APPENDIX A
Definitions of KEY TERMS
& Acronyms
EXISTENTIAL: Of, or relating to, your existence (life).
ONTOLOGY (noun): The metaphysical nature of being.
ONTOLOGICAL (adjective): Related to the metaphysical nature of being.
EXISTENTIAL GROWTH: The growth, progress, and maturation of your holistic potential as a human being.
LIFE LEADERSHIP: The process of thoughtfully and intentionally designing and constructing your life as part of a never-ending journey towards higher levels of Existential Growth and freedom.
SELF-ACTION LEADERSHIP (SAL) (Definition #1): Taking complete personal responsibility for everything in your life. This includes your thoughts, speech, actions, attitudes, beliefs, and all consequences engendered thereby.
SERENDIPITY: The felicitous aid of unseen forces.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: The effective bridling and management of your own emotions,
and the ability to influence others to do likewise.
RIGHT: Thoughts, speech, behavior, attitudes, and beliefs that result in positive, contributive, and constructive long-term consequences for self and others.
WRONG: Thoughts, speech, behavior, attitudes, and beliefs that result in negative, detrimental, and destructive long-term consequences for self and others.
CULTURAL LITERACY: Being educated, literate, and conversant in key knowledge points spanning a variety of different topics within a given culture or society.
PEDAGOGY OF PERSONAL LEADERSHIP AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT (PPLCD): Educational curricula that focuses a student's attention and efforts on taking individual responsibility and developing integrity-based character.
COURAGE: Doing what is right when doing so is difficult, inconvenient, unpleasant, or unpopular.
UNIVERSAL LAWS: Natural laws that define reality and govern all naturally occurring forces throughout the Universe (physical laws), as well as all long-term consequences of individual and organizational decisions (metaphysical laws).
TRUE PRINCIPLES: Fundamental truths that guide human beings to think, speak, and act in ways that lead to their long-term growth, happiness, success, fulfillment, and inner peace.
NATURAL LAWS OF ACQUISITION: Prices set by Universal Laws that must be paid to acquire any physical or metaphysical accoutrement or accomplishment.
MISTAKE: An innocent error that accompanies a learning curve.
SIN: A consciously committed error in violation of a known moral law.
THE PATRIOTISM PRINCIPLE: Nations and other organizations and groups are more successful when individuals within an entity are patriotic members of that nation, organization, or group.
LIBERTY: Your right to life and the pursuit of happiness, as well as the freedom to choose what you think about, say, and do—in conjunction with State-granted rights such as freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, the press, etc.
FREEDOM: Personal liberties and opportunities earned as a result of expending effort over time in submission to True Principles rooted in Universal Laws.
POSTMODERNISM: A philosophical ideology that denies and discredits the existence of moral absolutes.
PRESTRUCTURALISM: A philosophical ideology that postures erroneous ideas as moral absolutes.
MORAL STRUCTURALISM: A balanced moral philosophy based on True Principles rooted in Universal Laws.
FORMAL AUTHORITY: Power derived from a title or position.
MORAL AUTHORITY: Power derived from one's personal influence.
EXISTENTIAL DUTIES: Responsibilities you have—by virtue of your existence—to contribute to the health, well-being, growth, and freedom of other human beings (including yourself), other life forms, and the planet-at-large.
HUMILITY: The ability to accurately see and graciously acknowledge the way things really are
based on physical and metaphysical realities rooted in Universal Law.
EXISTENTIAL WORTH: The worth of someone's or something's existence as measured by his, her, or its potential for Existential Growth.
EXISTENTIAL POTENTIAL: The potential for Existential Growth of any life form, and more especially human beings and organizational systems.
EXISTENTIAL EQUALITY: A paradigm that all human beings are equal in their potential to become
fully actualized human beings in pursuit of unlimited Existential Growth.
EXISTENTIAL VALUE: Positive and productive value added to the world and its people by virtue of
contributions made and Existential Growth achieved by a given human being (or beings).
SELF-ACTION LEADERSHIP PHILOSOPHY: Principles, practices, and premises that promote taking complete personal responsibility for everything in your life that you can either control or influence.
LEADERSHIP: Thoughts, words, and actions intentionally undertaken to influence specific, correlated, and desired thoughts, speech, and actions in others.
FOLLOWERSHIP: The consistent, devoted, and willing adherence to the directions, instructions, and tenets of a leader.
SELF-LEADERSHIP (S-L): Cognitive and behavioral strategies intentionally utilized to accomplish something.
ACTION RESEARCH (AR): A 4-step cyclical process of identifying problems and then seeking to strategically solve them.
SELF-ACTION RESEARCH (SAR): Action research applied by, to, and for the self to gain self-awareness, aid self-improvement, solve personal problems, and nurture one's growth and freedom.
EXISTENTIALISM: A philosophical approach that values and consults human experience—in conjunction with scientific reasoning and rational thought—in the process of constructing meaning about reality.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHY: Scholarly research conducted on oneself and by oneself for the benefit and enlightenment of oneself and others.
SELF-ACTION LEADERSHIP (SAL) (Definition #2): Morally informed self-leadership that is action-oriented, focused on long-term results, and aimed at a continual rise in the Existential Growth of self and others.
RIGHT Choices: Thoughts, speech, and actions that result in positive and constructive long-term consequences for self and others.
WRONG Choices: Thoughts, speech, and actions that result in negative and destructive long-term consequences for self and others.
CONSCIENCE: An inner metaphysical light and compass that viscerally guides, directs, and prompts you to think about, say, and do what is right, good, and constructive while avoiding what is wrong, evil, and destructive.
TRUTH: The way things really were, are, and will be—as delineated by the continuous interplay of Universal Laws and natural consequences over time.
ERROR: Anything that deviates in any way from the truth.
EXISTENTIAL INTELLIGENCE: Holistic knowledge wisely and harmoniously applied across the eight (8) life arenas of Self-Action Leadership.
- Constitutional
- Spiritual
- Physical
- Mental
- Emotional
- Social
- Financial
- Moral
CONSTITUTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: The ability to identify, clarify, articulate, and then successfully pursue your life's vision, mission, values, standards, sociality, etc.
SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE: The desire, willingness, and capacity to detect, interpret, and effectively utilize information and wisdom that is metaphysically accessed and/or viscerally received.
PHYSICAL INTELLIGENCE: Acquiring and then acting on knowledge that leads to a fit, nourished,
balanced, and otherwise healthy and mobile physical existence.
MENTAL INTELLIGENCE: The desire, willingness, and capacity to continually nurture one's mind and intellect in an upward spiral of acquired knowledge and applied wisdom. It is also the ability to gauge one's own mental health and hygiene and the humility and courage to seek out help when one's mental health needs addressing.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: The successful bridling and management of your own emotions, and the ability to influence others to do likewise.
SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE: The ability to navigate a variety of human relationships and social dynamics by effectively reading, understanding, empathizing and communicating with, and being tolerant toward a wide spectrum of people and groups.
FINANCIAL INTELLIGENCE: The ability to earn, budget, save, and invest money for purposes of personal stability, security, independence, freedom, influence, power, and philanthropy.
MORAL INTELLIGENCE: Possessing a knowledge of right and wrong, a sharpened conscience that
readily discerns between good and evil, and the courage to act consistently in accordance with principles of goodness, rightness, and truth.
EXISTENTIAL BALANCE: A healthy state of equilibrium spanning the Eight (8) Life Arenas of Self-Action Leadership.
EXISTENTIAL OCTATHLETE: A self-action leader who continually strives for Existential Balance and Intelligence by concurrently focusing on one's development and growth in all Eight (8) Life Arenas of Self-Action Leadership.
EXISTENTIAL OCTATHLON: The lifelong pursuit of Existential Balance, Growth, and Freedom
across the Eight (8) Life Arenas of Self-Action Leadership.
SAL LIFE VARIABLES: Variables of reality over which we have varying degrees of control and/or influence that, in-turn, influence the results we get in our lives.
SAL Life Variables
- Forces of Nature
- Congenital Physical Variables
- Congenital Family Environment
- Congenital Social Environment
- Congenital Intelligence & Talent
- Initial Opportunities for Education
- Good and Bad Luck
- Genetic and Mimetic Inclinations
- Choices of Others
- Time
- Structural Inequality
- Geopolitics and Macroeconomics
- Suprarational Intervention (aka SERENDIPITY)
- Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
- Desire
- Developed Intelligence & Talent
- Will Power
SAL VARIABLES' QUOTIENT: A person's unique blend of genetic and mimetic benefits and limitations.
POSTULATE: Noun: A principle that is put forth and assumed to be true.
Verb: To put forth a principle that is assumed to be true.
LAW: A generalization based on a fact or event perceived to be recurrent. —New Oxford American Dictionary
COROLLARY: A proposition that follows from, and is often appended to, one already proved. —New Oxford American Dictionary
SELF-ACTION LEADERSHIP THEORY: A comprehensive academic theory of self-leadership and character development rooted in atmospheric and astronomical science and metaphor.
EXISTENTIAL ATROPHY: The deterioration and regression of one's holistic growth and moral progress.
SAL COMMAND CENTER: A four-part, metaphysical decision-making aid and tool.
EXISTENTIAL GRAVITY (XGrav): Addictions, bad habits, negative peer pressure, temptations, weaknesses, and any other force or inertia that inhibits Existential Growth or influences the onset of existential atrophy.
EXISTENTIAL CRABS: People and organizations that act to undermine your progress and inhibit your Existential Growth.
CRAB EFFECT: A phenomenon whereby a single crab may free itself from the confines of a bucket, but a group of crabs will prevent each other from similarly escaping by pulling each other down.
SAL HIERARCHY: NINE (9) different and progressive levels (or stages) of Existential Growth.
Earth's Atmospheric Layers and Nine (9) Progressive Levels of the SAL Hierarchy. (2)
LAYER 1. Earth's Surface LEVEL 1. Education Stage
LAYER 2. Troposphere LEVEL 2. Beginner's Stage
LAYER 3. Stratosphere LEVEL 3. Practitioner's Stage
LAYER 4. Mesosphere LEVEL 4. Refining Stage
LAYER 5. Ionosphere LEVEL 5. Polishing Stage
LAYER 6. Thermosphere LEVEL 6. SAL-Actualization Stage
LAYER 7. Exosphere LEVEL 7. Leadership Stage
LAYER 8. Outer Space LEVEL 8. Self-Transcendence
LAYER 9. Astronomical Bodies Beyond LEVEL 9. Creation Stage
EXISTENTIAL STANDING: The level of Existential Growth you inhabit at any given point in your existence.
PRACTITIONER'S PLATEAU: A perceived comfort zone existing in the Practitioner's Stage where a self-action leader opts to stop striving for higher levels of Existential Growth.
EXISTENTIAL VACUUM: A soul-deep, life-numbing existential ennui and paralysis akin to depression.
COMPETITION PARADIGM: A desire to obtain Existential Growth to surpass others.
LOVE PARADIGM: A desire to help others obtain Existential Growth.
EXISTENTIAL REGRESSION: The regression from a higher to a lower stage of Existential Growth.
dark shadow: Metaphysical darkness that corrodes and corrupts your mind, heart, and soul, leading you to think, say, and do that which is wrong, evil, negative, and destructive while eschewing what is right, good, positive, and constructive.
Five D's of the dark shadow
- Deception
- Discouragement
- Debasement
- Damage
- Destruction
Nine Regressive Levels of the SAL lowerarchy
LEVEL -1. Deception and Debasement Stage
LEVEL -2. Deconstruction Stage
LEVEL -3. Mischief Stage
LEVEL -4. Violence and Damage Stage
LEVEL -5. Corruption and Perversion Stage
LEVEL -6. Propaganda Stage
LEVEL -7. Pied Piper Stage
LEVEL -8. Self-Descendence
LEVEL -9. Destruction Stage
SAR Project: A self-led research experiment or project aimed at increasing self-awareness, aiding
self-improvement, solving personal problems, and bolstering Existential Growth.
SAL Project: A self-led personal initiative aimed at achieving long-term objectives in the domain of Existential Growth for self and others.
SAL Model: A comprehensive academic model of Self-Action Leadership and character development
rooted in action research theory and construction science and metaphor.
FIVE (5) Levels of Relationships
LEVEL 1: Relationship with your Source......................................your Creator and/or Conscience
LEVEL 2: Relationship with your Companion/Partner.................the One
LEVEL 3: Relationship with your Inner Circle.............................the Few
LEVEL 4: Relationship with your Outer Circle.............................the Many
LEVEL 5: Relationship with Everyone Else..................................the All
EXISTENTIAL BALANCE: A healthy state of equilibrium spanning the Eight (8) Life Arenas of Self-Action Leadership.
SELF-ONENESS: An elusive state of existential contentment and inner peace resulting from a satisfying and fulfilling sense of personal completeness or wholeness of body, mind, and spirit.
PERSONAL CREED: An individual's attitudes, beliefs, and aims which guide one's thoughts, speech, and behavior.
INSANITY TEST: A process of evaluating and then changing your approach to a goal until you have achieved your objective.
S.M.A.R.T.I.E.S — or just SMARTIES — GOALS are:
Measurable
Attainability & Accountability
Relevant
Time-bound
Intrapersonally competitive
Engaging
Sane
CHASTITY: Abstinence from sexual activity before marriage and complete fidelity to one's spouse after marriage.
FASTING: Abstaining from food and/or water and other beverages for a period of time.
SELF-REWARD: Something concrete and tangible you give to yourself as a reward for making good decisions, remaining on task, staying focused, and working hard.
NATURAL REWARD: Intangible reward that come as a by-product of engaging in activities and tasks from which you naturally derive joy, pleasure, and satisfaction.
SELF-OBSERVATION: Taking thoughtful notice of your thoughts, speech, actions, attitudes, and beliefs.
SELF-ANALYSIS: The thoughtful examination of your thoughts, speech, actions, attitudes, and beliefs to check for their alignment (or lack thereof) with your vision, mission, values, standards, and goals.
SELF-RENEWAL: Rest, recovery, relaxation, restoration, and rejuvenation activities and efforts aimed at continually maintaining holistic health and life balance.
ReVISIONING: The process of clarifying, expanding, and perfecting your SAL Blueprints over time.
PURPOSE EXAMINATION: The ongoing evaluation of—and adjustments to—your life purpose.
SAL ~ Serendipity BALANCE: Accessing the paradoxical equilibrium—or sweet spot—between chasing after your dreams and patiently allowing them to chase after you.
—Dr. JJ
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA
Author's Note: This is the 519th Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013 and the 302nd consecutive weekly blog published since August 31, 2020.
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