2023 March 7 A perspective on aging (part 2)

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about re-imagining your life. Thanks for joining me tonight for some general life thoughts on aging and how we handle situations that don't go quite like we expected. So if you like what you hear tonight, please leave a like, tell your friends and send me a message. Thanks for joining me. 

We're gonna be somewhat introspective tonight. This is a different sort of episode because things started running off the rails last week and never quite recovered. That's okay. We've been talking about living towards our goals and making progress, so how can it be okay? It's important to remember what we've talked about.  Goals are just that: goals. Life happens quite independently. When things happen, give yourself some grace, learn from your experience, and move on. 

Especially as you age, no matter what your current age after those initial years of invincibility - I'm looking at you, late teens and early twenties when we think there's nothing we can't overcome. Every year thereafter brings more wisdom and more discovery, which is really just a nice way of saying you'll learn a lot more about your limits, and how to overcome them.

Which is all good, but one of the hardest lessons for me, and I think for many people, is realizing that there are some things that you just can't work around. In my case, there was a cascade of situations, some common, like being tired (I often worked long days), but some were kind of uncommon, like giving blood when I was tired, and then I had had just come off a day of fasting and then doing physical labor until 8:00 PM. It was a bad combo, a big lesson to be learned. It culminated into an extended recovery time. I had to admit last night that I was not going to be able to get the live posted early, or even outlined. But as I have also said, life doesn't give us challenges. It gives us opportunities to learn.

The lesson, in this case, was to realize that I had over-committed to too many things, and the price was that I was unable to complete something that was really important to me, which is working on the envisionment course and doing the next installment of the free training. It was a difficult lesson, and I'm already planning on how to avoid it in the future.

What is equally important is that if I dwell on the failure instead of the lesson, it would just continue to demotivate me, and that would have two really bad results. First, it would make recovery much more difficult because I'd be viewing everything through this self-inflicted negative lens. 

But the second reason is even worse. Not only would I be unmotivated, but that alone would make it more likely that I'd repeat the situation (and likely keep repeating it), getting me stuck in this cycle of failure. Sound familiar? How often have you done something foolish and then let it gnaw at you and keep you in a bad mood? So now you'll have low energy and you keep making the same mistakes.

I've done it too. We've all done it. But if you've been paying attention, you already know the answer. Give yourself some grace. Learn the lesson. Start to develop a solution, and move on. That doesn't mean to ignore what happened and go merrily on your way. It means to learn from the challenge, and when it happens again, remember the lesson and do better.

Maybe not perfect, but better. Give yourself grace, because none of us is perfect. Mistakes are one way we learn. So that's the main message tonight. You have some homework if you want to try and do it. Unless you're having a perfect week - and I truly hope that you are, but if something goes wrong or you do something foolish - before you even start to judge yourself, just stop, count to five,  and then forgive yourself.

Look at how you got yourself into the situation, maybe even write it down in a notebook and then write down how you can avoid it, or at least mitigate it, the next time. Give yourself the grace of being a real, imperfect, genuine person and the wisdom to realize the challenges of life's hidden gifts of learning. That's it for today. I send everyone good wishes. 

Of course, remember UKR7.com. That's our list of links to support the people in Ukraine. If you're able and interested, please consider making a donation, or spread the link around to other people if they're trying to think of anything they can do to help.

There's also a link there right at the top of the page to World Central Kitchen WCK.org. Great humanitarian organization. They're providing meals for people in need, both in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world. Remember, one of the best ways you can care for yourself is to care for others. 

Please consider making a donation if you are able. One of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others, so please keep that in mind. If there's another cause that's important to you, then please donate to that as well. 

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 dream 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.