Jeff Howell: Intention & Commitment!

Hey, everybody. How’s it going? This is Jeff coming at you with another mindset. Monday I’m down here enjoying my time on the Mexican Riviera, and I have a couple of thoughts of my experience down here in Mexico over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been down here running around the Mayan Yucatan Peninsula and visiting Mayan ruins, special interest of mine. So we’ve been to six different sites in the last two weeks. The first week we were here, went to five different sites, and then we went to a really good personal friend of mine’s wedding. And then we went to a couple more sites. And now we are here enjoying and relaxing on the Mexican Riviera. So what I’ve kind of thought in that process of going and visiting these sites is that I see these big temples and monuments. I see these what they call stelae, which are like big flat rocks that have carved and engraved all of the Mayan writing in them. And it occurred to me that to do this, to accomplish this, to create basically stack rocks on top of each other and to carve your beliefs or your stories into stone takes great intention, a great amount of intention and dedication of resources to do that. So in our own lives, when we’re building whatever our monument is, whatever our sort of presentation of our beliefs.

That’s right. In line with the entrepreneurial journey. Because what we are building is a temple of what we believe, right? And we have to have that same level of dedication and intention behind it to be able to see it brought forth because it takes Herculean effort or in this case, a mayan effort, because and when you see the temples that they built with the technology that they had, it’s really mind blowing. It’s fascinating to think about what those societies look like and how they were arranged. I also had this thought about the culture of these societies. Some of the sites are so well preserved and laid out overall with the structures, I could almost imagine what it would have been like, what people would have been doing. The same structure of society was in place just at a different time period. This was 1000 1200 years ago. Most of this was going on and you had the rulers that took their spot at the top of the temples and you had the priests sort of in the bottom section, and then you have the merchants even around that area somewhere in that sort of strata of society. And then you would have the presenters, for example, the dancers and the artists and the quote unquote celebrities of back then. And then you would have the more common people who are working in whatever sort of labor or task in providing the services and goods that they provided.

So I see myself as a merchant, you know, and as I create businesses and as I help grow businesses, then I’m able to create a level of commerce that is trade. Right? And you had different representations of of people in this this Mayan culture where they were seeing the traders and the merchants, in other words, that were bringing valuable goods back to the rulers themselves and to their communities. We’re seeing at a higher level than other people who may maybe were bowing down to the more elite ruler class because they had a lot more insight into what was going on. They were visiting other communities and bringing back knowledge and bringing back goods and and different ideas that other people who were just staying in that same central location and providing a trade or providing a service, they didn’t have that wherewithal. And at some points in the history, the traders were even used as spies on other communities and other cultures in the area because they were the only ones that had the ability to go out and interact with those communities and see exactly what was going on. So it’s really fascinating how the structure of societies are very similar, even though their belief systems and the ways that they exemplified their culture and express their beliefs, I guess is a better way to say it, our way different from ours.

And if you know anything about the Maya, it was pretty extreme. And that kind of also brought up ideas for me of like, where would I be? I’m sure I would still be a merchant, but it’s like, how much more action would I be taking? How much more pressure would be would I be under to deliver in a society where death is far more prevalent in daily life, where you are pressured for food and other resources, and then ultimately could even be put to death in some way? You know, I’m sure there are many, many threats to your existence and in everyday life that we don’t experience in today’s time. So with all of these thoughts, it kind of comes back to putting the maximum intention towards what you want to see brought forth. And as I always say, the clarity. You can’t really put forth the intention behind it, the level of intention and commitment behind it really, until you have the clarity. Because if you don’t have clarity, you’re not going to be that committed. You’re not going to have that level of intention and you’re perhaps going to be bouncing around off the edges. And you have to do that sometimes to find what you don’t want and to figure out what direction is was right for you.

I’m grateful that I’ve been through a lot of that process and I feel very clear about what I want to see brought forth in my own business and in my own life. And I use my life and my. Career. And my my business in general is opportunities to continue to evolve and to bring that forth in my life. So I guess the ultimate real lesson here is the intention and a commitment to taking the action that you want to see brought forward. I can imagine building the temple of your business and of your life stone by stone. What does that look like for you and your world? What does that look like in taking action in the day to day existence of your reality? Some days are going to be good. Some days are going to be You’re going to not be able to accomplish what you think you’re going to accomplish. But ultimately you’re building that temple and your you’re carving that belief system into stone, something that you have in your imagination. But maybe, perhaps people around you, they can’t see it until you bring it forward. And you have to continue to push the edges and the boundaries of your skill set and your mindset and leveraging the resources and knowledge that you have into bigger and better things so that you can bring it all together into the, the, the, the vision of what you want to see brought forth.

So with that, I’ll leave you with those thoughts. I know there’s a lot to chew on there, but I mean, it’s been an amazing time here. I’m going to be here until Friday of this week and then I’ll be back in the States next week for another mindset Monday. But I’m going to be thinking about these concepts a lot as I get back into my normal flow of life. And I’m just so grateful to be able to live a lifestyle and a lapsed laptop style lifestyle where I can come down here and still work and be productive and take vacation and time and all of that. So I want that for everybody. I want that for all of you to be able to be in control of your destiny and. Control of your existence in a way that you can create and design the life that you dream of. So with that, I’ll leave you. Thank you so much for joining in. Leave any comments that you might have in the comment section and I’ll look forward to seeing you on the next one when I get back. Seaside. Take care.