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In Remembrance of 9/11
Previously published on September 11, 2021
Welcome to today's Audio Essay from Way Of The Renaissance Man Starring Jim Woods
We are a few days away from the 21st anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center September 11, 2001. In this special audio presentation, Jim offers his poem and thoughts on this day.
And now, here's Jim Woods.
By Jim Woods
There was a cat sleeping on my porch
She didn’t know what I had witnessed
The lacerated skyline of metropolis
A bleeding out of her twin sons
Flying lancets piercing steel hulls
Black smoke seasoning the azure sky
As the falling man descends to the concrete
Incendiary ideas born in Bronze
To please a prophet on a white horse
Hatred of the good for being the good
Crumbles a once-proud icon
Falling ash blankets District streets
A macabre concoction of concrete, bone, blood
Fury rises in the giant’s heart
Rage and revenge burn white
Country targeted, let there be fight
Two decades later, let there be flight
There is a cat sleeping on my porch
While the world remembers
-Jim Woods
September 11, 2021
**********
On Sunday, we mark the 21st anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001.
And yet the passing of two decades hasn’t been enough to fade our scars. And for me, those scars will never be allowed to fade.
Etched on my personal black box recorder are the memories I had circa 1999, when I checked in at the World Trade Center lobby to report to work for my first day at Morgan Stanley. The firm’s training program for new advisers/traders took place in those Twin Towers, and in the weeks that followed, I spent many an afternoon high atop the Manhattan skyline, learning the business inside the iconic monument erected to celebrate capitalism, Western achievement and the wealth of nations.
Their boldness, their glaring simplicity, their twin-brother like stance and their defiance of the rest of the New York City skyline was all part of the reason the World Trade Center was targeted for destruction by forces whose primary directive is death to the infidel.
On that day, when the blue skies were pierced by the stiletto insertion of commercial jets into the towers, I watched the events unravel from some 2,500 miles west. A condo nestled at the foot of the Hollywood Hills hardly seemed congruent to the billowing smoke oozing out of the structural siblings.
The only connection in my mind was… my mind.
A mind having been there just a couple of years earlier, wondering what it would be like to actually be there in that moment.
Wondering if I would have been incinerated along with the roughly 2,600 other souls that were extinguished that day.
Wondering if I would have acted heroically, the way so many did.
Wondering if I would have succumbed to the cowardice that so often accompanies paralytic fear.
I would like to think I could have been a hero. I need to think I would have been a hero.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to find out.
Instead, from afar, from the safety of Hollywood, I watched. All day, all night, I watched. Compelled by the horror; compelled by the enormity. Thinking to myself, “Will this be the world from here on?”
Would the world be plunged into war? At that moment, I wanted war. I wanted vengeance. I wanted to pound those responsible, and the philosophy that animated these acts, into a pulp.
I still want to.
I want to stoke the burn of that day. I want to remember the collapse of icons.
I want to keep calling out the life-hating, celebratory death cult of ideas that is radical Islam, and I want to rejoice in its defeat.
The scars of history must never be allowed to heal, and no salve of time should be permitted to mask the day America would be altered forever.
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Build Wealth Like a Renaissance Man
By Jim Woods
Building wealth really isn’t that hard.
The compounding math is there for anyone to grasp, as are the basic concepts. The tough part comes when you deviate from these principles in search of a shortcut, or if you make one or two bad decisions that put you in a big financial hole. Let’s look at the three basic rules for building wealth.Rule No. 1—Be Right More Often Than You’re Wrong
Making decisions means taking action. But no matter how smart those decisions, and no matter how much thought or research or effort you put into those decisions, you are still likely going to be wrong many times. Think about this as it applies not just to your investment portfolio, but also to life in general. If you’re reading this, you’re likely someone who has made many good, as well as many bad, decisions in life. Some of those decisions you are extremely thankful you made, and some you no-doubt painfully regret. Hey, we all make mistakes, and that’s because humans are fallible. Yet we don’t have to be right all the time to be successful in life—or in our wealth building. The key here is to be right more often than you’re wrong. And, when you’re wrong, to minimize the damage. The latter part of this prescription leads us into our next rule of wealth building.Rule No. 2—Win Bigger Than You Lose
Win some, lose some. This reality is just part of life. And try as we may to always win, we can’t. Indeed, part of being a Renaissance Man is understanding that life has its good days and its bad days. And while the big winning days are fantastic, the big losing days can really, really hurt. The key for a Renaissance Man, both in life and in the money and investment realm, is to win bigger than you lose. What I mean by that is you want to ride your stock, bond, and commodities wins higher. Don’t just bail out on a small gain because you have one, or because you want that shiny new car, boat, etc. As for losing, most of us have been on the wrong side of an investment decision. The key is to not let those losses go from small to large. Just like one or two really bad decisions in life can end up being the difference between happiness and sorrow, one or two catastrophic losses in a portfolio can be the difference between retiring wealthy and living the rest of your life on Social Security. Remember that investing (as opposed to short-term trading, which there definitely is a place for) means you build positions in strong assets likely to continue appreciating over time. And, you use the power of compounding and the requisite patience and time, to build your wealth. Of course, to find those wins in the first place means you have to invest in the right picks from the beginning, and the details of how to do just that are contained within the pages of my newsletters.Rule No. 3—Seek Income and Capital Appreciation
When you’re investing (as opposed to trading), you ideally want assets that pay you income AND that go up in value. This may seem simple, but you would be surprised by the number of people I’ve spoken to in my career that think income and capital appreciation are two separate entities. The best long-term wealth-building assets are those that not only appreciate in value, but that also pay you to own them. This means owning a basket of the best, most-stalwart, dividend-paying stocks the market has to offer. I’m referring here to stocks of companies that have consistently raised their annual dividends each year, and those who have done it for years, decades, and in some cases more than a century. This isn’t a quick-fix, get-rich scheme or some kind of real estate flipping strategy. It’s investing consistently in the biggest, most-profitable companies that have demonstrated they are committed to growing their business long term, and increasing the wealth of their shareholders. You see, when it comes to the basic Renaissance Man rules of wealth building, simplicity reigns supreme. Once you understand that, you then need to muster up the requisite manly courage, discipline and willpower to see those rules through to the end. In the name of the best within us, Jim Woods Now, we want to hear from you! Would like to share your opinion or make a comment on the Way of the Renaissance Man podcast? If so, then please leave your comment or questions in the space provided below and share this article with your friends and family on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Your comments or question could be chosen as our featured Ask the Renaissance Man Anything on a future episode.Of Christmas and Conscience
Welcome to today's #WednesdayWisdom from Way Of The Renaissance Man Starring Jim Woods
Today's insight was inspired by a true American Renaissance Man, scientist, writer, statesman, and philosopher, Benjamin Franklin.This time of year is replete with reflection on the past 12 months. It’s also a time when we prepare ourselves for the coming year. But before you get to either of these things, remember what Benjamin Franklin said about a good conscience. You see, when our hearts and minds are clear, we can see the past for what it is and the future for what it should be — and that, my friends, will bring you holiday cheer throughout the year. From all of us here on the Way of the Renaissance Man team, we wish you the very happiest of holidays. Jim Woods December 21, 2022“A good conscience is a continual Christmas.”
–Benjamin Franklin
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WayOfTheRenaissanceMan.com/store for Way of the Renaissance Man Fans is open. Grab your stylish t-shirt, gear, stickers and Way of the Renaissance Man art, too! Just visit the website now!
Now, we want to hear from you! Would like to share your opinion or make a comment on the Way of the Renaissance Man podcast? If so, then please leave your comment or questions in the space provided below and share this article with your friends and family on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Your comments or question could be chosen as our featured Ask the Renaissance Man Anything on a future episode.
JFK on Gratitude
Welcome to today's #WednesdayWisdom from Way Of The Renaissance Man Starring Jim Woods
Today's insight was inspired by an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy.As the late president so poignantly put it, gratitude is much more about action than mere words. This Thanksgiving, don’t just merely speak about the things you’re grateful for. This year, act on that feeling of gratitude and do something special for the people you value most — including yourself. Jim Woods November 23, 2022“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
— John F. Kennedy
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WayOfTheRenaissanceMan.com/store for Way of the Renaissance Man Fans is open. Grab your stylish t-shirt, gear, stickers and Way of the Renaissance Man art, too! Just visit the website now!
Now, we want to hear from you! Would like to share your opinion or make a comment on the Way of the Renaissance Man podcast? If so, then please leave your comment or questions in the space provided below and share this article with your friends and family on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Your comments or question could be chosen as our featured Ask the Renaissance Man Anything on a future episode.
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Paine-ful Wisdom
Welcome to today's #WednesdayWisdom from Way Of The Renaissance Man Starring Jim Woods.
Today's insight was inspired by English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist and revolutionary, Thomas Paine.
Now, we want to hear from you! Would like to share your opinion or make a comment on the Way of the Renaissance Man podcast? If so, then please leave your comment or questions in the space provided below and share this article with your friends and family on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Your comments or question could be chosen as our featured Ask the Renaissance Man Anything on a future episode.
I think the great Thomas Paine said it all with this famous quote, so I’ll refrain from any further elaboration other than to say that if you haven’t read any of this incredible thinker’s work, then you need to do so immediately. I guarantee you’ll find his thought-provoking wisdom both challenging and inspiring. Jim Woods November 9, 2022“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”
–Thomas Paine
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Three Pillars Form the Way of the Renaissance Man Ethos
Originally appeared in The Deep Woods at JimWoodsInvesting.com
A few years ago, a friend asked me to describe my personal “ethos” with just a few words.
Now, judging by that question, you can tell that I hang out with some pretty smart friends. And in this case, I knew my answer needed to be appropriately thought out to satisfy my friend’s curiosity. At first, I thought this task would be difficult. Yet after just a brief period of reflection, I answered with the following three words…Focus. Integration. Celebration.
Naturally, my friend demanded I amplify this answer, and so I went about explaining these “three pillars” of my personal ethos so that each concept would be simple and easy to understand. So, with your permission, I would like to do the same here.Focus.
The first pillar here is the most essential, as it also serves as a basis for all information processing, and for the application of the two other pillars of my ethos. The term focus here means much more than just concentration. By focus, I mean focus in the wider, philosophic sense. Perhaps a quote here from my favorite philosopher and my favorite novelist, Ayn Rand, will explain what I mean by philosophic focus: “In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one’s consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality — or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make.” So, when I say “focus” is the first pillar of my personal ethos, I mean it in this sense. I mean it in the sense that whatever it is I am doing, whether it is writing, speaking, analyzing companies, reading, composing and playing music, horseback riding, weight training, martial arts, combat marksmanship, driving a race car, walking a dog or just petting my cat, I do it in a state of full focus. I do it with the full, volitional and conscious awareness of reality — in the moment. You’ve no doubt heard about the importance of “living in the moment,” as it has become somewhat of a cliché in the self-help movement. So, let’s avoid this cliché, and just say that living in the moment requires that you live each moment in full focus.Integration.
The second pillar of my ethos comes after you’ve focused your mind on the facts and sensations of reality. Through the process of mental integration, you can categorize the facts, sensations and feelings you’ve experienced in that state of full focus, and you can begin determining what they all mean and how they fit into your broader, and deeper, philosophic premises such as the things you value. For example, let’s say you focus your mind on something that is on the surface mostly a physical pursuit, weight training. Yet is it mostly a physical thing? While the actual performance of the movements might be primarily physical, what you’ve likely already integrated before you even decide to begin weight training are the facts that challenging your muscles with progressive resistance loads is a good thing for your physical well-being. Indeed, the integration of higher-order concepts of “well-being” requires a long chain of philosophic integration that has to do with the value you place on your existence, your health, your appearance, the maintenance of your functional ability, etc. The wider point here is that the ability to focus on facts and integrate those facts into your philosophic matrix is the necessary second pillar of a rational ethos, and it’s one you must be consciously aware of if you are going to engage in the third pillar of this ethos.Celebration.
Once you’ve focused on reality and integrated those facts with your personal worldview, i.e. your personal philosophic premises, then and only then can you rationally indulge in the most pleasurable pillar — celebration. For me, celebration is the result of the focused integration of the concretes of reality and what they represent in my life. Staying with the weight training example, I know that a focus on facts means I need to weight train to stay in good physical shape. Staying in good physical shape is a value to me because I’ve integrated the virtue of good health and the absence of disease in my life as rational values for me to pursue. And despite being on the losing side of my fifties, I am for the most part in excellent physical condition, largely free of disease and strong, flexible and fully functional. It is this combination of focused integration that permits me to celebrate this circumstance. You see, when you live a life in full focus, and one in which you integrate the ideas and values that really matter to you, then and only then can you rationally celebrate your existence. It is this celebration, in all its glorious forms, that makes life worth living. Whether that celebration is the pleasure of watching your children grow up, or whether it’s staring into the eyes of the person you love most and feeling that love come right back to you, or whether it’s something as simple as performing a set of intense barbell curls — when you live a life of focused integration, you can justly celebrate life in all of its forms. For me, the three pillars of focus, integration and celebration comprise the basis of my personal ethos. And thanks to my friend’s question some years ago, these three pillars also represent the consistent themes running through my lifestyle website and podcast, Way of the Renaissance Man. If you want to hear more about the various ways I and others focus, integrate and celebrate life, I invite you to check out the articles, interviews and podcasts available right now at WayoftheRenaissanceman.com.Check out this Way of the Renaissance Man Ethos Tee…It is the perfect companion for every occasion—wear it when traveling, running daily errands, or going to the gym.
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Now, we want to hear from you! Would like to share your opinion or make a comment on the Way of the Renaissance Man podcast? If so, then please leave your comment or questions in the space provided below and share this article with your friends and family on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Your comments or question could be chosen as our featured Ask the Renaissance Man Anything on a future episode.
Madison on Tyranny and Oppression
Madison on Tyranny and Oppression
Welcome to today's #WednesdayWisdom from Way of The Renaissance Man Starring Jim Woods. Today's insight was inspired by an American statesman, diplomat, Founding Father and the fourth president of the United States, James Madison Jr.I think it’s important, especially today, to remember Madison’s warning. Whatever battles we fight around the globe, we cannot let those battles destroy our freedom. Jim Woods October 19, 2022“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” –James Madison
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Now, we want to hear from you! Would like to share your opinion or make a comment on the Way of the Renaissance Man podcast? If so, then please leave your comment or questions in the space provided below and share this article with your friends and family on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Your comments or question could be chosen as our featured Ask the Renaissance Man Anything on a future episode.
On Harnessing Passion
Welcome to today's #WednesdayWisdom from Way of The Renaissance Man Starring Jim Woods
Today's insight was inspired by American novelist, poet, and one of the pioneers of the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac.Passion is what makes life worth living. But controlling your passions is just as important as cultivating them. When it comes to a healthy life, balancing your enthusiasm and your self-discipline are the dual keys to success. Jim Woods October 5, 2022“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”
–Jack Kerouac
For more great resources and inspiration visit WayOfTheRenaissanceMan.com
WayOfTheRenaissanceMan.com/store for Way of the Renaissance Man Fans is open. Grab your stylish t-shirt, gear, stickers and Way of the Renaissance Man art, too! Just visit the website now!
This Way of the Renaissance Man Ethos Tee is the perfect companion for every occasion—wear it when traveling, running daily errands, or going to the gym.
100% cotton
4.3-ounce and 30 singles
Rib-Knit Crew Neck
Double needle sleeves and hem
Get yours here!
Now, we want to hear from you! Would like to share your opinion or make a comment on the Way of the Renaissance Man podcast? If so, then please leave your comment or questions in the space provided below and share this article with your friends and family on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Your comments or question could be chosen as our featured Ask the Renaissance Man Anything on a future episode.