Control of Thought: The First Virtue of MAAT

 Long before the Torah was written, Maat was the moral and ethical system used in ancient Kemet (Egypt) more than 4,000 years ago. Maat has multiple meanings, but according to The Husia, its sacred text, it essentially means moral and spiritual rightness concerning the Divine, nature, and other humans. It is also an interrelated order of rightness that requires right relations with and right behaviors toward the Divine, nature, and other humans.

According to Maat, 10 Virtues define an ethical person, the first of which is control of thought. This ancient virtue is especially important for people today who seek to be entrepreneurs because how one thinks and what one thinks determines what one does. In accord with the ancient Kemetic understanding of the importance of controlling one’s thoughts, modern business leaders and coaches stress the importance of a successful person’s control of thought as the key to business and personal success. Modern business leaders are not alone in urging the necessity of a person’s control of thought.

Quantum physicists have shown that thoughts are the creative force in the universe. In other words, all created things were once conceived in thought before their appearance in material form. So, if one’s thoughts are negative, the universal Law of Attraction will draw negative created things, persons, and circumstances to that one. On the contrary, if one’s thoughts are positive, serving the needs of others and tending toward doing right, then that same universal Law of Attraction will draw positive created things, persons, and situations into that one’s orbit.

The first leadership lesson for the aspiring entrepreneur to learn here is that all thoughts of impossibility, doubt and failure with respect to starting a business—whether starting from scratch or buying a franchise or license—must be eliminated from your mind. You create your own success or failure by what thoughts you allow to stay in your head.

The second leadership lesson you must learn is that you must compete against yourself. Your true opponent does not exist outside yourself. You are the only one who can be your worst enemy by failing to believe in yourself and your capacity to succeed. Fight every thought that comes to you saying, “you can’t,” “you don’t have what it takes,” and “don’t take the risk.”

Dare to control your thoughts, and you will control your world!

The 12 Components of True Wealth

    True wealth is much more than financial wealth, although financial well-being is definitely a significant part of it. The first and most important component of true wealth is having a positive mental attitude. People who lack a positive mental attitude are miserable, despite whatever money they may have accumulated, while people who maintain a positive mental attitude attract wealth to themselves.

   The second and next most important component of true wealth is sound physical health. You can lose all your money and recover more than you lost, but if you lose your health, you’ve lost something that may never be regained. Spend time on maintaining and sustaining your health by eating healthy food and exercising often.

   The third component of true wealth is harmony in human relations. Harmonious and peaceful relationships, both in the family and then with business associates, lead to good will, a good reputation, cooperation and peace of mind—a personal state of well-being.

   The fourth component of true wealth is freedom from fear. No fearful person can enjoy life or its perks. Fear robs you of the ability to enjoy life to your fullest capacity and imprisons you in a dark place where there is no peace of mind or joy in being alive.

   The fifth component of true wealth is the hope of future achievement. It is this component that gets you out of bed every morning to pursue your dream of success. Without hope for the future, you are poverty-stricken even if you are sitting on millions of dollars.

   The sixth component of true wealth is the capacity for applied faith. The capacity for applied faith is your ability to believe in the dream you have for success to such an extent that you actually do something to make it happen. Applied faith is acting to make your dream a reality, while unapplied faith is merely wishing for something to happen for or to you without doing anything to make it happen.

   The seventh component of true wealth is the willingness to share your blessings. You cannot have true wealth if you’re stingy and completely self-absorbed. The truly wealthy person gives to and helps others achieve their goals.

   The eighth component of true wealth is to be engaged in a labor of love. True wealth is only experienced by those who are doing something good that they love. There is nothing in the world more satisfying than being able to do what you love and know that what you are doing is benefitting other people.

   The ninth component of true wealth is to have an open mind on all subjects and toward all people. The truly wealthy person does not think that the world is only as she believes it to be. She is open to learning from others, listening to their opinions, and not judging them for not seeing the world as she does or believing in the same things as she does. She accepts people for who they are, not for what she believes they ought to be, in her opinion.

   The tenth component of true wealth is complete self-discipline. The truly wealthy person is self-directed. He is not driven by the whims and demands of other people but by the goals he has set out to achieve. That is why he has mastered complete self-discipline: he refuses to allow any outside influence to distract him from the task of achieving his goals.

   The eleventh component of true wealth is wisdom with which to understand people. Your life in the world, in your family, and in your business consists of interacting with people. To gain true wealth, you must first study the people with whom you interact. But studying them will not give you the wisdom to understand them. The only way you can gain the wisdom to understand people is to put yourself in their place and deal with them from their—not your—point of view.

   The twelfth and final component of true wealth is financial security. It is not an accident or an oversight that financial security is the last component of true wealth. Every component that comes before it paves the way for financial security and guarantees that once you have the financial status you desire, you will be able to maintain it by treating everyone by the standard of the Golden Rule.

   True wealth begins on the inside, spiritually, before it manifests outside materially. Strive to accumulate spiritual wealth internally, and as you do, you will accumulate material wealth externally.

How to Get to Effective Communication

 There are always two problems that threaten to derail effective communication. The first problem is Perception—how we perceive the world and what’s going on in it around us.

The ancient aphorism, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” teaches us that we do not see the world as it really is but as WE ARE! So, to communicate effectively with another person, we must strive to see the world as that other person IS! We must, at the very least, attempt to walk a mile in that other person’s shoes to see the world as that other person does. We fail as leaders the moment we are deluded into thinking that what WE ARE is reality and everyone else’s view of the world is twisted at best and utterly warped at worst.

The second problem we must overcome to communicate effectively is the issue of Credibility. In a disagreement, each person believes that he or she is right and the other person is wrong. What makes things worse is that each person knows that she or he is right and can’t trust the other person because of this false knowledge.

The first way to overcome both problems is to develop God-Attitudes about people by: 1) Assuming the other person’s good faith, sincerity and sanity; 2) Caring about the relationship with the other person; 3) Desiring to resolve the differences by seeking to see from the other person’s viewpoint; and 4) Being prepared to change!

The second way to overcome Perception and Credibility problems is to develop God-Behaviors toward people by: 1) Listening to understand them from their point of view; 2) Speaking to be understood and not to argue or express disagreement with what the other says; 3) Starting the conversation from the common ground of agreement; and 4) Moving slowly to areas of disagreement. Don’t criticize, mock, or judge the other person—be as patient with the other person as God is with you!

Finally, you must understand that the way to become effective when you communicate is to increase your influence by mastering the process of leadership development and growth. To do this, you must discipline yourself to work with a leadership coach who will help you to master the art of communication—One Day at a Time!

The Threat and Promise of Change

 For many people, the most frightening and personally threatening thing, as well as the most exhilarating and personally satisfying thing they can experience in life, is change. Change is motion—another definition of what it means to be alive. And since change is the process of being alive, it is both a threat and a promise.

The threat of change is rooted in fear and uncertainty: uncertainty that disorients, causes acute anxiety, and raises disturbing questions about who you are. Therefore, the very notion of change in any quarter threatens to destabilize you, the way you see the world, and how you see yourself in that world. When the threat of change comes toward you, your only question is, “What will become of me?” However, there’s another side to the threat of change—its promise. When the promise of change comes toward you, your only question is, “What will I become?”  

The promise of change is rooted in your unspoken desire to actually know, understand, and unabashedly celebrate who you are, your place and space in the world, and your mission and calling in life. Therefore, the promise of change is your opportunity to experience yourself, others, and the world at large first-hand and unmediated by the artificial boundaries and limitations of your upbringing, education, and training. The promise of change offers you a new lens through which you can perceive what is going on around you. It provides you with choices that you never imagined you had. It offers opportunities that have been hiding from you in plain sight, and provides you with tools that can move you from where you are to where you’d really rather be.

The promise of change exploits your raw materials of fear and doubt, and from them manufactures products and services that provide you places of safety, areas of knowing and vistas of clarity. The promise of change is the hope that propels you on the quest to live a full, meaningful and productive life that you actually get a chance to enjoy.

Investing in your personal growth offers you the promise of positive change in your life, as well as the vehicle you can use to get to your destination of success. Don’t focus on the threat of change. Think about the promise of change that will come to your life as a result of seeing yourself as worthy of investment. Take the leap of faith and discover your own hidden potential.

The Universal Law of Leadership

 The Universal Law of Leadership teaches that your ability to develop leadership skills is crucial to becoming a person who maximizes personal development and highest and best use of yourself, the resources you receive, and the resources you create for the benefit of yourself and your family.

Leadership has been defined by many people in many different ways. One great definition of leadership is "communicating to people their inestimable worth and unlimited potential to such an extent that they actually come to see it in themselves." (This definition of leadership is perfect for creating a healthy home environment for the entire family and especially for raising self-confident children!) Many others have said that leadership is the function of those who guide, direct, or otherwise control the activities of others.

At a fundamental level, however, leadership simply means having influence that affects the behavior and/or world-view of others within a particular sphere—whether that influence is negative or positive.

Negative leadership is coercive—i.e., it requires raw power (external force) to maintain and sustain itself. Examples of negative leadership include: 1) the power of the gun—“Do what I say or I’ll blow your brains out”; 2) the power of the law—“Do what I say or I’ll lock you up or shoot you down”; 3) the power of economic reprisal—“Do what I say or I’ll fire you—better yet, I won’t hire you in the first place”; and 4) the power of hate propaganda that exploits our fears—“Do what I say or illegal aliens, LGBTQ+ people, Muslims, and terrorists will take over ‘our’ country.”

Many people who follow negative leadership do so because they feel forced (threatened) to do so for personal survival, political, economic, social, or religion-based reasons.

Positive leadership, on the other hand, is inspirational—i.e., it requires soul power (internal values) to perpetuate itself. Examples of positive leadership include the power of being, the power of behaving, the power of belonging, and the power of believing.

The power of being is the God-given power that you have by your having been created in the very image and likeness of God—i.e., you have the capacity (power) to bring into being what does not presently exist in the material world. You have the power of imagination, which leads to innovation and drives all creativity.

The power of behaving is your ability to decide how you will act on your own and in concert with others—it is freedom, the power to choose.

The power of belonging is the strength you feel when you work together with others to accomplish goals which you could not possibly accomplish by yourself. It is cooperation which produces the power of the Master Mind—collective thinking that adds the Universal Mind to the group and empowers the group to produce new ideas, products, services and new approaches to problem-solving.

Finally, the power of believing is the catalyst that allows you to overcome every obstacle in order to achieve your goals—it is faith, the power to see and bring into being the invisible. People who follow positive leadership do so because it resonates with their own internal value system and because they choose—in freedom—to follow.

The Universal Law of Abundance

 The Universal Law of Abundance teaches us that we live in a world of abundance, not lack. All the water that has ever been on planet Earth is still here. Although it is constantly recycling itself and changing its form from liquid to solid to steam and gas, not one new drop of water is added to our water supply, nor is one old drop of water subtracted from our supply. We are drinking the same water that our ancestors drank.

In the same way, all the gold that has ever been on this planet is still here. All the wealth amassed on this planet is still here. So, everything that has always been here is still here, whether in original or transmuted form. Consequently, we lack nothing related to resources available to us.

Now, if you accept this universal foundational principle, it will affect the way you think in two specific ways. First, you will tend to be upbeat and grateful, and, more likely than not, you will feel optimistic with hopeful expectancy about your future. Second, you will have a positive attitude that whatever your goals in life, you will succeed in achieving them.

Your mindset—the way you think and what you think most about—determines what you believe, regardless of the facts. Even if there is no lack, but you believe in your mind that there is lack, then—despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary—you will continue to see every glass of water as half-empty and on its way to being emptied forever. Accordingly, a mindset of lack produces the opposite of abundance for you, supports your excuses for not developing yourself to your greatest potential, and keeps you from leveraging the resources that you already have in hand. In addition, a mindset of lack promotes the false belief that you are powerless to create your own resources.

People who believe in lack begin most of their conversations with “If I only had this or that,” or “if those people over there would only stop doing this and start doing that, I could do thus and so.”

If you decide not to accept the Universal Law of Abundance, then it will affect your mindset in two specific ways. First, you will tend to be downcast and ungrateful, and more likely than not, you will feel pessimistic about your future. Second, you will have a negative attitude that whatever your goals in life, you will not succeed in achieving them.

If you believe you can be, do, and have more in life, then you can be, do, and have more. If you believe that you can’t be, do, and have more in life, then you can’t be, do, or have more. The way you think—your mindset—determines your destiny.

The ancient aphorism is still true: “As a [woman] man thinks in [her] his heart, so is [she] he.”

The Law of Speech

 One of the open “secrets” of success that is an enormous help to entrepreneurs is the Law of Speech. The Law of Speech says that whatever you speak about yourself, your family, circumstances, or situations will come to be because you have God’s DNA, His power of speech. Everything that was created by God, except for humankind, was created by God’s word—His speech. Speech has more power than anything else because it brings into being whatever is consistently spoken.

Speech does not follow religious guidelines or moral laws. It is a universal law that is morally neutral. It is available to you and everyone else. Those who use the law well prosper. Those you don’t, fail. Whatever you speak continuously will come into existence, whether the spoken thing is good, bad, or indifferent. The Law of Speech is one of the central laws that drive systems, products, and service innovations. New systems, products, and services begin their existence as non-material ideas that people dare to speak repeatedly. Invention is the product of speaking the rearrangement of known created things into a new form. It is the power source that God has placed in your hands that allows you to create your own future.

When you understand the Law of Speech, it teaches you to promote your own health and welfare. Such positive speech sets the atmosphere in which all the powers in the universe are unleashed to create for you what you continue to speak. But there is more.

The Law of Speech requires that you speak wholeness and commit your active intention—your focused life force—to the object of your speech. Your speech must be accompanied by specific actions aligned with what you have spoken. Speech without deeds is useless in the same way that faith without deeds has no value. Positive speech overcomes the inertia of the status quo to produce the desired new outcome. That is why focused attention (intention) is the catalyst that brings about the birth of the created thing set in motion by positive speech followed by positive action.

   

You must understand that successful entrepreneurs do not have in their vocabulary such phrases as I can’t, it’s impossible, I don’t deserve and I don’t believe. These are the limiting negative words that people who don’t dare to take responsibility for their own lives and livelihoods use to justify their enslavement in a prison of self-loathing, self-doubt, and unbelief in their own unlimited possibility as creators, inventors, and innovators.

If you are looking for a way to free yourself from the economic and social limitations affecting your life, use your positive speech and create the future you want for yourself. Speak your dream, write it down, and then work toward it!

Face Your Basic Fears

 If you’re honest with yourself, you must admit that there are fears that attempt to creep into your consciousness, particularly when you are considering doing something new. These fears have a dual purpose: 1) to keep you from enjoying life now to its fullest; and 2) to lure you into placing them in your subconscious mind through inordinate worry about them in order that they may contribute to your early demise. In order to achieve the greatest level of success possible, you must challenge these fears and conquer them completely. Otherwise, they will rob you of the personal joy and satisfaction of all that you have already accomplished and inhibit your belief that you can achieve an even greater level of personal success in the future. The 7 Basic Fears include: criticism, ostracism, being alone, losing everything, aging, having debilitating sickness and death.

No one enjoys being criticized, particularly when it is not constructive—and most of the criticism people will give you tends to be less than helpful and more an opportunity for them to share their negative thoughts about you.  But you must decide that you cannot let your fear of criticism keep you from your destiny. The lesson you must learn is that people will criticize you whatever you choose to do or not do. If you make or refuse to make decisions based on whether or not you will be criticized, then you will forever have to change whatever course you take whenever the criticism gets too harsh. The antidote to this fear of criticism is to realize that since you’re subject to criticism no matter what you do, you need to do whatever you believe will get you to the personal success you seek. You do have a choice:  you can be criticized for succeeding or failing. Choose the former!

If you’re not careful, your fear of ostracism—being put out, separated from the company of those you admire—can work to thwart your goal of becoming successful. If your sense of who you are requires the approval of others to validate you, then you will make decisions not based on what you believe to be the right or best choices, but on the responses of your social validators. In that case, you’re not functioning as a self-determining subject, but rather, as an other-directed object, devoid of the capacity of agency that defines your humanity in a state of freedom.

The fear of being alone is so common in our society that people rush into meaningless and unfulfilling relationships in order to avoid it. In fact, countless people stay in unrewarding and lifeless relationships just so they won’t experience being alone. Somewhere deep in the recesses of our brains is this fear of abandonment, of being left alone forever. As with any fear you may experience, the first step is to acknowledge it and seek to discover what in your past caused this fear. Discovering the root cause of this fear is important for gaining the confidence you need to overcome it.

You cannot get to personal success without taking risks—large, life-changing risks. The risks related to moving forward, however, are not as scary or difficult to face and overcome as the risks associated with leaving the comfort zone of your present experience. If you’re not careful, the fear of leaving and losing everything you have will keep you from moving into the future where your success lies. In order to take any journey, you must leave where you are to get where you’re going.

Your fear of losing everything you know, understand and with which you’re familiar rears its ugly head whenever you’re required to move away from your past in order to embrace your future. Countless people let this fear of losing everything inhibit them from risking the loss of their current life to gain the benefit of a better, more fulfilling life. Success cannot be achieved without taking significant personal risks—not once, but over and over again.

Fear of aging is not something that crosses the minds of young people: they presume that they will be young forever. But for people over the age of 35, there just may be some momentary, fleeting thoughts about what life will be like when they’re older.

Modern medicine has actually heightened the fear of aging for many people. Because medical science has found ways to treat chronic illness and prolong life, many people are worried about outliving their resources. So the thought of aging brings with it the fear of ending up in poverty, regardless of the financial success that may have been part of life when they were younger. You must decide not to worry or fret about what might happen to you when you’re 95. You must believe that you will never get old until you decide to be old—which may be when you’re 137!

The fear of contracting or inheriting a debilitating sickness is more on the minds of aging people and younger persons who are aware of their family medical history than on people in the population generally. This fear has the ability to limit people’s choices for themselves today because they feel tethered to inevitable time-lines in which they see themselves crippled physically, mentally and/or emotionally tomorrow. Consequently, they make what they believe to be “safe” choices—not the choices they would even consider for themselves if the fear of a debilitating sickness were not hanging over their heads.

Like every other fear that stands in the way of your success, this fear must be faced squarely and conquered. You must decide and focus your thoughts on the fact of your long-term health and well-being. You must live your life believing that nothing can keep you from achieving your destiny. Such an attitude will allow you—in the worst case scenario—to adjust to whatever happens to you and keep moving forward into the future, undeterred. Your Faith and Iron Will are sufficient to get you where you desire to be in life.

Death is probably the biggest fear that most people have. It can come at any moment and it is usually unexpected. There is a real sense in which each of the six fears mentioned before this one have direct, though long, tendrils that connect to your fear of death—the final frontier. For example, your fears of criticism and ostracism are related to your not wanting to experience social death. Your fears of being alone and losing everything mirror your views about the isolation and the “You can’t take it with you when you go” reality of physical death. Finally, your fears of aging and debilitating sickness are metaphors for the emotional and psychological death that you view as an inevitable precursor to death itself.

Although a discussion about the fear of death is difficult, you must pursue and master it if you seek to be personally successful. Even when you tell yourself that death is a natural part of living, it doesn’t get at the heart of your fear of death. Fear of death is linked to a fear that you will not be able to accomplish all the things you have planned to do in your life. Therefore, your fear of death is less about the process of dying and much more about not having enough time to finish what you’ve started.

Examine your fear. You will discover that the “dis-ease” the fear causes you is illusory. When you think about it, you must admit that you don’t care, deep down, whether you finish or not. If you finish, you’ll be looking for your next big project. If you don’t finish, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that death came to you while you were working on the project at hand. In either case, life is the process of living, learning, and loving, and not necessarily finishing a particular task or project. In this context, finishing is of no importance whatsoever.

If you’re ready to face and overcome the fears holding you back from a more prosperous, meaningful, and happy life, then consider contacting me to find out whether you are a good fit for me to take you on as a coaching client. But, I warn you: I don’t take on everyone—“Many are called, but few are chosen.” I’m only interested in serious people with the courage and tenacity to change, stretch themselves, and be teachable. 

Concentrate on a Worthy Dream

   One of the gifts given to human beings is the ability to imagine a situation, circumstance, or reality that we have never experienced in the past. It is the gift of seeing the future, as well as the capacity to create what we have seen internally into a visible manifestation that we and others can see externally. Our endowments of imagination and creativity are proof that we all have God’s DNA within us. It is also evidence that the Law of Concentration is immutable.

  The Law of Concentration teaches that it is the focused attention of your imagination that creates the future. It is your disciplined thought life that is the major determinant of your destiny. In his classic work, The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons, Napoleon Hill defined concentration as follows:

Concentration is the act of focusing the mind upon a given desire until ways and means for its realization have been worked out and successfully put into operation. (p. 404)

 Hill argued that auto-suggestion—i.e., embedding the desires of your imagination into your subconscious mind—and habit are the two pillars upon which concentration, as he defined it, takes root.

   Whatever you think and practice repeatedly is stored in your subconscious and acts silently and relentlessly to bring about the realization, in concrete form, of the object of your imagination. Thus, concentration is the habit of fixing in your mind the thoughts, desires and creations of your imagination and insisting on their reality. You can do this because of the DNA of God that is within you and because of the unchanging nature of the universal Law of Concentration.

   The Apostle Paul made this same point in an even larger context:

As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He [Abraham] is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” (Romans 4: 17, 18 NIV)

    In this passage, Paul speaks of God’s having told Abraham that he was already a father of many nations at a time when Abraham had no children. Just as God spoke to Abraham’s future as if it were in present existence, and Abraham believed in and relied on God’s pronouncement, so too, can you imagine and speak to your future state as if it were already in existence and believe in and rely on what you have spoken to be actualized in your future.

   However, as the biblical passage maintains, in order to concentrate on your desires in a way that will bring results, you must believe that what you desire or what you are creating in your imagination will come to fruition. This principle of calling things not yet in being as though they already exist is content-neutral. In other words, it doesn’t matter what the object of the calling is. For example, if you keep calling yourself sick or inept or clumsy, you will eventually get sick, be inept, and become clumsy. If you call yourself a failure at something, you will most assuredly fail at that thing. On the contrary, if you call yourself well, you will indeed be well, even if you’re sick right now.

   What you believe and what you speak about what you believe will determine the content of your future. So, the issue of concentration is a double-edged sword. If you concentrate on the bad and the destructive dream, you will have it. If you concentrate on the good and the constructive dream, you will have it. The Law of Concentration teaches that you have unfettered freedom and enormous power—the freedom to choose what your life will be and the power to create your own future as you decide it will be. The real crossroads issue that emerges is whether you wish to take full responsibility for your own life or whether you will choose to behave as if you were powerless. If you choose the former road, the sky is the limit for the dream you create and on which you concentrate. If you choose the latter, you will become the victim you have chosen to be and suffer the consequences of remaining in a state of self-induced powerlessness. Thus, the Law of Concentration admonishes you to choose the dream upon which you concentrate carefully, because you will create for yourself and inherit whatever dream you make a habit of meditating on and placing into your subconscious mind.

   I have three worthy dreams on which I am concentrating. My first dream is to be the catalyst that positively impacts the lives of others through offering them world-class speaking, teaching, training, and coaching services. My second worthy dream is to model what I speak, teach, train, and coach. My third worthy dream is to gain your respect, confidence, and trust by keeping my promise to be transparent and honest with you throughout our relationship and to focus my energies on helping you to be all that you can be.

Develop Self-Mastery, Interdependence, and Reflection

    Successful entrepreneurs develop Self-Mastery. Self-mastery is the first and deepest foundational building block for your business success. It is taking complete responsibility for your own behavior and deciding to control your own reactions to outside pressures. This means that you will not blame others for your past mistakes and your present circumstances. You will use your own self-awareness, self-knowledge, imagination, conscience, and willpower to be self-determining and proactive. Self-Mastery says, “My success depends on me.”

   Successful entrepreneurs seek Interdependence. Interdependence is the second layer of foundational building blocks after obtaining Self-Mastery. Interdependence teaches you to develop strategic relationships with key people and to understand that you need them to help you create successful business outcomes. Once you have achieved Self-Mastery, you will realize that you cannot attain maximum effectiveness by your own thinking and behaving alone. You learn that by working in concert with others while being personally responsible for your own actions, a team mentality develops. The team mentality allows you and every member of the team to contribute to the effort at maximum levels and to experience maximum satisfaction from the process of working together.

   Successful entrepreneurs use Reflection to improve business outcomes. Reflection is the “beyond myself, my family, my community and my organization” third course of foundational building block that requires interdependent organizational strategic partners to function as a “think-tank.” The goal of this Reflection is to think and plan together in new ways, using new approaches to create new products, services, and solutions that meet needs and effectively address common problems. At this foundational level, there is a collective focus on working together to leverage the strengths of each group involved to maximize their collective profitability in their particular sphere of influence.

   I can help you develop Self-Mastery and Reflection as your coach, and you will develop the skill of Interdependence when you join one of my Mastermind groups.

Discover Who You Are!

    The “Who am I?” question is the most significant question you can ask because the answer to that question describes the soil—your identity (the real YOU)—that must be prepared for any planting that will be done in your life. When it comes to the values you hold and the behaviors you practice, with patience and perseverance, you can always find most answers within yourself or your immediate family. But the “Who am I?” question—the question related to the essence of your existence—has answers only you can answer. You cannot look outside yourself to discover who you are. The Law of Your Own Being is inside you. It lies deep beneath the idea of your identity that you learned from your parents, teachers, friends, and foes. You cannot rely on others' ideas about who you are. 

   Many external voices are telling you who you are: your family, the schools you attended, your religious institutions, and advertising and commercial messages, to name just a few of the myriad voices that scream every day into your ears that you are what they say you are. So the real challenge is finding the external voice that tells you the whole truth, the objective, unembellished, certain, nothing-in-it-for-the-truth-teller truth. To be the voice of truth, this voice must speak based on irrefutable laws of nature—laws that have the same weight as the laws of gravity, physics, and mathematics.

   Such a voice is found in the Law of Attraction. What you focus your mind, your feelings, emotions, and actions on is what is drawn to and attracted to you by you. So, one way to find out who you are is to consider carefully and study the people, places, and things that come into your life. The old wisdom proverb says, “As a woman thinks, so is she.” In other words, at this very moment of your life, you are what you have thought, felt, and behaved yourself to be. However, the great thing about life is that nothing stays the same.

   The Law of Change teaches you that you cannot and will not stay where you are. Change will impact you and force you into being and doing more than you are being and doing right now. Change will use such events as death or disaster, injury or accident, loss of income or an increase in your family’s budget to make you change. Whether you like it or not, you are a person who is undergoing the process of change!

   Be proactive and change yourself! In fact, you’re already in the change process—you’re looking at starting a business of your own. That’s certainly a change from what you were thinking at an earlier stage of your life. The fact that you are changing means that you are a person who is ever-changing, ever-evolving, and ever moving toward a definite goal—even if that goal is not very clear to you yet.

   The Law of the Farmer teaches that you cannot begin to plant any seeds until you have prepared the soil to receive them. The Law of the Farmer also teaches that what you plant today in a field will not grow today, nor will what you harvest from that field in the future bear any resemblance to what you planted today. Finally, the Law of the Farmer teaches that crops take a lot of time to grow. Accordingly, you have to develop the patience to wait for whatever you have planted to grow in its own time—it can’t be rushed. It must grow at its own pace.

   In the same way, you must learn to be patient with yourself as you grow the business you intend to own—you will not conquer your bad habits or develop an Entrepreneurial Mindset overnight. But you must start by planting seeds in the ground of your mind—seeds that will yield a harvest that is the development of your character.

   I can help you discover who you are by raising your awareness and holding you accountable for keeping the promises you make to yourself to know yourself so you can grow yourself. 

Take Small, Deliberate Steps to Reach Your Goal

 Wherever you are on your life’s journey, do what’s at your hand to do. Don’t sit around waiting for your purpose in life to show up one day. Seek it; pursue it. The way to go after your destiny is to take small, deliberate steps to explore what interests you. Some people know what their passion is early in life and can run with that passion. But if you happen to have several interests, none of which is so compelling that you would give every other interest up to follow one, then simply take each interest, one by one, and take one action each day to explore it.

Your commitment to do just one act every day related to a goal you have set for yourself has powerful significance. You may begin with only one step that you can see ahead of you. But after you take the first step—and sometimes it’s the only step you can see to take—another step, not visible to you before you took the first step, will emerge for you to take. You may never be able to fully script your life’s journey in advance, but it will always emerge as you move forward, one step at a time. It’s like driving through a thick fog that has been forecast to hang around for several days. You can decide to pull to the side of the road and wait until the fog lifts, or you can drive slowly in faith and inch toward your destination. However, unlike a fog, life does not lift in several days—it tends to go on interminably!

So, you are forced to come to grips with the Law of Faith. You can’t take a step forward in the fog or the dark or into the unknown without having accepted the Law of Faith at some level. Somewhere inside of you, you have to believe that what you’re doing will turn out right, whether you can see clearly now or not. Living by the Law of Faith means simply believing that your life has meaning and purpose, even if you don’t know what it is yet. The Law of Faith teaches you that you don’t have to know—indeed, you cannot know—everything. All you need to know is that if you muster the courage to move ahead, the way will be opened for you to advance. The Law of Faith is completely unrelated to your religion or religious preference or nonpreference—it is related to your belief in you and your knowing that you are not alone in the universe. There is help out there, waiting for you to summon it and appropriate it. The biblical definition of the Law of Faith is still true:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith, we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Hebrews 11: 1-3 NIV)

Every person who has achieved success at any level has believed that whatever his or her goals in life were, they were achievable. In almost every case, great achievement has come to those who moved past criticism and the negative comments of those who kept telling them that what they were after was impossible to attain. What drove them on was their adherence to the Law of Faith.

Every solid created thing that you can see with your eyes and touch with your hands is made up of things that you can’t see with your eyes or touch with your hands. All matter is made up of elements that are made up of atoms and their three components: protons, neutrons, and electrons—none of which is visible to the naked eye. In the same way, every new invention, every great idea, and every forward advance in science begins in the invisible realm and only later manifests itself in the visible realm. In other words, everything that comes into existence begins with and is brought to its birth through the Law of Faith. But, that’s just the beginning—and not the end—of the story, as your own life experience and the biblical record maintain:

In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. (James 2:17 NIV)

So, the Law of Faith teaches you that faith alone is insufficient to get you where you want and need to be. You must act—do something—that puts your faith into action. If you say you have faith that the big chair in the corner can hold your weight, and yet you refuse to sit in the chair, then you don’t really believe the chair can hold your weight. You cannot think yourself to success without taking relevant and timely action to get there. Your faith inspires you to take one step at a time to get to your next destination. But it is your action spurred on by your faith in yourself that takes you to the next destination!

If you have enough faith in yourself to accept the challenge of being teachable, accountable, and willing to do what it takes to succeed, I pledge that I will do all in my power to help you succeed in business and in your life.

Thought and Feeling: Necessary Siamese Twins

 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me, you can do nothing.  John 15:5

  In your time of ignorance and imperfect realization of your own power of Thought, you created negative forms and thought life into them. You created forms of death, sickness, sorrow, trouble, and limitation and then you thought life into them. These forms became your circumstances.

   However nonexistent these forms were in themselves, to you they became realities that shadowed your otherwise clear path and caused you difficulties that limited your ability to be, do, and have more of an abundant life.

   Now that you know better, you must stop giving the negative an affirmative force that does not belong to it. Think: the negative is not-being, the absence of all that constitutes being. Left to itself, it remains in its own nothingness. The negative only assumes form and activity when you give these to it through your own Thoughts.

   This is the quintessential reason why you must control your Thoughts. It is the only instrument you have that works with the greatest certainty of the outcome—whether limitation if you think limitation, or expansion, if you think expansion.

   Your Thoughts transmuted into feelings, are the only magnets that can attract the conditions and circumstances you desire. Thought is a created thing, but Thought translated into feeling is a greater and more powerful thing.

   Your greatest challenge is to think unrestricted by your current circumstances. This does not mean ignoring your situation, but it does mean exercising your Thoughts beyond the bounds and limitations of your present circumstances.

   Think from your center where there are no boundaries or limitations. Think from Unity and Oneness with the All-Originating Spirit of God, and from the light—the mystery of Jesus—within you.

   You have the power to determine what your circumstances will be by simply speaking and affirming your desire. Once you have done this, you can rest assured that whatever must happen to make your desire manifest will happen. As the scripture says: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the LORD.” (Zechariah 4:6)

   When you give thought to your desired circumstances, do not limit your Thoughts to specifics, but think more broadly. For example, rather than think about a specific house in a specific location that you want, think of houses in general that have the amenities and external locations that appeal to you.

   Think life in all its fullness, together with the perfect blend of conditions which include health, wealth, and a multitude of other good things.

   Think illumination, harmony, prosperity, joy, peace, happiness, and love. Think the things and not this or that specific condition of them. By Universal Law, these things will form themselves into the shapes that best suit you.

A Recipe for Self-Love

 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. Genesis 1:26

   You need to be confident that there is clear, unchallenged archaeological and anthropological evidence first brought to light by British anthropologist Dr. L.S.B. Leakey and followed by African scholar Cheikh Anta Diop, that the oldest fossil remains of a human being were found in sub-Saharan East Africa. Further, more recent DNA research has revealed that the first woman who lived on this planet carried the universal gene that is common to every racial grouping on Earth. This woman—even geneticists call her Eve—was a Black-skinned, black-haired woman.

   In the first five verses of Genesis chapter 1, God creates the heaven and the earth, causes light to shine on the primordial darkness, separates light from darkness, and gives each a name. And thus ends the first creative day. There is no biblical or scientific evidence to suggest that what is described in verses 1 through 5 happened in 24 hours. In fact, it could not have happened in 24 hours because there was no sun or moon yet created, and therefore no way to measure 24 hours.

   The first day could have been millions or billions of years long. But, if you want to believe that the first day was 24 hours long, then praise the Lord and pass the donuts! If you do not believe that the first day was 24 hours long, then praise the Lord and pass the donuts! What you believe about this has nothing to do with your personal expansion today.

   In all of God’s creative work from verses 1 through 25, He merely speaks “Let there be” and whatever He says comes to be. It is not until verse 26 above, that God speaks different creative words. God does not say, “Let there be humankind.” Rather, He says, “Let us make humankind.”

   In essence, the All-Originating Spirit of God is saying to you, “You were too important to me to leave to the impersonal ‘Let there be’ commands: I Personally made you like Myself—creative in and of yourself and free from antecedent limiting conditions.”

   Genesis, chapter 1, is not about humankind—it is about the character of the All-Originating Spirit of God. Only humankind is created in the image and likeness of the All-Originating Spirit of God. Thus, your identity rests in the personality, character traits, and identity of God. You cannot know who you are without understanding who the All-Originating Spirit of God is.

   The key that will open the door to your unlimited potential for personal expansion will appear when you accept the fact that you are—in your individualized, personal microcosm—precisely what the All-Originating Spirit of God is in Unindividualized, Universal Macrocosm.

The Meaning of Alpha and Omega

 I am the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

Revelation 22:13

    What does Alpha and Omega mean concerning you? It means the entire series of causation from the first originating movement to the final completed result. Whether you consider it on the Universal scale of creating a universe or on your own individual scale of building a house: everything has its origin in an idea—a Thought—and it has its completion in the manifestation of that idea (Thought) in form. Many intermediate stages are necessary, but the Alpha and Omega of the series are the Thought and the Thing. This is evidence that, in essence, the Thing already existed in the Thought. Omega is already potential in Alpha.

   To your life, this means that if there is an Alpha, the Omega must already be in it. The end always has its locus in the beginning. So, in terms of you, it means that where you start today counts. Each new day is a fresh starting point—a new Alpha. The Omega that was in your Alpha of yesterday will not be present in today’s Alpha if you have changed your Alpha course since yesterday.

   The manifestations of this truth for you are enormous. If you have been on the wrong track for years, you can get on the right track today. More than that, you can avoid the Omega that was in your past Alpha of thinking and behavior. On the other hand, if you leave the right track and choose the wrong track today, the Omega of good that you had been building up over time will be replaced by the Omega of bad inherent in the Alpha you chose today.

   The Alpha and Omega in your life function according to how you work with the Law of Cause and Effect. It is as basic a Law as “What you plant, you will harvest,” and “As a man thinks, so is he.”

   You must lay hold of this general principle that the Thing already exists in the Thought. The meaning of a general principle is that it can be applied anywhere and everywhere. You are the most important person you must deal with now and in the future. So, you must begin to see the Alpha and Omega in terms of your own potential.

   In the apostle John’s vision in the book of Revelation, the one who spoke the words in the above Scripture is described as “like a son of man”—i.e., however transcendent the appearance in the vision, it is essentially human and suggests the presence of the Universal Principle at the individual human level. But the figure in the apocalyptic vision is not a human being as you would ordinarily know and recognize her or him. The figure is that of Omega as it exists enshrined in Alpha. It is the Ideal You, in your future evolved state as it exists in the Divine Mind which was manifested in objective form to John’s eyes. It was presented as the Alpha and Omega of that Ideal in all the majesty of the Divine glory.

   If you can grasp the truth that the Thing is already existent in the Thought, then you should find it a short leap of faith from there for you to see that this transcendent Ideal You already exists in the All-Originating Spirit of God’s Mind. If on the plane of the Absolute, there is no space-time continuum, but only an everlasting now, then it follows that your evolved and Glorified Self is a present fact in the Divine Mind.

   But if it is true that the Thing exists in the Thought, it must equally be true that the Thought finds form in the Thing. Since Things exist under conditions of time and space—while Thought does not—Things are necessarily subject to the Law of Growth. While the essence of the Thing in the Thought is perfect from the beginning, the expression of the Thought in the Thing is a matter of growth.        

In the Beginning

 In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1:1

    Before there was anything anywhere at all, there was the Word. So, the beginning referred to in the above passage of Scripture is not the beginning of time as we know it, or the Word, but rather the story of the beginning of the universe which we now inhabit. The Word is the voice of God who is with God and existed as God before the universe was created. The Word brought into being all that was brought into being by the sound emanating from the Word—“Let there be”—after the Spirit of God hovered or was in motion (Genesis 1:2-3).

   Only after the Word “spoke”—generated sound—did anything come into being that was not in being before the Word “spoke.” So, a discussion of what modern science has found to be the relationship between sound and first cause is appropriate.

   Modern science acknowledges that every chemical atom is made up of particles of only one substance—the Original or Primary Substance—that seems to occupy all space-time. The specific identity of a given atom, whether it turns out to be iron, phosphorous, hydrogen, or some other substance, depends solely on how many particles of negatively charged electricity revolve around a center of positively charged electricity, and the rate of speed at which they move.

   Modern science also acknowledges that all material substance, inanimate matter as well as animate or living matter, has no inherent qualities or characteristics that distinguish one part of this Original or Primary Substance from any other part of it. The electronic theory explains how all matter has evolved from one homogeneous Original or Primary Substance. But this does not explain how motion originated to create or produce something different from the Original or Primary Substance from which the negatively and positively charged electricity particles came.

   Science is also clear that if anything is in motion, its movement has been caused by someone or something. At the beginning of creation, the Word used sound to set all things in motion. Sound is transmitted through waves, and sound is the cause of the effect of the waves generated by it. So, we can say that in the beginning, the Word produced the sound that caused waves that set everything in motion. Thus, science and the Bible agree that the Law of Cause and Effect requires that every effect is the result—and only the result—of the cause that produced it.

How to Overcome Obstacles

   I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses.

Joshua 1:3

    You probably are familiar with the Bible story of how Joshua captured the city of Jericho. What you may not be familiar with is how embracing the spiritual principles embedded in this story will help you overcome every single obstacle that stands between you and the life you have imagined for yourself and your family.

   Before going to war against Jericho, Joshua was told by God that every place Joshua walked upon had already been given to him. So, armed with this knowledge, Joshua and his army went up to Jericho, only to find high, thick walls that looked impossible to get beyond. However, Joshua ignored what his eyes saw before him and relied on God’s promise that Jericho was already his to conquer.

   Joshua spent no time trying to figure out how he and his army were going to get inside the city. Instead, he focused on God’s promise to him and followed his intuition to march around the city. He ignored the question of how he would get past the walls. Rather, he focused his energies on his God-inspired intuition that told him to march around the city, blow trumpets on the seventh march around the walls, and then shout. By doing this, “Joshua fit de battle of Jericho, and de walls came a tumblin’ down.”

   This story is a metaphor for your present psychological state. The city of Jericho represents your desire or definite objective. The walls of Jericho symbolize the obstacles between you and the realization of your dream, your definite objective. Joshua’s feet, as they were walking on Jericho’s soil, represent your understanding that you can place yourself anywhere you desire to be by fixing your imagination in the place you wish to be. You can live now, psychologically, in the state represented by your definite objective.

   So, here is how to apply this story and its principles to your life. First, define exactly what it is that you want. Do not make this determination based on “how” you can achieve it. Just pretend that “how” is not your concern.

   Second, take your mind completely off the obstacles that separate you from your definite objective and focus solely on the objective itself. Third, close your eyes and feel that you are already in possession of your desired objective. Stay within this psychological space you have created for yourself as long as you can. When your mind drifts, bring it back to your objective and tell yourself that you have already achieved it. Feel what you would feel like when you achieve your objective and feel the personal satisfaction you would feel once your objective has been realized. When you can no longer concentrate in this way, open your eyes, and go about your ordinary business for the day.

    Take the story of Joshua and the walls of Jericho personally because the All-Originating Spirit of God has made you the same promise: “ I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. Joshua 1:3

The Principle of Guidance

 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.  John 16:3

    The Principle of Guidance ranks first among the hierarchy of spiritual principles. This is not so because it is more essential than any other power, but because it is first in order of sequence because it gives value to all the other powers by placing them in their proper relation to one another.

   When you look to the Infinite Mind part of yourself as a Superior Intelligence from which you may receive guidance, you are not looking to an external source. On the contrary, you are looking at the innermost spring of your own Being. You are also looking with confidence in its action which enables you to move forward to the execution of your plans with firmness and assurance that are the very guarantees of your success.

   The action of the spiritual principles within you follows the order that you impose upon them by your Thoughts. Therefore, the order of your realization will reproduce the order of your desire.

   The awakening to consciousness of your mysterious internal powers will sooner or later take place and will result in your using them whether you understand the law of their development or not.

   Your internal powers are natural as much as your external ones. You can direct how they are used by knowing their laws. Thus, you must have some sound principle of guidance in the best use of these higher powers as they begin to manifest themselves.

   If you want to safely and profitably possess the great inheritance of power that is opening out before you, you must realize Superior Intelligence within yourself. This will become an unfailing principle of guidance if you will only recognize it, embrace it, and cling in faith to it.

   One path to actually begin to feel that you are being guided by Supreme Intelligence is to memorize and repeat hourly the following: “My mind is a center of Divine operation. The Divine operation is always for expansion and fuller expression; and this means the production of something that has not gone before, something entirely new, not included in past experience, though proceeding out from it in an orderly sequence of growth. Therefore, since the Divine cannot change its inherent nature, it must operate in the same way in me. Consequently, in my own special world, of which I AM the center, it will move forward to produce new conditions, always in advance of any that have gone before.”

 

On Growing in the Spirit

  Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. Romans 10:4

   Your personal acknowledgment that the All-Originating Spirit of God lives within you and that you have a personal relation to it gives you a new basis of Affirmation. You are the starting point of a specifically designed-for-you creative process that will lead you to your next level of personal growth and development.

   As enormous as this Thought is, you must remember that it is only a starting point. It transcends your previous range of ideas and presents you with a new set of ideas at a higher level. But, just as when you graduated from high school as a senior, your next level of college put you back in freshman status, so also your growing beyond where you became a senior at one stage of your development, brings you back to the beginning of the next stage of development as a freshman.

   Because the Spirit is always the same, you may expect a repetition of the creative process within you, but at a higher level. That process will require you to engage in involution—actually becoming what you desire and staying in Unity with it regardless of what you can see, hear, touch, taste, or smell. This is what Neville Goddard called living as if your wish were already fulfilled. At this point, you should look for a repetition of the universal process from its new starting point in your mind. You should expect to see your Thoughts being externalized in concrete form.

   Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, is set before you as the external manifestation of the Divine Ideal. The more clearly you realize the nature of the creative process on the spiritual plane, the more your objections to and unbelief about the Gospel narrative about Jesus will fade away. If you deny the Gospel narrative about Jesus as an impossibility, then you deny the power of the Spirit in yourself.  You cannot succeed at affirming a principle and denying it at the same time. If you affirm the externalizing power of the Spirit in your own life—the countless times you have created something from nothing just by your mere Thought—then you cannot logically limit the Spirit’s action by saying that under highly specialized conditions it could not produce highly specialized effects.

   If the Spirit can create at all, then you cannot logically limit the extent or method of its action. Since the basis of your own expectation of individual expansion must be premised on the limitless creative power of the Spirit, to reject the Jesus of the Gospels as an impossibility is to cut away the ground from under your own feet. It is one thing for you to say, “I do not understand why the Spirit would work in that way”—that is merely an honest statement of your present stage of knowledge. Even if you go to the length of saying, “I am not convinced that it happened the way it is written,” that is a true statement of your intellectual difficulty.

   But certainly, those who profess to rely on the Spirit to produce external results cannot say that it does not possess that power, or possesses it only in a limited degree. That position is logically destructive. What you should do is suspend judgment and follow the light as far as you can see it. Sooner or later, it will become clearer to you. When you realize how completely the Law of Your Own Being receives its completeness—its fulfillment of culmination—in Jesus as far as you know that law, then you can conceive that there are yet deeper phases of that law that you can only faintly surmise by intuition. You may have had an experience or two when just the fringe of the veil was lifted and you got a momentary glimpse of the powers and mysteries beyond your present conception. But even there, Law reigns supreme.

   Therefore, taking Jesus as your basis and starting point, you start with the Law already fulfilled, whether in those things familiar to you or in those realms that are beyond your thought. You need to have no fear of evil. Your new starting point with Jesus is the place where you will quietly grow into the evolution that fulfills the Law of Your Own Being.