🌎 World Domination Newsletter #7

Published: Wed, 02/16/22

WORLD DOMINATION

BY JOE

02/16/22

The day when inspiration, motivation and availability collided.

What Should I Do?

Living in the status quo or taking action—both are a choice. If there is one conclusion that we should all be coming to accept, it is that everything is a choice. OUR choice.

Our choices have nothing to do with the choices of others.

Our outcomes have nothing to do with the opinions of others.

By the way, that is not a value-laden response. Good, bad or indifferent, the opinions of others should not be given an important vote in the path of our actions.

During the last two years, to one degree or another, we have been inundated with messages of fear. We have experienced first-hand the literary fallacy of “appeal to authority,” which impacted many personal choices in our lives. Maybe this should be recast as “appeal to fear.”

It is not easy to totally disregard the emotional impacts that this messaging may have had on us.

Here is my advice moving forward...

Recognize when you are falling into thinking primarily about “What bad things might happen" if you make some change in life that youo may be contemplating.

Every choice we make in life can have any number of outcomes. Some of the outcomes we control; some of the outcomes may be influenced by others or may even be serendipitous. We need simply to tip the odds in our favor.

The tone of this newsletter is to reach out a helping hand and help YOU to remember that YOU CAN DO THIS. Long lasting success is not going to be bestowed upon the unprepared or the weak of heart.

But, YOU CAN DO THIS.

I am blessed and thankful for those in my life. I am thankful for the freedoms I enjoy. Indeed, those freedoms don’t arrive “free of charge.”

Along with freedoms and choices comes the requisite responsibility of those choices.

This is why the opinions of others can never be given a seat at the table of those choices and the process we go through to make them.

We must own it—ALL of it.

It can be hard to climb out of the “status quo” rut. Read here how many of us now are dealing with the status quo. Unless of course, staying in the rut is your choice. However, make certain that that is a choice and it is truly yours.

I believe every moment is a moment of choice.

OUTSTANDING QUOTES

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” — Amelia Earhart

“On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, at the dawn of decision, sat down to wait, and waiting died.” — George W. Cecil

“There is no decision that we can make that doesn't come with some sort of balance or sacrifice.” — Simon Sinek

NUGGET OF WISDOM

Pay attention to your dreams.

However, keep in mind the advice I read a long time ago concerning “analyzing poetry." Don’t be so concerned about solving the puzzle of the poem. Instead, try and determine what the author “felt."

Learn about the author. Research her life; especially the time leading up to when the poetry was published. No, don’t analyze the poem as much as determine what the author might have been feeling.

Wouldn’t that be something that you would want readers to inquire about years after your writings were being read?

The same applies to your dreams. Don’t attempt to analyze your dreams in isolation. Try, at first, to get a “feel” for your emotional state before or after dreams.

If your have trouble remembering the dreams, put a notebook next to your bed. Just jot down whatever you remember but more importantly how you felt during the dream.

A mentor of mine once told me that the key to relationships is to be able to see ourselves as others see us.

Try to understand how we feel. This may well give us an inkling into how others feel about us.

FUN, FUN, FUN

This is the part where, hopefully, you can get to know me better—part of my story.

I do have to admit that many who don’t know me believe me to be a rather boring chap!

Although it doesn’t count as fun, but rather “relief." I was relieved when my check engine light was relatively cheaply resolved recently. (Ok, maybe I am boring!)

In the “single” side of my life, one thing I love to do for fun is to go on road trips.

I am sure that I will miss one or two, but I have taken “date road trips” during the last couple of years to Colorado, Tucson (to the Titan Missile Museum), Flagstaff (to the Lowell Observatory), Disneyland a couple of times, New Mexico, Las Vegas and probably a few more that I have forgotten (and which will get me in trouble with someone!).

When I lived in Maryland, I invited a young lady living in Tennessee to come visit for a New Year’s Eve trip to NYC. Well, it wasn’t a road trip that we drove, but it was via train. Still, lots of fun!

I truly enjoy these kinds of road trips because it gives us a chance to get to know each other—you know, kind of a captive audience.

I also made it out to Top Golf last week. That is a blast!

Send me a note back. What do you like to do for fun?

INSPIRATIONAL VIDEO

PLEASE WATCH THIS and, then, promise me that you will just stop whatever you are doing and just sit and think.

I can ONLY speak for myself, but in moments like this I realize that the path to making decisions is much clearer than I thought. Some would call it “connecting with the spirit." Others might call it “getting in touch with what is important.” Maybe it is just when we know who we are, we know what we need and want.

It is much less important what we call it, but it is that spiritual connection that shows us that when we let our emotions, for a moment, connect with our impact on others, then what we want for ourselves becomes clear because we are NOT focused on ourselves. Does this make sense?

READ THIS

The message here in the newsletter this week generally has to do with taking action in our lives. We have to put aside our possible temporary comfort (if we even have that) and to maintain our own personal status quo.

We are living in a time the details of which few of us could have anticipated two years ago. We all have choices to make or to at least consider.

There is no question, however, that we and frankly most of the inhabitants of the planet have been inundated with the “message of fear.”

Are we going to live our lives going forward holding onto that message? Do we succumb to the impacts of having fear thrust upon us? Or, do we take control?

We have to remember that each of us have lived through and made difficult decisions when we had no idea what the outcomes would be.

I am all too familiar with this myself. It is an important element of my story. I have several options with this educational business that are stimulating, full of potential and, yes, like any big decision, could result in short-term struggles.

I can relate to what so many are going through.

If I can offer advice, if you are considering post-Covid or Covid-related major changes, I would humbly suggest:

Make that decision with a relatively tight timeline for implementation. Otherwise, you will likely put it off. It is just human nature to do that.
Prepare. Prepare financially, physically, spiritually, however you need to.
Visualize your decision. This is important and probably needs a much longer discussion. Visualize your possible outcomes. How have you dealt with this kind of thing in the past? My guess is that you learned lessons and know how to get through challenges.
So, DO what you know you CAN do!

EXPERT ADVICE

In keeping with the focus of this edition of the newsletter, here are two experts, who by their motivation and taking action, are an example of advice just by accomplishing what they have.

We live in a time where, to be honest, many are seduced by short-term rewards, including public adulation; in short, oftentimes, form over content.

Some things have not changed however.

Long term success still requires hard work, quiet dedication and having an outstretched hand for others.

Oldest Law School Graduate in the World

Oldest Person to Graduate from a US Law School

I sat for quite a while thinking about the decision process that these two “wonders” went through.

Maybe it wasn’t a hard decision for them to tackle what they did. Maybe that is the key. Maybe it was not a hard decision. They believed in themselves and just decided to do what they did. I can not imagine all of the late nights doing battle with the desire to just go to bed and be late on an assignment.

My “expert advice” is to keep one’s eyes “down the runway of life." Always have a hand outstretched for those willing to ask for help.

Know yourself. Make that circle around your tribe. To do that, know what you need and want, ask for honest advice from those you trust and just ACT.

Sometimes, the answers are simpler in life than we think they are.

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