I want to read from Genesis chapter. This has been personally a revelation and something I've been on a journey. Genesis chapter 33 verses 13 and 14. All of our notes are also on your version Bible app. You can click on more events and then enable location finder and then you're able to follow those notes as well and download them straight into your computer. But Jacob said to him, my Lord knows that the children are weak and the flocks and the herds which are nursing are with me.  Please let my Lord go on ahead before His servant. I will lead on slowly at the pace which the livestock that go before me and the children are able to endure until I come to my Lord in seer. On March 11th, 2020, COVID-19 was declared as the global pandemic. It was supposed to be two weeks to slow the spread. We all took our shelter in their houses to wage war against this invisible enemy. Two weeks turn into months, two months turn into a year, a year turn into two years and probably it's gonna go to three years. A mental health crisis, a national psychologist association issued a warning of the impact of these events, the lockdowns, the masks, the COVID, all of the stuff that's happening right now, that the impact of these events on the long-term physical and mental health is going to be greater than the actual pandemic itself. And Americans are facing a second pandemic which will be the effects of what we have been through. We're already seeing that. In fact, the Harrison Paul in February of this year found out that 61% of people are experiencing undesired weight since the pandemic. 41% have gained more weight than they intended on the average 29 extra pounds. 67% said they're not sleeping as they used to before the pandemic. 35% are sleeping less, 31% are sleeping more. So some people are sleeping more now, praise God, but some of us are sleeping less. Alcohol, 22% are drinking more alcohol to cope with the stress during the coronavirus. 46% of generation Z, Gen Z, and generation Z or Gen Z is pretty much those who were born from 1997 until 2012. 96 of them are most likely generation to say that their mental health has worsened compared to millennials, boomers, and other adults. More than half of employees served in the United States plan to look for a new job in 2021. Economy has shrunk at 32% in the second quarter of last year. This shock of April, May, and June was more than three times as sharp as the previous record, which was 10% in 1958 and nearly four times the worst quarter during the Great Recession. We are facing right now extremely unprecedented times. We are. I know that those of us who live in choice cities where maybe are not as, we feel like we're not as affected, but people lost their businesses. Some people lost their jobs. Some people lost their family members. And some people are not, they didn't lose anything. They're afraid that they will. Young people today, during the COVID time in the last two years, more suicides happened with teenagers than teenagers dying out of the pandemic. This is a very unprecedented and a very difficult time. On the top of that, we had to face a whole racial, almost like a revolution that was happening with Black Lives Matter. We had an incredible, difficult, toxic election. Till this day, we're still suffering the consequences of that. The laws and the rules that are being implemented in our land right now are crazy. The stuff that is being shoved into a school is bizarre. The things that are being pushed into our students today is crazy and we're living right in the middle of that. We're getting to the point where in some states you're not allowed to go to the gym, you're not allowed to go to a restaurant, if you don't prove that you have been vaccinated.  Then there's whole push, the mandate, the mandate of the vaccination, the problem is that what it does is it takes a toll on the human being. All of this takes a toll on our life. And today I wanna speak for just few moments concerning it's not gonna touch unnecessarily the spiritual component as much as on the practical component of finding peace in the pace of life. Jacob is our story and the Bible says that Jacob had a family, he already had flocks and he had children and he had wives, something that was permitted during that time. And something happened with Jacob, he meets Issa and Issa gives him this invitation. He says, hey, I want to pretty much accompany your family. I want to accompany your life. I wanna give you this security guardian, pretty much guard ship. I wanna guide you with my men all the way to the place that we're supposed to be. And Jacob tells Issa and he says, I can't let you guide my family. He says, if men were to drive the children and my flock, all of the livestock, flock, herds, nursing children, all of them will die. If you're taking notes, I wanna share with you two points from these two verses. One, during this time, as we're trying to bounce back, as we're trying to get to normal and honestly guys, we're not trying to get back to normal, we don't want normal. We want something new, come on. I don't want what we had two years ago. I want what God has for us in the future. And so there's no going back to normal. I don't want normal, I want something new. I want something supernatural. I want something that mind and man cannot explain. I want something that will glorify God.  I don't want normal, I want supernatural, I want revival, I want the glory of God. Come on somebody in the chat, drop that in the chat. That I don't want normal, I want supernatural. I don't want like it used to be, I want like God wants it to be, amen. But I want you to notice in here is that the first thing I wanna mention is that if we are not led by the spirit, we will be driven by the flesh. Jacob says, if man were to drive, God doesn't want your life during this difficult season to be driven. I know in the culture we live in today, culture preferences, respects, gives honor to people who are driven. We even say man, this person is driven by success. This person is driven by ambition. Like this person, they're driven. That means that they're motivated. Driven means that they are excited. Driven means that they are enthusiastic. Driven means is they're not lazy, they're not stuck. But I want you to see that being driven is actually unhealthy. In the scripture, God drove enemies out. He never drove his children, he led his children. If something drives you, that's not healthy because it's not God. God is not a driver, he is a leader. God is not a driver, he is a shepherd.   You don't drive them, come on somebody. And if you do drive your children, you need deliverance. You need some parenting help. You should not drive your children. The Bible says that the Lord drove from light into darkness, Job 1818. Numbers 32, 21, it says, until he has driven out his enemies from before him. Isaiah 8, 22, it says that then they will look to the earth and see trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish. And they will be driven into darkness. Have you noticed that every reference dealing with driving is into darkness, not success. Into darkness, not into a good family. Into darkness, not into better health. Into darkness, not into healthier you, newer you, good mental health, not into that. Anytime you're driven, you will be driven into darkness. Are you driven? Are you driven by success?  And that force is not the Holy Spirit because he does not drive. The Holy Spirit leads. Word driven means it implies controlling force, pushing a passive subject. Controlling force, pushing a passive object. How do you drive a car? You have a force. You are the force pushing your car being passive.  As Christians, we are not controlled and pushed and we are not passive. As Christians, we are led and we participate and we involve ourselves with our creator, the Holy Spirit. Being led implies a participation on the part of a disciple and the Lord went before them they in a pillar of cloud to lead the way.  Revelation 717, for the lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to the living fountains of water and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.   If you feel overwhelmed, if you feel under stress, if you feel right now like your life is going and the very, very excessive, crazy speed, I wanna ask you a question. Are you currently being led or are you being driven? Are you taking every opportunity that is thrown at your way? Are you chasing some kind of a fairy tale or some kind of a wind that you cannot catch? Are you in this cycle? You can't stop, your mind can't rest, you can't sleep and you find yourself irritated. You find yourself numbing yourself with stimulants. You find yourself restless at night. You find yourself maybe snapping at people that are closest to you. Perhaps you find yourself, you can't function without many, many cups of coffee, not because you enjoy coffee, but because you can't live without coffee. If you have a pace that is not sustained by the grace of God, I wanna ask you a question. Who is driving you? Who's driving you? You need to prove to your friends that you're better than them. Who is driving you?  What is driving you? Because God doesn't drive, He leads. And when He leads, He leads to still waters. He leads in green pastures. He leads in a way that doesn't damage and grind on your soul. He leads in a way that you don't lose your family.  He leads in such a way that you don't lose the local church. You don't stop tithing and you don't stop serving. He leads in a way that your whole life is being successful.   Not only that your responsibilities is growing, but so is your depression. God leads in such a way where there is a wholeness that takes place to your soul. But driving damages and destroys us. Why is driving dangerous? Driving is always done by men. Have you noticed, Jacob said, if men were to drive, men drive. The spirit of God leads. Driving is always done by force. Men work to drive hard and leading requires you to follow. Driving is hard, leading is easy. Driving is trying to do everything fast. Jacob says, if men were to drive, the sheep, the herds, and the livestock in one day, because you know when you're driven, it's when you do everything right now. Like, well actually no, not right now, you needed everything yesterday. You know you're driven when you are impatient. You know you're driven if you're trying to catch up for all the years that you lost.  You're just like, man, I just have so much stuff and you use your family dinner to get stuff done. It's like you're always, always on. You never turn off. I wanna ask you today to honestly examine your heart and ask yourself, are you driven or are you led? Now if you don't have the Holy Spirit, the best thing you can do is be driven and you can be successful in the eyes of people. But once you have the Holy Spirit, you don't have to be driven. You can be led. And to be led, that means you gotta know your leader. That means you gotta spend time in a quiet place. You gotta spend time with the word. You gotta spend time. In order to be led, if you're allowing somebody to lead you on the highway, you have to always see them. But if you are driving your own car, you don't have to see anybody. You just have to pretty much hit the pedal to the metal and you just gotta keep going. The moment you are led, you have to wait for the Holy Spirit. You have to pray about it. You can't just, if somebody presents you a business opportunity, you can't say, yeah, yeah, I got it. Of course, how much money does it make? Yeah, count me in. You say, let me wait, let me talk to my wife. Let me just wait 24 hours. Let me pray about it. Why? Because you're waiting on the leading, not on the driving.  I signed up for this course. I signed up for that club. I signed up for this thing.  But in reality is you were compelled by external force instead of led by internal leading. And Jacob said this to Issa.  Driving will lead to death sooner or later.  It will lead to the death of your family relationships. It will lead to the death of your marriage. It will lead to some kind of a death of your intimacy with God because you don't need God to be driven. You just need more time and more money. But in order to be led, you just need God. He said, Lord, lead me. Lord, guide me. I had to personally practice this this year, like never before. I have more opportunities now than I have time to do. More invitations to go speak at different places and people sometimes even are spreading the rumor. They're like, it's easier to get Benihin to the conference than Vlad. And they're like, he always says no. Like I was in Denver and the guy looked at me and he says, do you know how many people I talked to? And they said, it's impossible to get you anywhere. And I said, that's a good compliment. It's not that I'm walking around feeling like, oh, look how important it is, how important I am. But I had to take time this year to say, you know what, not everything that's good is God. Not everything that looks like will advance my career or my calling is where God wants me to be involved in. And I do know one thing is that when the Holy Spirit leads with his pace, there is his grace. When he guides, he provides.  I don't need to be at every place at every single invitation he can cause. Come on, somebody. And then all he can do is he can blow on one thing that's not supposed to be doing good. And then that could compensate for the times that you feel like you missed out because you gave priority to the leading of God. When you take a day off to be with your family, when you take a day on Sunday to be in church instead of putting in extra few hours at work, when you begin to prioritize your marriage and it seems like, but I could do so much here, so much there, I lost my business. I need to start something really fast right now. I need to finish my four year college in two years or three years. And then you're missing out on so much. I wanna encourage you. Stop allowing the forces of this world to drive you. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you will know what is the perfect, the will, the will of God is. Come on, somebody. Touch your neighbor, say, be led by the Holy Ghost. Say, slow down to the pace of God's grace. I want you to see the second thing is not only we're not supposed to be driven, we're supposed to be led, but the second thing that I wanna highlight and that is the grace of God should determine the pace of our life, not our opportunities. Let me say it again. The grace of God should determine our pace, not our gifts, our potential, or man. Man, I missed so much time. I need to catch up. Look what Jacob says to his brother, Issa. He said, I am not going to let men drive. He said, because driving means controlling, pushing a passive object. And my children are not objects. And your men will not have the luxury of driving them. And this is the first statement. If you wanna live a peaceful life, you have to fight the need to be driven. And you have to accept yourself in the position of a disciple. Put yourself as a disciple that is led by the Holy Spirit and resign as this passive object that ambition, needs, opportunities, and all of these things drive you. Be led, not driven. But the second thing I want you to notice is Jacob says in the next verse, he says, I will lead slowly at the pace that the herds livestock and the children can endure.  You can't lead if you are driven. You can't lead your family if you are driven by something. Constantly something is pushing you, something is driving you. You will never be a leader. You will be a driver if you are driven. You will drive your family. You will drive your ministry.  There will be squeakings all the time, grinding all the time. Everybody's upset, everybody's happy.  You will be successful alone because you lost everybody. But Jacob says, I will not allow the men to drive my family. He says, these are soldiers, my family, they're young children. He says, I have to develop a different pace. And then he says, I will lead slowly at the pace that the children and the flocks that are with me can follow. We have to determine our own pace, our rhythm, our stride in life. And this has to be determined by what is the grace of God on right now. When the grace of God is on the church, we can open more services. When the grace of God is on the conferences, we can do more conferences. When the grace of God is on social media, we can start doing more. But a lot of times when there is no grace and we begin to run faster to compensate for the lack of God's favor, we end up burning stuff up. We end up being burned out instead of being blessed by the grace of God. We do sense a grace of God moving at Hungry Jen. We do sense a grace of God that is moving in our services, in our small groups. We do sense that global ministry of Hungry Jen is moving forward. And that's what we're trying to keep up with the grace of God. But I wanna ask you in your personal, in our personal life, few things I wanna highlight. Grace of God will lead you to stride, not strife. Not stress. The grace of God will lead us to stride. Stride meaning you take steps. When you're striving, when you're stressing, when you are anxious, that's not the grace of God. That's something outside of the grace of God. And you can examine your own heart and ask yourself, am I striving or am I striding? Am I taking steps? But if I honestly skipping steps and there's glitch that is happening in my mind and in my life. Psalm 37 verse 33 says the following, the steps, can somebody say the steps? The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. Let me ask you a question. Are you running too fast? The Bible doesn't say the run of the good man, the steps. Meaning he has a stride to his steps. There's a rhythm, there's a pace to his life. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and he delights in his way.  God delights in your rhythm. God delights in your stride. God delights in the way your life is happening. He looks at that and he makes him happy. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and he delights in his way. And God says, even if in that rhythm, pandemic hits your business. Even if in that rhythm, sickness comes to your house. Even if in that rhythm, there will be a trouble. God says, though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down. For the Lord upholds him with his hand. I just wanna encourage you. When you find your pace of grace, it doesn't mean there will be never a bankruptcy. It does not mean there will be no funerals. It does not mean that there will be no hard days. It just simply means that God delights in your way and he will uphold you even if you fall. He will be there for your family even if you fail. He will help you. Come on, somebody. Jesus lived in a constant state of rest. He was never in a hurry, he never ran. We don't see that. He did not use a racing animal but a walking animal. He walked so slow that a crowd could keep up and a woman with an issue of blood could touch him. He slept in the storm and yet he was still able to do what God called him to do. And at 33, he finished everything God had him to finish. Was the whole world saved because of his preaching? No, but he accomplished what God called him to accomplish. We are wanting to be like Jesus and to be like him, we have to allow the grace of God to help order our steps. The other component that I wanna mention is that grace does not go faster than peace. What does it mean to follow the rhythm of grace? How do you know if you're following or not? Very simple question. Do you delight in God at this season? Number two, is there peace in your soul? And number three, are your children keeping up? So the first one is, do you delight in God at this season?   The peace of God is the indicator if the grace of God is currently on your life.  When there is no more peace, meaning there's constant turmoil, if we would cut you in the half and there's a storm taking place, even though there's no hurricane in tri-cities, but all of that hurricane landed in your mind. Even though there's no more wind this morning, but that wind, it's like you're tossed to and fro, driven like a ship in your mind and you feel like, man, I'm always stressed out, I'm always snappy, I'm always anxious, I'm always like that, I believe in God I'm gonna ask you a question. If you lost your peace, you probably have lost his grace. And if you lost his grace, all you gotta do is you gotta go back to the Holy Spirit and say, Holy Spirit, I want you to be my leader, be my shepherd, and I want you to begin to guide me, speed me up. Stress is your destiny, giving you a ticket for speeding. Exiety, a lot of times, anxiety. I've heard from one of the psychologists who works with people who have mental issues and he says 75% of people who come to him who need sleeping medicine, who need medicine for anxiety, he says, if they could do few simple things, like wake up on time, make up their bed, take a shower, eat healthy year, exercise few times a week, and do something for somebody else. He says, they will no longer need my pills or my services. He says, I tell them to do that, if they do it, they usually don't come back to me. If they don't do it, I still give them pills, but he said, the pills don't help because most people's pace of life, when they wake up, lack of discipline, lack of prioritizing time with the Lord, lack of prioritizing time with the family, lack of structure and lack of that stuff. He says, that is the real reason they experience anxiety. 70%, 75%, somebody said, the statistic says, 75% of doctors' visits today are due to anxiety, not to the actual physical illness. People come and they say things like something is hurting, I can't know, I don't know what, and they begin to examine their life and they notice that, yes, you have a lot of anxiety and they can push you on pills, but I wanna encourage you. What you really need, first and foremost, is the peace of God, but you can't find peace until you find that relationship and you start finding that rhythm that God wants you to be on, that he is leading you to do what you're doing. Are you with me? And let the peace of God rule in your hearts to which also you were called in one body and be thankful. But I want you to read, I want you to listen to what the net translation says. Let the peace of Christ be in control in your heart, for you were in fact called as one body to this peace and be thankful. So let the peace of Christ be in control in your heart. Let only one thing control you and that is the peace. Amen. When pandemic broke out, I was super excited that I finally can catch up on work. I had so many ideas, I just had no time. So all of my trips were canceled. I was like, yes, finally I can do more work. And so I started to do more work. I started to record curriculums for small groups that I always wanted to do, just didn't have time. From those curriculums, one thing led to another. I started a website, personal website, because my trips were canceled, I started to sell my content on the website. It grew a little bit, felt the leading of the Lord to start giving stuff for free. Three days later, people start sending donations. That turned to something that I started getting more ideas. I launched an online school that has, as of right now, probably 19,989, let's say 20,000 students, as of right now. It has six e-courses. Now, it has six e-courses. I start writing more books. I start producing more curriculum. After that, I launched an unprofit. After that, I launched, started to do YouTube. The YouTube started to take off for a month. It's about a one million views that happens on YouTube. TikTok took off, and things just started to happen. Then we did 40-day fast, and my life honestly starts just spinning even crazier. After that, not only the school was launched, not only the books were launched, one month, when I launched, I launched one reading plan a month on U-Version Bible Lab. In the reading plan, U-Version Bible Lab, one month this year, there was 100,000 subscriptions to that one reading plan in one week. As of right now, there's about 800,000 subscription, just on U-Version reading plans. Things just started to take off, and it was incredible. It was amazing. Started on Russian YouTube, and next week, launching a Spanish YouTube. And so, different things started to happen. The Lord has helped me, and I have three people now that started to work personally for me, and honestly, there was a time where I started to experience where I'm like, oh man, my mind doesn't turn off. Like, it spins out of control. There was a time when on my day off, I would just do more work. I would write, I would create content, I don't stop. And the crazy part is I love it. I love it, that's what I would do if I wouldn't have to do what I do right now. I would, I love to do that. The breaking point for me happened when a week before we had a marriage conference here, and my wife on Friday morning, while I was creating curriculum, she was going to a walk with the dog. It's our day off, and she was going for a walk with the dog, and she asked me to go with her, and I felt so upset that she asked me to go for a walk with the dog. I was upset why she got the dog in the first place. And I was upset, why does she want to go for walks? You know, why doesn't she just want to sit down and write her own book so we can reach more people together instead of just one of us? Imagine what we do with two books instead of one book. And I remember I was upset, and I threw something at her, and not physically, I like said something really, really negative, and she's just like, okay. And so she just went to have a walk with the dog, and I noticed that the dog almost like replaced the husband in her life. The dog was always there, and you know, he never had books to write, never had courses to do, and so, and the dog treated her really nice, always licked her, and been with her, comes to the bed, sometimes sleeps right between us. And I was like, bro, this is too far, you crossed the line. On our marriage conference, the Lord started to deal with my heart, and he said, you know, he's like, if you want your wife, he says, you have to be a good husband. And he says, you're not a good husband. And I started to, during our fast, I started to repent from that. But as time got busier, time got crazier, just recently, about a few months ago, we both listened to a book. I would highly recommend every person. It's called the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. I see people clapping already for that, okay. I did not get paid to promote the book, by the way. But John Mark, you owe me royalties. We listened both of us, we drove to Seattle. On the top of that, we also launched a for-profit company called Unveil. So if I mention everything that we've launched just in this week, I'm just gonna confuse you all. So I'm just gonna say a lot was done. And I remember talking to my wife, and I said, man, our life is just getting crazier. And when we listened to the book, something started to transpire in both of our hearts, that then I started to teach to our staff, and our staff started to practice. And I'll just mention a few things that I started to practice.  But that's something that I just wanted to share. Started to realize that not everything good is God. Started to also realize that Jesus' stops in the Bible were as important as his steps. A lot of miracles happened when Jesus stopped, not when he kept walking. So sometimes stopping is when God's miracle power can be. So when I stop, God can actually do more than just when I walked. I always thought God is only working when I'm walking. And I started to realize that God is actually working if I can stop. Also, something I've never done, made fun of people for doing that. I actually got a journal, imagine that. When I saw a guy with a journal, I was like, dude, bro, you lost it right there. I actually went and I got a journal for one reason. I started to write exactly what the Lord shows, what the Lord guides personally. And this is my personal history with God. It has moments here where just a few days ago, the Holy Spirit touched me right here and showed me that we will see 1000 people in our church before we move into a new building. I felt a vision from God. It was crazy. It's in here. It's those kind of things. And it started to journal. I started to read physical Bible because I read digital so much and I read not only, this is not to brag. I'm just sharing my personal journey to encourage you and to read not only in church, but in the airplane, in the airport and during my free time to take the Bible as like, you know, you would take something to just kind of relax yourself with, to numb certain things and just scroll through, just read through, to really start to get an enjoyment back of the Holy Scriptures. Instead of reading it for a sermon, to read it from a spiritual, soulish diet. I started to limit my phone usage, especially an hour before going to sleep and after the prayer, not to bring it to prayer. I used to use, my phone uses to unlock the car and I found another way to unlock and unlock the car without the phone. And I noticed something that happened when I don't check my phone in the mornings and I check it after the gym. It really, there's only one person who can disturb my prayer time and that's the pastor. But nobody else can disturb it. I don't have to come to church thinking about how to respond to a text message.   And then I wanna go and run and exercise in the gym without getting in a fight with somebody on the phone.  And I was like, this is madness. Somebody were looking at me like, dude, this guy is insane. And I was like, you know what the best thing to do is I actually finish my workouts in 20 minutes instead of 40 minutes because half of the time I'm texting or taking selfies. Okay, I don't take a lot of selfies in the gym though because I don't have nothing to show for. I also started to realize that running is very good spiritually. It seems interesting. A lot of men and women of God are men who physically run, experience, they say somehow anointing is connected to running. Catherine Kirk said the same thing. And I was like, man, that's where you get the anointing. You just go running. And so something happens with running. You release endorphins, healthy endorphins. You don't need to rely on stimulants. You don't need to rely on other external things that could kind of bring that. You can do that by running. And plus it helps a lot with physical weight as well. Another thing that I started to realize that is that day off is not a Sabbath. Sabbath is when you can stop. Sabbath is when you can rest. And Sabbath is when you spend time with God. And Sabbath is when you spend time with your family. And so in my case, I have one day that's day off running errands, doing stuff, fixing sprinklers, washing the car, cleaning the house. And to have one day where it's on Friday night till Saturday, it doesn't happen every week. But most of the time, I try to make it happen where for 24 hours, give rest to my cattle. You know what my cattle is? It's my iPhone. Give rest to everything and just stop for just 24 hours.  And you just be with your family. You just be with God. You just have a dinner with your family. We started to practice that with our family. We're on Friday nights. We'll bring the whole family together.  And the lunches don't last 30 minutes. And everybody's after that into their own little zone out, Rome, but they're actually interacting. There's a conversation that takes place. Your soul gets replenished, not just around God, but also around your family. Some of you have never been, you don't know the last time you were around your family. You need to be with your family.  If you wanna pray for them, it's one thing, but you gotta also be with your family. Are you with me? And the last thing, the last two things. And I've noticed right before going to sleep, 30 minutes, if I started to spend 15 minutes reading every single time before going to sleep, it's crazy how it changed my sleep. Instead of, it's a blue light in your phone actually damages your sleep. So they encourage at least for an hour before you sleep, you don't have your phone on.  It enlightens you. A lot of people fall asleep with entertainment instead of enlightenment. It's something beautiful if you have a book next to your nightstand instead of an iPhone. Leave your phone in the kitchen. Have a book next to your nightstand so that you can read about things from the word of God and have your life being enriched because, and then the last thoughts will be the things you've read in good books or the Bible so that you can go to sleep in a more peaceful way. And the last thing I'll mention is fasting. Fasting, the word fast, it's actually the opposite of what happens when you fast. Everything is slow. Fasting should be called slow because when you fast, everything slows down. Everything stops. But that's in a natural, in a spiritual, everything picks up. When you fast, you slow down.  Everything stops. Your body can catch up. Your stomach can start eating the rest of the stuff that you've been packing over there. And then your stomach slows down. Your mind begins to slow down and something begins to happen in the realm of the spirit. Now God speeds things up as you slow things down.   Get back into your secret place with God, find direction and rhythm from Him. I wanna encourage you, examine your heart if there are external forces driving you in unreasonable pace. Examine your heart with their external forces driving you into your own darkness and you find yourself overwhelmed and deal with those forces. Submit them to God and invite the Holy Spirit to be not a force but a friend that will guide you to green pastures.  And what is the kingdom of God? It's not eating and it's not drinking. It's righteousness, it's peace and it's joy in the Holy Ghost. You can't have the kingdom if you don't have joy. You can't have the kingdom if you don't have peace and you can't have kingdom if you don't have a righteous standing. Come on somebody.


I do hope you've been enjoying the talks in the ServiceMeshCon 2020 track this year. My session will be taking ServiceMesh a step further with a technology called WebAssembly. So my name is Christian and I am the field CTO here at solo.io. I've been involved in helping organizations build large distributed systems for quite some time and most recently last three years or so in building architectures on top of Kubernetes and cloud native infrastructure, including things like ServiceMesh. So at solo, real quick, what we do is we help organizations after they've figured out how to automate their deployments with CI CD and deploying into containers and kind of breaking up some of their applications into microservices. How do they get those systems to communicate with each other? And the organizations that we typically deal with are trying to deploy redundant, highly available systems that are capable of experiencing degradation and failover in a seamless way. And at solo, what we do is we help build API infrastructure on technology like Envoy and ServiceMesh to be able to span multiple clusters, multiple zones, multiple geographies and use things like mesh and gateways to be able to get this transparent routing and secure communication, observable network, and these types of things. So in helping these organizations build these types of architectures, we see a lot of what's happening on the ground and more importantly in practice and what's really happening. So what we do see is folks are adopting ServiceMesh and they are taking it into production. They do have some initial challenges around which one to use because as you're probably familiar with, and as you see the talks in this track, there are a lot of different options.  Who's going to give you the level of support that you need? And then there's always questions around how does it fit within an existing organization? How does it fit with existing applications that weren't very native to a cloud like platform? And one of the biggest that we see and that we've been able to help out with with our customers is how do we customize that last 10%? So we've introduced, let's say a gateway or we introduced a ServiceMesh and either at the edge or sometimes even in between the applications, there are needs around customizing the behavior of the network or customizing the behavior of the proxies. So typical customizations look like supporting existing wire protocols, maybe some of them are industry or vertical specific. You'll see the need to add more specific customizations and telemetry that the proxy captures, especially things like implementing security protocols, things that might not be industry standard, but have existed in these organizations. And if the mesh or this technology is going to be adopted, then it needs to be backward compatible with these existing brownfield applications and the way they communicate on the network. There's also going to be things like light transformations. How do we take this header, mangle it up a little bit, put it over here in this header, because that's what that's what the upstream applications expect, and so on. So there's a really large almost never ending list of what customizations you might need to actually productionize and get a system like a ServiceMesh into an organization. Now, at solo, what we've been doing is a lot of the technology that we focus on is built on Envoy. So either our glue gateway is built on Envoy or Istio is something that we've been supporting for our customers is built on Envoy. And so we can build the customization directly into Envoy, but WebAssembly has kind of come to the forefront as the right way to build these types of extensions. And I can explain a little bit more about that. So WebAssembly actually originated in the web browsers as a way to speed up the execution of code in the web browsers, but also open up the opportunity for folks to write extensions to web applications in different languages than JavaScript. So WebAssembly is a binary format that you write your length, your programs and your extensions in any language that you like, high level language like a C++ or a Rust or Golang or whatever, and then compile that into a binary module that can then be loaded into a host VM, a WebAssembly VM. And this is something that is not a new idea. We've been building and taking high level languages and compiling them down into different portable formats and running them in either some sort of VM or some sort of host. This is the same idea. So we can take this, again, we can take the code in a language that you desire to write in or maybe code that you have already existing and try to compile that down into a format that can be embedded into a web browser or in this case, as we see on this last line, on OnBoy proxy. And as I mentioned, OnBoy is one of the leading proxies for building this type of mesh or application networking technology. So an important part of WebAssembly and running it in any of these hosts is that you're kind of taking untrusted code and embedding it into an existing system. Now, WebAssembly is built to be secure.  And one of the things WebAssembly does is it enforces a very tight memory boundary around that module. The module can only use whatever memory and functions and variables that the host gives it. So it can't just start calling out to either any other host functions or outside of that sandbox. So it's very safe and secure. It's also extremely fast, at least compared to alternatives, right? So if we look at in the browser, we see that it's faster than a JavaScript implementation. If we look at maybe OnBoy specifically, it's faster than some of the alternatives. So some of the alternatives to extending the capabilities of OnBoy include things like calling out to an external service and having it process some logic like, I don't know, for example, we have customers that do funky things with HMAC on the request come in, they have to do some HMAC validation, or they might reach out to an external host service to do that out of the process of the proxy. If we could do something like that inside the proxy, now we don't have to take that additional hop. And that speeds things up. It's not as fast as writing the code directly into the OnBoy proxy itself. So if you wrote it as a C++ extension to OnBoy, well, but something's not going to be as fast as that. But the downsides to baking it directly into the proxy itself is, first of all, you have to write it in C++. You have to compile it and statically link it into OnBoy itself. So now the binary that you're running isn't upstream OnBoy anymore. It's your own distribution that you just created. And so that's a very important consideration, especially when you start talking about all the different types of customizations that you might want. So will you have one build of OnBoy that has all of the customizations? Or will you have, you know, 10, 20 different distributions that you're going to try to support? It'd be nice if you just had the one single distribution and dynamically load those customizations in as needed. So as I said earlier, with WebAssembly, we can use ideally any language. Now in practice, we'll see some are better suited today than others, but we can use any language which then gets compiled down into an intermediate representation of the code and then eventually executed into the VM. So here's where it gets interesting. Because for frameworks like ServiceMesh, especially those built on OnBoy, we have this opportunity now to not only... So ServiceMesh itself kind of organizes and programs the network at the L7 or the application layer. Now we can have very fine-grained customizations that are tailored toward the way you've written applications already, and especially that might be organizational specific. So if we take a look at OnBoy today and the mechanisms and how a request would flow through the filter chains in OnBoy. So OnBoy is built on this pipes and filter type architecture. And request comes in, goes through one of these first steps, continues on to the next, to the next, and eventually gets routed either sent back or routed to an upstream service. So OnBoy is a proxy, right? So it's proxying the request, it's adding some additional capabilities to the request once it gets on the wire. Now you can see the fourth box here going down. As you flow through this chain of filters, you can add... First of all, you can configure any of the out-of-the-box filters that exist in OnBoy to live in this chain. But you can also add your own custom filters. And so that's something that we've done in the past. You write this in C++. But as I said, with WebAssembly, you can write this in a different language than C++, compile this down to WebAssembly module, and then run that piece, run that module as a step in this filter chain. So WebAssembly becomes this mechanism of extending the capabilities of an existing OnBoy proxy with the code of your choice and the language of your choice. Now how that happens is the filter in OnBoy... So the filter in OnBoy has an API, right? And how we translate that into code that the WebAssembly module will be able to understand is we have... So first of all, we need an execution engine to be able to run WebAssembly. And then we need a interface between the OnBoy filter, and what OnBoy understands natively, and the sandboxed WebAssembly VM. And so that's called the application binary interface. So you might see this term, and that's why I'm covering it. You might see this term when you start looking at building WebAssembly modules for OnBoy. And all the ABI does is specifies a set of functions that can be imported into your WebAssembly module, and functions that are exported. So in other words, you're only allowed to use and see a certain handful of functions, for example, make external calls or something that OnBoy will allow you to use, and then your application can implement these callbacks that the ABI and the filters will actually call into. Now all this stuff sounds a little bit complicated, but you shouldn't worry too much about that because this is what's happening in the OnBoy side. What you are more interested in as a developer, let's say, you're interested in the SDKs that kind of wrap this ABI and abstract some of these details away from you. So there are SDKs for C++, assembly script, Rust, and TinyGo to be able to write your applications in these languages, compile them down into a WebAssembly module, and inject that and run that in an existing OnBoy. So again, the SDKs that have been built around this to abstract some of this detail are your entryway into building WebAssembly modules for OnBoy. So then the question becomes, how do you start using these SDKs? How do you build these modules, pull the correct tool chains and all this stuff to be able to build the modules, and then when you build the modules, what do you do? How do you install them? How do you maybe share them, publish them? And there's some interesting parallels here between the experience that we saw crop up around Linux containers and the experience that we want with something like WebAssembly. And this is a very important distinction because with Linux containers and setting up C groups and namespaces, all that stuff, even LXC and some of those APIs that built up around it initially, they weren't all that well suited for the developer experience, let's say. And so that's where Docker came in and built a nice API and nice developer experience around using containers. And so that's what this open source project WebAssembly hub is aiming and trying to do for WebAssembly. So we have this simple CLI that allows you to quickly bootstrap a new WebAssembly for OnBoy project in a handful of different languages that you can choose. And then it automates a lot of the boilerplate, lining up the ABI versions, lining up the SDKs, finding all the tool chains that you need to properly build the WebAssembly module. We've also have a OCI style and spec that describes what a WebAssembly module would look like once it's packaged. And then you can take that publish it into an OCI registry and share it and ultimately pull it down and install it into a running OnBoy framework like a service mesh. So WebAssembly hub and the WASMI tool allow us to do that. And to get started, let's say we go to Firefox, we go to WebAssembly hub. To get started, you can do so first of all, you can you can come take a look at WebAssembly hub. You can see some of the WebAssembly modules that folks have been kicking the tires on. You can come over here to the docs and get started. So install the WASMI tool tutorials for getting started and starting to build your own project and so forth. And what we're going to take a look at is a demo here of us building out a WebAssembly module and going through this developer workflow and figuring out how do you deploy this to a running OnBoy based framework. So let's take a look at that. So again, the demo we will be taking a look at WebAssembly hub and specifically the CLI tooling around getting started with a project, building it and the whole life cycle around that. So if you come to the docs here, you can look in the installation and getting started tutorials, building our different WebAssembly modules just a little bit outdated. We have more languages that we support here. So let's take a look at the at the demo. So the CLI that we would use to start get started with our WebAssembly experience here for especially for building for OnBoy is this WASMI tool. And with WASMI what we can do is create new projects, we can build them, deploy them to existing OnBoy based frameworks. And then we can also there's a workflow around pushing them and pulling them from a registry. So let's take a look at building a WebAssembly module for OnBoy using using this developer experience for a couple different languages. So if we do demo, let's do tiny go. Let's take a look at our existing deployment. We're going to be using Istio for this. We have the Istio control plan deployed. We also have the book info application running. Now if we make a call between the product page and the details service, we see the call completes. It's an HTTP call. We've also dumped some of the headers. What we're going to do in this demo is just create a WebAssembly module that extends the capability of either transforming headers or adding new headers to the request or the response. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to build, we're going to bootstrap a new project and we're going to use Wasmian it and then we're going to put it in a new directory and we're going to pick a language that we want to we want to use for this WebAssembly module. So if I click on tiny go, which is what we're going to use a subset of the goal language, we will pick the platform that we want to target. In this case, it's Istio 1.7 and then it creates it. Now if we go in and open our project, we can see we have some of the boilerplate code already set up for us. So all we have to do now is either go in and edit existing functions that override so the callbacks that Envoy will be calling into or we can add new ones that align with the SDK. If we look at this runtime config JSON file, this is a metadata file that is used in the packaging of this WebAssembly module as a OCI style package. So that's all good. Now let's say we want to build our project and turn that into a WebAssembly module. So what we're going to do is run was me build will tell it what type of language we're using here. And then we're going to tag it using a format that's similar or familiar to what you would do with other OCI images. And so we'll give that a few moments to complete while it downloads while we wait. What this is going to do is download the the document as you can see to provides all of the right versions of go the right versions of the SDK and builds everything consistently. Now it's still going almost there. Apologies. I should have downloaded this ahead of time. And there we go. Now we've downloaded the builder and and now we're going to build it shouldn't take too long. We're going to tag it using the tag that we specified here. And now we built the image. If we take a look and list it locally, we can see that 14 of this ad header demo was built and is packaged as a OCI style container. And then from there, what we can do is we can push that to a registry. So in this case, we're going to push this to the WebAssembly hub registry. If we go take a look, if we log in under my name, you can see our demo ad header repo that's been out of here at zero dot 14 is the one we just created. Click on tags. We should see that indeed zero dot 14 is is available as a 21 seconds ago. So that's awesome, right? Now we just built a extension to envoy using go or tiny go subset of go. We packaged it as a WebAssembly module. We pushed it to a registry now that other other folks can can come to this. This repo and explore the various different WebAssembly modules that that are, you know, other folks have been have been working on and experimenting with and so on. And we're not limited to just C++, which is what Envoy has written. And we're not statically building this into the proxy. This is dynamically loaded or will be when I show you that part. Let's let's do it again. Let's let's reset this. Let's pick a different language. Let's do assembly script. All right, so we have the same thing. We have this deal running. We have our book info demo running. And when we make a call, what we're going to do is we're going to insert one of these WebAssembly modules into the envoy proxy. So we see headers here. We don't see any additional headers yet. So what we're going to do is we're going to do was me and it do the same workflow. But now we're going to do it with assembly script, which is a variant of TypeScript. And we're going to pick the platform we're targeting. And now if we open our project, we see something like this. We see our assembly assembly script source here, which was automatically bootstrap by was me the was me tool. We see the same runtime config packaging here. So now if we build our project, it'll use the same build, build container that we did. But now it's going to do this using npm and using JavaScript style build tools. So we'll give that a moment shouldn't take too long. We see it tagged again as zero dot 15. In this case, if I list it, we see zero dot 15. The assembly script was a module is a little bit smaller than the goal line one. And now we can also push that one to the WebAssembly hub repo. Now what we want to do is actually deploy this to an unboy based framework. So let's take a look. Again, we'll call between product page and details. We don't see any, any headers are yet. What we're going to do is was me deploy Istio. Let me give that a second here. I'm going to pause the output. This is a live demo. So and it is typing, but in the output still coming. I just pause the output was me deploy Istio the specific tag that we want. And then any configuration that we that we want to give to it. Now sometimes there is a there's still a race condition that we are aware of here. Give it a second. Not very nice. All right, well, let's let's try this again. I should cross our fingers here. All right, there we go. Now it looks like it has taken so what this has done is is injected the WebAssembly module into each of the pods running in the book info name space. So in the book info name space, we should see the output of our WebAssembly module, which in this case, I didn't do too much. We just added a new header when when we get the response. So if that's the case, now that my demo is not automated anymore, let's let's first take a look at what what we created under the covers for Istio. So if I do get envoy filter book info, what we see is we've created these book in or these envoy filters to patch the envoy proxies to load the wasm module. If we actually take a look at one of these, let's take a look. We can see that we are adding a the wasm filter and that it is calling out to a wasm module. So if that's the case, then what we should see is when we call between product page and details what we should see across our fingers is this new header that we that we added. So let's run this. And indeed, we do see the the new header that we've added with the with the specific configuration. Let's come back here. We're using hello instead of world or saying hello tomorrow and that and that's what we see in the request path here. So that's the extent of my my demo here. I do encourage you take a look at the WebAssembly Hub tooling. Go ahead and take a look at Istio and some of the service meshes that are supporting WebAssembly. The caveat that I should point out is that WebAssembly and envoy was just recently merged into upstream up until now it's been on its own fork. But it's recently merged into upstream. It it's in a state of let's just say it's still settling out a little bit. It will I believe it will be available in in envoy 1.17. Even then I still caution that this is still kind of new technology that will need some soak time. So definitely experiment with it, push the boundaries of it and the limits of it and you know, jump in and contribute in the community in terms of issues and you know, whatever experience that you have with WebAssembly and definitely feel free to reach out to us or the broader WebAssembly community for any thoughts or questions. So thanks again for stopping by my talk.


I'm so delighted to be talking with Dorota Godfrey. We always have deep conversations when we can. And so thank you Dorota for being here, for doing this. I'll just give you, well, so for those who are watching, this is one of the interviews that I do with some of my clients and we will be checking in with Dorota several times during the year. And just kind of talk about the learnings and the progress that's happening in her business. So Dorota, let's start with introducing your business to us. However you wanna share about it today is great. Some years ago, the term gentle power came to me and I kind of knew that these were my marching orders. And so I really love supporting people who are solopreneurs, professionals who are naturally highly sensitive because they thrive on that type of approach to life and work life, gentle power. And typically they struggle with overwhelm, feeling frazzled, pulled into many directions. And I have a love of creating order and bringing grace into chaos and plotting the path, kind of customized individual path through the jungle. So I love having kind of reviewing and realignment conversations with people that can be useful in wherever there is a review and realignment that's due, whichever area of life or work life or relationships that I can also be useful there. Wonderful, wonderful, thank you so much. Just one second here. And I'm just mentioning your background is a real background. These days of course, a lot of people have virtual backgrounds and I think your background is lovely and that's a real one, right? So well, there's lots we can talk about. I'll let you start wherever you like. Thank you and you sent me some notes in advance and there's just a lot of good stuff there. So where would you like to start? It's interesting this context and whether it's only for the community or other people kind of matters, doesn't it? But in general, we're talking about the learning about the better business practice and our insights about that. Yes. And well, maybe I'll start with a kind of a mini story because I had a colleague conversation from the community recently and we exchange sessions and I received a sole alignment session.  Yeah, and just, I'm sorry, just so that when you say community for those who are watching this because some of those are watching this on YouTube, Dorota is in the authentic business community program that I run that has, you know, specific, you know, heart-based, solopreneurs, more spiritual entrepreneurs in there. And so when you say you met with a community member, it's somebody in that group program, yeah. And there was a new piece of information about me having a relationship to healing through dream work. I haven't done much of this, but, you know, doing my homework, I started a dream journal. And two days ago, I had a dream in which I heard someone directly looking at me and saying, you don't know how powerful you are, do you? And this was, you know, it's kind of funny how synchronicity or, you know, when the student is ready because that's one of the questions I've been looking at about how our biggest gifts and where we are most useful or powerful, how this is the most hidden part of the picture often. And I, you know, for clients, I always see it in clients, but of course, like, you know, and there's been so many of those personality profilings and various readings and healings I've undergone over the years. And still there is one of my recent discoveries was in that department, in relationship to my work. And my overall mission and hope is that I will finally come out of hiding with my work and, you know, be useful to more people. That's my kind of purpose for the yearly business community journey. And so that was kind of one of the little, you know, not just that I got, but another one was, and I'm here to write an article about it because George, you don't know this, but I, about two weeks ago, I became an overnight success. And not completely in the way that people talk about it. And not that I was expecting it, but I was cooking one day with YouTube as I do and, you know, listening to something of interest in this occasion, it was human design, illuminating some circuitry or other. But the point is, it was about the relationship to success and what your particular definition of success is. And, you know, I listened to it was like something started circulating through. I woke up the next day and reviewed that information by actually writing out the bullet points that related to me. I looked at the list and was dumbfounded because one of the struggles as someone who has got a kind of sensitive trajectory, which means long incubation and sort of becoming more empowered later in life. I kind of see that a lot with sensitive. So it seems to be happening to me as well. So, but in that long incubation, there could be a lot of anxiety and a lot of, you know, self-doubt about maybe I've got it wrong. Maybe I really am a failure. You know, it's kind of comparing my insights to other people's outsides and all of that. And so I've had those seeds of anxiety about my own results, despite so much learning and so much training and so much, you know, experimentation and everything. And in that list, I ticked all of those, you know, this was why I had to kind of go, you know what, by my own standards, I am a success and it literally was from anxiety about being a failure to I am a success because not only I tick all of those boxes, I live by them, I prioritize things by them. I always have, this is, you know, my relationships are sort of organized that way and my work is organized that way and my pleasure, it really was. So I'm still integrating what this means.  And you know, it's like, it's everywhere, everywhere I look now, it's, so there's a kind of curiosity in me now about what it looks like to approach the same learning trajectory and, you know, our course assignments and the colleague conversations. But from that new place of standing in a more of a sense of my own wholeness and calm and kind of, you know, really a sense of sovereignty rather than that always me go that, you know, this what if it's not working out and it will not work out. So it's beautiful. And you know, and add to this that my garden, I have, I choose three garden qualities of being for the year. And one of the ones that are guarding my 2023 is divine, high self-esteem. And they are just working on me, you know, because it's all like just, it's not even anything that I am doing in particular. It's a kind of, you know, a habit in my peripheral vision as the reference or a prayer to turn to, but these things that are beginning to come, it's really beautiful and I love it because of course, this is nothing new to me. This is what happens when I work with clients, but, you know, it's like, that's always hardest to see for yourself and to have a sense of those better options and, you know, one's own beauty, it's hardest to see in power. It's hardest. Oh my gosh, it's so much richness there, what you just said. Well, first of all, I don't know if you often have those kinds of dreams or not, but I'm like, oh my, which I had more meaningful dreams like that, but that's really amazing.  And the means that the metric of our success or the definition of it has to be unique to us rather than, you know, what's seen out there, six-figure, seven-figure, whatever number there might be, but it's like there are certain, I don't know, it could be habits we're trying to develop or like experiences we're trying to have or little projects that we want to get done or big projects or whatever, it's like, if we can, if we had that, my intention and then we did it or we experienced it, then we should celebrate along the way and like you said, that long incubation period, it makes me so curious because it's like, incubation towards what? It's like, is the end goal or vision too much to expect in terms of a certain timeline or can we, I guess, chunk them down really? And which is why you're doing even in our group community program, you've been doing these group hangouts called the Compassionate Monthly Review, right? So it's like, we could celebrate every month, I hope, right? Yeah, we can appreciate our progress every month. Tell us a bit about that actually. So that's one of the things, and people are attending, people seem to have enjoyed it, those who attended. So, and then you're using the process yourself. So tell us a bit about that. This is because, you know, the hardest thing, we are surrounded by experts, by trainings, by examples, by world issues, you know, and all those different areas of our lives, you know, mind, body, spirit. But the hardest thing to do is to calibrate all of it for your own reality and, you know, plot the course that is relatively simple and doable and energizing amongst, you know, through the jungle. That's the hardest thing to do. And of course add all of the traumas and the learned dismissals that, you know, we carry, that it's hard to do and have a positive experience with rather than, you know, shame or guilt or a sense of being behind all of that. And this is what I discovered that, and that's another kind of clarification about, you know, our individual alignment about what works for us. So I'm definitely not a goal-orientated step-by-step girl. I am an emergent, gradual development with regular reviews. This is what I learned. And so if I really deeply review, whether it's a month or a quarter, it gives me so much clarity and, but on the level that really I can see the path through the jungle. And then I don't overdue and don't over stress and don't over reach. So because this is so powerful and actually joyful, then I, you know, I really recommend this to others, especially people who are working in a more organic way, more creative, more spiritual. Those kind of, you know, peace rather than jays on the Myers-Briggs. This is hardest to, because we compare ourselves to the kind of more left brain norms in the world and can always feel hard to feel that sense of success or self-esteem because we cannot do it that way anyway. And this reviewing and the gentle realignment feel so much more kind of, you know, more aligned with kind of how my system is configured and also the evidence of progress or where something needs to change is kind of, and kind of more accessible that way. So, you know, it wouldn't work for everyone. There are people who are motivated by stress or by direct going for something and deadline. You know, there are those who get energy in their bodies then. It's not for everyone necessarily, but I swear by it. So, yeah, it was so joyful. People were really happy because it was, you know, if I ask a really good questions and hold lovely, gentle energy for people inquiring themselves and then getting witnessing, then it really that emergent insight comes through. And you know, I kind of, when I know I kind of had this sense that a little bit of how those spaces happen and how I work with clients, that it's a little bit like, remember in the 90s, stereograms were so popular, those pictures where you were kind of, if you could relax, you could see the 3D depth in the picture. They were kind of like, there's lots of patterns, but you had to relax in order to see the depth. Yes, yeah, there's a picture. Otherwise, if you didn't, it just looked like squiggly lines or whatever. Yes, and it looks kind of flat. And today, as I was, I wanted to look up that reference so whether that's the right metaphor to explain what I mean. And I learned that apparently, because we used to do them for fun, but apparently people discovered that they now, using them can improve your vision and help you with stress relief. So there is something about relaxing and seeing the depth of your own picture that allows you actually to have better state and better progress, better stamina, be it vision or otherwise. So it really is, but it's the hardest thing to do because look what happens. We are just torn apart by various course here, recommendation there, a to-do list elsewhere. And there's the hardest thing to do is to relax and to interact with your own pictures and not with those what my natural advantage colleague calls injected ideals. Now that, and it's the hardest, you know, it's the hardest with people we love or admire because then it's very hard not to kind of try to be like them rather than be in relationship with your own power gift trajectory. This is a very important message and it's not said enough. Especially those who are watching or listening to this, we love to learn. We love to admire others and gain from others' teachings and experiences and wisdom and resources. And it is too easy to, well, give our power away. I mean, no one even realized we're doing it. And so I really love that you're bringing this idea in. And earlier you said, divine self-esteem. That is something, that is, say more about that. And what are you, how are you working with that? What are you learning about that? The languaging of it comes from Sufism, which is one of my friendships in my life because they refer to the qualities of being as divine names or divine qualities. That the notion being that they are not manufactured by us or something that we do, but something that we make ourselves available to and therefore can experience and transmit into the world. And I love that way of referencing it because otherwise I could not, even human high self-esteem, I've struggled with in life being a minority trait and being all these things that are minority, a girl and a foreigner and not grew up in poor circumstances. All of these things that do not add up to high self-esteem as the world of Caesar would have it. So even that was hard. But to align with the kind of self-esteem, you see, when those qualities come to me, I don't, they come to me as assignments or kind of ways to access more liberation, but I don't, it takes me a year to grow into them. So this is where February, I'm just beginning to get those lessons and those relaxations into what this means. And the stories I told, that was kind of how it's beginning. But of course as someone who has, I am a six two in human design. So this is someone with distinct three life stages and pretty much hell on earth to start with and then deep investigation to heal that and make sense of that. And then finally coming out and being useful in the marketplace, really being visible and impactful for all of the lessons you've learned. And I kind of really recognize this in my own life. But what this means is that I've been digging and in secret to find those things and not going, I've got it for 50 years. So it takes a little bit of undoing of those habits of digging deep but somewhat on the sidelines of things. So I kind of sense that this quality would be a good guide for me for the year when I am attempting with the beautiful support of the community and your guidance to admit to the impact and admit to the wisdom and admit to what I can do for people. And it's kind of the admitting but it's new. In sessions with clients, I see it, I hear it. It's very humbling to see the kind of beauty of those stereograms emerging for people and them being surprised that it can be that simple or that they feel so encouraged. But then to be visible for that, that takes that a little bit of divine help to be able to stand in that place and not to shrink away or immediately somehow sabotage it because it's so new and so scary. That's right, yeah. It is a gradual process of being okay standing in that light and having that impact. So amazingly, the time has already started to wrap up. So as we wrap up this conversation, I guess I have two questions for you. One that I definitely want you to share about more about your work. Do you have any offers, offerings that you wanna mention here? But also just to complete this idea of divine, or not complete but continuing on. It's like when we check in again next time on this interview, how might you envision that the divine self-esteem has continued to manifest or to integrate for you? So I have, I am using your course to fix my bugs in the kind of the poor habits or the kind of places where something is not configured right. And so I've been looking at the yearly intentions in January at money in February, but going forward, I need to fix distribution or what you call distribution. That exactly that thing of whatever I create, be it writing or on my art, my courses, that somehow more people see them because that's, I managed to get my Facebook blocked from advertising and so I managed, I'm saying managed. It seems like self-sabotage in the hidden era. So I need to find alternatives to this and I'll be doing a LinkedIn course. We might be able to fix that together. We'll talk often about that. And the point is that I want to learn about the rhythms of being visible regularly and enough that's the piece that, which is completely related to that. Okay, now I'm standing in my self-esteem and it's been the last two months have been amazing coming through. It's like, okay, what does it look like to then be seen for that? That's right. Yes. Well, and this interview series is part of that experience. Well, tell us about your, how you love working with clients at this time. What are some things people can reach out to you about? Yeah, talking of which, right? Like the, so this compassionate review and realignment conversation, I really love it. And I realized that I have had only longer programs for one-to-one work. So I am piloting compassionate review and realignment conversation as a one-off. So this I will be offering to the community as a pilot. And so this is where people can take either one aspect of their work or one problem or one system that they would like to upgrade and figure it out together. You know, just look at the stereogram and see the path through the jungle and get any kind of sense of where the better options lie and where your strengths lie and where there are easy fixes. So I love this conversation. It's very interesting to me. And so I'll be offering this as a one-off. And it's also, of course, a good way to try what it feels like to work with me. So that's gonna be happening. Pilots in this month and in March. And so I want as many guinea pigs as possible for that. Yeah, wonderful. Well, of course, I will put the links to how to follow up with you below, yeah. And then in March, because I, you know, the reason why you notice the space because it's pretty much sprinkled. I started getting that sense of light is here. I see what's dusty. I see what needs rearranging. And because one of my hat is as a decluttering doula, I want to offer a course that will be so very seasonally placed. And I just love how changing, transforming physical space affects our operations and vice versa. And it shows us more of the more soulful or work territory as well. So the title, I have a course coming up in March over three Sundays starting on 11th of March that I call soulful space clearing because you can take one area, one room in your physical space. And however, whatever happens there, whether it's your office or, I don't know, your kitchen or whatever, you can reorganize it, clean it and reorganize it and bring the sense of grace, of visible grace and authenticity into it so that you are kind of all set to come out and I guess like me be visible, right? Visible for the year, for the summer and with the full energy. So that is a fun thing because usually cleaning or clearing or clatter-cleaning or even looking at your gremlins can be kind of overwhelming on your own. And when you have a little bit of encouragement, a little bit of companionship, a little bit of structure, it's a completely different game. So. Oh wow. Yeah, both are wonderful offerings and I hope people will take you up on it and check it out. So look at the links below and yeah. Well, Dorota, we look forward to continuing on. Let's check in again in a few months. So thank you so much for doing this. And thank you. Thank you for holding the space for our incubations and innovations and bug fixing. Priceless, priceless to have the frame and the guidance for it. Thank you, George. Thank you so much.


You're crying. Oh, I'm not crying. You're crying. 10. CM Punk How's that popular saying in wrestling go, oh yeah, because after nearly a decade away, CM Punk made his earth-shattering WWE return at the end of this year's Survivor Series. With a newly remastered version of Living Colors' Cult of Personality that was blasting through the Chicago All-State Arena speakers, fans around the world lost their ever-loving minds as Punk's name and logo filled up the titantron, and then it happened. The polarizing and controversial superstar, thank you Michael Cole, appeared giving a cheeky little smirk to everyone. Like him or not, this was an emotional and rare moment in pro wrestling that we fans truly live for, made all the more memorable as Punk returned to the place he said he would never return to. 9. Rey Mysterio Prior to his grudge match against his son Dominic at this year's WrestleMania Goes Hollywood, Rey Mysterio paid an emotional tribute to the late great Eddie Guerrero in what was a massively memorable moment given Rey, Eddie, and Dominic's history. The newest member of the WWE Hall of Fame was driven out into Los Angeles' SoFi Stadium with Snoop Doggy Dog behind the wheel of a classic lowrider as nothing but a G-thang blared out. Then suddenly, a shout of Viva La Raza rang out as Guerrero's iconic, I lie, I cheat, I steal theme, hit. Such a fitting and powerful tribute that touched the hearts of fans and viewers all around the world. 8. House of Black The largest wrestling event ever took place this year in London, England at Wembley Stadium as AEW hosted their all-in-paper view. As is par for the course during this kind of thing, some wrestlers got special entrances like Chris Jericho singing his theme to the ring or Sting seeking and destroying like it was 1999 all over. But the one entrance that had everyone emotional was the House of Black's tribute to their fallen friend Bray Wyatt. Upon the dark trio's emergence onto the stage, the lights dimmed and the record-breaking crowd all became fireflies. Buddy Matthews then revealed a lantern and placed it on the ground in front of them. Such a heartfelt tribute to their compadre that really hit home. 7. Randy Orton Overshadowed by the return of Punk just two nights before, Randy Orton got what he deserved when he was given the opportunity to open up the post-survivor series Monday Night Raw. After being on hiatus for a year and a half with a major back injury and not knowing for sure if he'd ever be able to wrestle again, the Viper was clearly very emotional as he took to the ring ropes to perform his signature pose. You can just tell that Randy lives and breathes professional wrestling and as a decorated veteran and future WWE Hall of Famer, this is the time for Orton to soak in all of his flowers. 6. Edge I tell you what, Adam Copeland had his fair share of entrances that totally reeked of awesomeness this year. From absolutely slaying it at WrestleMania 39 to his AEW debut at WrestleDream, the rated R superstar really knows how to make an appearance. However, with his contract set to expire at the end of September and the company refusing to meet his renewal demands, the stage was set for Edge to have his last WWE match on the August 18th edition of SmackDown against Sheamus.  5. John Cena For two decades, John Cena was one of the most polarizing superstars, splitting the WWE universe in half with their chance of Let's Go Cena and Cena sucks. However, just weeks before WrestleMania 39, the wrestling legend turned Hollywood Megastar made an emotional return to Monday Night Raw.  Love him or hate him, everything you want to see in a pro wrestler or a human being, you can see it in this man, even though sometimes we can't see him. 4. Zelina Vega When we look back on the year that was, there's a pretty good chance that backlash will be viewed as one of, if not the single best, premium live event of the year. The crowd in Puerto Rico was fire all night and there were plenty of reasons why, from Bad Bunny's excellent Street Fight vs Damian Priest and the Caribbean cool returns of Savio Vega and Carlito, but none of them made the emotional impact that Zelina Vega did when she stepped out in all Bariqua colors for her match against Rhea Ripley for the SmackDown Women's Championship. And although she lost the bout, it was still Vega's night to shine as she received multiple standing ovations while visibly fighting back tears. 3. Cody Rhodes WrestleMania is known for its over-the-top entrances, but in the run-up to the main event of Night 2 on Sunday, we got a heartwarming moment that moved most to tears. After hugging and kissing his wife and daughter, there was a touching gesture of goodwill by Cody as he gifted his weight belt to Little Brody, the son of John Huber, the late Luke Harper. For a sport that's predominantly scripted, the raw emotion of a moment in time like this pulls the curtain back on our favorite characters and shows us, the fans, their true identity as human beings. Cody Rhodes, such a class act and a good man, just a beautiful story. 2. Sami Zayn The WWE Universe has always loved Sami Zayn's Skypunk entrance theme, Worlds Apart, because it perfectly sums up his underdog babyface persona and also lends itself nicely to stadium-wide singalongs. However, in an attempt to match Zayn's ever-changing zany character, the upbeat Diddy was dropped in late 2021. Fast forward to early this year when after the former honorary ooze finally turned on the bloodline, this song made a memorable return in front of Sami's hometown crowd of Montreal, a day before his emotionally-charged, undisputed, Universal Championship match at Elimination Chamber vs. Roman Reigns. The reaction Sami received this night was arguably the greatest pop of the year. 1. Bray Wyatt Knowing what we know now, the unexpected and untimely passing of Wyndham Rotunda at the way too young age of 36 sent a shockwave of sadness throughout the sport. Emotional tributes from around the pro-wrestling world celebrated the life and legacy of one of the most creative performers in WWE history, which makes his entrance at this year's Royal Rumble that much more meaningful.


Is it time for the Falcons to draft a quarterback in the first round? Everybody, I'm Dave Archer. Boy, it seems odd to be thinking about drafting a quarterback number one. Doesn't seem that long ago, 2008, Matt Ryan, the third overall pick, and came in here and really changed the face of this franchise, became the face of the franchise. Leadership, the play on the field, certainly was outstanding. You look at some of the accolades that this guy's got. He's right on the verge of probably Hall of Fame material. I think he's a Hall of Fame, a ninth all time in yards, 10th all time in touchdowns. He's got 10 consecutive 4,000 yard seasons. He's ninth all time in completion percentage, third all time, and passer rating in the postseason. I mean, Matt Ryan has been all you could possibly want. But he will be 36 when we tee it up the next time for the 2021 season. So that's getting a little bit on an age. Is it time to find his successor? Remember, if you draft the quarterback first round, he's not going to play next year unless something were to unfortunately happen to Matt Ryan. But what better way to tutor if you're a young quarterback than behind a guy like Matt Ryan? Let's talk about some of the guys that are going to be available. Now, we know Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson are probably going in the first two picks. Jacksonville and the Jets have positioned themselves to probably take those two players. Lawrence is probably the most polished quarterback we've seen coming out in a long time. Big arm, IQ off the charts. Tremendous athlete, 66-220 has all the intangibles you're looking for as a quarterback, national championship winners and freshmen. Zach Wilson, a little bit less of a work base to look at him in. 62-215 pounds. Has some of those Mahomes-esque type arm talents. He has good off-schedule throws. He's got a quick release. His pocket presence there, he's been injured. And he did not play a very good opponent base a year ago. Some would say some of his games are like seven on seven sessions. He had some of the longest time to throw behind a big offensive line at BYU that we've seen. Let's look at the three guys now that potentially could be there for the Falcons. Justin Fields is the first guy that comes to mind for me on Ohio State. Not because I think he's the best selection. He's the first guy. He's the local product. Let's get him in there first. He's out of Kennesaw, Georgia. Went to Harrison High School. Tremendous pro day. Ran 4-4 in the 46-3, 225-230 pounds. He showed excellent accuracy in his throws. And again, remember, a limited base of work. He played a full season of 2019 and eight games in 2020. So about a season and a half of football, outstanding runner. He has scheme versatility. He can run the RPO, the stretch running game, which applies to a Falcons now. When you start talking about what Arthur Smith wants to run, play action outside zone. Off of that is bootleg and what better guy to have than a 6-3, 225 pounder that can run 4-4 coming on the edge to threaten me in the run in the past. Now, he's had some issues with staying on reads too long. And each one of these guys is going to have some negatives against him. I think it's probably something he can work through. Pre-snap recognition will be part of that. Only 22 games, as we said, under his belt. So how much of that will be rectified with his ability to get on the field and play? But there's not a lot to dislike about this guy, outstanding player, local product Justin Fields. Trey Lance is the next guy. 6-4, 225 pounder out of North Dakota State, ran in the mid-4-5s in the 40. Big arm. Ball just jumps out of there. He watched the tape. Ball jumps out of his hand. But the problem is, not a lot of tape. He played 19 games in his career. 16 of those games came in the 2019 season when he guided the bison to the FCS National Championship. Now, you'll like what you see, but he only averaged about 18 throws per game. I think Trey Lance has a chance for a tremendous upside, but a bit of a project. The guy that has not been on the field very much. Remember, just a red shirt sophomore coming out to get to the National Football League. Highly regarded as all the intangibles. You want big arm, all those type of things, but a lack of experience and maybe the level of play at which he played against the FCS level, maybe a strike against him. How about Mac Jones out of Alabama? Mac Jones is that quarterback that everybody saw. He's on all the national games. He won a national championship. Tremendous intangibles, leadership, football IQ, accuracy, throws people open, anticipation throws. Not the great athlete does fit any kind of system, but a little bit less of a run threat, a lot less of a run threat. But remember who he played with, cast of characters. Four number one draft picks at the wide receiver position if Devontae Smith and Jalen Waddle go number one this year. Remember, Rugs and Judy went number one last year. So was he covered up some of the scars or some of the scabs covered up because of the guys he played with? We'll never know. We'll have to wait and see. But those are three guys to me that come into play for the Falcons at number four. If in fact, you decide to go quarterback in the first round. Wow, that sounds strange. 13 years of brilliance by Matt Ryan.