This has been one heck of a week. Our nation suffered an unprecedented attack. Normally, I see things happening in the news, sigh, and say "okay, so that happened."

This hit me a bit harder. It was quite distracting. Add to that all the other stress of business, family life, and all the rest, and I found myself pretty well off balance yesterday.

When we go to Mystic Dojo - Yamashita International Karate, we bow upon passing through the door. This is to show respect for the dojo and the instructors, but it is also a signal to ourselves to leave everything outside.

The news, the bills, the family, what's for dinner, when will I find time to do the thing, all of that stays outside. No matter what is happening outside, when I go inside my mind should be 100% karate and nothing else.

It's not always easy to do so, but by the end of the class, my mind is clear, and I am refreshed to be able to return to the bustling outside world.

I didn't buy it. I got it with a combination of good luck and hard work.

I got it the same way that most success comes.

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I had two conversations yesterday that really sum up the debate I had internally a few weeks ago.

The end of that debate was to be fully authentic.

I'm not going to present a cleaned up, idealized version of myself. That doesn't help you, and it's not honest with you.

Thanks Butch for confirming what my instincts told me.

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Running water. Indoor plumbing. Plentiful cheap food. Refridgeration. Safe streets. Free education. Electricity. Internet.

These are just a few reasons that now, even in 2020, is one of the best times in history to be alive.

Keep that in perspective.

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I have lived in and owned this house for a month and a half now, but I haven't truly felt like I owned it. It just felt like the place I was living now.

My wife has done a lot of work on the house, but I have mostly just worked in the house. My focus is my business and all the things I need to do to be able to pay for my share of the mortgage.

Last night, it started snowing, and I went out to do a bit of shoveling. In shoveling the snow at MY house, I started to feel like it was MY house.

As humans, we are hard wired that work should involve muscles. Things that we do only with our brains don't always feel like our work in the same way.

I think this is some of where the sense of satisfaction in good, hard, physical labor comes from. Your body feels like it did something triggering the brain to say "good work!"

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Christmas is supposed to be a joyous holiday, but for too many it is stressful and overwhelming.

The joy of giving has been replaced with the obligation of giving.

Let 2020 be the year that you shed these obligations. Give because you want to. Give because you will bring joy.

If there is someone you are giving to or doing something for because you are afraid they'll be upset, then stop! If someone expects gifts or create obligations upon you, that's not love. That's extortion.

Simplify your holidays, and bring the joy back to Christmas.

I woke up tired and worn out this morning. Just feeling kind of blah.

Our instinct when this happens is to justify it. It's silly to feel down for no reason, so we make up reasons.

That's even sillier.

Sometimes you're just worn out. It's okay. It happens.

Sometimes you're just down. That's fine too.

No reason to ascribe reasons to it. Just wait it out and get back to it when you're ready.

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I don't think I'm going to set goals for 2021.

That's not entirely accurate. I'm setting goals, but I'm not setting specific ambitious goals. I'm not writing a big number on a piece of paper and tacking it on the wall. I'm not charting a specific course.

It doesn't make sense right now.

I'm setting two intentions:

1) Make enough money to be comfortable

2) Find my path and follow it forward

For some time, I have tried to pay the bills with grand plans and audacious goals, but grand plans take time. I didn't have that time so I had to rush and constantly readjust to get faster cash. It doesn't work.

Thus, the two parts. First, GET THE MONEY. Money doesn't have to come from my core business. It doesn't have to come from high prestige, exciting work. It could come from delivering boxes, copywriting, making web sites, delivering food, shoveling snow. Anything that pays a reasonable premium on my time is good.

This provides the stable platform and space to work on the second part. Understand what path God has intended for me and follow it.

Conference21 is shaping up to be one of my main projects. At the start of October, I hadn't even thought about running events, and it will take three months to come to fruition. It will be fantastic in many many ways, but I can only work on these long term projects if I'm taking care of the fundamentals.

Who knows what opporutunities 2021 will bring? I certainly don't. So my specific plan is to place myself in a position to take advantage of whatever amazing ways appear before me.

One of the projects I'm really enjoying is creating motivational content. You can get it free in your email every morning at http://motivation.guywhoknowsaguy.com

Kyoshi was speaking to the kid's class at karate yesterday, and he said that if you're taking short cuts now, what will you do later.

The answer is that I know exactly where that road leads because I followed it. High school was easy. College was easy.

The world was hard.

When I got out of college into the real world, my shortcuts and coasting devistated my opportunities, and it would be a decade later that I finally developed the kind of worth ethic needed to achieve success.

If I had gone to a school like Mystic Dojo - Yamashita International Karate when I was a kid, I would have enjoyed much better outcomes.

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