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Who Are You Listening To? Who are you listening to? Why are you listening to that person? We are creatures of habit and environment. Our habits are picked up by the repeated actions, tendencies and behaviors that became normal to us. In our environment we do what we see and we are expanded or limited by the expanse of our environment. However, time and knowledge has shown us that it doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t have to stay in the prison of our past or our experiences. We can expand to new growth but it requires intentional behavior. Intentional behavior includes being mindful of who we are seeking wisdom from. A common mistake that we make in seeking wisdom is that we primarily listen to and get advice from people who we are comfortable with. However, we never stop and ask ourselves why are we comfortable with them in the first place. The truth is that we are comfortable with certain people because we have been in the same environment with them for a long time or we share a similar opinion about certain subjects. For example, those friends that you grew up with in the neighborhood you still look to them for advice and approval because you always did. That girlfriend that you meet for happy hour, she thinks you have the best relationship with the best guy, even though he physically and mentally abuses you. She supports your messy relationships so she is your confidant of wisdom. There is a better way. The better way is to be intentional about your pursuit of wisdom. The Wisdom Equation Wisdom is experience + knowledge + good judgement. A person with experience, who has gone through, survived and thrived in the area you seek needs knowledge and good judgement. Sometimes people survive and win by luck. Luck is not what you’re looking for. You’re looking for wisdom, so you have to make sure that the person you are listening to actually gained knowledge from the situation they experienced. How will you know if they gained knowledge? Knowledge is facts, information and skills gained through experience or education. In other words, what are the facts they learned? What information or skills did they gain from that situation? Lastly, the wisdom equation requires good judgement. A person can have all the experience and knowledge in the world but do they display good judgement on a regular basis? Life is too short to waste your time. Seek wisdom so that you don’t make unnecessary mistakes. Seek wisdom from the right people. Until next time, 🙏🏾 Please subscribe to my YouTube page where I go deeper into this subject and where I’m building a library of empower workshops.🙏🏾
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Your Lack of Goals Will Create Your Lack
I spend a lot of time in thought trying to figure out how and why so many people take the path to destruction as opposed to the path toward a positive future. It would be unfair if I failed to acknowledge that all of us occasionally, and often, fall down, make mistakes and mess up. That’s different from choosing a path that will only lead to destruction and then purposefully staying on that path. Recently in my courtroom a man stood before me with two separate cases. One case was a probation violation, the other case was something new and more serious. The probation violation was based on the man’s previous charge of disorderly conduct. When he was found guilty of disorderly conduct, I chose not to send him to jail but instead I put him on probation and intended to enroll him in my “Finish First Leadership” program. He never reported to probation so he never got into my program, as a result, a warrant was issued for his arrest. Fast forward three years later, he is standing in my court in hand cuffs and, to follow procedure, I confirmed with my Probation Officer that the man never reported to probation. I didn’t bother to ask him why he didn’t report because on this day he had more pressing issues. His current charge was for murder. The report said that he shot another man in the head with a shot gun. How does a person go from disorderly conduct to three years later being charged with murder? I submit to you that much of it has to do with the path that he decided to take. He wasn’t interested in my leadership program. He didn’t have a goal that would lead him out of the hood and on to success. He allowed the destructive direction of his life to take him down a path that lead to despair and devastation. The same applies to you and I. You may not be on the path to murder but you may be in a situation where the lack of positive goals for your future will lead you into a bad situation. ☯️ Are you going to allow that bad relationship to drain you of your ability to flourish and love or will you set goals and change your direction? ☯️ Are you going to continue to underperform at work to the point where you lose you job or will you set goals to change your direction? ☯️ Are you going to continue to spend time with people who are up to no good and don’t mean you any good or will you set goals and change your direction? The choice of your path is up to you, but the destination of your path is already written. Until next time, 🙏🏾 Please subscribe to my YouTube page where I go deeper into this subject and where I’m building a library of empower workshops.🙏🏾 Re-Claim Your Time
We waste time. Of course there are some people who have mastered the ability to maximize their time, but for the most part we could all do better with managing our time. On the worst level there are those who have allowed others to take, use and abuse their time. This week I want you to consider reclaiming your time. You should do this if for no other reason than the fact that your time is too precious to waste. Re-Claiming your time means: ☯️ Stop taking yourself, and allowing people to take you, into debates and arguments about things that don’t really matter. I use to be a victim of this early in my career as a lawyer. I would wear it as a badge of honor to be able to debate with people on any subject. I was even on the college and law school debate team, but as I have grown Ian’s matured I now realize that my energy is more important than proving that I can argue. The same applies to you. ☯️ Stop spending your most valuable and productive hours on tasks that are not productive or valuable. Social media has a lot of good elements but it can also be a pit of distraction and destruction. Gossiping at work can have a benefit of spreading information but it can also be a source of toxicity. Make it a point to complete productive activities before you scroll social media or gossip with others so that you can re-claim your time and live your absolute best life. ☯️ Value your time and make others value your time. How often does someone totally waste your time, keep you waiting or discount the importance of your presence? What do you normally do when that happens? You likely say, “that’s ok,” but it is not ok. If you refuse to let someone know when your time is not being valued, their behavior will never change. They will continue to disrespect your time. Even more importantly, if you don’t value your own time no one else will. Today take these steps: Stop being late, arrive early. Stop moping around, move with purpose. Stop de-valuing your time because your time is your life. When your time is up, your life is up. Re-claim your time as the most valuable asset that you have. Until next time, 🙏🏾 Please subscribe to my YouTube page where I go deeper into this subject and where I’m building a library of empower workshops.🙏🏾 Dose of Positivity
Pain Does Not Have To Mean Suffering We all experience pain. Unfortunately we also have all experienced some type of suffering. Suffering comes in many forms. Physical suffering, mental suffering, emotional suffering, financial suffering and the list goes on. Suffering is natural but it is not necessary. I believe that most of us suffer because we are in the dark about how to stop that cycle. The cycle I’m referring to is the cycle from pain to suffering. When we realize that we can stop the cycle and then get the tools necessary to stop the check we will have more peace. What is suffering? The original root sense of “to suffer” was “to bear or carry.” The Latin “sufferre,” meaning “to bear, undergo, carry,” with that in mind, when we suffer it’s because we are carrying pain. For example: Constantly talking about your terrible break up = carrying the pain of the breakup = suffering. Constantly returning to a place of a tragedy = carrying the events of that tragedy with you = suffering. There are many other examples but the bottom line is that when we choose to carry the events that caused us discomfort or pain we are choosing a state of suffering. How Do I Minimize The Suffering In My Life? ☯️ Accept that there is nothing wrong with feeling hurt, sad, depression or any emotion at all. We are emotional beings so we have a full range of emotions at our disposal and we surely use them. ☯️ Set up guardrails. Guardrails let you know when you have gone a little to far. Guardrails in your life will do the same. They will let you know when people or situations have gone too far. When you get the guardrails notifications, back off or change course. ☯️ Limit the time of your suffering. Yes, actually put a time limit to the amount of suffering that you will allow in your life. It sounds easy and in fact it is. You have more control over your thoughts and the direction of your thoughts than you can imagine. Begin to build your mind control muscles by limiting the time you morn, talking about, cry about or suffer over a situation. Suffering can’t be eliminated but it can be controlled. Watch my YouTube video for a more in-depth conversation on developing your discipline muscle. Until next time, 🙏🏾 Please subscribe to my YouTube page below where I’m building a library of empower workshops. Dose of Positivity
Discipline In my experience as a Judge it seems that the word “discipline” has become a dirty word. When I use it to describe expectations that I have or use it to describe a path to greatness some people get offended. One reason that people get offended is because, as independent people, we all want to have and express control over our lives. We don’t want to answer to anyone, we don’t want to follow anyone (in real life) and we all want to be bosses. The funny thing about all those aspirations of independence is that they too require discipline. Discipline is the key to success in any area of interest. If you want to be good at something you have to practice discipline. If you want to be great at something you have to live a life of discipline. Let’s explore three “disciplines of discipline”. ☯️ ControlControl is required to have discipline. You can’t even begin to become more disciplined as a person until you foster the ability of control. Think of it as a first step. For instance, you have to learn to control your temper before you can be so disciplined to never get mad at all. The reason that many people lack in their development of discipline is because they try to jump directly to “Never doing (fill in the blank)” not realizing that they first have to control themselves when (fill in the blank) occurs. ☯️ PurificationPurification is another dirty or resented word. When I speak of purification I am not talking about walking around with no flaws in a state of perfection. I am referring to your ability to rid your mind of negative and dark thoughts. The benefit of getting rid of the negative and dark thoughts is that you are removing negativity and darkness as even a possible response to things that happen in your life. ☯️ Relinquishment To relinquish is to let go. To release. In order to have discipline in your life you have to release and let go of the things that contradict your goals. If you want to be in better health, but you have an addiction to sugar, relinquish the sugar. If you want to have a great relationship, but you are addicted to the person who brings you drama, relinquish the drama. If you can not relinquish, what you are saying is that what you think you want is not as important to you as staying where you are. If you don’t care about where you are or if you don’t care about going to your next level of greatness then discipline is not for you. But I can’t end like that. I know that you desire more from life. I know that you desire to win in all areas. I know that you understand discipline is a key to your success so let’s grow in discipline together. Watch my YouTube video for a more in-depth conversation on developing your discipline muscle. Until next time, 🙏🏾 Please subscribe to my YouTube page below where I’m building a library of empower workshops.🙏🏾 Contentment is so D*^% Hard As we enter this new moment of life, and every movement is a new moment of life, let’s reflex on the concept of contentment. Contentment is the ability to find happiness right now in the position, situation and space that you are in. Contentment often eludes us because the world fills our mind with a longing. We long for love when the love of God is all that we need. We long for materials when all that is required for our life existence is available to us. We long for more life when all we have to do is start living right now. Another reason that contentment eludes us is because we stay in a state of “get ready, get ready, get ready!” There is nothing wrong with getting ready, in fact I promote planning. However, when getting ready is your constant state of mind how can you be content where you are? I read this very interesting story of how a lady who practiced meditation every day, believing in its power to set her day on a great path, soon found herself in an uncomfortable mindset. She went to visit a friend and was suddenly overcome with the beauty and location of her home. Shortly she began to feel discontent. She was discontent with everything she had. She even began to feel that nothing was right with her life; nothing was right with her. Her morning began with meditation and a lovely visit to a friend’s beautiful home. How did she end up discontent, bruised and disgruntled with her entire life? How did she get here so quickly? One brief moment, a twinge of jealousy for someone else’s home, and within an hour she had forgotten that she has a beautiful place of her own. The answer is that she fell out of gratitude. The beauty of her experience for us is that we can recognize that we all fall out of gratitude from time to time but, as she did, we have the power to go back to gratitude. For you, me and all my Cycle Breakers I want us to be happy, full of joy and content. The best way to get to those places is to practice gratitude every day and every moment. True contentment, is performing duty and right action with pure joy. It is the true understanding that there is nothing more that can or does exist than this very moment. Until next time, 🏾 Please subscribe to my YouTube page below where I’m building a library of empower workshops.🏾 What If?
The world is full of uncertainty, which means that life is full of uncertainty. I watched a Saturday Night Live comedy sketch that really put this uncertainty into perspective. The sketch had three friends in December of2019 going to a fortune teller to get predictions of how their 2020 would turn out. The things that the fortune teller predicted were situations that, based on our experience and expectations, you wouldn’t expect to happen. That is how 2020 turned out. There were many things that we would have never imagined would happen that actually did happened. Think about it: ▪️Stocking up on toilet paper out of fear that it would be in limited supply. ▪️Not being able to eat inside of restaurants. ▪️Not being able to fly on a plane or go to any place without wearing a mask. ▪️Zoom holidays. This year has put us all in the position of wondering and even asking, “what if?”. We now realize how unpredictable life is. We realize that we don‘t individually control what happens in this world. By this I mean that some tins require a joint effort, for example: ▪️To support a healthy atmosphere we ALL have to care about climate change. ▪️To support low disease, pandemics and outbreaks we ALL have to be safe in the way that we live our lives. ▪️In order to stop domestic violence we ALL have to care about not mentally or physically abusing anyone. The “what if”, in and of it self, is not all bad. The “what if” gives us an opportunity to plan and prepare for a better 2021. How does the “what if” work? There are two keys: 1. Plan for your best life and 2. Control the things that you can control. Plan for your best life. I am an obsessive planner. I even created a planner that will help you map out your life for 2021. I have discovered that when you plan you are taking control of your life. Planning is a way of taking action. I suggest that you take time to map out all the positive, “What ifs” for 2021. Then plan and map out the path to make those positive “what ifs” come to life. Control the things that you can control. We spend too much time thinking about and worrying about what other people think or are saying about us. We also spend a lot of time worrying about what certain circumstances are going to do to us. I do believe in giving some consideration to the possible scenarios that you may find yourself in, however more time should be spent focusing on the things that you can control. You control your time - Your life is your life. Your time is under your control but this control only lasts as long as the choices that you make. You control who you spend your time with - Why do you continue to spend time with people who are not good for you? You control your mind - Your thoughts are yours but you allow other people to take space in your thoughts. If the thoughts in your head are not good for you eliminate them because it’s under your control. You control your body - This is a statement that is “mostly” true. There are a few situations where you don’t control your body for example if you are in a physical jail, you don’t control what you do with your body. Similarly, if you are in a physically abusive relationship - Domestic Violence, you may not control your physical body BUT both of those situations can be temporary if you take the first step and “plan” your way out. The funny thing about control is that its a moving target, so you should start controlling what you can now because soon it ALL will be out of our control. Life is full of “What ifs” and it will always be, however use your power to plan for the best and then control what you can. Until next time, 🏾 Please watch the video on this subject from my workshop by following my YouTube page below.🏾 “Live in Love, Flow in Love,” Judge William Dawson judgewilliamdawson@gmail.com Face Your FearsIt is time to grow. It is time to be better than you have been. The great news is that a New Year brings new opportunities. A new month brings new opportunities . A new day brings new opportunities as well as every new moment. The question is will you take advantage of these moments of renewal or let them slip away? The majority of people would answer this question with a resounding YES, but the truth of the matter is that once the newness of a new year wears off many people will find themselves doing the exact same things as before, accepting the same situations as before and in the same rut as before. One reason for this fall back is that some people, maybe even you, are afraid to win. I can imagine that if, in person, I asked you if you are afraid to win you would object louder than a defense attorney in the court room. However, if you give some deep thought to this question you may discover the hidden and suppressed fears, those deep down fears that keep you from winning. To fight against losing the new year before it begins I offer you a Cycle Breaker tool that I teach in my leadership, empowerment and yoga trainings. The tool is for you to STEP UP AND FACE YOUR FEARS!
▪️Discover Your WhyWhy is it important for you to achieve your goal or complete the plan? When you discover your why, the why will pull you toward the finish line. ▪️Identify The ConsequencesWhat are the consequence that you will face if you don’t complete the task? It could be as serious as you going to jail for behavior that you don’t stop or things that you don’t complete. It could be simply that you will find your heart broken if you fail to reach your goal. ▪️Identify The Benefits.What are the benefits that you will receive when you achieve your goal? You can gain a lot of momentum when you think about and strive for those benefits. Let’s keep it real, we all like rewards. ▪️Go!Now go! Don’t wait for Monday. Don’t wait until your order from Amazon comes in. Move now taking action, even if they are small steps. Move toward your goal. Once you put these tools into action you will destroy your fears and begin to achieve all the goals and plans that you have for your best life. Until next time, 🏾 Please subscribe to my YouTube page below where I’m building a library of empower workshops.🏾 ForgivenessForgiveness is a humbling process and it takes a lot of hard work. To let go of pain and anger takes serious effort. It’s easy to talk about forgiveness and even easier to tell someone else to forgive but to apply forgiveness takes more than just words.
Steps to forgiveness ⚖️ Acknowledge That You Have Been Forgiven Those who believe and follow God know that forgiveness exists. Those who believe in and respect the “universe” knows that forgiveness exists. Even those who don’t believe in a higher Power know that forgiveness exists. We all believe that forgiveness exists because at some point in our lives we have been forgiven. Maybe you were forgiven by your mother, at least once (think of the time you broke something in your house as a kid). Maybe you’ve been forgiven by your boss for a mistake you made at work. Maybe a Judge, like me, gave you a lower fine or even dismissed your case, showing compassion. There are countless examples of forgiveness yet we have a hard time applying it in our lives. The first step to applying forgiveness is to acknowledge that you have been forgiven, so you know that forgiveness is possible. ⚖️ Get out of Jail Unforgiveness is a jail that we voluntarily walk into. Why do we walk into this jail? I submit to you that we walk into the jail of unforgiveness because it is the path of least resistance. It’s easier to close the door and lock it behind you when something hasn’t gone the way that you wanted it to go. To do this is to voluntarily put yourself in a jail or prison of unforgiveness. That jail has four walls and a ceiling that will keep you closed off and locked away from all the sunshine available to you. ⚖️ Take Control When we live in a state of unforgiveness we are allowing something outside of our control to have dominance over our lives. When we constantly blame others and cling to the hurt of the past we are unable to live in the present and fully enjoy our lives. Don’t give up control in one ofthe few areas where you have total control. No one can take away your ability to forgive. ⚖️ Take Responsibility Responsibility is a step further than control. Control is knowing that you have the power. Responsibility is knowing that using your power to forgive is all up to you. When you take responsibility you are designing the life that you want. I know you don’t want to live in hurt and pain. Design life that minimizes hurt and pain. I know you don’t want to live repeating wrongs and bad experiences. Instead design your life in a way that you wipe the continuance of those wrongs and bad decisions out of your life. How do you wipe the bad memories out of your life? You stop giving them life by practicing forgiveness! Until next time, 🏾 Please subscribe to my YouTube page below where I’m building a library of empower workshops.🏾 |
AuthorJust a Judge trying to help people live their greatest lives. Archives
March 2021
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