Aim their laughter like a cannon that booms out over the water.

Aim their sorrow like a rainbow that follows a storm.

Aim their anger like a lightning bolt that kills a man standing under a tree.

Be careful not to stand under trees.

People would rather be angry that bored.

This is why we pay attention to politics.

People would rather be frightened than bored.

This is why we watch scary movies.

People would rather be sad than bored.

This is why we read books that break our hearts.

People would rather be laughing than bored.

This is why we have comedians and memes and YouTube and TikTok.

Why is it so profoundly difficult

to simply sit still in silence?

Because whenever we are silent

for more than a few minutes,

all of our shadows and secrets and sins

come to the surface of our consciousness.

Jesus says, “Whenever you pray,

go into the closet and shut the door.”1

Surely, Jesus knows about all the

skeletons we like to hide in our closets.

And Jesus wants prayer to be the place

where we confront those skeletons

and face our fears.

If we do not confront the skeletons in our closets,

then they will control the whole house.

If we do not control our shadows,

then they will run the whole show.

This is why some say

that all of humanity’s problems

stem from our inability to sit quietly

in a room alone. 2

– Daniel DeForest London,

The Cloud of Unknowing, Distilled

Anger, fear, sorrow, and laughter are forms of excitement.

Excite people and you will be the center of attention.

But the happiest thing to do, if you can do it,

is fill people with a sense of wonder.

Wonder is a feeling without skeletons or shadows.

Wonder is a reaction, not an emotion.

Wonder is triggered by realizations that are bigger than our minds can contain.

Roy H. Williams

HOT TIP – Make Yourself Happy. Sign up for Jeffrey’s class Aug. 13-14 at WizardAcademy.org. It will give you more confidence, competence, and consideration. Your teeth will be whiter and you’ll be a better dancer. – Indy Beagle

1 Matthew ch 6, verse 6

2 Blaise Pascal, (1623 – 1662)

“It’s what you choose to believe that makes you the person you are.“

– Karen Marie Moning

Nick-Anthony Zamucen has launched four successful franchises: a pizza chain, a home care business, a crime scene cleaner, and a water and fire damage repair company. According to Nick-Anthony, there is a proven formula for running a successful franchise, whether you buy into someone else’s concept or decide to start a franchise of your own. What should you look for in a franchise? What do you need to launch one? And what should you absolutely avoid? Make some popcorn because the show is about to start as Nick Anthony Zamucen tells all to our own roving reporter Rotbart at MondayMorningRadio.com

Any person who relays messages to you from the boss, is now your new boss.

An excellent messenger might relay exactly what the big boss asked them to tell you, but only after they have reframed it, recharacterized it, and added their own slant.

Every messenger does this. Whether they do it consciously or unconsciously is irrelevant. Whether they do it maliciously or innocently is irrelevant. What matters is that it happens.

When a person speaks for the boss, you work for that person. You must do what they say.

If a messenger gives you a handwritten note from the big boss, your response to that message will be reframed, recharacterized, and delivered as interpreted by the mind of the messenger. The big boss is going to hear their words, not yours.

And God help you if you entrust an innocent question to a messenger. By the time that question enters the ear of the emperor, it will sound like a childish challenge or an anger-inflaming insult. The only thing you can do now is kneel down, put your head between your knees, and kiss your ass goodbye.

Have I put the matter too strongly? If so, let me soften it with this short summary: You are forever at the messenger’s mercy.

Which is perfectly okay if you do not love your job.

Are you putting in your 8 hours then going home to begin living your real life? If so, you are incredibly lucky. Do your 40, collect your check, live your life.

I envy you.

But if you are cursed with ideas, innovations, and experiences you believe have value, you will forever be frustrated by the bleak barrier that separates you from that pristine person who can say “absolutely yes.” Your cheeks will be chapped by silly slaps from interfering intermediaries. Your days will be darkened by dullards. Your mind will be massacred by meetings with morons. (Yes, I am toying with alliteration today.)

You need to get a different job. You need to have direct contact with that one special person who can say absolutely yes without having to clear it with someone else.

I spent my youth writing ads for clients who grew too big and became too busy to speak with me directly. When I became weary of living in the leg-irons and handcuffs imposed by messengers, I cut two tablets of stone from the heart of Mount Moriah. Those tablets contain two sentences:

1. “I cannot work my magic unless I am in direct contact with the person who has unconditional authority to say ‘absolutely yes’ without having to check with someone else.”
2. “If that person is too busy to speak with me personally, I am too busy to write his ads.”

You have felt what I am describing, or you have not.

Again, I envy you if you have not.

If you have felt that frustration:

1. Get a job working with an entrepreneur who will take the time to hear you.
2. Honor that person by giving them your best.
3. If that person’s success causes them to feel the need to insert a messenger between them and you…
4. Take your stonemason’s hammer and your stonecarver’s chisel to the ancient mines of Mount Moriah. Sit down and think for awhile in the shadow of the Almighty. Then carve what you feel.

If Mount Moriah frightens you, then you must learn to live with chapped cheeks, darkened days, and a massacred mind.

I will leave you to make your own decision.

As for me, I’m placing my stone tablets in my front window where everyone can see them.

Roy H. Williams

NOTE FROM INDY BEAGLE: August 13-14: Only 15 people will be allowed to attend an extremely special business class taught by Jeffrey...

There is a time to get started, and there is a time to wait.

1. When you have thought carefully about it, take action. But when you haven’t thought about it, wait.
2. The important is rarely urgent, and the urgent is rarely important. Do not become a slave to the merely urgent.
3. Perception is to see things that not everyone sees. Intuition is to recognize connections, and the patterns that occur because of these connections.
4. Maximum information is available, and maximum contemplation is possible, only at the last possible moment.
5. If you ever feel bad about procrastinating, just remember that Mozart wrote the overture to Don Giovanni the morning it premiered.
6. Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment. But if you procrastinate too long, you will have your choice made for you by circumstance.

Mozart was christened Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. Theophilus, in Greek, means “loved by God”.

In a letter announcing his birth, his father said his name was Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart. Gottlieb, in German, means “loved by God.”

When he was 21, Mozart began calling himself Amadè, which is Hungarian for “loved by God.”

Mozart called himself Amadeus only once, when he signed a letter “Wolfgangus Amadeus Mozartus” as a joke, (sort of like Indiana Beagle calling himself “Indianus Beaglus” in the image at the top of today’s Monday Morning Memo.) Amadeus, in Latin, means “Loved by God.”

“Johannes Chrysostomus” precedes the name “Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart” because he, a Catholic, was born on January 27, the feast day of Saint John Chrysostomus in the West until the calendar reform of 1969.

But I digress. We were talking about the tyranny of the “merely urgent” versus information, contemplation, and procrastination.

1. Waiting serves a purpose. In Manley Miller’s booklet, “Potato Chips: Greasy, Salty, Really Good Stories from Growing Up in New Orleans,” he writes,

I became a pastor when I was still young and foolish enough to say, “All right, God, if I’m not a senior pastor by the time I’m 30, then I’m going to quit being a pastor. I’m just going to take that as a sign from you that this is not what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Later, I found out the reason Jesus didn’t start his ministry until he was 30 is because you couldn’t become a rabbi until you were 30. You didn’t have enough life experience.

Jesus was 12 when Mary and Joseph found him teaching in the Synagogue, and it says that he “spoke with great wisdom.” But then when he’s 30 and starts his ministry, it says he spoke with great authority.

You have an aptitude for something when you have a talent for it.

But you develop proficiency over long experience.

And it’s going to take some time to get there.

Likewise, there’s a long journey from wisdom to authority.

When you have something to say worth hearing, that’s wisdom.

But when people respect you enough to listen, that’s authority.

Waiting is not wasting.

And now we’re going to make a 90-degree turn and head off in a tangential direction. Hold on tight.

Here are the Top Five Regrets of People Who are Dying:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. I wish I had spent more time with my family.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be...