2022 September 20 Living toward your goals every day

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website by, for, and about Baby Boomers. Thanks for joining me tonight to talk about living towards your goals every single day. So let's get started. If you like what you hear, I'd really appreciate it if you’d hit the like button. If not, please drop me a line as to what you'd like me to cover. 

So tonight's another extemporaneous night for a variety of reasons. Work, of course, ran late and then ran even later. Because my last call was with someone who's a friend of mine, we ended up chatting and all. But tonight is also the last night of rosary for my church friend who passed away unexpectedly at a very young age a week ago, Friday. That's actually happening right at the same time the normal podcast does, so I really want to be there for that. It made me realize, in a lot of different ways, (I've thought about this and talked about it before,) just how precious a gift that life really is. This particular person - she had no reason to expect that Saturday, she wouldn't be around doing things - and yet obviously, things changed tremendously a week ago Friday, for her. 

It really makes you think a lot about how and why every single day matters in a lot of different ways. It's not just in what you're getting done, per se, but it's everything that goes around that: how you treat other people, how other people perceive you, forming your legacy - a legacy in a really good sense as in: How are you leaving the world? Are you leaving the world a better place, a more fun place? Are you leaving smiles behind you? People want to emulate how you lived and think about you in a fond way. It's not just about me me me. It's not in that sense at all, but certainly I think most of us realize that one of our purposes for being here is to make life better, not just for ourselves, but for everybody all around us.

That got me thinking, of course, about life goals, life satisfaction, envisioning what you want your life to be like. It led me to think about, why would you want to live your life like really living your life doesn't start until you're older and you reach your final goal. You can't really start doing things until you retire or until summer vacation comes around or only once every five years and you take your big vacation. Why wouldn't we want to live our life to the fullest every single day? We've talked about that in some things, but with my friend’s passing, it really got me thinking about it even more. It seems every single day, we would want to celebrate another small step towards our goals. It can be an infinitesimally small step, but the really important part is it's a step towards our goals and not a step in neutral.

So if we're just hanging out thinking tomorrow I'll do this, or next week I'll do this, or by the end of the year, I should really do that. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but think how much more fun things would be if finally we got to the end of the day –

I'll show you something, this is a little piece that I'm making up, which I talked about a couple weeks ago (and the prototype has been mostly done, been using it for a while now). I'll go over it in more detail next week. But at the end of the day - the last two items are the summary of today and the things I want to think about for tomorrow. 

There's lots of other things in it talking about the good things that happened today. What people have affected me in my life today, and how did it affect me, and why were they positive things? 

If I had a choice on how to live my life, I would want every every day to be something that ends with fun, something that makes a smile at the end of the day. So the real obvious solution then is to live every day like we've reached a little piece of our life goal, and that helps us to live life with a little more purpose and to celebrate the win at the end of the day.

Remember we talked about, when we celebrate our wins, our mind gets all excited and it goes, Hey, what I did today was a good thing. I'm gonna do more of that tomorrow. That naturally moves us forward and into our goals. We've often talked about that, but now going back to the reasons this is going to be a short visit tonight, when it's put in terms of unexpectedly leaving the earth, then the real importance becomes all that much clearer. Because what could be better than every single day we're able to celebrate a little or a big win and doing something that matters to us, something that adds value to our lives, something that adds value to everyone around us. 

So I would encourage you to always live every single day with your goals in mind, to make even a teeny bit of progress towards your goals and towards things that make your life feel satisfying. That way every day can end as a successful and more satisfying day and something that makes you excited if you get to the end of the day and say Wow, I could check these things off my list. I made this person happy, whatever it is in your life that makes you feel good and you'll know that you're moving ahead in your life and moving towards how you really want to live your life and how you want the world to be, not towards something years in the future, but towards something every single day brings rewards.

 I’m finally finishing the daily planner. Like any daily planner, it's customized to things that I find useful. I'll go through this in more detail, but this is just a half sheet of paper, an 8x11 sheet of paper, folded in half, front and back. It's all set up. There's a free Canva template, and I’m going to have my people go through and spiff it up a little more, but basically the front page is setting the tone for the day. To wake up with a positive affirmation and things to help set the tone in a positive fashion for the day.

If there's something special going on that day, you can note it here. It's just a reminder. For me personally, in this particular case, I have today's Gospel, but you have the Canva template - it'll be free - you can change it to whatever motivating thing that you want to put there.

The inside two facing pages are a little different than most planners that you'll find. One of them is the most important thing you want to do today and the other things that are in your day, and then what people are important in your day and why, and the good things that happen for today.

Then the other side is like a planner, but it's not really a planner. It doesn't start off at nine o'clock and go to five o'clock. It's an area where you can write things down that are important for you to do that day. If you want to put meditate for 15 minutes there, or whatever it is that strikes you for that day, that's important to you, that's a place to write that down. Then just a general place for notes at the bottom. This is a quick go through. We'll go through it in more detail and how I suggest you might want to consider filling it out. 

A lot of these ideas are from the people who Tim Ferris interviewed in Tools of Titans. I find that book very useful. Tim is awesome. I love Tim. I think about him often and appreciate all he does. Some people had some really good ideas on how they run their lives, to make them feel more satisfied. I don't want to use the word productive. This isn't really a productivity thing, but just to make their lives more satisfying.

One of them is just a place to put ideas - any ideas that come to your mind, whether they're good ideas, bad ideas, silly ideas, just ideas that pop into your mind. And challenges that came up for today. Then at the end, just a little space - you can make it bigger if you want. It's going to be a Canva template, you can take it and run with it. But it's a summary of today. Just a few short words, a couple sentences about How did today go and why? What was memorable about today, and what brought a smile and positive things into your face. 

If it's a challenge, I would suggest that you don't put that in a summary today. You put that under new challenges. We're really trying to separate the things that require more work, and the things that are positive. Because it's pretty rare that you don't see something positive throughout the day. Then finally a place to put what you want to think about overnight, to give your subconscious something to do overnight and really think about.

There'll be more about that next week. I think that's probably about it for the day. That really is what I wanted to go over for the evening.  As always, please remember the war in Ukraine UKR7.com. We’ll  be adding a link to the World Kitchen. They do food, and winter's coming in Ukraine. They're in the Northern hemisphere. If somebody's looking for a way they can help out, it’s a page full of links to other people providing aid to the people of Ukraine during this war.

I think that's about it for the evening. If you like what you hear, please hit the like button and I hope you enjoyed it. Have a great week. Please remember to live the life that you dream of, because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com. Thanks so much.