There is nothing more beautiful than a blank canvas.
With nothing but our own imagination, we can turn what was once blank into a thoughtful masterpiece.
Like an artist painting, a musician writing music, or an author writing a book, the blank canvas is their oyster and is a place to display the deepest levels of their imagination and thought process.
The blank canvas serves a model simply for the sheer fact that one can make whatever they want out of it.
As people, it is nice to think about the fact that we could potentially view life in this same manner.
Life could be whatever we make of it if we were truly willing to do the work on ourselves and become valuable assets to others.
However, the caveat to this is the simple fact that humans are much more complex than a blank canvas.
As humans, we are simultaneously processing thoughts, emotions, and everything going on around us all of the time.
Many of our thoughts are in fact fueled by our emotions and what we are feeling.
Our deepest insecurities can send us down a rabbit hole of negative thoughts and before you know it, the entire day is gone and you spent all day thinking about something insignificant.
It is natural for humans to try and justify things of insignificance - we all do it.
Just because somebody you don't even like said something about you that hurt your feelings isn't worth ruining your entire day over.
We can also get trapped in a train of insignificant thoughts for being too empathetic.
In other words, if you know you unintentionally hurt someones feelings, it can often cause the mind to wonder because you feel bad about doing something unintentionally.
When you get trapped on a train of insignificant thoughts over things you cannot control, you have to identify that train of thought as an insecurity.
Maybe the real reason you feel bad about unintentionally hurt someone's feelings is because you don't want them to see you in the negative light.
Maybe you are insecure about the way others view you.
This is very natural as humans because while the easy thing to say would be "don't care about what others think about you", it is more complex than this because we do have feelings and all of us want to feel validated by others in some way, shape, or form.
I also want to make clear that I am not stating to not be empathetic, because every one of us needs to be empathetic.
We need to be able to try and understand why people feel the way that they do to better understand them, but in order to do so, we must first understand why we are the way that we are.
This means understanding and coming to grips with our insecurities so that we can strategize our way around them and even use them to our advantage.
Being empathetic is a charming quality to have, but being overly empathetic to the point where you feel like you have to please people all the time will do you more harm than good.
This is why the blank canvas analogy is much more complex than we like to assume.
You can completely change everything around you, even move to a new state that you have never been to - your insecurities will still come along for the ride.
You will still carry unchecked luggage with you wherever you go if you cannot master it.
If you can master yourself, then like the artist with a blank canvas, the world is your oyster and you can make of it however you please.
We can turn our lives into a blank canvas and make whatever we want out of it if we are willing to show up and continue to do the work every single day.
Even on the days you feel the worst, dues are still to be paid.
Every single day when I open up this browser and see a blank sheet, I see it as a vehicle to put my thoughts down with the hopes of trying to inspire someone out there.
Whether it is writing these daily blogs or working on my book that I am in the process of writing (more to come on this later), I see a blank sheet of paper as a tool to utilize my imagination in hopes of helping someone out there.
I am human and have insecurities just like everyone else out there.
And many of my posts are inspired by my own insecurities and how I have been able to make sense of them.
For me however, I refuse to let my insecurities define me.
I look for avenues in which I can use my insecurities to be productive.
This is something I have found that works for me, and there is something out there for you as well waiting for you to discover it.
The blank canvas analogy can be applied to life when you find your means of being productive, otherwise known as finding your purpose.
Once you discover what fuels you, there is no stopping you from having the things you truly desire in life.