Next Generation Speakers Magazine - January 2023

Happy New Year! Can you believe that it’s 2023? We are super excited to be showcasing our good Friend Shandricka McDowell as she shows us how to have the Grace of a Gladiator!

PRESCRIPTION FOR EXCELLENCE with Dr. James J. Williams helps us Recalibrate for 2023!

The Global Butterfly Princess, Dr. La Donya Yvette, has the secret to Unstoppable Confidence in the month’s The Butterfly Effect.

The Become The Best You Event in St. Louis will be one for the record books! We are bringing out the BIG GUNS because You are worth it! Check out the list of people that are going to be there in their article!

In this month’s Co-Sign Your Significance segment, Shona Dennis M. Div. explains to us “The Height of Courage”

And we are resharing our 5-part series called S.H.F.T. Did you hear? NEXT GENERATION SPEAKERS Magazine is now available in paper copies that you can order vis MagCloud!. We are not slowing down and all we want to know is: “Who’s Got Next?” Email: cicone@ciconeprince.com Text: 251-753-6299

Shandrika McDowell Grace Of A Gladiator

1. Who is Shandrika McDowell? Shandrika McDowell is a visionary with a strong vision of her future. Who even as a little girl knew that something grandiose was going to change the trajectory of her life allowing her to make an impact? She at the time didn’t know what that something was. She is a mother, grandmother, and protector passionate about breaking generational curses and leaving a legacy for her children. Shandrika is a writer, motivational speaker, and business owner. Shandrika McDowell is the 2021 Grace Of A Gladiator Award Winner and is currently on a mission to become the best version of herself.

2. What are you most passionate about? I am most passionate about telling my story rather than writing or speaking about it I know that it will inspire someone else to tell theirs.

3. Describe yourself in one word? Survivor

4. What’s your favorite pastime? Spending time with my family! It’s such a blessing to be alive. So anytime I get to bond with my children is priceless.

5. What’s the one thing that you dread doing the most? Leaving my home and going to work for others. I’m at that point in my life where I want to set my own schedule and spend more time with my children and grandchildren.

6. Who inspires you? My children and my Aunt Dr Betty Gammon. My aunt is one of the most dedicated, strong, supportive, and passionate women I know. She pushes me to reach my full potential.

7. What do you want to be remembered for? I want to be remembered for my loyalty! Even in the most chaotic times in my life, I’ve never let someone down. Meaning that if I have you my word I’m going to do my due diligence and see it through. Even if I have to suppress my feelings and tears I got you!

8. What’s your favorite quote? I have so many, however, the one that is by far my favorite is “When people show you who they are believe them the first time.”

9. What is the biggest challenge you have had to overcome? Self-love and I’ll elaborate! You would think that loving yourself would be easy because everything starts with self. However, that was a challenge for me. Due to my abandonment issues with my parents, I searched for love in all the wrong places. It took a long time to understand loving myself and what that looks like.

10. If you could talk to your younger self, what would you say? Even though your family dynamic isn’t perfect or like others you are loved wholeheartedly!

11. What’s your comfort food? My comfort food is seafood!

12. Any parting thoughts? “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” - C.S Lewis

PRESCRIPTION FOR EXCELLENCE

With Dr. James J. Williams

Recalibrate

2023 will be a year of recalibration. As we’re gradually able to put the worst elements of 2022 behind us, it’s going to become clearer to all of us how far we’ve strayed from our habits, dependencies, and routines of the past, and not just in our daily tasks but in our entire way of thinking. Futurist Thomas Frey (futuristspeaker.com) provides a global perspective on how to recalibrate our lives.

In just one year, our idea of “normal” has been run through a woodchipper and is unrecognizable in so many areas: our health, our government, our professional lives, our activities, our families, and our priorities. As we move past the 2022 crisis mentality, 2023 will be a year of adjusting the dials, flipping the switches, and recalibrating our lives. But it’s not something we can simply press a button and regain our sense of normalcy. The first order of business will be to break our reactive habits that have built up over the past 10 months.

COVID is forcing us to change; so drifting back into our previous, comfortable state of normal will not be possible. We’ll often refer back to the “good old days” of 2019, 2015, or whatever year in the past we felt was most ideal, but that past was never as good as we recall, and we also have the opportunity to redirect ourselves, along with the rest of humanity, towards a far better future.

Recalibrations set to accelerate in 2023

One of the most obvious recalibrations to date has been the office workplace. Work-from-home was not unheard of before 2020, but it was a relatively big deal for a company to give certain teams the opportunity to work from home 1-2 days a week. Now companies like MasterCard, Intuit, Shopify, Siemens, and others seem committed to a predominantly work-fromhome arrangement for a majority of their people. This recalibration will continue long into the future.

Along with this, our priorities change. Stemming from the work-fromhome transition, we’re seeing a shift in personal priorities. Lives won’t be organized around work – it will be quite the opposite with work taking a second seat to personal commitments and pleasure. As this happens, people begin to realize they are more than just the sum total of their job, position, and title. Over time, this will lead to a deeper sense of purpose in other areas.

From a management standpoint, companies are now focused on outcomes. By focusing on outcomes, employers help people make time count, instead of simply counting time. That type of trust and empowerment actually makes staffers far more productive.

Also on the workplace front, we’ll see less corporate travel. We’ve learned we can be efficient and effective with virtual meetings. Even if employees go back to the office, they’ll continue to connect with out-of-town clients and customers virtually rather than face-to-face.

However, conferences and off-site retreats, for the most part, will resume and take place in person because none of us ever got used to day-long virtual sessions or online happy hours this year. The overall decline in business travel will be a long-term recalibration, much to the chagrin of the airline and hospitality industries.

Last, consider the recent, rapid decline of the oil and gas industry due to dramatic worldwide declines in demand. Yes, we were already moving steadily toward battery-powered cars and alternative energy sources, but this trend has significantly accelerated due to the cascading events of 2020.

As a result, the worldwide economic collapse triggered global oil and gas industry retrenchments. As an industry, it clearly sees the handwriting on the wall with the end date of its energy reign looming in the distance. This recalibration will continue over the coming years.

Finally, we’ll put a greater emphasis on health and wellness, both from a personal and employer perspective. Flu and cold season will now be flu, cold, and COVID season as new variants of these viruses appear and reappear every year. Masks will become a fashion industry standard, and far more common during the Fall and Winter months. Family leave policies will be more liberal and generous, especially if companies want to keep mothers in their workforce. This will be a long-term recalibration.

Let’s Get on With It

So yes, let’s all get on with life as soon as we can in 2021, not fixated on going back to the way we were, but looking to the future with a clean slate and a desire to be and do things better. And those of us working as futurists can once again refocus on the future and emerging technology trends like AI, robots, and flying drones!

Here’s to a successful and healthy year ahead!

The opinions expressed here by Next Generation Speakers Magazine columnists are their own, not those of the magazine itself.

Email - jjwilliamsphd@gmail.com Cell - 301-806-8614

Webstore - ChasingTheEagle.com Twitter @jjwilliamsphd LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/james-j-williams

PRESCRIPTION FOR EXCELLENCE

Are You Climbing The Wrong Mountain: Finding Your True Purpose explores the need to make sure you are living out your Godgiven potential. This book had been read and re-read by countless individuals that don’t want to settle for less than they know they can have. If you have ever felt dissatisfied with your current situation, then you owe it to yourself to grab a copy of the Amazon Best Selling Book and prepare yourself to climb your new mountain because your Mountain Awaits!

Knowing When To Jump: Determining The Best Time To Take Your Leap of Faith is the much-anticipated follow-up to Cicone Prince’s Amazon Best Selling Book, “Are You Climbing The Wrong Mountain: Finding Your True Purpose.” This book explores the process needed to go from thoughts to actions. With mile markers along the way, Knowing When To Jump helps the reader realize that they are not jumping to fall, they are jumping to fly.

Becoming the Best “YOU” Overcoming Challenges you can be:

Encouraging you to overcome what is holding you back!

What is #BTBY? It is all about you and helping you to become the best version of yourself. Becoming the Best “YOU” you can be: Overcoming challenges is a movement about helping others to overcome their challenges and grab the life they want.

We want you to rule your kingdom. Stop letting fear, doubt, low self-esteem, your past, what others think and more, stop you from becoming the best you can be. So put your crown on and rule your kingdom.

We host events with world thought leaders that teach and guide you on how to change your life. Our website says it all. www.comechangeyourlife.com

We have held several virtual events, live events and now have a TV Talk show about becoming the best you. It is about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. They are stories of hope and encouragement to help you see that you too can have the life you want, if you are willing to make the changes to make it happen.

What is holding you back? The only one that is stopping you is the person looking back at you in the mirror.

The Butterfly Effect

Unstoppable Confidence

Dr. La Donya Yvette

Have you ever wondered how and why the adversities in life is what challenges us to do better and become better? It doesn’t matter negative past experiences, because at some point we must take responsibility on how we respond and move forward in life. Truth be told when blame or fault is placed on other people, things or the enemy it is actually that limited mentality that we created within ourselves.

We have absolute Power to go from thought to manifestation. Once the belief of knowing that we deserve what we absolutely desire becomes crystal clear, then it doesn’t matter what your dream, goal or what in life you really want to do or become. Because at that point you become empowered to have the courage to allow confidence to show up.

When we think something or someone has the audacity to get in the way of achieving our desires, then there is also proof that there is a solution to overcome and conquer. Release the resentment.

Understand also that self-confidence will only get you so far because it only generates ‘limited’ potential. It is believing Unstoppable Confidence is cultivating God-Confidence within that will unleash ‘unlimited’ possibilities.

Unstoppable confidence is an awareness of the truth that lies within. Applying these principles are a few keys to get beyond self to Spirit:

Sharpen Your Intuition

Sharpen Your Focus Sharpen Your Faith

Today, right this very moment, is another chance to release your limiting beliefs. Because if you’re still holding on to old habits and ways of thinking there’s no space for anything new. Change the narrative and always default to the positive. No more excuses. The game changes when you write your own playbook. Think your way through... Breathe in possibility, exhale limiting beliefs. #UnstoppableConfidence xoxo~

“Be brave enough to have bold courage to release the brakes and accelerate to live above the line. Move forward in Grace.” - La Donya Yvette

La Donya Yvette The Clarity Coach

Dr.

The Height of Courage

By: Shona M. Dennis M.Div

What is courage? the ability to do something that frightens one. Strength in the face of pain and grief.

I recently started real estate school in November 2022. I was inspired to take on that adventure and began the journey of creating generational wealth. In life, you either jump or you don’t, so I jumped. The course ran for 60hrs and it was dry learning of specialized knowledge.

I wasn’t sure if I would be able to retain such massive information coming at me so fast. At first, the knowledge seemed foreign when trying to understand the new terms. I felt like I was in over my head. The more I kept hearing about the upcoming exam with 100 questions, the fear of the unknown overwhelmed me.

Eventually, I begin to encourage and empower myself with all the good reasons why I should remain focused and forward-driven. My mother took a try at real estate before passing away and it was another avenue and way to show my children to be lifelong learners and produce generational wealth. Each class was from 5-9 pm, with powerpoints void of any illustrations and transitions.

We were studying from a thick yellow book with small black sentences. It was very hard to be excited about what we were learning. I started to envision myself as successful in real estate and I begin to research the benefits of being a realtor. December 20, 2022, on my 2nd re-test, I passed my pre-licensing real estate exam. I was so proud of myself with 2 more exams to go.

The Bible reminds us to be strong and courageous. Joshua 1 :9 says have I not commanded you to be strong and courageous? Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

The height of courage is about, how we start at FEAR yet give ourselves the space to be terrified and empowered to do, be, and go. Our Courage grows taller, longer, wider, and deeper as we believe in ourselves. No one can do this for you.

I recently visited the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, TN. I wanted to see the beautiful decorations since I was in the mall area. I was fortunate to take a picture of two construction high-rise workers on the ceiling. I know it takes a bunch of courage to take on a job at great heights.

I decided to do some research on these types of workers. This is dangerous work with terrifying heights and spectacular views. The worker’s inch along knitted in full body harnesses with lines clipped to their backs and materials tied off to prevent them from falling.

The workers face danger with professionalism and heart. What are you having a hard time facing with courage and heart? Do you remember the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz? John 16:33 Jesus reminds us to take heart that he has overcome the world. YOU CAN OVERCOME YOUR FEARS, DOUBTS, AND CONCERNS AND BE COURAGEOUS. I challenge you to explore what’s beyond your COMFORT zone, trust that your curiosity and vulnerability will pay off.

Open the channels of your intuitive self and spirit. Allow yourself to align with the power of God and your potential. Amplify your experiences with intentionality and VISUALIZE your future. The mind stretched by a new awareness and awakening never returns to its original dimensions.

S. H. I. F. T.

There is no better time than now to make a S.H.I.F.T! 2021 has allowed us to move into a new mindset. S. H. I. F. T. is an acronym for Study, Heed, Impact, Forge, and Train. This month we will cover the Study aspect.

Study - the devotion of time and attention to acquiring knowledge on an academic subject, especially through books.

There are several ways that Studying can occur. The two that we are going to cover in this article are Observational and Academic Studying.

Observational Studying:

Studying is one of the first things that we should all be willing to do. We need to realize that we don’t know everything and get around people that know more than we do and be quite long enough to learn something. We then need to ask questions and take notes.

We have to become students of people who have done what it is that we want to do. We have to enroll in the school of humility and carefully take note of not only what they do, but why. To keep the questions to a minimum, learn all you can on your own before asking them to hand you the playbook. What I mean is that you have to use your deductive reasoning to follow along as far as you can. Only ask questions that show that you truly want to learn and implement what you see them doing.

This attitude may also grant you access to more information and greater access to them because you are putting in the work. The second way of Studying is sometimes seen as the hardest.

Next month we will dive deep into the need to Heed what we’ve Studied! So many people learn a lot and know a lot but they are the worst when it comes to putting it into practice. You don’t want to miss it!

Cicone Prince

Academic Studying:

Academic studying can be less glamorous and more tedious but they are the surest way to get solid information that stands on. Going over the information at your own pace allows you to soak up and retain more information. The more you learn, the more you can teach.

Academic studying has a component in it called Testing. Testing makes sure that you have gotten the information back giving you problems to solve or situations to work through. From Academic studying, you can be assured that you have the information down pack so that when you share it later on you will know what you are talking about.

Available Now on Amazon!

The wait is over! In Cicone Prince’s highly anticipated 5th book, he shares fundamental principles of Leadership that are a game changer if properly applied to the all important role of Leadership. He makes no apologies for highlighting the importance of equipping the Next Generation with the tools they need to succeed.

Leadership That Lasts will have you running to help someone else prepare for their future while realizing your success.