What does it mean to love the real you?

People love our thoughts and actions when those ideas and actions align with their thoughts and actions. An optimal life is produced when everything aligns. Yet, as soon as we think or act outside of their personal outlook; it becomes an assault on their E.G.O. (edge God out), and our thoughts and actions are then taking personally. When situations are taking personally, we inject our overactive mind and react, normally reacting in an unproductive fashion. This dangerous concoction causes us to emote and to engage in inappropriate, and sometimes egregious behavior. Inappropriate behaviors lead us to interact in situations with conditional love, which can lead us to act as a soulless being. Soulless beings are void of unconditional love, and many believe that they are not loved. Many of us are taught that love comes from obedience and from exhibiting deference to other people opinions.

The issue is that when we operate outside of their requisite desires, and those chosen actions violate their coupled desires; we might receive the wrath of their judgments. Those judgments can cause internal anxiety if we are willing to mask our true selves and to capitulate to their demands. When we make their judgments an authentic indictment against us, we suppress and hide our authentic spirit…being hijacked by their finite ideas and opinions. Even though their ideas and opinions will be buried with their limited and masked flesh. The greatest conundrum of masking ourselves to their desires is that it incites a destructive process of potentially shelving our authentic selves. When we shelve our authentic self, we remove self-love and inject trouble. This trouble creeps in as subtle anxiety, and this anxiety attacks our three pillars that enables us to access our limitless spirits.

I lived for the approval of our individuals, panting for their applause and cheers of acceptance. If people told me I was great at something or cheered me for some performance, I beamed on the exterior and used their opinions to lift my drooping internal spirit. This happy feeling is temporal and fades instantly, if someone rejects my masked behavior. When this occurs, my body feels achy and my stomach turns with moments of dull constipation. Sometimes, I tend to lose the desire to eat, and my spirit tend to expel out a feeling of lightness. As my body and my spirit reject the flow of life, my mind becomes stuck on needing their attention and on asking repetitive questions about how can I receive more positive comments, to receive their approval. Repetitive thought occurs in our anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG), and we become reactive and unconscious beings, detaching from bliss or flow. However, we will need to unmask and be conscious if we desire to disengage and to engage our prefrontal cortex and to control our decision-making process.

We all have the ability to become limitless and to transform into sentient beings who love themselves, owning a mentality of “love me or love me not, I am going to be me.” This mantra was sparked by the late rapper, Soulja Slim.

I utilized my 3 E’s to break the cycle of anxiety and to “be limitless.”
• Embrace the situation
• Engage with the situation
• Establish power with positive talk

Now when people give me compliments or attention, I embrace the compliments or attention. I do not assign a label (i.e., positive or negative) to it. I engage in their compliments by being in the moment and by being mindful when I communicate with them, suspending judgment in the process. The third step is to establish power by telling myself that I am not good or bad, instead I say, “be limitless.” Limitless beings do not entertain the opinions of others because limitless beings do not believe in labels; they believe in experiencing life rather than judging life. Remember, live a limitless life and never be masked to a limited life.

Today’s challenge is to call one random person and to say, “I love you” and hang up the phone. Do not entertain a conversation, your job is to love them unconditionally and move on. The purpose is to inject love, without needing to feel love back.

Check Your Life: Be Limitless
“Be better than your best and never rest on your previous success”
Dr. James Arthur Williams

Life begins and all of a sudden, bang, we mere mortals exist. This is my “Big Bang Theory” of how we are myriad of atoms conjoined together, to produce matter of flesh and of our inherent spirits. None of us can truly grasp our conception process, but we (finite beings) aim to understand conception and to assimilate to the world’s inception process of labels. Labels were my introduction to the “Big Bang” of lies; lies that tethered me down to a multitude of false beliefs. The gist of the “Big Bang Theory” was a rapid expansion of matter from a state of extremely high density and temperature to fabricate the origin of the universe. The more I believed in these collections of false beliefs, the more I expand into someone foreign to my inherent truth. This is how and why we adopt intentional masks that limits us to this meaningless world. When I state meaningless, I am referring to the notion that nothing accomplished or acquired in our individual worlds hold lasting value to our limitless spirits.

Remember, it is our spirits that hold our value, not our finite vessels. Many traverse this earth with an imperious attitude that we are infallible in our mortal bodies and limitless due to our limited actions. We must realize that none of our expansive lies make us limitless; it is our limitless spirits that ascend us higher than our limited labels. As I write, I envision our spirits in a holding cue, waiting for infinite intelligence to align us up with the actions and thoughts of our mortal parents. When they entangle or fornicate, they initiate our “Big Bang” and gestation commences for the next nine months. We expand inside the wombs of our mothers during the duration of her pregnancy. Our “Big Bang” introduces us to process, demonstrating how something grows and ultimately improves over time. This natural process is interrupted during our existence because we are constantly introduced to false labels that operated as limits in my existence. There was never any knowledge of intelligence in my limitless world, but I was told that my intellect was inferior in elementary school. My elementary teachers recommended me for special education because they equated my boredom and disruption as a deficient aptitude.

My parents rejected this label, but subconsciously, I thought this label had some credence; and I lived up to this label for many years. I failed to study, and I failed to engage due to rejection from my teachers and my peers. The unfortunate truth is that they were all lies, and I decided to expand on these lies and to embrace them as a well-respected beliefs. I masked myself to intellectual inferiority, so I was incapable of generating high marks in our cold and stinky classroom. My “Big Bang Theories” were based on general principles agreed on by some of my teachers and classmates, but theories are disproved all the time and never represent the inherent truth. Scholars utilize a guiding question to explore or to examine a proven theory, so I used a simple question: What if I am more than my body? This question has led me to disprove theories about my mind, my body, and my spirit, and my uncovered truth has set me free to reject my “Big Bang Theory” and to unmask my true potential. This potential incited me to expand to check my life and to be limitless. I implore you all to do the same and to reject your “Big Bang Theory” by exploring and examining your expansive lies and to walk in your inherent truth.

What is one lie or label that is hard for you to shake? How has this lie or label limited you? How will you explore and examine this lie to unmask your true potential?

Today’s challenge is to hug and to kiss someone and let them know how special they are. For example, I told my wife how much I love her desire to love on other people and to help disadvantaged individuals.

Check Your Life: Be Limitless
“Be better than your best and never rest on your previous success”
Dr. James Arthur Williams

We live in a world where we are forced to interact with one another; a world where we love on one another. There is no existence without other people be able to recognize our presence or our world absorbing your energy. We cannot live invisible lives, even when we receive pejorative stares. Life is energy, and energy is a continuous flow with all life forms, from the trees, the ocean, the insects, and all the other energy free flowing forms of existence. At the core of all forms, is our energy or our light; it is a presence so powerful that it illuminates life forms and a multitude of spaces. Our life force or energy is our God-consciousness, not our finite flesh; but most people pay homage to their dying flesh and adopted finite labels (e.g., race, gender, color, religion, and sexual orientation) and enter into a world of bondage or our eternal hells on earth. As infants and toddlers, we are free of bondage and untethered to finite labels until the great conditioning begin from our worldly serpents.

These serpents inject us with their inflammatory and necrotic poison, burning our spirits and destroying our physical beings, from the inside-out until many of us are consumed with their shared hate-filled philosophies. Infants and toddlers are void of racist history and segregationist ideologies before the great conditioning and an assimilation of subtle and overt superior and inferior rhetoric is permeated in our environments. This is the moment we shift from a state of being and to a state of needing to know everything; a time when we replace faith with psychological fear. A fear that sets our worlds on fire, with a needing to view other people or situational differences as abnormal from our realm of normalcy; and it becomes a time of subjugation, oppression, and elimination of those other differences. Yet, all differences are assigned some label in this finite world. For example, someone in need of financial assistance might receive welfare or some government benefits, so someone who oppose that assistance might call them poor, lazy, or a waste. Their judgements start in their opposing minds and become a derogatory and hateful close-minded statement.

This hate is produced through a cancerous formula, I like to refer to as the Four D’s: dislike, discriminate, divide, and death. When we are domesticated to dislike an individual for the color of their skin, our dislike can easily transform into hate. The sad part is that any two human beings are 99.9% alike, genetically or biologically; and ALL human species DNA originated from Africa, the same region. This coexistence was a time when the United States did not exist on a global or economic scale and was not occupied by descents of Europe. However, when Europeans sieged control of the new world, known now as the United States; they rewrote history and masterfully created categories that presented the Caucasian or white race as the normal species. Even though Caucasians first ancestors can be traced back to Africa, long before they categorized themselves as White. White turned into the superior species and Black and other marginalized groups became the inferior species. Dislike can transmute our energies into an action to discriminate against other beings.

When I was about 9 years old, my twin brother’s best friend’s mom stopped allowing her son to be Mack’s friend. My brother was discriminated against, and this women’s action became a great divide in Mack and his friend’s relationship. The final step to hate is death, death occurs figuratively and literally when people arrive to this step in the process. Death stops a person from viewing disparate individuals as real or sentient beings; they become lifeless objects to people who entered into their death phase perspective. Everything starts in our minds and leads to an actionable response, but our power to rise above subjective thoughts comes from the God deep on the inside of all of us. The God that dwells prior to our conditioning of learned labels. The only way to find ourselves back to this heavenly home is by asking profound questions. David, a former student and an exceptional scholar who graduated with honors from UT and transitioned into the workforce as a manager at Target. He is a Black man who served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps, carrying out multiple tours in Afghanistan. He wanted to know, why do some Black people judge other black people as acting “white” when they are to climb the corporate ladder?

My simple and most transparent response to his question was that the individual do not know the truth. Remember, only the truth shall set us free, and a lie shall tether us down to a world of bondage. In David’s situation, the offensive individual has been conditioned to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge or finite labels. First and foremost, Black and White is a social construct that only exist because we agree with race and give one race power and another race inferior status. Yet, I would tell David that he has the power deep down on the inside of him to never be bothered again by the thoughts of a finite individual. When I refer to being bothered, I mean that he can develop the power to recognize the emotion of anger and to proactively allow it to dissipate without ever reacting to the emotion. The power to quell this emotion can also proffer us with the power to eliminate hate.

THREE-STEP ACRONYM
1. Awareness – see the situation or feel the emotion with no judgment.
2. No judgment – do not interpret a situation or emotion, instead accept what happen as is.
3. Do your best – do your best to stay in joy, to be happy, and to exude unconditional love in every situation.

Today’s challenge is to make one random person smile or to feel a measure of happiness. For example, you can buy a random meal for someone, give a compliment, give up your position in line, or give a way some stuff. Whatever you do, you need to make a difference by making someone smile. Let me know what you decide to do, I would love to hear from you as you engage in antihate.

Check Your Life: Be Limitless
“Be better than your best and never rest on your previous success”
Dr. James Arthur Williams

Have you ever woken up after a deep sleep to feel liberated from the tyranny and ills of your physical world? If so, you definitely understand the intoxicating joy of waking up with a smile on your face, even though you might not remember the pleasantry of your dreams or some pleasant encounter you might had the night before. If you felt this feeling, you understand that there are no words to recapture the joy; this joy starts to become a pleasant welcome to every morning routine in our lives. However, if you never felt this feeling before, I believe you might have a strong desire to experience this joy. This unexplainable joy can instantly become a part of your every day routine.

Please do not scoff at the notion of routines because we all have routines, even if we are not conscious of them. For example, many people wake up and drink a glass a water or release stored up waste in their immediate laboratory. Please disregard my use or fastidious selection of the word “laboratory,” I have been drawn to the word “laboratory” ever since one of my elementary classmates asked our teacher to use the “laboratory” to relieve himself; I thought it was a funny words, so I shared it here to prompt a little chuckle or smile on your face. This blog is about liberated joy. The point I am attempting to make is that routines are normal whether we acknowledge them or not with our conscious awareness.

As you evaluate the previous sentence, I hope you are drawn to the two words: “conscious awareness”. Conscious awareness is the key to unlock our door to internalized joy, and for practical terms, peace as we decide to take on our individual days in the morning. This is significant because our routines dictate our daily success and dictate our liberation from our mental and personal hells. Hell is produced when we enable external factors to impact our internal and infinite being. I stated “internal” and “infinite being” on purpose. Internal denotes something on the inside that is infinite or limitless, and the word “be-ing” when broken down to its origin produces an enormous power. “Be” origin means to dwell in the present and “ing” means complete, to indicate our being creates a complete presence in the NOW. I refer to being as sitting with God while we dwell in our personal state of godliness; this leads to our individual heavens and provides us a get out of hell free card.

Conscious awareness is pivotal to raising us to a limitless presence and to a liberating joy, by enabling us to tap into our prefrontal cortex and to alter the wires of our primed subconscious programming. All of our routines are connected to our subconscious conditioning to a pre-programming that dictates our morning rituals or practices, such as drinking a glass of water, using the bathroom, or brushing our teeth. These are all great routines I might add, but I believe there should be positive and deliberate routines created prior to engaging in our rote behaviors. This brings me to my intentional power mantra and conscious awareness routine to generate limitless joy.

Intentional and Conscious Awareness Routines
1. Smile and keep smiling until my “being” feels happy.
2. Take three deep breathes.
3. Name three things you are grateful for, for example: vision, taste, and touch.
4. Say this positive affirmation to inspire you to attack with unconditional love: Today is a glorious day and for 86,400 seconds, I will give my excellence and my best until I am laid to rest. I am always blessed and never stressed. Check Your Life: I am limitless.

Please implement these tips and share your thoughts and day with me…did you wake up with joy and did you use this day to make it the best day of your life? I would love to hear from you all.

Check Your Life: Be Limitless
“Be better than your best and never rest on your previous success”
Dr. James Arthur Williams

Soft skills are necessary for the successes of future hospitality leaders. Soft skills serve as a conduit to the promotion of productive and efficient performance in today’s work environment. Soft skills are often spoken by many professionals, but the origin or understanding of soft skills is rarely broached. It is spoken in a matter of fact fashion, implying that receivers of the words should instinctively comprehend the symbology of “soft skills.” Contrary to popular belief, I know that many people are unaware of its meaning and relevancy in hospitality; but ultimately, in practical everyday endeavors. Soft skills are crucial to our personal and professional lives, and every educator should be committed to fostering environments that inspire the development of soft skills.

Hopefully, you are pensively peering at your computer screen, acknowledging the value of soft skills and clutching a pen to share this information with all of your colleagues and constituents. Now that I have your attention, we will discuss the origin and working definition of soft skills. In a nutshell, the United States (U.S.) military introduced the term soft skills in 1968. The U.S. identified hard skills as those that required physical abilities measured by an objective-based test or visually-observable metric. However, military leaders noticed that other immeasurable abilities were needed to lead individuals to accomplish technical tasks and operational functions. This dichotomy birthed the notion of “soft skills” or intangible skills needed to convey messages or to lead individuals to utilize hard skills within a given work environment.

The origin and a working definition have been discussed, but it is still vital to expound on some notable soft skills and its relevance to hospitality classrooms. Some common soft skills that impact the efficiency and success of hospitality work milieus are leadership, confidence, communication, listening, self-efficacy, and team work, to name a few. The beauty of this blog expansion on soft skills is that soft skills can be taught and mirrored in any classroom setting. The first requirement is to construct our classrooms with my backwards four-step modality: intended outcome, create objectives that target outcomes, design activities that promote those soft skills, and facilitate discussions. For example, what should students know prior to existing our classroom? When I ask myself that question, I instantly rely on my inherit teaching philosophy (e.g., your philosophy should guide everything you do in your classroom). My philosophy question is what hard skills and soft skills students should my students know that will benefit them, personally and professionally for the rest of their lives?

Once I recognize those soft skills since this blog is about soft skills, I will construct objectives and conscious lesson plans that inspire the development of chosen soft skills. For example, I might identify team work, leadership, or self-efficacy (e.g., belief that one can complete any given task) as those soft skills, prompting the development of team projects or in-class activities. Within those team activities, I would encourage every student to own their roles and demonstrate elements of leadership in every specified role. Also, I would periodically produce obstacles that force teams to abandon, adjust, and adopt strategies to build on their self-efficacy skills. The key is to unlock their greatness with my backwards four-step modality: outcome, objectives, activities, and facilitate.

My charge to you phenomenal instructors is to remain great and to focus on developing your students’ soft skills with an inherit love for teaching and for making learning a fun endeavor while realizing your “love” and “desire for fun learning” are soft skills.

How will you develop soft skills among your followers, students, or employees?

Dr. James Arthur Williams

Domestication is a phenomenon of our lived experience. From birth, society indoctrinates us to dogma, stemming from education, religion, politics, lifestyle, and many other stereotypical and prejudicial principles from one’s unique culture. We all derive from collective cultures and individual cultures that plague our collective egos and individual egos. For example, individuals born in the U.S. tend to embrace their collective culture and to buy into its collective ego of societal greatness when compared to other nations; this mindset might inspire us to develop a collective ego of fascism in regard to international affairs and an individual ego of being right on morality and ethics. Not realizing, our truth comes from our virtual reality. However, this thought process produces conflict and stymies collective success, as well as universal love and joy.

This stance leads to segregation or isolation from diverse populous because it constructs an unrealistic and false concept of self. My next statement will probably make some of you feel uncomfortable, but it is probably the most profound and factual statement of this text. We do not exist, not in a so-called black, white, African American, Caucasian, or worldly title fashion. These are manmade concepts that are implemented and adopted to create levels of hierarchy, mainly, superiority and inferiority distances among people within our respectable nation. We are taught these disparaging ideas at very young ages, to create separation among the majority (95% poor and middleclass citizens) of the people, transitioning people to live in unproductive silos. We unconsciously tout about a God who loves all, but we (Christian-nation) overtly discriminate against other religions, religious sects, atheists, and/or any heresy that attacks one’s domesticated beliefs.

However, we learned that the “truth shall set us free” from seers, sages, and the 1999 blockbuster movie, The Matrix. We must be like Neo because we must choose the red pill, the truth, a truth the leads us to righteous walks throughout our remaining days. A walk that led Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Gandhi, Dr. King, and many other seers to unmask their true potentials and to become the ONE. All of these individuals understood and responded to the light within them rather than the elements seen in their physical form. The light is boundless and limitless while our eyes and flesh is finite and limited to our span of existence. We ALL have this light dwelling in us, encapsulated by our soul. We refer to this light as Christ, God, energy, and intuition. I chose the term “light” for this blog, to be inclusive to all readers and to break away from our domesticated foundation of beliefs. Our lights are constantly corresponding with us, in myriad of subtle ways, such as omens (i.e., coincidences), visceral instincts, probing thoughts, and positive or negative encounters.

Our light is our compass to our personal legend, and the more we follow this light, the more the universe conspires with us to lead us to our individual purposes. These individual purposes propel us to die to our constructed versions of self, a self that was built on domesticated beliefs, and held up by our cultures, religions, and ultimately our false egos. Our light shines through all of those fallacies and unmask us to our hidden selves or versions of us that are more robust than our former models anchored in labels. The world can never give us our light because it existed prior to any introduction to manmade concepts, families, or individual ideas that was bestowed upon us. I implore you all to sit still, remove any distractions (e.g., phones, entertainment, people, and etc.), and be in joy, love, and peace and activate your light and authentic calling.