2022 March 15 Being True to Your Own Beliefs and Goals

Hi, Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website by, for, and about Baby Boomers. Wow, I really lost track of the time tonight. Sorry if you were waiting. Thank you very much for waiting. Let’s get started on things. 

Tonight’s going to be a little brief, a reminder of the importance of living our lives consistent with our true beliefs. A lot of us say that we do that. We certainly all try to do that. But when life gets in the way of that, I have found it’s worth trying to reset and get back and think about what’s really important to you, and try and live your life so that that’s really consistent. 

So, let’s get started on that, but first I want to remind you that I’m not a medical professional. Sometimes I talk about things that I personally find useful insofar as attitude and just adjusting to situations as they happen. This is the number for the National Suicide Hotline 800-273-8255 or just 988. If you find things are getting really truly overbearing, and just feel like you just want to talk to somebody, please utilize these numbers.

When the situations get overbearing, don’t forget that there’s always people willing to support you in whatever situation you’re going through. So starting off, my regular listeners know that I’ve been pretty focused on the entire invasion by Putin of Ukraine and certainly that situation hasn’t changed over the past week. If anything, it has worsened. 

Tonight’s topic is the result of some of the things that I saw and read and experienced over the past week. So what struck me first, I saw an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. As you know, I look at the Journal a lot. It’s kind of become the conservative New York Times. It was a story by Mr. Matthew Hennessy, and he was referencing a recent study that showed that 50% of the Democrats polled and over 32% of the Republicans polled said they would leave the US rather than stay and defend it. Now think about that. So, all the amazing things that we have here, they said that they would leave rather than defend their own neighborhood. What really struck me is that I think a lot of that is based on the fact that people don’t realize how special our core freedoms are. How unusual they are, and they don’t appreciate what a gift it is to give our kids and the rest of the world to act as a role model. 

I know it’s really popular to do US bashing now. Certainly, we see it all the time in the news and by many special interest groups. To everyone who’s bashed the US, I would encourage you to go to other places, particularly other places that aren’t so neat. They don’t have to be far away. They can go somewhere, go to Singapore, for instance. I just remember in Singapore, I was with some people. I used to work on a ship and was with someone who had taken out some marijuana. The people they were with, the blood just drained from their face. They said What’s the problem? They said That’s a death penalty here. Think about that for a second. Here we have all these different systems in place to keep us safe from the courts. They don’t always work perfectly. But they’re here. They often work pretty well, especially if you’re white. 

So here we have a bunch of people, that they would just abandon all that for no reason. I thought about that a lot, and I thought it’s not even just that I don’t realize what’s there. They haven’t really thought about what’s there, and they don’t realize that one of the most essential things that they just expect in life. The freedom to pursue happiness, it’s so aptly said,  is something that’s not common in life. If you sit and think about your core beliefs, your core values, you start to realize then that wow, things that are really important to me really should be directing my every action. 

It’s something that comes innately core to you. I’ve mentioned and told people, I’m involved in my little support rallies for Ukraine, and I tell them that, and they say, Well, you just live in a little town, and how many people see you, and what is it really doing? I always tell them that even if I make a little tiny bit of difference, then, it’s a complete success for me because I’ve pushed the world a little bit in the direction that I want to see it go in.

I tell people often, part of it is for the people of the Ukraine. I mean, the situation there is just horrendous, but the other piece of it, it’s also for my grandkids and for my kids, because these are things I grew up in a world full of freedom, and I don’t want them to see something different. I don’t want them to be in a country that’s always afraid of being attacked. It’s easy for me to do these things. But it really goes deeper, partially because of my religious beliefs. Partly because of how I was raised. I’ll talk about that in a second. 

Helping others is part of my core belief and core mission. I don’t say that with any hubris or self pride. It’s just something that’s always been a part of my life. It was taught to me by example, by both my parents. My dad, I can remember as a child, he was an ophthalmologist, which ran in the family, three generations of ophthalmologists. 

I dropped the ball, and became an engineer. But I can remember going with him on Wednesdays, his day off, the classic midweek day off for many physicians at the time, to give free eye care and health care to the migrant farm workers in the area where I live in upstate New York. We are actually a big farming area, and so there were migrant workers, and he would go there to the cornfields and give free healthcare to these people. 

I can remember as a child seeing all these kids hanging out at the migrant camp. I said something to him. I said Oh wow, they must all be Catholic. He goes Why do you say that? I said Because they’re not at school. He goes They don’t go to school. I said Well, why don’t they go to school?  I mean, I knew that school was really important to me, and he said Because their parents move all the time. So they’re not in school at all. It was a very different world back then for anyone who’s younger and listening. I can remember thinking Wow. I get mad about school and sometimes I don’t want to do my homework and stuff, but these kids don’t even have that opportunity. It really made me think Wow, my dad was an awesome guy,  but also how lucky I was to have that. 

My mom was the same way. She did a lot of volunteer work at the local Catholic Hospital. I remember her talking about working as a surrogate mother for abandoned children during her nursing school days in New York City, and so I was really fortunate. I grew up in a household where caring for others just was something that you did. It wasn’t something that you were put out by doing. It was just you learn to appreciate that you were fortunate, and all the things you had, so you wanted to share that with other people. 

That’s why I’m putting myself out there a little tiny bit by standing out there holding a sign saying Support Ukraine. To me, that’s the very least I can do for a cause that’s critically important to me, and that's really the operative term here. It’s not something that I think is important. It’s not something I want to do because Oh yeah, I should probably do that. It’s something that’s critically important to me because it’s something for my grandkids and my kids and the world in general. 

So, our related topic is another editorial, and actually I apologize. The first editorial which I kind of glanced over was by Matthew Hennessy. The next editorial, also in the Wall Street Journal, is by Victor Pinchuk, and the the title of that one was actually Sympathy isn’t Enough for Ukraine. He starts off with a joke, and he says, Two people are fighting about that blue and yellow paint. It’s kind of getting in short supply these days, and if it runs out, how they’ll be able to support Ukraine, and immediately goes on to say that the moral support is wonderful and it’s essential and it’s appreciated and everyone’s totally thankful for it, but at some point, action is needed. 

I think that’s a really important point here, and that it’s great to support causes, and it’s one of the issues I have with many of the support rallies that you see these days. It’s great to go to a rally because it gets other people worked up, and gets other people aware of the situation for the causes that you’re out stomping for. That’s really important, and that’s why I go out and do my little mini rallies of one person. It makes people think about it. That’s that’s the motivation and the whole function of doing that. 

But the other piece of that is at some point you really do have to get out and get involved with things. We’re really fortunate, and happily probably we’re not going to be fighting a face-to-face battle in our neighborhood anytime soon, but it could be something as simple as writing to your Congressional representatives, encouraging the support, a cause that you believe in. I know a lot of people say, well, you know, the representative was from the other party. He doesn’t care what I I say, or she doesn’t care what I say. 

That’s not really true, because even though that little teeny step may seem inconsequential, it truly does help steer policy because they always have staffers that actually listen to all the calls, they read the letters, and that’s why I encourage you when you write a letter to your congress critter there, that right in the very first sentence, right after thank you for listening to my opinion, I oppose or I support this particular bill related to food or whatever. You want that right out in the first sentence, first paragraph because some staffers are going to be reading that and say, you know, Bill XYZ, I support, oppose, and that actually does help steer policy. 

Also just from a personal standpoint, it lets the person your representative know that you’ve got their back when they stand on the floor and say, I support this bill, because they know that 70% of their constituency said, Yes, we support it with you and we’ll vote you back in. The other side of this, they also know that you’ll be looking for their head if they oppose you next time voting time comes around, so it’s really important from a couple different standpoints both to make people and talk to other people about what you just did. So, you want to talk to other people about contacting them and supporting something. 

Then also, you want to let the representative know that you’re supporting them too, because it goes both ways. They need to know that they’re going to have support from their constituents. 

https://7em.link/Congress  This link takes you to the congressional office, and there you can put in your address, and that will tell you all the contact information you need for your representative in the house and your two senators. 

So that I think is really important. And of course vote. Don’t just go out and vote whatever some particular block is saying to you. Try and find out about the candidates. Find out about what the bills are on the ballot this year. Guide yourself by what’s really truly important to your very heart and your very soul. Because if you do that, then it's not hard to go out and encourage other people to vote. To talk about the issues. A lot of people say I don’t like to talk about politics. Well if it’s really something you believe in, then it’s easy to talk about. It doesn’t mean you have to argue. It doesn’t mean you have to scream. But it’s just telling people, and getting involved, and presenting your side of the argument. I think that’s really important. So, acting even in a small way, if you act in a manner consistent with your core beliefs, you’ll find that you feel a lot less threatened by the world, and a lot more involved and confident in your actions, and in life in general, which is a lot more fun way to live in general of course. 

You know, I haven’t talked about this before, but I’ll talk about it briefly now. When I’m out and people always talk about this and say, Why aren’t you scared about stuff? In reality, I have received a number of verbal threats, and in one case, physical abuse, so my perpetrators haven’t been particularly competent and particularly aggressive, so it hasn’t been excessive. 

But what I find fascinating is that these people, I presume, are so uncomfortable with their lives that they feel compelled to attack somebody in some form or another who reminds them of that basic inconsistency, because I’m sitting there with a sign, and I could actually go run grab it and show you. It says, has two words on it. It says, Support Ukraine. That’s it. It's not anything about Russia. It’s not anything about Putin. It’s not anything about war. Just says support Ukraine, and just that is enough to get them so wired up that they feel that they have to act out directly towards me. 

So, rather than making me feel concerned about that, it actually makes me feel empowered, because I know then that I’m invoking some sort of change and making them think about something that’s outside their comfort zone. The reason I feel confident in taking that risk is for  similar reasons they feel uncomfortable. I do feel comfortable with what I’m doing because it’s consistent with my core beliefs. You’ll find that if you think hard, really think about what really matters to you, you can then use that to give yourself the energy and the motivation you need to go out and make positive changes both in yourself and in the world around you. 

If you feel like donating, this page leads to a bunch of links where you can donate financially to people.  https://ukr7.com/  Different humanitarian causes. There’s very direct causes and I think there’s actually a link available which I haven’t posted yet where you can actually sign up for the Ukraine Army, which probably not doesn’t apply to most of my listeners. They’re looking for young, frisky people, but the important point is that, if you’re acting in a way that you truly feel confident in, and if it’s one of your core beliefs, you will automatically feel confident in it. Whether it’s organic food and farming, if it’s helping people in difficult situations, if it’s for voter rights for certain blocks, if it’s for aid to certain countries, whatever it is, that’s really important to you. If you keep that as your real motivator, then, all the other things become much easier to do. 

That doesn’t mean that people aren’t going to harass you, people aren’t going to say things to you, but now, it’s not like they’re personally attacking you. They’re trying to attack your core belief, but because it’s a core belief, you know that they can’t really harm that, because that’s dear and inside your heart. As always, as we talked about before, please keep everyone in this needless Russian-led conflict in your prayers and in your thoughts, because it has worldwide implications.

But most of all, be true to yourself. It will serve you in every situation in ways that go far deeper than public appearance or short term comfort or a little self confidence. You can live knowing that you’re doing all you can to help others live their best lives, and you will live your own best life. Remember caring for others is caring for yourself. 

That’s it for the week. Thank you so much for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along. If not, please drop me a comment telling me what you’d like to hear about. Have a great week. Thanks for visiting. Remember to live the life that you dream of, consistent with your goals and with your inner soul, because that’s the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everybody. Thank you so much and see you next week at 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.