2023 July 11 Living life as you define it!

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me today to talk about looking for the good in things. So let's get started. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like and tell your friends and send me a message.

First off, I hope everyone had a great Independence Day 2023. Whether it was a holiday for you or not, I hope it was a good day this year. I noticed a lot of good wishes from politicians and people from other countries to the US, which is really thoughtful. Tonight's topics revolve around looking for the good in this situation and then looking for the good in yourself.

This isn't about enjoying every situation necessarily, but rather looking for the lesson behind the event. I've talked about this book before, Peace is Every Step, by Thich Nhat Hanh. He's passed away. He has a little section here called, What's Not wrong?  It's a short section about not focusing on what's wrong. You see somebody go, Hey, what's wrong man? What's happening? You don't look good. 

If we think about what's wrong, what do we do? We plant these seeds of sorrow in our consciousness instead of seeds of hope and joy. If instead you think about what's right, it changes your whole viewpoint on everything. As an example, maybe got an unexpected red light. We talk a lot about red lights because they happen to most of us.

We get an unexpected red light, and you get annoyed. You could just as easily have said, Oh, I have time to look at that pretty little garden. Or How wonderful I live in a place where people actually pay attention to traffic signals. Although in some cities, you might not be able to say that, but you might simply say How fortunate I am to be able to have a moment's break from driving there. There are a lot of perfectly reasonable reactions, but most of the time, we habitually become annoyed because that's just what we do. You get a red light and say, Ah, now I have to sit and wait for a red light. Okay. It's up to us to change that around. 

By asking what's right instead of what's wrong, you can change that entire moment into something nice, which leads to more nice moments later in the day. It's entirely up to you on how you respond to that situation. That's just a real simple example. We come across them every day, where a little thing happens and we tend to focus on how this thing is impeding our progress, when in reality, it's an opportunity to enjoy something new.  

That section goes on to say that many people wish things that we often take for granted, yet we don't appreciate what we have.  Going back to the red light example: You get a red light, and get frustrated and take this deep breath and sigh when you get that red light. Yet someone with asthma would be just enthralled to be able to take such a deep breath without discomfort or wheezing or coughing.

It's really up to us to realize all the things we do have. The better question is What's not wrong? 

To continue with tonight's improve your outlook theme, there's a woman, Cassie, in one of James Wedmore's mentoring cohorts that I'm involved in. She just recently made a post about a situation where she faced criticism of her vision and passion. This is all about your outlook on life and how your outlook affects your own dreams.

She'd been really applying herself to her business and making a lot of engaging social media posts and marketing her courses, being really involved and feeling good about things. Then one of her relatives completely dismissed her efforts and just directly criticized her. It completely deflated her. 

At first, she was completely taken aback. Then she remember a quote that was brought up in our course that you can only grow to the level of problems that you're able to handle. You can only grow to the level of problems that you are able to handle.

It's one of those simple little phrases that's easy to say, but she took it to heart and realized she could either let someone else's criticism dictate her life and her dreams, or she could follow her heart and her dreams, and live her life to the fullest, hoping that that family member could realize that she was following her passion and overcoming limits created by others.

Think about all the decisions we make in our own lives, and how many of those are made in deference to someone else. This doesn't mean you have to dominate every personal interaction and conversation. Sometimes compromise is the best approach, but if you're talking about something you hold dear, and someone else makes a negative comment or criticizes you, do you just change the subject and ignore it and move on?  Or do you start to doubt your own dreams and goals? 

Remember, we've talked before about how society in general really doesn't reward people that are different. Whether you're much less successful than your peers or much more successful, it really doesn't matter. It's just that you're different. In either case, you'll probably be criticized. People will say your dreams are silly, or all you care about is money. Why don't you ever hang out with us anymore? Come on, come over, watch a movie. Meanwhile, you're trying to do things to improve your own life. They'll come up with any number of things which tend to undermine your determination to live your life, to attain your dreams.

This is where you have to remember what Cassie did. She wasn't rude or mean, but she realized that the other person was speaking from a position of ignorance. Ignorance of what was truly important to her and of what she needed to do to take her life to the next level. Happily, she was able to take that unexpected challenge and turn it into an opportunity to motivate herself to get to that next level.

She's able to realize that the criticism wasn't what should be controlling her, but rather it reflected what was controlling the other person. Think about that for a second. When someone else criticizes you, you shouldn't let it control you, but realize that they're letting it control them.

They're trying to keep things the same. It was their limitation, and she said she couldn't allow it to become her limitation. When problems and challenges arise, either expected or completely out of the blue, remember to take a moment to view them from your own perspective. See if they're still relevant in terms of your own life, your own goals, and your dreams. If they're not relevant, honor them for what they are - someone else's feelings, but don't abandon and give up on following your own life dreams. If you truly want to live your own life to fulfillment, then you need to have clarity in what you want to do, and the courage to believe in yourself and the path that you are following. The only real limits you have in your life are the ones that you accept as real. When you're able to see past those limits, one way or another, you'll find a way to live your life, to be your very best self. 

So that's it for the evening. As always, remember the war in the Ukraine. We have our link page for donations at UKR7.com. The war is still going on. There's also the World Central Kitchen WCK.org. They're active, not only in Ukraine, but in other places throughout the world. I'd encourage you if you can, please consider donating to either of those cause.

Remember as always, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. So if you can and you're able, please try and help somebody, either one of the big organizations or even locally. As always, thinking outside of yourself really changes your perspective on the world and it brings you from being looking inward to looking outward. You see a lot more in the world. It's an awesome exercise if you can afford to do it. 

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along and please hit that like button. If not, please drop me a comment as to what you'd like to hear.

Have a great week. 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 on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com. Thank you.