2022 October 4 Finding true meaning

Hi, Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute  and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website by, for, and about Baby Boomers. Thanks for joining me tonight. Tonight we're gonna cover how to find your own meaning in life. So let's get started. If you like what you hear, please hit the like button, and if not, please drop me a line as to what you'd like me to cover.

If you notice what I'm wearing, certainly the autumn season is upon us right now. Where I live, it's in the 40s and raining, which I think is just beautiful outside. So no matter where you are, I hope you really enjoy the evening.

But I'm glad you're here. Tonight it's a funny topic, and it's going (as always) to lead back to the same conclusion. I've really started to notice that following the pandemic lockdown and the economic reset, that despite the world returning to normal, it seems that a lot of people are noticeably dissatisfied.

There's a lot of superficial reasons given, a lot of politically motivated reasons with everybody trying to blame everyone else, and some very real reasons, of course, things like the war in Ukraine, but the breadth of the whole malaise is such that I really think there are some more fundamental core reasons.

If we keep going back over the past couple years, we had all these false stock market profits before the pandemic. Then all the amazing fake wealth that was being created out of that, coupled with all the challenges. Social media really started to peak I think, in a lot of ways. I really think that a lot of people, to varying degrees, (even worldwide) stopped looking at true core values and became infatuated, really, with shallow gaudiness, basically, for lack of a better word. Just whatever to impress somebody else is what they became interested in. So why get a car when you can get an SUV? Why get an SUV when you get a great big pickup truck? Why get one when you can get two? What? You don't have a summer home? The whole thing was just going on and on. And if you've read any history at all, the whole Holland tulip bulb craze in the 1630s. Yeah, way back then. Same sort of stuff was happening.

Everybody in business talks about up and to the right. Your profits are going up, and things are heading towards the sky, and tomorrow's always better than today. That's the way it was in Holland at that time. It went that way for almost four years, I believe it was. Tulip bulb prices went up by nearly a hundred times, according to some records. Everybody was speculating and buying tulip bulbs and selling them for a profit, and were awash in money, and spending it on everything superfluous, until suddenly it all ended with a rather large thud and a crash in price.

Fast forward now to the past few years, and we see salaries skyrocketing for many people. Stocks going up, your house, doubling in value, and bidding wars over your asking price, and cars with almost no money down. Everybody was, again, focused on the superficial. Then the pandemic came, but the party rolled on, as fueled by the government with handouts and on the whole online economy.

But that party, too, finally ended, and then some funny things started to happen. For one, suddenly everybody realized during the pandemic that there were all these little people who they didn't pay attention to before. They couldn't stay at home during the pandemic, and they were the ones who did the really fundamentally important things.

They made the food. They worked in the factories. They drove the trucks that brought the food and all the stuff from the factories to you. They tended to the sick, and they cared for the home care patients. They fought fires, and they picked up the trash. In short, they did the important things that made life possible.

And for a short while, it seemed like people might actually start to reset their values, to begin to realize what was truly important in life. It was things like friends, and being able to eat what you wanted safely, to learn how to be with your family again, and really enjoy each other's company, and how to value all the little things that truly made life good.

But then when the pandemic ended, and the party started up again, something was missing. People weren't really all that satisfied with trying to buy happiness, to live the superficial life. They started to realize that when you don't actually have a reason to do something, doing things for these self-aggrandizing reasons, honestly, isn't that much fun.

Buying a new house so your family is more comfortable, that's fun. Everybody appreciates it. Everybody feels happy, because life is genuinely nicer. Buying a new house just to show off - really doesn't work, because someone else can always buy a bigger house, and show off bigger than you. There's no intrinsic value in it, for you or for the people around you.

So we started to see the spread of dissatisfaction and unrest of exaggerated reasons as to why life should be better and why it wasn't very good. At the same time, all those little people said, Hey, we're really tired of being the poorly paid servants to everybody else. Suddenly you couldn't go buy a dinner for four for $20 anymore, and the lawn care person wouldn’t mow your lawn for another $20.

At the same time, there were more and more people who just started to drop out, to realize they'd been living a life driven by marketing and consuming, not by passion and family and enjoyment. So here we are now, late 2022, and if you're like a lot of people, you have this sense that you're at a turning point. 

You're right, but in reality, you've been at this point for years. Every single day, every minute you make decisions. Each decision can either lead you towards your goals, or away from your goals. Every single one. So if you want to live a happier, more fulfilling life - if you follow along with me, you know what the answer is. You have to define your goals, envision them, and every single day choose to live a life in alignment with your goals towards your life purpose, moving you in a direction that you want.

If you're still working because the money is good, we talked about this last week. Then stop and look at the real costs and what you might be missing out on. We're in a very special time in the world right now. An old friend of mine used to say, Change is opportunity. It doesn't matter how things are changing, whether it's going up or going down, there is opportunity for those who will seek it out.

The world is changing. Some of it's good, some of it's a real challenge, but there's tremendous change going on all around. It's up to each of us, each and every one of us, to seek out the good changes and to take advantage of them, to enthusiastically support the good ones and try and make each day one that brings us to a place of alignment with our goals.

We've talked about many ways to do this, such as structured goal setting, envisionment of goals, and practices and techniques to do that, and we'll continue to do that. But I'd suggest that now is a particularly good time to start again, and to make your life what you want it to. With so much change going on, there are many ways to find support for your efforts, whether podcasts, such as this one, or online or in person communities, many people are seeking more meaning in their lives, and you can find a lot more support.

I'd encourage everyone to think about what really matters most to you. Write it down so you can look at it every single day. We've talked about this before. Writing it down is really important, particularly if you're writing it in a public place. I have them written on a whiteboard in the hallway, and very often in the morning I'll recite them to myself.

You want to remind yourself every day what the point of today is. Then every day say, What can I do to move one step closer to attaining the things that really matter to me? Having good friends or a happy family is endlessly better. When it’s whether your sneakers are cool enough or whether your house is big enough, those things will come and go.

Having friends and family and truly important things around you, whether it's faith or however you get to that - that's something that will last you a lifetime and support you for a lifetime. Write down what is important to you, and then start living what is important to you, because that is what will bring you to true happiness, and that will bring out the true and lasting meaning in your life, which is what we promised to cover in the beginning of this.

So that's it for the evening. As always, don't forget UKR7.com, where you can make donations to help the people of Ukraine. 

It's getting cool here. It's getting very cold over in Ukraine as well. They’re moving into winter just like us. They’re a Northern Hemisphere country. So if you or any of your friends are looking how you can support Ukraine, send them to UKR7.com. Look online. There are a lot of places doing it. Remember, one of the best ways to support yourself is to care for others.

Please help support the people in the Ukraine right now. It's really very important. Yes, they're making progress, but they're making progress with the country destroyed. They need help. 

So as always, be true to yourself. Live your life aligned with your true goals. Thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along. Please hit that like button. And if not, please drop me a comment as to what you'd like to hear. Remember to live the life that you dreamed of, because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. Wee you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com. Thank you.