2022 September 6 Some short quotes

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website by, for, and about Baby Boomers. Tonight's kind of a low energy night. I apologize. 

A few things happened recently that gave me pause. Tonight I'm just going to be sharing a few thoughts and then some things you'll hopefully find interesting, and be referencing another book. Basically what happened is that this really nice church friend of mine passed away quite unexpectedly on Friday night. That was extremely difficult. People pass away all the time. She was young compared to us. Certainly she was very young, and she and her husband were always extremely nice to me, so it was really difficult for me. 

Then after that, on Monday, yesterday, I'm reading and it turns out right after I left Podcast Movement 22, I found out that they were busy sending out these tweets and other social media posts apologizing for letting a well known conservative celebrity into the venue.

Frankly, I was shocked at their behavior. As almost always, the woke left is tolerant of basically anyone who agrees with them, and for others, there's no lower limits. So I was really disappointed to find out about that because - podcasting, of all places, of all situations, of all groups of people who I associate with, is an area where open discussion and tolerance really is supposed to be the norm, and clearly that's no longer the case. So it's really disappointing. 

So there was more that went on in the week, but you get the idea. That kind of plays into our whole philosophy, because what's our philosophy? It’s that sometimes life is great, but sometimes it isn't, but we should never take our eyes off our goals. I was going to cancel my ticket to next year's Podcast Movement 23, and thought about it. I was going to have a pretty strong case - if I'm not welcome there, then clearly you've misrepresented the venue. So I want my money back. I don't care that it's non-refundable, non-cancelable. You lied to me. So I want my money back.

But instead, I decided that it's really going back again.That's the proper forum to reach, and to emphasize that tolerance isn’t some catch phrase. It's really a way of life, and it really should apply equally to everybody, most especially it should apply to those who you do not agree with. It's easy to be tolerant or open or supportive of people you do agree with, but it takes real tolerance and real patience to sit and discuss and listen with people who you don't agree with. 

It’s easy to do things that you agree with, but the challenge is when you have to deal with dissenting opinion. Essentially you either have to walk the walk or else the talk is just empty talk. It's nothing. I've talked before about this. A friend of mine, Doug who lives near me - he and I are absolute polar ends of the political spectrum and everything, but we're good friends and it's because we're both old and we both remember the way things were, and the way things were are when you had dissenting opinions, and you were friends with somebody,and you found out you had dissenting opinions, you didn't walk away from them and say, Oh, I'm not gonna be your friend anymore. You sat down and you talked about it. It doesn't mean you convinced the other person to your side, but both of you had to think, and both of you had to work to defend your arguments when you do.

That makes you realize the weaknesses in your arguments. It makes you realize the perspective of the other person. You gain empathy for their side, and typically they'll gain empathy towards your viewpoint. Again, it doesn't mean everybody walks away agreeing with each other and singing kumbaya and having a wonderful time, but you learn to respect the other person's opinion and to understand why they feel how they do and how that affects your life.

I mentioned a couple days ago, last week, that I started reading Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. I love the book. What I decided tonight, mostly because I was having a hard time keeping a good perspective on things, I went through the book and just found some quotes that caught my eye. So I want to share those with you. 

I'm just gonna grab a couple and read the quote and pause a second, and then give you a moment to think about it. I think it's important in today's society, so many things are just soundbites. People say things. It happened at Podcast Movement. Somebody said something, that somebody else had to say something and everybody piled on and they didn't listen to what they were saying, that they were taking half the people in attendance and saying, You don't deserve to be here, and that's not what podcasting is supposed to be about.

That's certainly not what tolerance is supposed to be about. The way you change that is to think out loud basically. From coach Christopher Summer, “Quality long-term results require quality long-term focus. In patience, dealing with frustration is the primary reason most people fail to achieve their goals.” 

In the heat of the moment, we tend to forget our why and our reason, and we forget. When we forget, we get frustrated. Right after I read about all the stuff that went on at Podcast Movement,  I was angry. I was frustrated. I was disappointed. I was hurt. These are people I thought I could count on. Then I thought about it. I thought What's my goal? My goal is to reach out to people and bring them together. Saying that I'm not going to go back doesn't help bring people together. Actually, I'm probably going to get buttons made that say something like Tolerance begins when you disagree with somebody. 

I already have the ticket, so I'll probably go back next year, and I'll probably make a point of having difficult decisions. I think by doing that, hopefully more people will see that people with opposing opinions or dissenting opinions or just different opinions aren't scary. They're not bad. They're not horrible. Everyone wants the same thing. It's just that we take different paths to get there. Our job as people is to remember our long term goals and always live towards our dreams. Hopefully our dreams include bringing the world together and getting more discussion going.

The next quote is from Tim Ferriss himself. Thank you. “Meditation allows me to step back and gain a witness perspective. I can step out of the washing machine and calmly look inside it.” So that one really struck me, because I happened to come across that one shortly after the whole episode with Podcast Movement and was thinking about it.

So often, when we get wrapped up in things, we get your basic tunnel vision, short term near vision, and you lose sight of what it is we're trying to do. So, much like remembering our long term goals, and to stay focused on them, when you get caught up in something, it's like being in a washing machine. Everything's topsy turvy, things you thought were true don't appear to be true, but you're not sure. There's dissenting opinions. All this stuff is happening all at once. 

Whether it's by meditation, taking a deep breath, just removing yourself from the situation and talking to nobody for 30 seconds, step back away from the fray, and then you can actually look at it and get a better perspective as to what's going on.

Then form some reasonable thoughts, and go back in from a reasonable perspective, as opposed to from a reactive or aggressive perspective. That one in particular really hit home with me, because we get so caught up in the details. We miss the whole reason why we're doing things. From Tony Robbins, your basic awesome person, all these people have - none of 'em are perfect - but all of them have great characteristics that are really worth looking at.

One of the ones that really caught my eye again. “Life is always happening for us, not to us. It's our job to find out where the benefit is. If we do, life is magnificent.” That's a really powerful statement. 

It's very easy, especially with the modern news and the modern way things are presented, even the weather is always presented as something that's happening to you. Oh, this brutal storm. The adjectives they come up with to describe things like weather are basically laughable It's like the weather's just hanging out, waiting, plotting how to get you, which isn't the case at all. 

There was recent flooding in Rhode Island over the past day or two. Even here, we had about half as much rain as they did in Rhode Island. I measured the rain. We had six inches of rain in the past 24 hours. That's a lot. We could sit and say, Oh, that weather, it was on Labor Day. It ruined this. It was horrible. 

The other way of looking at it is we can say we were behind by inches, if not feet of rain. We really needed it. It would've been nice if it happened another time, but it didn't. It happened now. A lot of goodness happened now. Probably a lot of crops will be saved for the fall. Maybe not as good as they would've been, but at least they'll be saved. A lot of the trees and plants have come back. It's amazing how fast nature recovers after a drought. So there was a lot of good. 

It's up to us to find the good in what's going on, and insofar as what happened to my friend with the unexpected passing away, is it terrible? Yes. It's very terrible. It leaves a tremendous hole in many people's lives, but the other way to look at it is, Why is that hole there? Because of all the good that she left behind, all the good that she brought to so many people that she and her husband welcomed into their lives, welcomed people into the family. If you focus on that and realize, Boy, isn't that a nice legacy to have?

The situation was horrible, but what a legacy to leave behind. People think of you, and they think good things they think of, Wow. I want to leave behind that kind of legacy. So I'll try to do the same sorts of things to be accepting of people and to bring people joy and to include them in my life.

So even in a bad situation like that, you have to focus on the good, and if you focus on the good, you realize there's still a lot of good that can be pulled out of it to really help us through the situation and to realize the good that exists in life that can be found.

Perspective is always difficult, but it's especially difficult when things seem bad and that's when it really pays to try and keep a good perspective on things.  You'll always find bad things. You'll always find good things. You don’t want to say, Oh, the bad things don't exist and put your head in the sand, but you want to keep all sorts of things in balance because there's a lot of good things that go on in our lives generally. We want to make sure we remember those, as well as the things that are challenging. 

Then from Seth Godin, a very simple one just says, “Send someone a thank you note today.” Sounds a little silly, but if you think about it, whether it's a real card or just picking up the phone and calling somebody or writing them a one page note or whatever it is, bring some joy into someone else's life. It goes with the meditation of happiness where you just wish a stranger joy, even don't say anything to them, just wish them joy. This is like the actualized version of it: actually bring some joy into somebody's life. Just out of the blue, you're going along. You have three minutes.

What am I going to do for three minutes before I leave? Write somebody a three sentence note. Hey, I was thinking about you. Just wanted to let you know things are going on. Pretty good here. I saw some ice cream and was thinking about you. Shoot it off, make them smile, share your joy with someone else.

Finally the last one is from Maya Angelou: author, creator, actor. This is a paraphrasing of something that she has said. Creativity and love are infinite resources. The more you spend, the more you have. So that whole concept is a really very powerful concept because how many times do we act as though we want to save ourselves for something else or something later or something more important or bigger or better?

We have to remember that life gives back what we give to others. So by sharing our creativity or our love, whatever it is that we have, anything positive, pays back huge rewards in every way. Don't be afraid to share what you have, to share it with others, because when you share it, you'll get it back in many ways, some expected, like if you say hi to somebody, they'll probably say hi back, but in ways you don't expect.

Take the chance to share what you have with somebody else. When something bad happens, keep perspective. When you just want to say That's it, I'm quitting. I'm gonna just withdraw and leave this group. Think No, that's not consistent with my overall goal. My overall goal is bigger than that. Take the chance, go back, try to share things with them, and to be truly inclusive, to bring people together rather than help drive them apart.

So that's it for the evening. Thanks for stopping by. Stay healthy. Care for others. I hope you found something interesting and it brought a little bit of joy into your life, some different thoughts than maybe you were thinking at the beginning of this. I know it's a little different than normal, and I apologize that it wasn't quite as cohesive as sometimes, but they're all along the same general thing.

Remember it all comes down, it's about sharing with the people. Ukraine, things are still gone going on over there. UKR7.com. They need our help, but a lot of people in the world need our help. Some are far away, some are close.

Some of the situations are a little troubling. Some of them are devastating. All those people, keep them in your mind, keep them in your thoughts and your prayers. Try and act to bring people together, not drive them apart. That's really it for the evening. 

As always, be true to yourself. Live the life that you love, and you're aligned with your true goals and your feelings. Thanks for stopping by. If you found something that was interesting or useful, please pass it along. If not, please drop me a comment as to what you'd like to hear. Please hit the like button. That lets me know that you're least listening to what's going on and makes me wanna do more of it. 

Have a great week. Thanks for visiting. Remember to live the life that you dreamed of because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week at 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com. Thank you.