Creating Real Wealth With Dame Doria Cordova

When you can personally support people that have tremendous influence, you can leverage your purpose. That is how Dame Doria (DC) Cordova, PhD has been able to develop socially responsible businesses. Doria is a humanitarian, a philanthropist, an author and the CEO and owner of Global Excellerated Business School for Entrepreneurs. She is also known for the Money And You program which has inspired some of the best-known business education and wealth experts. Today, she shares her personal experiences in helping some of the great leaders in the world, thereby leveraging her own purpose. She also discusses creating your own business empire, referencing the philosophies of thought legends like Buckminster Fuller. Join us in this episode as this amazing, world-renowned entrepreneur inspires you with her wonderful advice and tips for creating real wealth.

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Creating Real Wealth With Dame Doria (DC) Cordova

I feel incredibly blessed at this moment to be taking the breath I’m taking and to be enjoying a beautiful day on the planet. I haven’t considered what it would be like to live somewhere else. Sometimes it’s enough to learn how to live within my own body and be grounded on this earth. I keep myself in that space. Although having a wonderful conversation with my soon to be son-in-law. We were contemplating the cosmos and what other places there might be out there that would support life that are trillions of light-years away from here. I think our best bet and I certainly believe that my best bet for our kids and our kid’s kids and all of our collective family is that we make the best place for us to live right here on earth. What’s cool is the guest that I have on the show who’s also a dear friend of mine and somebody that I have great admiration and respect for. She’s committed to making this planet the best it can be in so many ways including environmentally and what does that look like. How do we sustain this beautiful earth? How do we continue to care for mother earth? The options for us elsewhere are extremely limited or that’s what it feels like anyway.

I would love it if where ever you are in this moment, whatever you’re doing that you can take some deep breaths and ground yourself, become present and enjoy this moment as if it was the last moment. I love this old book by a gentleman who has an interesting name, Og Mandino. He wrote a series of books in the ’70s that were very popular including one that’s called The Greatest Salesman in the World. There are a series of things that he suggests that we all do to live into the greatest part of ourselves that can enroll other people in our mission and our vision and enroll ourselves each and every day in living a great life. One of those suggestions he makes is to live this day as if it were your last. In this moment, as you take a deep breath, take that breath as though it might be your last. Take that breath and relish that breath as something sacred and even holy, something thoroughly enjoyable.

Smile and enjoy that breath as I share a little bit about our guest who you’re absolutely going to love. She is someone truly special. Her name is Dame Doria Cordova, DC as we call her sometimes. She is the CEO and owner of the Excellerated Business School known for the Money and You Program. It’s been around since 1979 with more than 145,000 graduates from over 85 countries. The program has inspired some of the best-known business education and wealth experts. She’s touched the lives of millions and millions of people globally. Doria is a humanitarian, philanthropist and author. She is a global business developer for the world’s leading solar architect and other organizations that are in alignment with her purpose. Her purpose is to uplift humanity’s consciousness through socially responsible businesses. Doria, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being with us.

I love being here. Thank you so much.

It’s been many years that you and I first met, which was wonderful. I know a lot about you and maybe some people that are reading have heard your name before. They maybe have read a book or studied under you and the Money and You Program or something like that. What’s something that I didn’t include in my opening description that you would love for people to know about you?

You always want to find out who's the power behind the power. Share on X

I was destined to work with world leaders and different kinds of leaders to support them and leverage my purpose with them. In 1984, I had the opportunity to meet Fidel Castro. Later in 2000, I met the head of Malaysia, Mahathir who is the Prime Minister again. I like to go to people that have tremendous influence and personally support them and leverage my purpose.

Doria, share a little bit about how it is that you’ve been able to put yourself into proximity to some of these great world leaders and how you’ve been able to help them?

I had the opportunity in 1984 to meet Fidel Castro and was able to tap into the fact that I was to spend my life influencing some of the world leaders and leaders of industry in order for me to be able to leverage my purpose. That is something that was left out of my introduction.

That’s something you’d certainly want people to know about you. There’s a lesson in that because many people are wanting or seeking a way to play a bigger game. That’s part of what they tell themselves, “I’ve got to play a bigger game,” and they get stuck or stopped by the fact that maybe they don’t have influence themselves. They don’t have a big platform or way to be some massive change in the world. Yet you’ve been able to leverage some of the access, the celebrity and the influence of people to be able to have your purpose be bigger than it would have been if you just tried to do it all on your own.

I am not famous in many circles, not like my old partner, Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad Poor Dad. He was my business partner for nine years. A lot of people know his name, not the book. This is something else to be learned that they are people like myself behind pulling all the different strings and making sure that everything happens. You always want to find out who’s the power behind the power and that’s what I’ve done. That is one of the things that I looked for when I meet somebody very influential or very successful. I say, “Can you tell me who the person that’s running their lives?” I go to them and learn from them or have them introduce me or do the work. That has been one of my keys to success.

Creating Real Wealth: Once you understand how to live in a world of sufficiency, there is a simplicity to life and an experience of tremendous wealth because you get very present to what is in front of you.

It’s reminding me of something that I wanted to talk to you about. This is going be one of those divine interventions I supposed. When I’m keynote speaking, which is something I do quite a bit these days is stand on a stage with a corporate audience and share a message usually about creating resilience and how people within those organizations can not only be resilient for themselves, but how they can help the company build resilience as well and how they can make a difference. Typically, what I’ll do is I’ll share a story of a gentleman by the name of Buckminster Fuller, who many people have never heard of. It’s interesting to me when I mentioned him, how many people have not heard of him? I’ll say, “He’s also known as the creator of the geodesic dome.” They look at me and go, “I still don’t know who the guy is.” I go, “The dome at Epcot.” They go, “That guy. Did he create that? That’s incredible.” It’s a way to introduce the name. He was a genius, a futurist, a philanthropist. He was a person thinking so far outside of his time or the restrictions of the technology and what was available and he had access to it in that time.

I know that you spend a lot of time speaking with, working with and being mentored in proximity to Bucky Fuller. I want to get into that. I want to find out about that. I typically tell this story about how he was studying how big ships turn. The big ships had this big problem, which they weren’t able to turn very easily. They weren’t very agile. They had a big giant rudder that would be turning these big ships, but it was slow. Someone created this little rudder that sits on the big rudder. When they had the little rudder turn the big rudder, the big rudder would more easily turn the big ship. That little rudder is called a trim tab. Bucky talked about the trim tab factor and how sometimes the little things in life can have a big difference. You can call it the Law of Small Differences or the Butterfly Effect. In pivot language, we talk about a small change in direction can create transformation over time. What can you share with us about your relationship and what you learned from Bucky Fuller?

Buckminster Fuller was also a mathematician, a thinker and an author. He was named as one of the Top 100 by Time Magazine. He was known as the Leonardo da Vinci of the twentieth century. The reason why a lot of people haven’t heard about him is that we haven’t caught up to him yet. He was the type of gentleman that made over 50 predictions over many years ago and 49 of them have come true and most of them are mathematical. I was only 27 years old when The Hunger Project was being launched. He was the gentleman that tapped into the aspects of me of understanding sufficiency. We live in a world that experiences scarcity. We have our economic engine of the world still run from scarcity. Literally, we’re still trying to manage having scarce resources when that is so not true. That changed in the ’70s. That was his big conversation. Once you understand how to live in a world of sufficiency, then there is a simplicity to life and experience of tremendous wealth because you get very present to what is in front of you. From there we can have abundance.

I had the opportunity to sit in front of them, with 1,000 people behind me in 1977. He said so many things that I had never heard before. That was when I committed my life and I was so young. We had The Hunger Project and I had my business. I was a court reporter at the time. I grew up to be an attorney like you. I had an opportunity to pivot into a whole other life. I ended up retiring and I was very good with money because I had been in the legal system by then for nearly eight years. I had learned from the masters of money and business without knowing any of that. I began to learn more and more from Buckminster Fuller and I attended the first business school for entrepreneurs of its kind, which I ended up inheriting. He also was invited to that and he became our mentor and teacher for the next five years. He came and we study with him. I sat at his feet. John Denver called him the grandfather of the universe. He was like this grandfather that would share information with you that was so advanced. Honestly, it took me years and years to understand it. I did feel that when I would listen to him for five to ten hours, sometimes twelve hours, when he was teaching us, that there would be something that was shifted within me, something that he called the Phantom Captain.

Even if you don’t have a logical or conscious understanding, there was a part of you that grok it. The word grok is from that book. It introduced this word called grok, which means to understand the essence of something. I was able to have an understanding of these principles that run your life and run everybody’s life. It’s that when you get something in every part of your being. Sometimes people experience that when they fall in love and they connect so deeply with someone. For instance, Adam, you grok love, you grok collaboration, and you grok that these principles that you know work. How do you know that? You haven’t been around for hundreds and thousands of years, but yet in your heart of heart you have the essence of that. That’s what Buckminster Fuller did.

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Was that the Phantom Captain that you talked about?

The Phantom Captain is the one that has a total understanding of that. Buckminster Fuller would teach us things that were true in nature or in physics, how like bees seek honey and human beings seek money. He taught us this beautiful principle of precession.

Please tell us about what precession is. Is it a law?

It’s a generalized principle. A generalized principle is something that is true at all times, always. Gravity is a generalized principle. Leverage is a generalized principle and the physical universe and also people have an understanding of the word leverage in terms of money and in terms of now. We have expanded that word that you can leverage teams, people, time, money and resources. Originally, the word leverage was only used on Wall Street and in financial circles. That is a generalized principle. Precession, the definition is the effect of bodies in motion on other bodies in motion, which is the physics term for ripple effects. It’s like when you throw a pebble into the water, you will have these ripples. It always occurs. That way, if you focus on as close as you can to your true purpose in life. The precession effects, the 90 degrees, the ripple effects of your life will be very positive. You will add value to humanity.

If you look at your life as a human being and everything is not working, you’re not making money, you’re not healthy and your life sucks basically. Everything is just going horrible. You need to stop and look at what is your purpose. What is the purpose of your business? What is your purpose in your life? Are you honest with everyone? Are you going for the highest purpose that you were meant to do? That’s what people do in our programs and your programs. They stop and they go, “Maybe I should pivot this way because what I have been doing all this time hasn’t been working.” That’s why we are known for the last 40 years to teach human beings these generalized principles combined with sound business principles. You combine the two and you create wealthy human beings who are adding value to humanity.

Creating Real Wealth: There are two things that people have very little or don’t understand – income generating activities and leverage.

If you were going to convince somebody that has been living in scarcity since earlier than they can remember because it may have been what was around them and modeled to them in their home. They learned it from their parents or others and they had been living in scarcity. What would you say to them? You get the opportunity through the programs over a period of days to peel away the layers of why it is that people are programmed to think the way they do about money and about other things. In this moment, somebody’s reading this and saying, “I always feel like there’s not enough. I grew up with people around me saying there’s never enough. We can’t afford it. Even now, no matter what the economy might be doing and how many people might be getting very wealthy at the top, I still feel like I don’t have my fair share.” What do you say to somebody in regards to pivots in perception from something like scarcity to sufficiency?

I don’t know if I can do it in a conversation because I have had this conversation with many people and one of the things that I have found out about human beings is that they will fight for their limitations. My old partner, Kiyosaki taught me a saying that’s very old, “Don’t teach a pig to sing. It annoys the pig and it wastes your time.” Having said that, there had been some people that had been very receptive when I had an opportunity to talk in-depth to them. At this particular point, I go into conversation like, “Do you realize that there are two key things to get out of that circumstance? One of them, are you spending enough time in income-generating activities on a daily basis? Number two, are you creating systems? Do you have a product or a service in your life that you can leverage?” There are two things that people have very little or don’t understand, income-generating activities and leverage. Once you pivot people into that particular mindset and to particularly look at that, then you begin to have an opening and they go, “What is leverage?”

Now we move and we pivot from scarcity to leverage where for some reason people’s brain, people’s minds are conditioned so that they can understand it a little bit more and then we can take them back to scarcity. Scarcity is a very scary thing for most human beings. I pivot them away from that and talk about something that they can manage. At a later time, I can take it back to them. It’s almost like I have been talking to heads of universities, to ministers of education, to prime ministers about their educational system, that no educational system in the world that works for everyone. Would you like your country to have an educational system that works for all your community, for your citizens? They always say yes, but the minute that I start bringing in different things, they will get very defensive. Right now, you’re reading this and you’re set and very solid on a certain perspective of way of being. That is the thing that you need to start opening up and saying, “Is my life really working at the level that I wanted to work? Do I have all the money? Do I have all the health? Do I have all the love, the relationship? If the answer is no, then we are stuck in some way and you need support.

You said that people would argue in favor of their limitations. What do you mean about that? Unpack that if you will.

The way that their brain works is black or white. We’re run by a computer and in many ways so you see black or white. Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? You need to ask yourself that question. At that point you begin to have an opening. First, you have to have such mastery and we need to move into that area a little bit more, which is that you need to move into the aspect of how much mastery do you have over your emotions? How much mastery do you have over your ability to be able to make changes so you truly have a life that works for you? I can’t work on the world until I work on myself first. This is very difficult for many to understand because our whole system of education, of business and of life is not designed for that.

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It’s based on competition for one thing. It’s embedded in competition, which I’ve heard that competition has been called a virus. I think it is in many ways a virus. It’s one where someone wins and someone loses. Scarcity is already a part of the equation or the paradigms. Do you agree with that?

There is also healthy competition if it’s in the context of that. If people end up collaborating with each other and the end result is going to be for the good of all. Not all competition is bad. There is a healthy competition. In our program sometimes we put people temporarily into competitive situations, but the end result is going to be collaboration with each other and making the world work for 100% of humanity. If you have a product or service that in any way, shape or form is hurting someone, hurting the environment or hurting something, then you need to pivot out of that area and move it into a life. It’s not easy. This is something that I want your audience to understand that the results are so magnificent because then you begin to experience sufficiency in every area of your life so that you can live the life of your dreams.

I love where this conversation is going. I’m going to ask you a funny question. This seemed like out of the left-field, but do you play tennis?

I used to when I was much younger.

There’s a book that you may have read. It’s an incredible book that came out in the early ’70s. The name of the book is The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. It’s sold many millions of copies. Here’s a tennis instructor who penned a book about philosophy and mindset. In some ways it was a Zen philosophy book. In that book, what I thought was cool was he said that healthy competition is competing with the intention and even the hope, the prayer that the person on the other side of the net that you’re playing with is at their very best. That’s when not only will you be at your best and win, lose or draw, you’ll feel good about it.

Creating Real Wealth: Once you begin to have mastery over yourself, you begin to have an understanding on which game you’re going to participate in and how you’re going to do it.

The entire thing is a positive experience as opposed to being on the other side of the net and hoping, praying and wishing that the person fails, that they don’t succeed, they double fault. I think it’s an important distinction because even when we’re in competition, how it is that we look at that competition and what’s that endeavor drawing out of us in the process is a big deal. If you’re willing to cheat, lie and do whatever it takes or even if you’re not doing those things. If you’re wishing for your competitor whether in business or in sports or anything to fail so that you can succeed, there’s a termite in the woodpile to start.

Let me say we have an eight-day program, which is a business school for entrepreneurs. That originally was six-weeks long that I attended, then four weeks, then two and a half weeks, and now it’s eight days. We set this standard around the world for very fast business schools. We have competitive physical games in there. We do it for a reason. For instance, we used to play Rugby. One of the reasons was because with Rugby you have to pass the ball backward in order for the whole team to move forward. Everyone knew that if I was going to play Rugby with them, forget the sweet Doria, “We’re playing a game. We’re all clear with playing the game and we are going to get the ball over there. Look out.” It was so interesting because we were playing certain sports. We do running and swimming now, but we haven’t played Rugby in the past. I remember because we play men and women together, I literally went in between the legs of this big guy and I was running with the ball and went in between. Everybody was laughing so hard they couldn’t believe I would do that. I was playing a game. When you are very clear about what game you are playing, business and life are just like a sporting event.

I’m glad you brought up tennis. Let’s take football. In America you see it, you have the rules, you have the players, you have the coaches or the people, the referees, then you have the spectators and then all the stuff that goes with spectators and the TV and all of that. That’s exactly how business is. One of the key things that we also teach in our programs is a thing called the rules of the game. When you are very clear about what game you are playing, what are the rules of the game? What are the consequences? What can happen? What are the risks? What most human beings do is pretend that they are not that knowledgeable or they don’t know some of the rules and they’re hoping they’re going to get by. Some of the games that they choose in their lives are very dangerous.

They will risk their savings, their money, their families or marriages and their spouses. They will risk all these things without taking into consideration what are the rules of the game that you’re choosing to play. Once you become this conscious being and you begin to have mastery over yourself, you begin to have an understanding of which game you’re going to participate in and how you’re going to do it. Part of it is understanding that the minute that we’re going to attack another, the minute that we’re going to hurt something, the minute that we’re going to hurt the environment, that particular game is too risky. This is where humanity is right now.

There are thousands of fires that are burning in the Amazon. This is something that’s happening in our environment. When people are willing to do certain things and violate the rules of the game, whether that’s the broader game of humanity even, there are consequences. I know that renewable energy is a very important thing and something you’re extremely passionate about. If you would share with us because you’ve been very successful in your business career and you’ve been educating people for a long time so that they can acquire some of the skills that you’ve been sharing. This has been a pivot for you out of that education space. There’s something that’s more about the future of our planet, which is where we began this particular episode. What can you tell us about renewable energy and the work that you’re doing there?

There is no educational system in the world that works for everyone. Share on X

There is this architect, his name is Huang Ming. He created the only Solar Valley of its kind on the planet. It’s called SolarValleyChina.com. He was the man that passed the first Green Law in China. He has been committed to the greening of China and the world way before he was in vogue. I had an opportunity to be introduced to him many years ago. The original environmentalist was Buckminster Fuller. I have been an environmentalist younger than that. I was a little bit of a hippie. I was hippie for two weeks back in 1969. I had to shower all the time. When I met him, it was love at first sight with a whole group of people and I had an opportunity to travel with him and his wife. He had an epiphany. Many years ago, he was one of China’s leading oil industry engineer.

When he held his baby for the first time, and you can relate to this being a father, he realized that there was going to be no world for this little girl. He literally pivoted into solar. He didn’t call it an enlightenment experience or anything. It was what happened. By the time I met him, he has won the Right Livelihood Award, which is like a Nobel Prize for doing good. He actually had dinner with the Nobel laureates. It’s an event that happens the night before. It’s not as famous as the Nobel Prize, but it’s just as prestigious. He happened to know some of the world’s leading scientists. I traveled with him in the year 2014 and I’ll never forget this. One of his very closest friends is one of the top leading scientists and has an endowment of $20 million at South Florida University, SFU. I was taken into a renewable laboratory if you want to call it that. It was so amazing because all the top scientists were Asian.

He was Indian. Huang Ming was Chinese. It’s very hard to find scientists that are Americans, because of the education that they get. That in itself proved everything that I had been about education and not being adequate. The book Rich Dad Poor Dad is a work based on our work because truly, that’s what I’ve been working on. To make a long story short, I had an opportunity to see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears the shift that is going to happen from having carbon, chemicals and what was going to happen with renewables. There’s going to come a time very soon in the future where it was going to be much cheaper to do renewables than it’s going to be fossil fuels. The resistance that’s going to happen is going to require a lot of greater lying, greater misconceptions, and people standing in their own authority. It’s going to take off. I realized from a scientific point of view that me, Huang Ming, and the interpreter were the dumbest people in the room. They had a lot of good money to do research and they’re scientists. They’re not about the money.

It was there in 2014 from a left-brain scientific point of view that renewables are going to be the future, but also that there was going to be such resistance. It’s the only thing that’s going to save our environment. I went to a thing called OurDay.net which is my yearly pilgrimage to Colorado where you have the top most unbelievable scientists and this are people that learn and study this. We have literally maybe twenty years where the seas are going to rise 25 feet. This is no game. This is not somebody exaggerating. We are completely going in that direction. For me, to see it from a business point of view, there are all these industries, there are all these green jobs and we’re going there. You might as well jump into the ship. It is crucial that every human being that’s from the little tiniest thing into creating businesses and organizations where they can be wealthy or beyond their dreams and create a beautiful environment.

Thank you for that. I would love to know how you create the environment of your mind. We know that more than any other law that I can think of and I believe we can feel the direct impact of it every day is that what we think today is what we produce, by way of experience, tomorrow. Would you agree with that?

Creating Real Wealth: One of the things about meditation is it’s cumulative; it doesn’t just happen overnight.

Absolutely.

I would love to understand and I know that the people in our community love it when we share the rituals that we have, the things that we do on a very conscious level to start the day. Do you have a morning practice of some kind?

I have been meditating twice a day for many years without missing. I’m a transcendental meditation practitioner. I also have physical things. I start off with lemon juice, a little bit of lemon and lots of water to hydrate. We’d been sleeping for whatever number of hours. All the organs are ready for the water. I drink Calli tea, which is a healthy tea and my greens. That takes a couple of hours. An hour later, I can have breakfast by then. Sometimes it’s mid-morning and that keeps me thin. That’s one of the things. Everyone should take at least once a day, close their eyes and check in with themselves. This is where you get to go in and say, “What’s happening?” Tune in to yourself. That’s why my program is called Money and You. It’s more about the you part that will then generate the wealth and have the experience of sufficiency.

What does meditation look like for somebody that may say to themselves, “I can’t quiet my mind. I’m a crummy meditator?” Give advice to somebody that would love to be able to get the essence of meditation. What would you tell them to do to get started?

There is a whole group of people, quite a few of them. I discovered from my friend Cynthia James that they need to meditate while walking. There is walking meditation and there’s physical meditation. If you have never been able to set still, you could be one of those people. You probably should have her as a guest because she’s an expert in that area. For many of that can’t sit still, I have been given a mantra, but before I had my mantra, I basically would sit very quiet and then there would be a sound, the sound of om in the old days. I didn’t know that om actually was giving me quite a bit of energy. You let things pass by. It’s almost like a detachment. For twenty minutes, half an hour sit down and separate yourself from your problems, from your thinking. Whatever you’re thinking, you begin to see it as the screen that’s going in front of you as opposed to being in it. One of the things about meditation is it’s cumulative. It doesn’t just happen overnight. Even if you sit there for twenty minutes, even if it’s loud, begin to see the advancements that you can have, the progress as you sit there. There are some meditations, beautiful ones. There are apps where you can listen to beautiful music, but the thing is to start calming yourself down.

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Doria, are you able to share your mantra with us? I’ll understand if you don’t wish to.

No, actually it’s supposed to be kept quiet. This is a very neutral sound. There was no significance to it. It’s just a sound.

It’s a sound for you, not words.

It’s a word that is like a sound.

Did you say for about ten years you’ve been meditating?

Creating Real Wealth: Don’t get attached to money. It’s very unreal in many ways because it can’t save you from the tremendous losses in life.

Without missing, twice a day.

This being 2019, I’m approximately in my eleventh year of starting my day with a particular ritual. It’s one that I will involve you with now. Doria, did you wake up today?

Yes.

Sometimes I’ll ask people that and they go, “Get back to me in a half-hour when the coffee has kicked in,” or what have you. It is a little funny because sometimes we’re awake on a physical level, but from a consciousness level, we’re not so awake. In fact, when I used to be a lawyer, I was in that profession for about eighteen years and this has nothing to do with that profession. I spent a lot of time in Manhattan because of my work. I walked the streets of Manhattan and thousands and thousands of people that you would pass each day. It didn’t feel like everybody was quite awake. There’s a look you could see in somebody’s eyes where they wouldn’t make eye contact and you couldn’t get a smile out of some people. The process of waking up is more than physical. One thing is for certain, Doria, when you went to bed last night, you were not given a guarantee or a promise that you would wake up today. Isn’t that true?

Correct.

Renewables are the only thing that could save our environment. Share on X

The moment of waking is also a blessing and all of us wake up each morning to a different day, to a different set of circumstances. We don’t know what’s going to happen. There are things we know that are scheduled for that day, some of which we’re excited about. I knew we were going to be on this podcast and I woke up excited about that, enthusiastic. There are some days where the thing you’re waking up to encounter might be going to court. It might be an argument that has to get resolved, a conversation, a very transparent and difficult conversation with someone.

It could be going to the doctor, it could be getting chemo, it could be going to a burial or something else. There are so many infinite possibilities of what the day will hold. One thing I think is certain and that is as you take that first breath of the morning as I did, there are people that were taking their very last breath in that same moment. There’s something truly sacred about it. To me, if you can be in that moment, be aware that you are awake from your bed or on your way to the bathroom, even if that’s the case, it’s just that awareness, “Yes, I am awake and that is a blessing,” can shift you.

It can shift you even momentarily into a state of gratitude. What’s great about gratitude is that it’s impossible to be in gratitude even for a moment and be in fear in that same moment. Fear is the thing that I think gets in the way of so much of what we want out of life and the joy and what we’re meant to do as you said, the purpose that we have is interfered with more by fear than any other things. This is a great antidote to fear. Wake up and feel grateful, think about something you’re grateful for and then take ten seconds to say something out loud and those words are, “I love my life, I love my life, I love my life.” Doria, what are those words?

I love my life. Before I go, I have to say something. I cannot go without telling you this. Buckminster Fuller used to love to say this and you’re going to love this. He used to say, “There are no guarantees that the person that goes to sleep at night is the same person that wakes up in the morning.” It was one of his favorite things to say. It was so mystical. I have had a lot of lost this life. This is part of why I’m not attached to money and have an understanding of money that’s very unreal in many ways because it can’t save you from this thing. I have had a tremendous loss in my life. I have to tell you that the hardest thing during that time was waking up and having that feeling of loss instantly. Most people don’t understand that when you lose somebody that you love so much, that’s the hardest thing.

One of the things that I began to learn was very similar, but I didn’t have the distinctions that you have because I was only nineteen years old. I began to learn that whatever it was that I said to myself first thing in the morning. There were times when I felt so different. Now, I have this thing that it could be the worst day. I go, “I’m going to bed because I know tomorrow morning is a brand new day and we don’t know if the same person that goes to sleep is going to wake up in the morning.” I love to sleep and I love to wake up every morning. Thank you for reminding me of that.

Thank you, Dame Doria, DC as you’re known to some people. Doria is such a beautiful name. I feel so blessed that we got to spend time together. You are a resilient lady. I know we all have had difficulties and high and low moments in our lives, but you’re a model of resilience. I feel like that’s one of the most important things in the world. It’s how we figure things out. If we’re not around long enough to make enough mistakes, to find out what doesn’t work, it’s very difficult for us to learn what does work. It’s a risk in that respect, which only is so fitting for this crazy wild ride that we’re all on. Thank you so much. If this has been an enjoyable conversation to all of you out there that are reading, please go to AdamMarkel.com/podcasts and leave a comment. Leave a review on iTunes and join us on Facebook. I highly recommend that you get into proximity to this very wise and beautiful woman. I’ll leave you all with this big kiss.

About Dame Doria (DC) Cordova, PhD

CEO / Owner of Excellerated Business Schools® / Money & You® Program – the organization that brought to the world Experiential, Transformational Entrepreneurial Education (now both off- and on-line), since 1979 with 145,000+ graduates from over 85 countries. The program has inspired some of today’s best-known business education and wealth experts and has touched the lives of millions globally. Her programs are presented in English, Chinese and Japanese – soon expanding to Tamil, Hindi and other Indian languages– plus, Spanish, Bahasa and others.

Doria is a humanitarian, philanthropist, an author and has been in countless Webinars, podcasts, films and book series. She is a Global Business Developer for the world’s leading solar architect, Huang Ming of the unique and only www.SolarValleyChina.com; and other organizations that are in alignment with her purpose: to uplift humanity’s consciousness through socially-responsible businesses.

She is also a Brand Ambassador for the www.ShareNode.com platform, which connects Influencers, businesses, non-profits and communities for the good of all.

The latest version of her www.GlobalExcelleratedBusinessSchool.com covers the three arenas that are most important for conscious entrepreneurs to understand today: New Technologies, Renewables, and Contribution.

One of her missions is to transform educational systems around the world and eradicate poverty and hunger – all the endeavors that she is involved in must be in alignment with that mission.