A lot of us say we want clarity, but what we really want is control and life rarely offers that. I’m joined by Dr. Sheldon Greaves for a grounded, surprising conversation about releasing fear, staying open, and learning how purpose shows up through detours rather than perfect plans.
Sheldon shares his path from doctoral work in ancient Near Eastern studies into a job market with no obvious landing spot, then into an experience that changed everything: getting mugged, choosing to learn self-protection, and discovering a new world he never expected.
That chain of events leads to a once-in-a-lifetime invitation to help build what became Henley Putnam University, the first accredited university serving intelligence, counterterrorism, and executive protection professionals. We talk about what it takes to recognize opportunity when it arrives in a form you wouldn’t normally call “good.”
We also get practical about thriving in the AI era and the social media attention economy.
If you’ve been wrestling with doubt, distraction, or the pressure to have your whole life mapped out, this will help you breathe and move. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.
To purchase Dr. Greaves book, visit: https://book.spines.com/books/the-guerrilla-scholars-handbook/
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
I’ve still got a lot of fun left.
Hey Lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Released Out Reveal Purpose. And today is Sheldon Greaves, and we have got a show for you because we are going to be talking about and co-collaborating on letting go of that lovely illusion of control and staying open to the opportunities that life grants us. Because when he came into the job market, there were no jobs for what he had studied for. And so he had to stay open to those opportunities and be ready to take them when they came open. So without further ado, Sheldon, thank you so much for joining us on Released Out Reveal Purpose.
Thank you, Sylvia. It’s a pleasure to be here.
It’s a pleasure to have you. And I’m so grateful that you finally were able to get on. The fiscal round was a little bit disappointing. You know, you were very disappointed. Uh for the listeners, he couldn’t, we couldn’t manage the, like he couldn’t, I couldn’t hear him.
He couldn’t hear me.
The technology was not help helping us.
Yeah.
And I kept telling him via the chat, I said, you know what? I’m gonna view this as an opportunity for me to have one more hour in my game. What am I gonna do with that one additional hour? I’m not gonna be mad about this because the timing of this, we’re not in control of that. God is, and when God is in control and we submit to that control, our lives actually feel easier. It’s when we resist these changes, these pivotal moments, when we fail to see the opportunity when it comes to us and fail to take it, that’s when we lose out in life. So, Sheldon, I really want you to guide us on how you landed on this space.
Okay. Um, so um I uh I guess it goes back to when I was in graduate school, I was working on a doctorate in uh ancient Near Eastern studies. Uh and at the same time, my spouse was working on a doctorate in classics. So we were basically putting two kids through college, namely each other. Uh we were a young married couple, and uh first of all, we had to we we came to an arrangement where I would work for a year and she would go to school, and then the next year uh I would go to school and she would work. And on the years when I wasn’t going to school, I had to get creative about keeping up in my field and accessing materials and whatnot. So you’re looking for opportunities to um pick things up to uh look where other people might not look for information and for opportunities. And this was also happening in the Bay Area in the late 80s, early 90s, where the computer evolution was booming. So there was all kinds of really interesting stuff going on, and that kind of fed me a lot of um hints of possibility, you know, of things that uh that were happening that were very, very cool. So I graduate in uh 96, and uh the path that I had envisioned for myself as someone going into academia teaching this stuff didn’t materialize. And so I’m sitting there with a degree that is basically uh I, you know, I’m an expert in dead civilizations and ancient languages, which was like hugely marketable in Silicon Valley, as you can imagine. Um but uh I had also kind of come to realize that there were a lot of other really interesting things out there that I wanted to spend my time on. So I had to get creative again and I had to leave myself open to possibilities. Now, we have to back up a little bit here because this is where opportunity comes in a form that you don’t normally associate with opportunity. And in my case, that opportunity came in the form of being mugged in East Palo Alto one dark Sunday night. Uh and it got me thinking that maybe my excellent education had a few gaps in it, like how to take care of myself on the street. So as soon as I graduated, I started looking for a place where I could maybe do some martial arts. So I found this place that uh was a school for training um high-end uh executive protection specialists, and they had a curriculum that involved this new martial arts style code at the time it was new, called Muay Thai. No one had heard of it. I certainly hadn’t. And so I started taking that while I was working as a technical writer for various Silicon Valley companies, and the opportunity came when um after about a year of this, uh we were taking a break, and my teacher, who is just uh an amazing individual, he is patiently working to take this um middle-aged academic wimp and get him in touch with his inner badass, you know. And um I let slip that I had an advanced degree from Berkeley. And he perks up and he says, Can I see you in my office? And I’m like, Oh no, what’s this? You know. And so we get in there and he says, you know, I have this school here, you know, and it was being run out of a warehouse in one of the lesser, less reputable neighborhoods of San Jose. He says, I’ve got this school here. We hand out these certificates that are approved by the state, but I have bigger plans for this thing. I want to take this school and I want to expand it. I want to turn it into an actual full-fledged university with bachelor’s and master’s and doctoral programs and all that sort of thing, but I need people with advanced degrees to help me. Uh, he says, I I have a business degree from a from a university in India that no one’s ever heard of. He says, and I’m, you know, I’m a street fighter. What do I know, right? Uh actually, he was much more than that, but that’s another story. Uh he says, You’re doing technical writing. That’s the kind of thing that we need to document all this stuff. And then he stops and he looks at me, he leans across the table, looks me right in the eye, and he says, How would you like to co-found a university with me? And I’m like, uh.
That’s pretty awesome, actually.
That was pretty awesome. And the thing is, I had read other works by other people about independent scholarship, namely, especially one by a guy named Ronald Gross, who wrote a book back in the 80s called The Independent Scholars’ Handbook. And he talks about how people could form their own learning institutions. So I was kind of warmed up for this idea anyway. And I blinked a couple of times and said, Well, now that’s got to be one of the most interesting propositions anyone has ever made to me. I says, Um, I’m in all the way, but you have to understand my knowledge of the intelligence world consists of the fact that I’ve seen every episode of Get Smart, you know. Um so uh but we dived in, we worked on it. He says, he says, don’t worry about it. I think you can do this because for the last year you’ve been showing up consistently, you come twice a week, you work hard, you pay attention, you do what I ask you to do. I think you can handle this. And so I thought, okay, let’s let’s do this. So the two of us, plus one other gentleman who was a former Secret Service uh agent, we started in and we ended up founding what became uh Henley Putnam University, that was the first university to offer um accredited degree programs to people in the intelligence, counterterrorism, and executive protection fields. And I got to work with an amazing group of people from all sorts of three-letter alphabet soup intelligence agencies and the military and school administration and learned so much, uh, developed some really interesting friendships, and that has in turn led to other opportunities here and there that uh have been terribly enriching. But it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been open to the idea, for instance, that people can form their own learning institutions, or that it was even possible to do something like this and say, hey, let’s start a university. You know. And uh I I also like to say that um I’m something of an uh I call myself an elitist because I think we need elite thinkers in every corner and at every level of society. Um people who are thoughtful, people who are informed, people who know how to tell sense from nonsense. Uh democracy is founded on the proposition that the people are informed, that they’re educated, that they they are smart enough to make good decisions. You know, uh President Eisenhower’s alert and knowledgeable citizenry. But um, I find that the more you expose yourself to the world, the more opportunities you can find. If you are curious, open to them, if you’re willing to put aside the fear, even when it doesn’t go willingly, and um just um don’t let yourself be held back.
I think it’s some sound advice, and I do want some practical steps that we can provide the audience because sometimes you and I are very big time thinkers and we have very high-level concepts, but not everyone’s at that stage in their journey just yet. So let’s say we are now just graduating out of this, these universities with the advent of AI, which we know is going to start taking over some human jobs. Yeah, how do we stay curious? What are some practical steps that young people can take?
Step one, keep a notebook, keep a journal, use a pen, use long hand, don’t type it. Use uh write it in long hand. Uh, if if you don’t know how to how to write in cursive, pick it up. It’s not that hard. Um, do it every day. Make yourself write for I don’t know, 15-20 minutes about whatever is on your mind. And take the time to to just think, reflect on what you’ve seen, what you’ve what you’ve heard, and you will find after a while that you start having some ideas that are not half bad. And I know a few few better ways to train yourself to spot the first faint stirrings of a great idea uh or an interesting idea or an observation. You know, there there have been entire academic careers built on exploring the implications of just one single potent idea. You know, uh you don’t need you you don’t need to do this to become famous or anything, it’s just going to make the world more interesting. Uh the second thing I would do is to actively cultivate or recultivate a sense of curiosity. Take some time to ask questions. Why is that the way that is? How did they build that? Why does this behavior work and that behavior not work? And don’t be, you know, don’t just go to Google and look for an answer there. Try to figure it out yourself first. And if you come up with an idea, write it in your notebook. You know. Um the other thing I would do is to um look for people uh who are smarter than you. If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. Um find them, cultivate relationships with them, uh, and make sure that they are people who whose area of study is is like way outside your experience. For for the longest time, I used to have coffee with a gentleman who was a retired professor of civil engineering at Oregon State University, and then there was my background in ancient Near Eastern studies. You’d think, what on earth would they have to talk about? Well, it turns out we had quite a bit to talk about, and we shared a lot of really interesting ideas with each other. I learned a lot. I like to think he learned a thing or two. So, um, yeah, you know, do that. Look for people who can poke you a little, you know, lead you into some interesting directions and uh um nurture those relationships because uh what makes a college a college and what makes a university a university is the community. First and foremost, it’s a community of people. Without that, it’s just buildings and administration, and that’s that’s no fun.
No, I went to a liberal arts college Sherman, Texas, and Austin College was my alma mater here in my state, and um one of the big themes of that college was to critically think. Oh yeah, to apply your critical thinking skills, don’t just accept information because it comes from Google. Like look at all of the avenues of information and sit with it. And I’ve I’ve actually guided my son to to be this way. I’m like, you’re gonna get information from all sorts of places.
Yeah.
It’s it’s unfortunate because our children nowadays are inundated with information that they don’t even know what’s true anymore. And they rely on these tools for their intelligence, almost. And I and I always caution my children and any child that I have any influence over. I went to career day at my daughter’s school and instead of telling them stuff, I showed them what a life coach did. You know, let me show you what an author does. Let me show you what a life coach does. I don’t want to tell you. I want you to use your brain to go through the process of awareness so that your brain remembers the steps, and then when you have a question, it can go through the same steps and find the answer. That’s that’s what a good coach does. Because if they tell you what to do, you that’s not helping you. No, you know, and so I’m in total agreement with you on this critical thinking. The other point I wanted to to emphasize that you made that I am in total agreement with is to be in the room with someone smarter than you. I think what happens is there’s so much competition in the world, Sheldon. I find that people are always wanting to up one another instead of viewing them as a resource, as someone that can help them along their journey. It’s almost like their ego gets tied up in this and they can’t seem to get around it. And so I always I remember my father who was who passed away about two years, almost two years ago, he was someone that was a voracious reader, he was a surgeon by training, and but read about economics and then would go, and I apologize to my listeners because I’m a pretty clean podcast, but he would call it the bullshit hour, but it was anything but bullshit. He would go to the hospital lounge, like uh and would have an entire audience of doctors that would tune in to the bullshit hour, and he would share all the information he had learned through all the books and all the articles he had read about stocks, about how how the doctors could retire early if they invested in X, Y, and Z. You know, and some people made fun of him, right? But you saw a lot of them take notes, they were sitting there taking notes underneath. I’m like, you guys are silly because and after he passed away, people would remember that about my father. And I learned that concept when I became a coach for the John Maxwell team. They have us constantly growing and learning more and more as coaches, and so they have us take these courses. And in one of the courses I took, I took it from Paul Martinelli, who used to be the president of the John Maxwell Companies. Now, John Maxwell has seven different companies. We’re under one of them as speaker, coaches, and trainers, right? And we were taking this uh study on Napoleon Hill’s think and grow rich, very deep concepts, right? The concepts that you can’t just read and just it’s so easy to read. No, you’re reading, you’re pausing, you’re reflecting, and you’re thinking. And you’re thinking, think and grow rich. I mean, it’s in the title in itself, right? The the the concept of thinking and using critical thinking skills. So I’m in complete agreement with you. I think nowadays people have gotten so lazy. You know, our society, everything is faster, more efficient, but rather it is like it has actually handicapped us further than where we were, I don’t know, like 20 years ago or even before then. I there’s been so many leaps that we’ve taken, but in the process we lost that critical thinking step. And now you have like people just following you know, the social media followers and this and it’s just bluff. It’s not not anything of substance, really.
No.
How do we how do we how do you think we need to start shifting, Sheldon, this this advent of social media to a more balanced view of it?
Yeah, um there’s a I I devoted uh a sizable chunk of a chapter to this uh in there, but um back in the 1920s, there was a wonderful book that was published by a um a Dominican priest called The Intellectual Life, and it was the audience was uh young Catholic men who were interested in entering the priesthood in order to become scholars. And he has this wonderful extended section on creating an inner zone of silence that puts you at complete disposal of whatever it is you’re doing and eliminates distraction and. I mean, he’s complaining about too many distractions in 1920. I can’t even imagine what he would think now. But this idea of taking back the ability to be comfortable with our own thoughts, you mentioned critical thinking. Probably the best definition I’ve heard of what it means to think critically is when someone asks your opinion of something and you give your cum your opinion, you can state exactly why you think what you think. Even if it’s just like, well, I haven’t really thought about it, I just happen to like it, you know, or you know, I uh I I don’t like that because I don’t like dogs because one bit me when I was five. You know, even if it’s that ordinary, that mundane, um, know why you think what you think. Uh the other thing that I I um uh I talk about is, and you mentioned it, it’s the problem of speed. Um social media maintains its grip by increasing the tempo at which information is delivered. And what happens is the mind gets distracted and then it gets distracted again and again and again. And what happens is that we’ve seen a decline in the attention span to the point where people can’t uh sustain their attention on something for for any length of time. I think average it’s like down to under a minute or something like that, some absurd thing. Um, so we need to kind of take back our attention span. We need to learn to be able to stop, to put things aside, to say, no, I’m not going to be hung up on this. Um you mentioned um you mentioned being inundated with information. Um of the things that I learned working with the intelligence community is that um when an analyst is working on a on a problem and they come to a conclusion, there’s a point beyond which more evidence will not improve the accuracy of their of their analysis, but it will strengthen their confidence in that analysis. And so what that means is that if you feed somebody something that is incorrect, but if you keep feeding them that, their confidence in that opinion is going to get really, really strong, and it’s gonna be very hard for them to change their mind. So it’s actually a good idea to scale back where you get your information to some very carefully chosen sources that you trust, but you test once in a while, you review them once in a while. If it’s still good, go for it, hang on to it, if it isn’t, find another one. I’ve got something in the book about that too. So um, but we have to we have to take back in many ways our leisure, you know, the time that we have for reflection, uh for thinking deeply. Uh another thing I like to tell people is that ideas, um, like any other living thing, have gestation periods. They, if you try to bring it out too soon, it’s not going to work, it won’t be viable, it might be deformed, it might be stillborn to continue the metaphor. So having good ideas is not something that just happens instantaneously, it takes time, and we have to respect that.
So you know, a lot of these concepts, and the more I read the word of God, and I got into it in 2023 because that’s when my dad received his terminal diagnosis, so it was a way for me to focus my mind on things, and that’s where the control just kind of went away. Because when you’re faced with a terminal diagnosis, there is no control in that. And so that concept, that illusion that we hold on to is it’s dispelled pretty quickly. And so, anyways, going back to this point that you’re making is if I remember correctly, tell me the last thing you said. Oh, about ideas having gestation periods, yes, there is a gestational period, but there’s also like the timing of things, yes, you know, the timing, I always view it as God’s timing. And sometimes I get a prompting to act, and if I don’t act in that moment, the moment passes sometimes. Sometimes these ideas, yes, they need time to get developed because if there’s like an idea of like a university, of course, like what we started off with the interview, that’s going to be it’s gonna require some process, right? But there’s also the timing God’s timing on things, and he does set things up in motion to align to these ideas and these promptings that you received. And then he aligns the people that are gonna help you get that idea in motion. So, in your case, for example, I saw it clearly as you were discussing your your the instance of how this university came to be is you happen to mention somewhere inside your soul, there was a stirring to mention that advanced degree because he knew the thoughts of the other person needing someone of your stature and someone of your skill set to help him. And that’s how these pieces get put together. But sometimes when we allow our fear to dictate or our need for control of our circumstances, and we don’t let go and we don’t act in that moment, the moment passes, and then it has to come up all over again, you know, and and we and he has to take advantage of when people are thinking certain things. That’s why we say God sees everything, God, God’s knowledge is so vast in comparison to us, that when we just limit our understanding and our knowledge to our circumstance just by that limitation, then you miss out on these opportunities that are coming from a higher level of consciousness, higher level of being, and because the higher level of being is looking for that opportunity. One thing I want to share with the audience is our minds are conditioned to look for the negative. We have to intentionally look for the opportunities. We have to intentionally focus our mind to see the good, the true, the noble things happening around us. That is intentional practice, that is not something your brain uh does automatically. What it does automatically is look for the negative, it has a negative bias. So you have to be aware of that and know that you can use the conscious ability of your mind and ask yourself the questions that Sheldon has asked on the show. It’s like, okay, where did that idea come from? How do we incorporate more curiosity? We have to go back to being little kids again. When we’re kids, we ask a bunch of why questions. We drive our parents crazy. You know, maybe touch babies. Like my mom’s still living, and I could always just go back to it. It’s like, what kind of questions would I ask when I was a kid? And then ask myself those questions before bed. Meditate, pray on them, and then allow the Holy Spirit to come in and answer it for you because you’ll feel it in your soul space. It won’t be, it won’t be something coming outside of you. It’ll be something that you’ll feel within. And then and then you step into that action space. Um I know you have something to say about that.
No, you just you were you you reminded me of this wonderful when the you know the timing is is is right. Um, that wonderful um quote from um Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, there is a tide in the affairs of men, which when taken at the flood leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries, you know. But there’s this there’s this ancient idea um of uh in Greek it’s called Kairos time. It’s that moment when something that was not possible before suddenly becomes possible. Uh, and you can’t you can’t invoke it, you can’t make it happen, you just have to recognize it when it happens. And this this idea, this stirring that you feel inside, I think that’s something that um that kind of tells us that we’re in a Kairos moment. And when that happens, you act um hopefully in the right direction. Um because uh another thing that that uh the ancients say about Kairos time is that it’s it’s treacherous, you know. You can do the right thing or you can do the wrong thing, so be careful with it. Uh, but don’t ignore it.
No, I think that’s wise advice. Do not ignore that the stirring’s within, because our answers are within us. Our amazing capacity are within us. We have been fearfully and wonderfully made. We have this amazing capacity to think. We we have we’re moving away from it, we need to move towards it right now. We really need to make an intentional effort to go into back into the way we once were. Any last words of encouragement? And Sheldon, how can we purchase your books? How can we find you?
Uh, my book is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Thrift Books. Uh, you can also get an audio version on Google Play, I believe, and a number of other uh outlets. Um that’s probably the easiest way to get my book. Uh, you might be able to order it uh through your local bookstore. That would be wonderful if you did that. Um last last words. Um I think uh one of the other things that we kind of haven’t touched on, but is easy to easy to to remedy that, is that um one of the reasons why I am so passionate about independent learning and and independent thinking is because learning is a pleasure. Uh there’s this um uh this wonderful old novel by TH White, The Once in Future King, uh, about Arthur and the sword and the stone and all that. And in it, um uh Merlin is advising young Arthur, who’s kind of down in the dumps about something or other. I I forget what it is, but his his quote is Um The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. And then he goes on to describe all the things that to that flow out of that. It’s a it’s a wonderful, it’s a wonderful passage. I I won’t burden you with it here, but um at the end of the day, if you’re not feeling pleasure in what you’re doing and what you’re learning, something is very wrong. Don’t go there.
Wise words. Thank you so much, Sheldon, for joining us on release out reveal purpose. And as usual, my listeners know how I sign off. Be embody the light, be the light. Remember Matthew 514, and just be the light, like Sheldon’s been the light today on the podcast, and and sharing with us his his story to stay curious, to look for the opportunities, intentionally seek them and step into it with faith, courage, and confidence. Have a wonderful week. Stay safe. Love y’all. Bye now.
So that’s it for today’s episode of Release Doubt, Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes will win a chance the grand prize drawing to win a twenty-five thousand dollar private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.