Process: Looking for the Good

we’re going to be talking about the, the process of seeing now, you ask what is this process of see, at one point in my life, I wasn’t always at this apex, this high energy, this high flow, you know, like all people, I found reasons to beat up on myself and look at the world from a perspective of scarcity and a little bit of fear. And one thing I began to notice and realize is that I had more power than I gave myself credit for, I didn’t have the power to snap my fingers, wiggle my nose, do some big Witched kind of stuff and make a million dollars. But I did have a power, I did have an ability, I did have the ability to make my myself feel things deliberately make myself view the world deliberately.

And it became a muscle that I chose to go forward and begin to learn how to practice, I had to exercise this muscle of seeing the world. As I know, it truly is versus what’s always told to me or that mental ideas that I practice. So this, who this process of seeing dates back to the summer 2006 I was living in a pedestrian place. So I could walk around and and talk with people interact with people. And so the process that I discovered it was just a game at first and then I realized that I felt really good playing it. Because typically in the past when I felt good it was when something was going to culminate. When something was finally in my experience, I had this conditional kind of happiness.

I didn’t let myself get too low, nor did I let myself get too high, I would find myself in fits of joy, or fits of agony. And I didn’t like that lack of control. And I use my imagination to come up with this process so I can begin to take control of how I feel. So if you find yourself in those less than admirable places, if you find yourself in not so shiny and bright places, I challenge you to pick up this process. So today this process may not be directly what you need. But I guarantee you it’s going to be something that you want to reach to. It’s going to make you feel good deliberately, or you’re going to use your mind and your environment to play this life giving game.

So it began One summer day in the summer of 2006. As I said, I decided to step out of my space into the world. And everybody who was walked by me, I found something to appreciate. At first, it was challenging because my mind had not practiced looking at people and seeing the best in them, looking at people and seeing the beauty in everybody, because you gotta realize every body is the most important person in their world. Their mothers love them. Their lovers love them. And I just wanted to three seconds to love them. Three seconds to see them as special as unique, as talented as fashionable as intelligent. No, I don’t know these people. So my version of my mind is merely fiction, but I walk past people and I admire their sense of style, their ability to put together an outfit, I looked at them and said, Wow, they’re smiling.

I walk past people and exercise and engaged my mind in a way that I’ve never done before. She’s very beautiful, her hair is nice, I love his shoes, and so on, and so on. I saw the kindness in people’s eyes, the kindness in their smile, I saw the ambition in their pace. And I made a mental note of it and kept moving and walking and kept adding up. So throughout the course of a day, I would make mental notes on over 200 people. And guess what I found myself in this rapturous place, this place that even joy or delight, or just raw happiness cannot truly compare to, I found a way to look in the world and look for things that were going to pluck on my heartstrings and make me smile.

But the things didn’t make me smile. This what I’m describing to you, is a product of focus. And so even today, walking knees, quote, unquote, mean streets of New York, I, I do this process. And it is such a beautiful process. And being a photographer now, with my camera that focuses itself, but I’m the see or I am the look, or I’m looking out into the world looking for the beauty that is in it. I’m not needing somebody to point it out I am that compass that points it out that points to my true north that points to seeing the world as somebody who loves these people I’m looking at can see them. This is the most immediate way to jumpstart positivity in your heart.

Now, nothing changed, your bank account didn’t change, your career didn’t change, you may not still be quote unquote, with the things that you desire. But in that time of focusing, in that time of appreciating that time for looking in the good of all the people that pass you the ingenuity of constructing an outfit, the upkeep of somebody’s upkeep, scuze me of somebody’s appearance, the way that they smile, the joy in our heart, the way that they help, maybe their child do something, all these things that I enumerated and enumerated and enumerated were my way of finding my whole space. And from that whole space, the momentum continues to move, it continues to open doors where there were none. It continues to make you magnetic, not in ways that can be listed not in ways that other people will truly understand.

But you will have a glow in your eye you will have a twinkle in your eye you will have a lilt in your step. You are the type of person doing this I want to hang out with and so even in more simple, elegant places, even in our work environment, we can exercise this even even around our family we can exercise this even around some of the most interesting people in the world you can find one thing to appreciate if you can’t where is your imagination. So this is the process of seeing and I share it with you take it do what you will with it. Engage with it, share it understand this come back to this if you find yourself in a not so great feeling place.