LOOKING AHEAD TO 2023 AND SETTING GOALS

I have been hunkered down attempting to write a book to be called “Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times”. I have been writing for about 1 month and it has been a challenge to get to the heart of the unchanging and timeless elements of wisdom that are important for modern living. In doing this, I have been reflecting on the last few years and how things have changed for me in my world view. The extraordinary overreach by governments with the mandating of experimental injections, termed “vaccinations” in 2021 and 2022 and the willingness of most people to accept the unacceptable has been a shock. As a society, we have been shown to have limited understanding of freedom which has all but disappeared from our vocabulary. The willingness of the mainstream media and most doctors to support authoritarian overreach and to deny credible alternative voices also has shocked me. Now people are returning to life as though nothing has changed but to me, everything has changed as precedents have been set for governments to use a range of digital tools to restrict freedom of movement and even thought, when the next “crisis” appears. It seems almost certain that another “pandemic” will be engineered and we have to consider for ourselves what are our “non-negotiables”. Each of us have areas of our lives where there is a bottom line and we will not deviate and so when the government imposes new mandates, we need to consider where we will take a stand.

As I have been writing the book, and also have been considering the year ahead, it seemed that it may be helpful for my “Sons of Issachar” readers if I took some time out from book writing to put down some thoughts about 2023 and goals for the year. I think that it is particularly important to carefully consider priorities and non-negotiables at this time. If you don’t this, it is clear that Big Government, Big Tech and Big Pharma will do it for you! So this newsletter will hopefully help readers to think about their focus for the year ahead and where they can have the greatest impact.

Goal Setting - Opportunities and Challenges

When I first joined a group of CEOs many years ago, I was introduced to the idea of goal setting. This was a new idea for me and the process started with a simple idea: what would you like people to say about you at your funeral and how would you like to be remembered? The question stopped me in my tracks to do some deeper thinking about how I was living and what was important. We don’t need to look for big achievements or discoveries because as John C. Maxwell said: “leadership is influence, nothing more and nothing less”. All of us are influential in our own sphere and most notably with our friends and families.

Since that time, I have put time aside to do goals and have found it a beneficial process. Many people set New Year resolutions and usually these include: lose weight and eat more healthily. The success rate of such resolutions is very poor because mostly they are a wish rather than something based in reality. Within our CEO group, we each wrote our goals for the year and shared these goals with the 15-20 people in the group. The process was challenging because others would question our goals and eventually they became an exercise in one-upmanship as people boasted about how they had met their goals. Many goals were set - personal (financial, relationship, holidays, family) and business (financial, personnel, growth, market share etc) but I realized that after a few years of doing these that it was difficult to decide what was important. When you have many goals, most become lost in the morass of time and you tend to find that when there are many, you end up doing none but life rolls on for another year and the daily challenges of life end up making us subject to circumstances around us.

Goal Setting - A Simplified Approach

2023 already has almost vanished and January seems to have disappeared in a puff of smoke in the rear vision mirror. However, it is not too late to take some time out from Netflix or the tennis to spend an hour with a pad and a pen to jot down a few ideas. My suggestion is as follows:

1. Start with the question - what would you like people to say about you at your funeral? I have found that this provides good perspective and could be important because your funeral may be sooner than you think! The old saying: “Live every day as though it is your last - because one day you will be correct” is true.

2. Review the past year. Ask the question: what are three things that I did that I believe had the most impact? Forcing yourself to filter the various things you did down to three helps to focus on the things you did that were most important and also helps with your goals for the year ahead. Also ask the question: what is one thing that I avoided this last year that I know I should have done?

3. Looking at the year ahead, what is the single most important area to give your attention in 2023? It may be an activity, a relationship, your finance, a group. Once you have identified this “one thing” then also identify how you are going to know if you are successful - what is the measure you will use? The other important question to ask is: what is one thing that I could stop doing that will have the most impact? This may be a boundary issue - saying no to someone or it may be time spent on social media or television. We all have areas that take up our time and it is the only commodity that we can’t get more of.

An important area that is often neglected is our spiritual life. The famous theologian A.W. Tozer in his book “Experiencing the Presence of God” wrote:

“The simple fact is that God gets the leftovers, never the main meal. God never gets anything new. He gets the hand-me-downs. We give to God that which we don’t need instead of giving to Him that which we need , and thus earning a crown for ourselves. If we were as concerned with our spiritual condition as we are with our homes and businesses and our income, we would go forward spiritually at a great rate.......You do not have to choose between making a living and going forward with God. You can do both.”

You need to consider Tozer’s words as you think about where you focus for the year. As you jot down your ideas on your pad, it is worthwhile asking yourself this overarching question:

What is the single thing that you plan to do in 2023 that will matter most in 10 years time? This question is helpful in making you stop to think about the impact of what you have deemed most important. For example, I have a friend who was going to stop homeschooling her children because it was so difficult and challenging. However, she decided to press on for another year when realizing that continuing home schooling would likely be the thing that would matter most in 10 years.

This whole process is something that you can do in a few hours and I have found it to be beneficial in helping me to focus on what is important and also to stop doing things that are of little importance.

The Big Picture of Challenges in the Year Ahead

The Ukraine Conflict

I have continued to monitor various news sources about the conflict in Ukraine and there is such a “spin” on any news, it is hard to decide what is really happening. The fact that the President of Ukraine’s wife gave the opening address at the World Economic Forum in Davos this last week is a sure sign that there is another agenda for Ukraine by the “new world order”. Germany has refused to make available their highly acclaimed tank but Zelensky has been adept at emotional blackmail. Even Australia has been pressured to send equipment and all we have is a gumboot! It is hard to predict where the conflict will end but it is certain that given the long-standing corruption in the Ukraine that much of the money and materiel will end up being used for purposes other than Ukrainian defense. China and Russia are now engaged in combined naval exercises off the coast of South Africa and this alliance will have long-term impacts. When you think that that the assassination of an obscure royal was a precipitating factor in the start of WWI, it seems that the Ukrainian conflict where the West has put all its eggs in the Ukrainian basket, could end up badly and a much wider conflict is possible.

The Next Pandemic

The pandemic was such a great opportunity for authoritarian overreach that this tool is almost certain to be used again in the not too distant future. There was an attempt to create a monkey pox crisis in 2022 and another “tabletop” exercise called “Catastrophic Contagion” - was held in Belgium in late October 2022. The exercise was led by Johns Hopkins University with support from the WHO and the Gates Foundation. A similar exercise was held in 2019 in relation to a possible coronavirus outbreak and the proximity seemed more than coincidence. Interestingly, this recent conference focused on Africa. I suspect that this was to influence African leaders who were resistant in 2022 to the WHO being given total control over declaration of a pandemic and authority to manage it. It is certain that we are being prepared for more vaccine mandates with the G20 agreeing to the idea of future vaccine passports for travel. Another pandemic would solidify this idea and I believe that we can anticipate this some time in 2023. Lockdowns, digital IDs and digital currency are coming whether we want them or not. It is also concerning that Jeremy Farrar, the former head of the Wellcome Trust has been appointed the Chief Scientist of the WHO. I can recommend listening to Whitney Webb’s latest podcast about this, accessible on this link.

A number of people are discussing the issue of excess mortality or sudden death from the last “pandemic” that appear to be associated with the various COVID “vaccines”. To understand this more, it is worthwhile reading Edward Dowd’s book: “Cause Unknown”.

Net Zero Will Lead to the End of Modern Civilization

You don’t need to be a climate scientist or even understand rudimentary energy theory to know that world leaders are charting a course back into the dark ages and energy disaster. So called “green” energy has no possibility of meeting energy requirements and energy prices will continue to rise dramatically in a simple supply-demand model. Countries like Australia are commiting self-destruction by refusing to mine and use our p\lentiful supplies of coal and gas because of an apparent religious commitment to “net zero”. We should continue to ask: “net zero what”? because the answer could be net zero humans! Technocracy News has published a recent summary of a paper by Dr Wallace Manheimer. Technocracy News says that:

“Dr. Manheimer holds a physics PhD from MIT and has had a 50-year career in nuclear research, including work at the Plasma Physics Division at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. He has published over 150 science papers. In his view, there is “certainly no scientific basis” for expecting a climate crisis from too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the next century or so.” Technocracy news says that Dr Manheimer believes that net-zero will be “ the end of modern civilisation. Writing about wind and solar power he argued it would be especially tragic “when not only will this new infrastructure fail, but will cost trillions, trash large portions of the environment, and be entirely unnecessary”. The stakes, he added, “are enormous”.

The net-zero juggernaut has such a head of steam that derailing it seems impossible. All we can do is to head for the hills and ensure that we have our own independent energy supplies.

Looking Ahead in 2023

The situation ahead looks dire to me. Big Government, Big Tech and Big Pharma have their collective hands on the controls and they will not give these over without a fight. Unfortunately we seem to be in a situation when there is little fight left in most of the Western populations. However, I was interested to see Chris Reed, a prophetic pastor who is President of Morningtstar Ministries give his predictions for 2023. Chris is a man who has a history of accuracy prophecies and his prophecies for 2023 and beyond are extensive and mind-boggling. Here is a link to the prophecies that we given at the end of 2022 at a Morningstar Conference. The video is about 30 min long and in case you don’t have time to view, here are a few highlights for 2023 and beyond:

• Biden - gone before 2024

• Harris - in as US President but only a short time

• President Xi - replaced

• Putin - gone

These are a glimpse of the 30+ prophecies outlined in the video.

I have made good progress with my book on wisdom and have completed 8 chapters of a rough draft. My plan is to focus on this writing for the first 4 months of 2023 but I will send at least monthly missives to “Sons of Issachar” readers to help continue to provide a perspective on the “signs of the times”. I would appreciate any of your best ideas about goal setting if you have some time.