walk into their home later that day and decide to move on and never tell anyone, but the guilt of that action is so strong that they won’t be able to forget it. It will pop up every time he hugs his kids, wife and dog. It’s a color on the board that should have long passed but our brains stay in that pattern and wouldn’t allow us to move on.

I figured that out and now I’m left at peace. When there is no peace in my life I seek out the reason for it and amend it. What it did was make me forget how stress feels and now it gets a little harder to deal with stress when it comes up, but I think with the tools i’ve picked up along the way are super efficient to let me out of that stressful dungeon. I don’t need to remember all the simon colors from the beginning of time, all I need is to focus long enough on the task at hand right now, and the overall task of my life as a pretense. One of the things I’ve been observing for a while is the idea of time, time stresses people out, how needed is it? Another thing I realized about time was that sometimes the illusion seems to fly by, like on vacations, and when I lay my head down in class at 1:45 for half an hour, it was only 1:46 when I raised my head. How does that work? I realized that during vacations and good times we never look at our clock and watches, we’re all busy in the moment and only stop to think the night before the flight. “Where did the time go? I can’t believe I have to go home already!” But in the classroom all we do is look at the clock, waiting to do something more valuable with our time. So I decided to take a trip for a few days and test it for myself.

Day 1. I was fresh in the front seat, enjoying the New York State views, loving the peace and quiet and learning from an audiobook. Peaceful like never before, next thing I know, I’m in Ohio already. The next day I’m not so much involved in my listening, I’m changing songs every five minutes and am wishing for a coffee break after an hour drive. I stopped having fun and time started slowing down. So I stopped, since I had no destination to get to, took out my pad and started writing, next thing I know, two hours have passed. Time is flying again. I met a few strangers and from a five minute small talk we ended up sharing memories and I didn’t shut up for about an hour and a half. I leant what makes time fly, and how to make it stop flying. Making stops throughout my life has taught me to close chapters quicker. No longer am I burdened by old thoughts, I apologize immediately if I said something wrong and live in those moments of reflection.

Do I know what my purpose is or what my destiny will be? No. But I do know what makes me happy, so that’s what I’ll be doing until the next chapter in my life. Maybe I will be an astronaut or a sports athlete, or a master violinist, the possibilities are endless. I look forward to what life has in store for me and can’t wait to see how it will come about. I know that what I’m doing now somehow takes me to that next life, I’m not talking about the afterlife which my actions here definitely guide me toward, I’m referring to the next episode in my life. My actions will determine the recognition I will gain and where I can best utilize my skills. I’ll wait and see. Anyhow, that’s me in a nutshell, get to know me and let’s get crackin!