2022 June 14 Make decisions that support your life purpose!

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 big decisions. So let's get started. 

But first the regular reminde: I'm not a medical professional, but I'm just talk about things that I find useful in that I do on a regular basis, and I hope you find them useful and helpful as well. If you find yourself feeling truly hopeless or depressed, please seek professional medical help or just dial 911. The other number is 800-273-8255. Starting July 16th, and available now in a lot of areas, dialing 988 will connect you with immediate assistance. So good to know for yourself or a friend.  

We all go through phases. At least I certainly go through phases, and right now it's the “I want all this junk out of my life” sort of phase. But what's really driving me, is it that I want to be decluttered, or is it just my inner mind addressing one of the blockers that is, in reality, holding me back from my next goal. I'd suggest that the clutter itself isn't the issue, it’s that it gets in the way of doing things.

Right now, I have in my own mind things that I want to do, and remember - we've often talked about how to find a goal and then really envision it, and then simply living your life towards your own vision. Why is that? We've also covered once your mind agrees that something is attainable, then it will do everything possible to make it happen.

That's one of the many reasons why negative self-talk is so damaging and should be avoided. So many of my likely next steps in my own life right now involve something with my house. I've lived here probably over 25 years now, and I've collected a good deal of material over the years. It's all good stuff, of course, but still. It's time to clean out a lot of things. 

So whether I move, or rent the house part-time, or rent the house long-term, whatever ends up happening, no matter what, I have to make more, so that there's just room for my own thoughts and room to do things. Having an uncluttered life actually really frees up your mind a lot. So it all starts with tidying up, which seems simple enough. So where's the big decision? It's deciding what are the very many memories and other things that I have around that should be relegated to history. I'm sorry to all the tidy people that write all the books, but taking a picture is not the same thing as surprising yourself with an old postcard from a friend.

I'm not going to scan 20-some photo albums that I have around from the family. Some of them dating back seven decades or more. Some of the pictures actually go way back to the thirties and some are even older than that. But in our stage of life, the ante goes up the further we go. 

I mentioned that my day profession is an electrical engineer. Not only an electrical engineer, I usually work as a contractor. If you’ve never lived with such a person, you'll find out that what that means is that I have tons and tons of things like test equipment, parts, tools, and other hardware items of a real practicing practical trade. Many of those items you can’t simply use “If I haven't used it in one year” rule, because some of it's specialty equipment, which I might only use once in a couple of years.

Plus, unlike the photo albums, these are tools of the trade and they actually make me money. It's different than the things that have emotional attachment are very important. Things that make you money actually goes a step beyond that. You don't want to just discard it willy nilly. 

And in one sense, it will make me money soon. Hopefully it's going to make me money. Now the decision gets really difficult as I get closer to retirement. What do I want to do? Do I want to get a little contracting work on the side? Do I just want to do something with the grandkids? If I do, I'll need some of those items.

Some of it is truly clutter, and I'm trying to clear that stuff out. But many other things - I could replace them by buying something new when I'm really going to go out and take the time to buy a new piece of test equipment just to show the kids something interesting, like what a voice looks like when it's singing a single note into a microphone. 

So for me in these situations, there's always a tendency to go binary. Either it all stays somewhere, or it all goes. It's very easy when you approach things like that, you're weighing, should this go or that go and you just say, forget it. Everything's going in the trash. Everything in the room is going into the trash. That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid, because that's really a good decision. Living in those gray regions between black and white is often very difficult. Just look at the current politics and you'll see how it's very easy to make binary decisions. You’re either with me or against me.

But living in the gray regions is exactly where all the magic happens, because rarely is one extreme or the other the correct choice, or certainly not the best choice. So as we go through the changes, as we age, there's a strong tendency to pick an extreme. We're going to downsize the house and get rid of everything. And then I wish I kept some things from the kids or We're going to move to Florida and get all new friends. There are a lot of people I miss from where I lived before I moved to Florida. 

The other way it often manifests is in terms of what we can't do. Again, this whole binary sort of thinking. I can't travel anymore. I can't learn anything new. I don't use social media. I can't learn to play the piano. I'm too old to learn a language. We have a million built-in limitations and excuses ready to go. But just like cleaning the house, and all the things where the best decisions are in that nebulous, gray area, many of the big decisions you have to face as we age are best answered somewhere between all or nothing.

Sometimes health does play a part, and that's a reality we have to face. Same with money. The limitation may be real. But not being able to go hike Machu Picchu doesn't mean that we can't go to Peru. Not being able to afford a trip to Peru doesn’t mean we can't drive to a different region of the county.

Not being able to drive doesn't mean we can't take a bus trip with friends to one of those pretty gardens in the next city, next door, that we've always read about. Remember the quality of your life depends upon the quality of the questions you ask yourself as you define your goals. If you ask black and white questions, you're going to get rigid goals, but good goals are flexible goals.

Life is always changing. We actually have big decisions to make every single day. Oftentimes they're just masquerading as innocent little decisions. Whether it's diet, health, exercise, calling a friend, helping somebody, deciding what to do over the summer, or planning your retirement, each decision is leading towards or away from our goals.

So how do we make big decisions? You know what the answer to this one is. We make big decisions that are aligned with our goals and our purpose, and they lead us to a place of contentment. So suddenly those great big overwhelming decisions just became little decisions, leading us towards our desired outcome. 

Which suddenly makes things like sorting through the whole house a much more manageable task. So good luck practicing your goal setting and goal envisionment. If your goals support you in your life purpose, then your brain would do amazing things to help you get there. That's it for this evening. Thanks for stopping by. Stay healthy. Care for others. Remember to care for yourself so you can always be at your very best. 

Don't forget that the war in Ukraine is still going on. If anything, it’s getting worse, which is saying a lot, since it has already exceeded most other modern wars in terms of brutality and genocide.

If you're able and interested, the page to donation links is still available. UKR7.com. If anyone asks you where you can donate, you can go there. No donations are accepted there, but it does point to other places where you can go and find all sorts of organizations, either doing humanitarian aid. Remember that one of the best ways you can care for yourself is to care for others. If you can donate, please check it out. 

So as always, be true to yourself and live your life aligned with your true goals and feelings. Again, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along.  If not, please drop me a comment with what you’d like to hear. Have a great week. 

Thanks for visiting. Remember to live the life that you dream of because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone, and see you next week on 7EveryMinute  and 7EveryMinute.com. Thank you.