Meditation, Hypnosis, and Rock Stars – Thoughts from January 14 and 20, 2024

January 14, 2024

I was listening to a meditation today. Why I was listening to it is not what I’m talking about today. Part of it was a positive affirmation to tell yourself. I’ve heard people saying these things before, but I was noticing how the affirmations have no connection to reality. Telling yourself you’re great isn’t really changing your life. Coming up with concrete ways to fix problems in your life is what you need to improve your life. My cleaning up my office and organizing it helped focus me and removed stress when I’m in my office. I have a hard time telling myself things I know don’t change me as a person. Meditation works for some people, but not me.

I feel the same way about meditation as I do about hypnosis. No one has ever hypnotized me, and I don’t think anyone can hypnotize me. You have to give yourself over to someone else’s influence. I find most other people’s thoughts incomplete and illogical. One person talking is much less interesting than a conversation. My attention will wander from the hypnotizer. Hypnosis requires a lack of awareness of your body and the world around you. If I’m unaware of the world around me, I’m anxious about what I’m missing. When someone is trying to influence me, that is when they can influence the least.

I’ve been watching a show recently about a guy who doesn’t hide his thoughts about other people. I do this all the time in my head, but I keep most of my thoughts to myself. This helps me avoid conflicts and fights with other people. I tell my thoughts to people I know, but that gets me in trouble sometimes. Strangers only rarely get my innermost thoughts, especially if they are about a stupid thing they are doing. Being ignorant or illogical is not something people do because they’re not good people. They just don’t put as much thought into the things they do throughout their day. I can tell you the logic behind everything I do. Does this make it hard to make decisions? Pretty much.

It’s better when I have four paragraphs in a Thoughts paper. That’s my main purpose for starting this paragraph. I love playing with structure in my writing. I think this makes my writing interesting, but I’m sure some people find it annoying. If that’s you, this paragraph is probably not for you. It has a premise sentence that states a goal for the paragraph, but is that enough. Am I just rambling with no actual point? Should every paragraph read like a homework assignment? That would be boring. This paragraph has everything needed in a paragraph. It’s the best final paragraph I came up with. If don’t like it, just be glad it’s over.

January 20, 2024

Patti and I took some stuff to the Goodwill. I finished putting up more shelves in my office to display more of my toys. We’re slowly but surely cleaning up around the house. I got a loan so I could pay off high interest credit cards. Now, I have cleared the balance on the two cards I had. I will only use the card with the lower interest rate for some things, but pay it off every month. The day I got the payment from the loan, I noticed I wasn’t as stressed as I was before I paid off the credit cards. I might get a handle on this life thing yet.

I’ve been listening to an autobiography by Bono. If you don’t know, he’s the lead singer of the Irish band U2. They’re not my favorite band, but I know and like many of their songs. I’ve always been jealous of Bono’s vocal range. Wikipedia tells me he has a three octave range. I have a two and a half octave range, though I haven’t verified that in many years. The book is told through forty of his songs. There are many audio examples of the songs along with atmospheric sounds throughout. It reminded me of the Barbra Streisand audiobook.

Bono’s life is not that of a typical rock star. He never really got into drugs, has been married to his wife for many years, and has four kids. He’s definitely a rock star, but not a typical one. Like most rock stars, he has met many other famous people. Famous people meet other famous people because only another famous person can understand what fame is like. He met more famous people than himself at the beginning of his career and less famous people as his fame grew. Being a rock star is not a normal job, but he has remained as normal as you can get.