I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.     – Francis Bacon It’s a common viewpoint. We’re surrounded by people younger and older. Never mind those younger folks. Concentrate on the older ones and you realize, “I’m not so old.” What you fail to understand is that you may be deluded. 😉 One of my favorite quotes about age is by E.W. (Edgar Watson) Howe, a journalist, writer, and novelist. In 1919 he published Ventures in Common Sense, so you know he was our kind of guy. A young man is a theory, an old man is a fact.    – E. W. Howe   Neil Young was in his mid-20s when he wrote and recorded the song, Old Man. Now, he’s 76 and officially old. He’s likely far older than the old man who was the caretaker on the ranch he bought back in the early 1970s. “24 and there’s so much more.” But you never know. Plenty of musicians – and others – have never made it to old age. Another great song about old folks is by Five For Fighting.   Father’s Day was a few weeks back. It was the 70th Father’s Day for my dad who will turn 99, Lord willing, in September. Rapper Valee (no, I do not listen to rap, but I found this quote by him, which tickled me)…“I’m an old man. A big weekend for me is Home Depot and a Caesar salad.” I looked it up and he’s only 33. I don’t know the context of the quote. I can’t imagine a hip-hop rap artist incorporating those sentences into a song though. But I’m old. What do I know? We’re talking about old men ’cause I’m not an old woman. Have you seen this hubbub with Matt Walsh, who did a documentary, “What Is A Woman?” It’s a fascinating thing to behold and proves how far modern culture has descended into…well, I don’t even have a word for whatever it is, but it’s not good. It certainly isn’t wise or helpful.   I know what a woman is, but I’m not one so I can’t claim a full understanding of that perspective. I have been married to a woman for going on 45 years. So I’ve got that going for me! Jon Buscall is a friend from Sweden. He’s a photographer. And a worthwhile Twitter follow as evidenced by this tweet.

<blockquote>I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.     – Francis Bacon</blockquote> It’s a common viewpoint. We’re surrounded by people younger and older. Never mind those younger folks. Concentrate on the older ones and you realize, “I’m not so old.” What you fail to understand is that you may be deluded. 😉 One of my favorite quotes about age is by E.W. (Edgar Watson) Howe, a journalist, writer, and novelist. In 1919 he published Ventures in Common Sense, so you know he was our kind of guy. <blockquote>A young man is a theory, an old man is a fact.    – E. W. Howe</blockquote> Neil Young was in his mid-20s when he wrote and recorded the song, Old Man. Now, he’s 76 and officially old. He’s likely far older than the old man who was the caretaker on the ranch he bought back in the early 1970s. “24 and there’s so much more.” But you never know. Plenty of musicians – and others – have never made it to old age. Another great song about old folks is by Five For Fighting. Father’s Day was a few weeks back. It was the 70th Father’s Day for my dad who will turn 99, Lord willing, in September. Rapper Valee (no, I do not listen to rap, but I found this quote by him, which tickled me)…“I’m an old man. A big weekend for me is Home Depot and a Caesar salad.” I looked it up and he’s only 33. I don’t know the context of the quote. I can’t imagine a hip-hop rap artist incorporating those sentences into a song though. But I’m old. What do I know? We’re talking about old men ’cause I’m not an old woman. Have you seen this hubbub with Matt Walsh, who did a documentary, “What Is A Woman?” It’s a fascinating thing to behold and proves how far modern culture has descended into…well, I don’t even have a word for whatever it is, but it’s not good. It certainly isn’t wise or helpful. I know what a woman is, but I’m not one so I can’t claim a full understanding of that perspective. I have been married to a woman for going on 45 years. So I’ve got that going for me! Jon Buscall is a friend from Sweden. He’s a photographer. And a worthwhile Twitter follow as evidenced by this tweet.

Old Men, Old Love & Old Life

I will prepare, and one day my time will come.     – Abraham Lincoln Case in point Camille Vasquez, the breakout attorney who represented Johnny Depp in his defamation trial against Amber Heard. She’s 37 and according to the collective legal community, she was given some unprecedented opportunities during the trial to cross-exam witnesses and make closing arguments. Those responsibilities are typically given to partners. A week after the trial concluded, Vasquez became a partner. Some speculate it was to retain her because others were attempting to lure her to their firm. So it goes when you do well with a high visibility opportunity! What we’ve not seen are the hours of pursuing the opportunities. Law school. Study groups. Bar exam. Research. More research. Grunt work. More grunt work. Wondering if your time will ever come. Doubt. Fear. More time spent wondering if this will ever be what you dreamed it would be. And then it happens. Maybe out of the blue. Maybe not. But your time comes. Some aren’t prepared. Or they fail. It happens. We’re hardcore OU Sooner fans. The hazards of being born in Oklahoma. This isn’t football season, but weeks ago the Women’s College World Series (softball) happened. After OU won their way to the championship series, Oklahoma State University fans watched their team lose both semi-final games to Texas, thanks in part to a moment of errant defensive play that resulted in multiple runs by Texas. Even as an OU fan I couldn’t help but feel for the players involved in the OSU mishap. Their time had come and they couldn’t all handle it successfully. We all know this firsthand. It’s been true in our own lives. Was it Texas? Was it the bigness of the moment? Or was it life? Or something else? Likely it was all of those things – and many more things. But I know what it wasn’t. It wasn’t the universe. It wasn’t fate. It wasn’t “meant to be.” Being unprepared won’t work out well. But being prepared is no guarantee for success either.

<blockquote>I will prepare, and one day my time will come.     – Abraham Lincoln</blockquote> Case in point <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/06/07/johnny-depps-lawyer-camille-vasquez-made-partner-after-trial-win/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Camille Vasquez</a>, the breakout attorney who represented Johnny Depp in his defamation trial against Amber Heard. She’s 37 and according to the collective legal community, she was given some unprecedented opportunities during the trial to cross-exam witnesses and make closing arguments. Those responsibilities are typically given to partners. A week after the trial concluded, Vasquez became a partner. Some speculate it was to retain her because others were attempting to lure her to their firm. So it goes when you do well with a high visibility opportunity! What we’ve not seen are the hours of pursuing the opportunities. Law school. Study groups. Bar exam. Research. More research. Grunt work. More grunt work. Wondering if your time will ever come. Doubt. Fear. More time spent wondering if this will ever be what you dreamed it would be. And then it happens. Maybe out of the blue. Maybe not. But your time comes. Some aren’t prepared. Or they fail. It happens. We’re hardcore OU Sooner fans. The hazards of being born in Oklahoma. This isn’t football season, but weeks ago the Women’s College World Series (softball) happened. After OU won their way to the championship series, Oklahoma State University fans watched their team lose both semi-final games to Texas, thanks in part to a moment of errant defensive play that resulted in multiple runs by Texas. Even as an OU fan I couldn’t help but feel for the players involved in the OSU mishap. Their time had come and they couldn’t all handle it successfully. We all know this firsthand. It’s been true in our own lives. Was it Texas? Was it the bigness of the moment? Or was it life? Or something else? Likely it was all of those things – and many more things. But I know what it wasn’t. It wasn’t the universe. It wasn’t fate. It wasn’t “meant to be.” Being unprepared won’t work out well. But being prepared is no guarantee for success either.

Are You Prepared For Luck?

Today’s show was sparked by a headline. No, it wasn’t 57 things, but it was 25…or some weird number of things you should think about selling if you’re preparing to retire. I found the list a bit odd and decided to hash it out with you. No, you don’t have to be preparing to retire. Maybe you just want to shake things up, improve things, declutter or simplify your life – or something else. There are bound to be lessons here to fit whatever situation you’re in.

Today’s show was sparked by a headline. No, it wasn’t 57 things, but it was 25…or some weird number of things you should think about selling if you’re preparing to retire. I found the list a bit odd and decided to hash it out with you. No, you don’t have to be preparing to retire. Maybe you just want to shake things up, improve things, declutter or simplify your life – or something else. There are bound to be lessons here to fit whatever situation you’re in.

57 Things To Sell When You’re Ready To Retire/Declutter/Simplify/Something Else

I’ve got more episodes “in the can” than ever before. It’s unprecedented for me here at LTW. Today’s show was recorded in the wee hours of the morning. Today. So I decided to hit the publish button. It seemed fitting for a week before our nation celebrates independence and freedom – two things I’m thankful for. Thanks for clicking that play button. Capitalism – an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state Practitioners and supporters of capitalism are capitalists. I’ve long declared myself a capitalist. Supporting industry controlled by private owners rather than the government is the foundation of why I’m a capitalist. Capitalism is also based on fair (high integrity) competition and merit. High integrity is often absent, but it’s also absent in socialism, communism, and all other isms – many based on philosophies opposed to competition and merit. Don’t confuse capitalism with consumption or consumerism. They’re somewhat tied together, but it’s a chicken versus egg thing. If I open up a business on Main Street selling custom-made T-shirts, the buying public – the market – will determine whether I make it or not. Sure, I’m in control of many variables, including my costs, my marketing, my location, my pricing, and more. But if I fail to get any customers, I’ll fail. The market will make a loser out of my custom-made T-shirt business. Entrepreneurs find needs and fill them. Or try to. Sometimes entrepreneurs see a need that really isn’t a need. The market says so by refusing to buy their solution. Sometimes entrepreneurs see a need that really is a need, but their execution or timing is poor. They fail. Sometimes entrepreneurs see a need, fill that need effectively and people buy. Perhaps in droves. Should The Individual Have The Power To Choose? Yes. Those who lean toward the left of the political spectrum seemingly place a high value on governance and legislation. That is, state imposition to encourage people to do what they feel is best. Those who lean toward the right of the spectrum seemingly place a higher value on the options and choices of the individual. Much of the debate focuses on whether or not the individual has the capacity or self-discipline to do what should be done – or what some think would be best. The simple version of the quandary is that if the power and freedom reside with the individual, then each individual has the ability to get it wrong. Or right. The point is whether or not their choice is legislated, but whether or not their choice will fit within the context of the greater good of society. So a person who decides that a life of theft will be their choice now faces societal consequences imposed by the government, whose task is to punish “evil-doers.”  1 Peter 2:14 “or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.” It’s the very reason God ordained earthly governments. Humans have the capacity to love. Having that choice necessarily means we have other choices. We don’t have to love something. Or somebody. We can choose alternatives between love and hate. And within the scale of love or hate – or anything in between – we can choose degrees. The extremes can be chosen or something more moderate. It’s up to us. Each of us. So It Goes With Our Money Decisions Individual choice is optimal. It’s also how God created us – with free will. free will, in philosophy and science, the supposed power or capacity of humans to make decisions or perform actions independently of any prior event or state of the universe Simply put, free will is our ability to make up our own minds. For this conversation, that means how we spend our money. Many choices impact others. Maybe every choice we make impacts somebody else. I’m not smart enough to figure that out, but it’s clear that if we’re financially irresponsible then we’re a burden on somebody else. Maybe on the entire society. So we’ve got a responsibility to ourselves and to others to be wise with our money. That doesn’t mean we handle our money to please all those around us, but it does mean we understand that spending more than we earn will negatively impact us. And others. That family that declares personal bankruptcy because their credit card debt became so enormous they couldn’t even make the minimum payments each month don’t likely consider that those losses suffered by all those businesses who won’t be paid have to be offset somehow. Profit or loss? Break-even? Ideally, we all want to profit. We want to profit financially, physically (health), emotionally, spiritually – in every way. Let’s roll this stuff over in our minds.

I’ve got more episodes “in the can” than ever before. It’s unprecedented for me here at LTW. Today’s show was recorded in the wee hours of the morning. Today. So I decided to hit the publish button. It seemed fitting for a week before our nation celebrates independence and freedom – two things I’m thankful for. Thanks for clicking that play button. <blockquote>Capitalism – an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state</blockquote> Practitioners and supporters of capitalism are capitalists. I’ve long declared myself a capitalist. Supporting industry controlled by private owners rather than the government is the foundation of why I’m a capitalist. Capitalism is also based on fair (high integrity) competition and merit. High integrity is often absent, but it’s also absent in socialism, communism, and all other isms – many based on philosophies opposed to competition and merit. Don’t confuse capitalism with consumption or consumerism. They’re somewhat tied together, but it’s a chicken versus egg thing. If I open up a business on Main Street selling custom-made T-shirts, the buying public – the market – will determine whether I make it or not. Sure, I’m in control of many variables, including my costs, my marketing, my location, my pricing, and more. But if I fail to get any customers, I’ll fail. The market will make a loser out of my custom-made T-shirt business. Entrepreneurs find needs and fill them. Or try to. Sometimes entrepreneurs see a need that really isn’t a need. The market says so by refusing to buy their solution. Sometimes entrepreneurs see a need that really is a need, but their execution or timing is poor. They fail. Sometimes entrepreneurs see a need, fill that need effectively and people buy. Perhaps in droves. Should The Individual Have The Power To Choose? Yes. Those who lean toward the left of the political spectrum seemingly place a high value on governance and legislation. That is, state imposition to encourage people to do what they feel is best. Those who lean toward the right of the spectrum seemingly place a higher value on the options and choices of the individual. Much of the debate focuses on whether or not the individual has the capacity or self-discipline to do what should be done – or what some think would be best. The simple version of the quandary is that if the power and freedom reside with the individual, then each individual has the ability to get it wrong. Or right. The point is whether or not their choice is legislated, but whether or not their choice will fit within the context of the greater good of society. So a person who decides that a life of theft will be their choice now faces societal consequences imposed by the government, whose task is to punish “evil-doers.”  1 Peter 2:14 “or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.” It’s the very reason God ordained earthly governments. Humans have the capacity to love. Having that choice necessarily means we have other choices. We don’t have to love something. Or somebody. We can choose alternatives between love and hate. And within the scale of love or hate – or anything in between – we can choose degrees. The extremes can be chosen or something more moderate. It’s up to us. Each of us. So It Goes With Our Money Decisions Individual choice is optimal. It’s also how God created us – with free will. <blockquote>free will, in philosophy and science, the supposed power or capacity of humans to make decisions or perform actions independently of any prior event or state of the universe</blockquote> Simply put, free will is our ability to make up our own minds. For this conversation, that means how we spend our money. Many choices impact others. Maybe every choice we make impacts somebody else. I’m not smart enough to figure that out, but it’s clear that if we’re financially irresponsible then we’re a burden on somebody else. Maybe on the entire society. So we’ve got a responsibility to ourselves and to others to be wise with our money. That doesn’t mean we handle our money to please all those around us, but it does mean we understand that spending more than we earn will negatively impact us. And others. That family that declares personal bankruptcy because their credit card debt became so enormous they couldn’t even make the minimum payments each month don’t likely consider that those losses suffered by all those businesses who won’t be paid have to be offset somehow. Profit or loss? Break-even? Ideally, we all want to profit. We want to profit financially, physically (health), emotionally, spiritually – in every way. Let’s roll this stuff over in our minds.

Capitalism, Not Consumption

“I’m sick of following my dreams, man. I’m just going to ask where they’re going and hook up with ’em later.”    —Mitch Hedberg Mitch was witty. “Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.”       —Jack Handey Jack Handey is a real person. A Texan. A funny guy. “Insomnia sharpens your math skills because you spend all night calculating how much sleep you’ll get if you’re able to ‘fall asleep right now.’”    —Anonymous I can attest that this is true. “I’m at a place in my life when errands are starting to count as going out.”   —Anonymous Proof that Anonymous is the most clever of all people. Besides, I’ve told you that Anonymous gave us my all-time favorite quote… “Everything is hard until it’s easy!” Age. Experience. Wisdom. The trio of brilliance. Or something. “You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.”   —George Burns Today’s show is about chasing our dreams. Mostly, I think it’s about figuring out whether or not we want to conclude the current chapter of our life. Until we decide we want to end this chapter, no point in crafting a new chapter. Then we have to decide how we want to conclude this chapter. How do we want it to end? The focal point comes next – are we sure we want to begin a new chapter? And what do want that chapter to look and sound like? It’s not easy work. But it’s doable.

<blockquote>“I’m sick of following my dreams, man. I’m just going to ask where they’re going and hook up with ’em later.”    —Mitch Hedberg</blockquote> Mitch was witty. <blockquote>“Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.”       —Jack Handey</blockquote> Jack Handey is a real person. A Texan. A funny guy. <blockquote>“Insomnia sharpens your math skills because you spend all night calculating how much sleep you’ll get if you’re able to ‘fall asleep right now.’”    —Anonymous</blockquote> I can attest that this is true. <blockquote>“I’m at a place in my life when errands are starting to count as going out.”   —Anonymous</blockquote> Proof that Anonymous is the most clever of all people. Besides, I’ve told you that Anonymous gave us my all-time favorite quote… <blockquote>“Everything is hard until it’s easy!”</blockquote> Age. Experience. Wisdom. The trio of brilliance. Or something. <blockquote>“You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.”   —George Burns</blockquote> Today’s show is about chasing our dreams. Mostly, I think it’s about figuring out whether or not we want to conclude the current chapter of our life. Until we decide we want to end this chapter, no point in crafting a new chapter. Then we have to decide how we want to conclude this chapter. How do we want it to end? The focal point comes next – are we sure we want to begin a new chapter? And what do want that chapter to look and sound like? It’s not easy work. But it’s doable.

Hooking Up With Our Dreams

An unplanned episode, but it’s how I roll. Well, it’s how I’m flowing these days. Speaking of flowing, let’s talk about cash-flowing life. No matter how old or young we are we can all benefit from a bit of sober thought about our lifestyle, our incomes, our investments, our expenses, and our financial welfare.

An unplanned episode, but it’s how I roll. Well, it’s how I’m flowing these days. Speaking of flowing, let’s talk about cash-flowing life. No matter how old or young we are we can all benefit from a bit of sober thought about our lifestyle, our incomes, our investments, our expenses, and our financial welfare.

Cash Flowing Life & Taking Some Chips Off The Table

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.     – Henry David Thoreau How did you grow up viewing money? Making it and spending it? I suppose all of us have a relationship with money based largely on how we grew up. I don’t pretend to be a financial expert, but I do have a view – and a relationship with MONEY.

<blockquote>The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.     – Henry David Thoreau</blockquote> How did you grow up viewing money? Making it and spending it? I suppose all of us have a relationship with money based largely on how we grew up. I don’t pretend to be a financial expert, but I do have a view – and a relationship with MONEY.

What’s Your Relationship With Money?

What are you pursuing? What would you like to pursue, but maybe you’re afraid? Me? One item I’m pursuing is an upgrade for The Yellow Studio – the new Rode Rodecaster Pro II. Isn’t it gorgeous? 😀    Today’s show is about pursuing dreams, chasing ambitions, and achieving our ideal outcome. But it’s mostly about the role we play in serving others as they pursue their ideal outcome! Some folks enjoy raining on other people’s parades. Others of us rather enjoy a good parade. The last thing we want to do is diminish the frequency or power of a good parade.

What are you pursuing? What would you like to pursue, but maybe you’re afraid? Me? One item I’m pursuing is an upgrade for The Yellow Studio – the <a href="https://rode.com/en/interfaces-and-mixers/rodecaster-series/rodecaster-pro-ii" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">new Rode Rodecaster Pro II</a>. Isn’t it gorgeous? 😀 Today’s show is about pursuing dreams, chasing ambitions, and achieving our ideal outcome. But it’s mostly about the role we play in serving others as they pursue their ideal outcome! Some folks enjoy raining on other people’s parades. Others of us rather enjoy a good parade. The last thing we want to do is diminish the frequency or power of a good parade.

How To Watch More Parades

The headline was clearly meant to tempt me to click it. So I did. But I didn’t read it…until I hit the record button. 29 Careless Ways Retirees Waste Money Let’s see how well this list was curated. I also give a shout-out to a golfer in today’s show. Shocking, since I don’t golf. But I love rather love golf courses. Especially the ones inside Hot Springs Village.

The headline was clearly meant to tempt me to click it. So I did. But I didn’t read it…until I hit the record button. <h2><a href="https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/29-careless-ways-retirees-waste-160043377.html" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">29 Careless Ways Retirees Waste Money</a></h2> Let’s see how well this list was curated. I also give a shout-out to a golfer in today’s show. Shocking, since I don’t golf. But I love rather love golf courses. Especially the ones inside <a href="https://HSVInsideOutc.om" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Hot Springs Village</a>.

How Many Ways Can You Waste Money?

“The wise adapt themselves to circumstances, as water molds itself to the pitcher.” – Chinese Proverb Things change. Sometimes quickly. A phone call wakes you. Middle-of-the-night phone calls are never good. Dream jobs aren’t offered at 3 am. Sweepstakes winners aren’t awakened with the news. Suddenly your life is different. How different depends on the news at the other end of the phone. There was a pre-phone call ideal outcome. Now there’s a post-phone call ideal outcome. They don’t likely resemble each other. “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw Other changes – even sudden ones – may not be as dramatic. Or devastating. But they can still prompt a change in direction. A change in motivation. A change in our ideal outcome. Have you ever wanted something so badly it consumed you? You thought of it often. You planned. Strategized. Committed yourself to figure it out. Then something changed. A circumstance. A new situation. A new challenge. A new opportunity. Maybe suddenly, maybe not – your passion diminished. The passion for pursuing that ideal outcome weakened. Maybe it even evaporated. Because you now have a new ideal outcome. You changed your mind. You adjusted. Adapted. To new information, a new situation or something that prompted you to see things differently. “Change before you have to.” – Jack Welch Some dreams die. Others change. New dreams are born. Maybe. But new directions undoubtedly emerge…dream or no. What do you most want when it comes to an outcome? Why? Are you in this alone or does your ideal outcome involve or include somebody else? Age, experience, insight, wisdom. These things matter. But their counterparts do, too. Youth. Inexperience. Lack of insight. Foolishness. That’s why ideal outcomes are personal. Johnny Deep’s ideal outcome would be a massive multi-million dollar judgment against Amber Heard. Ms. Heard’s ideal outcome would be a massive multi-million dollar judgment against Johnny Deep. One or both are going to be horribly disappointed. Maybe one of them will do a celebration dance when this ordeal is over. Maybe both will leave the courthouse slumped shouldered and weeping. Or screaming. That seems more their habit. 😉 Ideal outcomes can be influenced by life’s circumstances, too. Professionally I’ve pursued and sought after a number of outcomes that happened…and many that didn’t. In retrospect, some of the failures served me well because the circumstances changed. Drastically in some cases. If your ideal outcome is an egg sunny side up, but the shell never break and the egg is boiling in water…well, bad news. You won’t be eating a sunny side up egg. But you’ll have a hard-boiled egg. You might want to make it a deviled egg. But it most certainly will never be a sunny side up egg! And you might find that’s to your advantage. I’ll bet you could tell us all about one time – likely more – where that happened to you. I never wanted to be in business. I wanted to write. To speak. To communicate stories. But I fell in love with music and that method of storytelling. Some kids grabbed guitars or sat at pianos or drumsets. Their ideal outcome was to learn to play. My ideal outcome was different. The urge to play an instrument never dawned on me, except in some wishful thinking kind of way. “Wouldn’t it be great if I could play the guitar reasonably well?” Instead, I most wanted to listen to music. My passion was enjoying the performance of others. But my passion for listening to music led me to walk in cold to a local hi-fi store and ask for a job selling stereo gear, something I’d never done before. It seemed like a good idea ’cause I knew a lot about stereo gear even though I didn’t own any good stuff. I loved music and the equipment that would faithfully play the records I loved. It was just something I loved. I was a teenager. I never intended it to become a career. But it did. Sometimes ideal outcomes are like that. They happen even though we didn’t plan on it. I often wonder what life might have been like if I had made different choices. By the time I got into journalism school, I was wishing I could stay on a college campus teaching some aspect of journalism. For a variety of reasons – life circumstances and other priorities – I knew it wouldn’t be possible. I only dreamed about it, but I continued to go to class and work (at the stereo shop). Sometimes a degree of success determines the outcome, ideal or not. I was pretty good at selling stereo gear. I was personable, truthful, and honest and I knew the gear really well. The job was straight commission, which meant if I sold something I made something and if I sold nothing, I made nothing. I consistently did well. If you’re gonna do something, do it well. But doing it well meant staying in it. Had I not been good at it I would have certainly been fired or quit. And moved on to something else. Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I’d been bad at selling stereo gear. What would have been next? We’ll never know. But I do sometimes wonder. What might have been? It’s a question we all ask ourselves. Sometimes. And I’m not talking about regret. It’s more about wonder and curiosity. There’s an elephant in the room when it comes to ideal outcomes. Well, specifically about pursuing ideal outcomes or considering what might we think our ideal outcome will be. In our minds, it’s always ideal. It works out perfectly. It’s successful. Ideal outcomes are never failures. Not in our minds. But I could have been fired as a young stereo salesman because I was no good at it. And I could have pursued trying to get on the faculty of a journalism school only to be stuck teaching a bunch of 8th graders somewhere. That wasn’t what I had in mind. Not my ideal outcome. Not my dream idea. But it could have turned out that way. Failure is always a possibility. Some might argue, a probability. Which is why ideal outcomes can – and often SHOULD – change. We have to have enough self-awareness to know, as best we can. “A man’s gotta know his limitations,” said Harry Callahan, aka Dirty Harry.   I know my limitations. I’m intimately acquainted with them. 😉 But there are some that I honestly am not sure about. Maybe they just exist in my head. They may not be real at all. And I may never really know. What I don’t know won’t hurt me, right? Hardly. It’s what we don’t know that can kill us. So it’s important we get our ideal outcome as right as possible. Not because achieving it is the thing, but because pursuing it is. It’s the quest to get better. The pursuit of improvement. To make ourselves better. To improve our situation. To put ourselves in a better position. A better place. To be…somewhere better. To be…someone better! “When something goes wrong in your life, just yell ‘Plot Twist’ and move on.” – Anonymous

<blockquote>“The wise adapt themselves to circumstances, as water molds itself to the pitcher.” – Chinese Proverb</blockquote> Things change. Sometimes quickly. A phone call wakes you. Middle-of-the-night phone calls are never good. Dream jobs aren’t offered at 3 am. Sweepstakes winners aren’t awakened with the news. Suddenly your life is different. How different depends on the news at the other end of the phone. There was a pre-phone call ideal outcome. Now there’s a post-phone call ideal outcome. They don’t likely resemble each other. <blockquote>“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw</blockquote> Other changes – even sudden ones – may not be as dramatic. Or devastating. But they can still prompt a change in direction. A change in motivation. A change in our ideal outcome. Have you ever wanted something so badly it consumed you? You thought of it often. You planned. Strategized. Committed yourself to figure it out. Then something changed. A circumstance. A new situation. A new challenge. A new opportunity. Maybe suddenly, maybe not – your passion diminished. The passion for pursuing that ideal outcome weakened. Maybe it even evaporated. Because you now have a new ideal outcome. You changed your mind. You adjusted. Adapted. To new information, a new situation or something that prompted you to see things differently. <blockquote>“Change before you have to.” – Jack Welch</blockquote> Some dreams die. Others change. New dreams are born. Maybe. But new directions undoubtedly emerge…dream or no. What do you most want when it comes to an outcome? Why? Are you in this alone or does your ideal outcome involve or include somebody else? Age, experience, insight, wisdom. These things matter. But their counterparts do, too. Youth. Inexperience. Lack of insight. Foolishness. That’s why ideal outcomes are personal. Johnny Deep’s ideal outcome would be a massive multi-million dollar judgment against Amber Heard. Ms. Heard’s ideal outcome would be a massive multi-million dollar judgment against Johnny Deep. One or both are going to be horribly disappointed. Maybe one of them will do a celebration dance when this ordeal is over. Maybe both will leave the courthouse slumped shouldered and weeping. Or screaming. That seems more their habit. 😉 Ideal outcomes can be influenced by life’s circumstances, too. Professionally I’ve pursued and sought after a number of outcomes that happened…and many that didn’t. In retrospect, some of the failures served me well because the circumstances changed. Drastically in some cases. If your ideal outcome is an egg sunny side up, but the shell never break and the egg is boiling in water…well, bad news. You won’t be eating a sunny side up egg. But you’ll have a hard-boiled egg. You might want to make it a deviled egg. But it most certainly will never be a sunny side up egg! And you might find that’s to your advantage. I’ll bet you could tell us all about one time – likely more – where that happened to you. I never wanted to be in business. I wanted to write. To speak. To communicate stories. But I fell in love with music and that method of storytelling. Some kids grabbed guitars or sat at pianos or drumsets. Their ideal outcome was to learn to play. My ideal outcome was different. The urge to play an instrument never dawned on me, except in some wishful thinking kind of way. “Wouldn’t it be great if I could play the guitar reasonably well?” Instead, I most wanted to listen to music. My passion was enjoying the performance of others. But my passion for listening to music led me to walk in cold to a local hi-fi store and ask for a job selling stereo gear, something I’d never done before. It seemed like a good idea ’cause I knew a lot about stereo gear even though I didn’t own any good stuff. I loved music and the equipment that would faithfully play the records I loved. It was just something I loved. I was a teenager. I never intended it to become a career. But it did. Sometimes ideal outcomes are like that. They happen even though we didn’t plan on it. I often wonder what life might have been like if I had made different choices. By the time I got into journalism school, I was wishing I could stay on a college campus teaching some aspect of journalism. For a variety of reasons – life circumstances and other priorities – I knew it wouldn’t be possible. I only dreamed about it, but I continued to go to class and work (at the stereo shop). Sometimes a degree of success determines the outcome, ideal or not. I was pretty good at selling stereo gear. I was personable, truthful, and honest and I knew the gear really well. The job was straight commission, which meant if I sold something I made something and if I sold nothing, I made nothing. I consistently did well. If you’re gonna do something, do it well. But doing it well meant staying in it. Had I not been good at it I would have certainly been fired or quit. And moved on to something else. Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I’d been bad at selling stereo gear. What would have been next? We’ll never know. But I do sometimes wonder. What might have been? It’s a question we all ask ourselves. Sometimes. And I’m not talking about regret. It’s more about wonder and curiosity. There’s an elephant in the room when it comes to ideal outcomes. Well, specifically about pursuing ideal outcomes or considering what might we think our ideal outcome will be. In our minds, it’s always ideal. It works out perfectly. It’s successful. Ideal outcomes are never failures. Not in our minds. But I could have been fired as a young stereo salesman because I was no good at it. And I could have pursued trying to get on the faculty of a journalism school only to be stuck teaching a bunch of 8th graders somewhere. That wasn’t what I had in mind. Not my ideal outcome. Not my dream idea. But it could have turned out that way. Failure is always a possibility. Some might argue, a probability. Which is why ideal outcomes can – and often SHOULD – change. We have to have enough self-awareness to know, as best we can. “A man’s gotta know his limitations,” said Harry Callahan, aka Dirty Harry. I know my limitations. I’m intimately acquainted with them. 😉 But there are some that I honestly am not sure about. Maybe they just exist in my head. They may not be real at all. And I may never really know. What I don’t know won’t hurt me, right? Hardly. It’s what we don’t know that can kill us. So it’s important we get our ideal outcome as right as possible. Not because achieving it is the thing, but because pursuing it is. It’s the quest to get better. The pursuit of improvement. To make ourselves better. To improve our situation. To put ourselves in a better position. A better place. To be…somewhere better. To be…someone better! <blockquote>“When something goes wrong in your life, just yell ‘Plot Twist’ and move on.” – Anonymous</blockquote>

Your Ideal Outcome: It’s Okay To Change Your Mind

Archie Karas appeared on the YouTube channel, Soft White Underbelly. The two sound clips from Archie’s appearance on that web show provoke today’s conversation about two words: expectation and desire. Today’s show is a special – unplanned – episode. I hope you enjoy it.

<a href="https://youtu.be/UpiVPJkGZ5k" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Archie Karas</a> appeared on the YouTube channel, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/SoftWhiteUnderbelly" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Soft White Underbelly</a>. The two sound clips from Archie’s appearance on that web show provoke today’s conversation about two words: expectation and desire. Today’s show is a special – unplanned – episode. I hope you enjoy it.

Nothing Is For Free In This World

Today’s show was provoked by watching Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger conduct the 2022 Berkshire Hathaway stockholders’ meeting. Well, that and getting older. There’s a good reason why “Hey, get off my lawn” is attributed to old guys. 😉

Today’s show was provoked by watching Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger conduct the 2022 Berkshire Hathaway stockholders’ meeting. Well, that and getting older. There’s a good reason why “Hey, get off my lawn” is attributed to old guys. 😉

The Quirkiness Of Old Age

Today’s show is about YOU. Helping you through whatever you’re going through right now. Whether you’re in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s or 60s — or whether you’re younger or older than that…you’re going through something right now. Probably a number of things! Recorded in the early morning hours of Monday, May 16, 2022, today’s show has just one aim: to help you figure out what’s next. Just the very next step. It’s about making a decision, then acting on that decision. I hope this episode is helpful.

Today’s show is about YOU. Helping you through whatever you’re going through right now. Whether you’re in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s or 60s — or whether you’re younger or older than that…you’re going through something right now. Probably a number of things! Recorded in the early morning hours of Monday, May 16, 2022, today’s show has just one aim: to help you figure out what’s next. Just the very next step. It’s about making a decision, then acting on that decision. I hope this episode is helpful.

What’s Next? What Do You Most Need To Do Right Now?

Daily news is scary. Really scary. Real estate news. Tax news. Gas prices news. Inflation. Short supplies. Healthcare. Moral decay. Cancel culture. Deep fakes. Personal finance. Career. Scary is everywhere! Everywhere. As a little kid one particular movie on TV scared me, Bunny Lake Is Missing. Encore.org is an organization I’ve been aware of for about 10 years now, thanks to an author who wrote a book I’m fond of – Marci Alboher. The book, published in 2007, was before Ms. Alboher was involved in Encore. I’m a fan of the book: One Person / Multiple Careers: The New Model For Work/Life Success. Here’s an explanation from the Encore website: Encore.org was founded on the belief that the aging of America isn’t so much a problem to be solved as it is an opportunity to be seized. For 20 years, we’ve worked to change cultural expectations for the years beyond 50 and spark a movement around second acts for the greater good. In our own second act, we bring older and younger changemakers together to solve problems, bridge divides, and co-create the future. I’m at the encore phase of life. Truth be told, I’ve been at the encore phase for years! And it can be scary. No, it is often scary. When you’re determined to cash flow your life – and I am – it’s both scary and invigorating. Scary because like everybody else – and everything else – it’s largely unpredictable. We aim for an ideal outcome with the realization that there are going to be challenges we know nothing about. Add those to the known challenges and it’s enough to make a body want to stay in bed all day! What’s going to happen with this economy? Interest rates are on the rise reaching new heights that an entire generation (or two) have never seen. Me? I’ve had a 14% mortgage before – and that was with an excellent credit score. But I’ve not seen anything like this – uncontrolled inflation, abundant supply of money, limited supply of products, out of control demand for almost everything. It’s an intersection of things that don’t make sense to me. Scary. We’re all afraid of something. We’re all going through something. And we’re all just trying to figure it out. I hope to be helpful as you make your journey.  P.S. It was 9 years ago today when I lost my lifelong best friend, Stanley. I won’t belabor it today because I’ve talked about him here enough I suspect.

Daily news is scary. Really scary. Real estate news. Tax news. Gas prices news. Inflation. Short supplies. Healthcare. Moral decay. Cancel culture. Deep fakes. Personal finance. Career. Scary is everywhere! Everywhere. As a little kid one particular movie on TV scared me, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058997/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Bunny Lake Is Missing</a>. <a href="https://Encore.org" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Encore.org</a> is an organization I’ve been aware of for about 10 years now, thanks to an author who wrote a book I’m fond of – <a href="https://encore.org/marci-alboher/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Marci Alboher</a>. The book, published in 2007, was before Ms. Alboher was involved in Encore. I’m a fan of the book: <a href="https://amzn.to/3skGHp0" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">One Person / Multiple Careers: The New Model For Work/Life Success</a>. Here’s an explanation from the Encore website: <blockquote><a href="http://Encore.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Encore.org</a> was founded on the belief that the aging of America isn’t so much a problem to be solved as it is an opportunity to be seized. For 20 years, we’ve worked to change cultural expectations for the years beyond 50 and spark a movement around second acts for the greater good. In our own second act, we bring older and younger changemakers together to solve problems, bridge divides, and co-create the future.</blockquote> I’m at the encore phase of life. Truth be told, I’ve been at the encore phase for years! And it can be scary. No, it is often scary. When you’re determined to cash flow your life – and I am – it’s both scary and invigorating. Scary because like everybody else – and everything else – it’s largely unpredictable. We aim for an ideal outcome with the realization that there are going to be challenges we know nothing about. Add those to the known challenges and it’s enough to make a body want to stay in bed all day! What’s going to happen with this economy? Interest rates are on the rise reaching new heights that an entire generation (or two) have never seen. Me? I’ve had a 14% mortgage before – and that was with an excellent credit score. But I’ve not seen anything like this – uncontrolled inflation, abundant supply of money, limited supply of products, out of control demand for almost everything. It’s an intersection of things that don’t make sense to me. Scary. We’re all afraid of something. We’re all going through something. And we’re all just trying to figure it out. I hope to be helpful as you make your journey. P.S. It was 9 years ago today when I lost my lifelong best friend, Stanley. I won’t belabor it today because <a href="https://leaningtowardwisdom.com/?s=Stanley+Elmore" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">I’ve talked about him here enough</a> I suspect.

When’s The Last Time You Were Scared?

There are many personality assessments – and other kinds of “tests” that can help us better understand ourselves. Hubspot has a nice list of them. Maybe our differences aren’t so much the issue. Maybe there’s something else that needs our attention.

There are many personality assessments – and other kinds of “tests” that can help us better understand ourselves. <a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/personality-tests" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Hubspot</a> has a nice list of them. Maybe our differences aren’t so much the issue. Maybe there’s something else that needs our attention.

What Are You Doing To Better Understand Yourself & Others?

This week I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger so rather than take the week off I fired up the webcam and recorded a show exclusively for the folks in our little Facebook group. If you’d like to see it, then go here and answer an easy question and I’ll likely let you inside. It’s a 36-minute episode that’s mostly about regret!

This week I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger so rather than take the week off I fired up the webcam and recorded a show exclusively for the folks in our little Facebook group. If you’d like to see it, then <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/LeaningTowardWisdom" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">go here</a> and answer an easy question and I’ll likely let you inside. It’s a 36-minute episode that’s mostly about regret!

April 28, 2022 – Exclusive Episode For The Facebook Group

I registered the domain – ZoomingOut.com – on May 22, 2004. It had nothing to do with photography – or my video conferencing platform of choice. Instead, it was focused on our attempt to see a bigger picture as a means of seeing the finer details. There never was a website at that address. I still own the domain, although it’s been for sale at a fairly high price for a while. I’m not anxious to sell it or get rid of it, but a person can only actually use so many domains and I already have too many (even though I’ve gone through one major purge about 2 years ago). I suppose I’m due another purging. Zooming Out was a phrase I first wrote down in early 2004 for reasons I don’t remember. My best recall is people were likely talking about narrowing in on things and that whole inability to see the forest for the trees was something I’ve battled in others all my life. While I’m very detail-oriented, I’ve mostly been frustrated by folks who can get intensely focused on the bark on a tree that they’re unable to see anything larger. It was my experience with such types that caused me to craft a sentence that I’ve lived by professionally for much of my life – “If everything is important, then nothing is important.” In other words, if we’re not able to prioritize and acknowledge that at this moment, something is more important than anything else, then we’ll chase every tangent that comes along deluded into thinking it all matters equally. I’ve never found any situation in life – personally or professionally – where that’s true. I’ve spent countless hours trying to help myself and others look at the bigger puzzle that we’re all trying to put together. My conviction – and experience – have proven that knowing we’re attempting to assemble a 1000 piece puzzle of a seascape can help us better figure out where any single specific piece may fit. And that’s largely how we may be able to best figure things out, including ourselves. In the mid to late 80s a Ph.D. consultant in San Francisco named Jan Halpern wrote a book based on research she had done about successful men. The book was entitled, “Quiet Desperation: The Truth About Successful Men.” I’ve still got my copy and think of the book often – so much so, I’ll pick it up pretty regularly to go back through various sections of it. On page 49 is a section titled, “QUESTIONING THE ETERNAL TRUTHS.” Sure, it’s a bit click baity – written before the Internet and clicks were even a thing – but she makes some grand points. She writes… There are many intellectual and emotional barriers that must be broken through, reevaluated and discarded before you can become comfortable in your own skin. I suggest you begin to question the messages and premises you have been raised with that prevent you from knowing your private self. By challenging these “eternal” truths, many have come to reject the notion that men don’t feel. Moreover, doing so has helped them to alleviate the haunting emptiness and confusion that plagued their moments of solitude. Let me make an allowance here that while the author’s research was specifically on successful men, much of it has a broader application. It began as a market research project in 1977 and wound up involving some four thousand men who operated within leadership roles of Fortune 500 companies. Even the author acknowledges in the preface of the book that it could apply to some women, but she focused on men. And I’m not so interested in the details of her research for today’s show – or the fact that it’s solely about men. I’m coming at it in true Zooming Out fashion looking at a bigger, broader picture of all of us – as humans.  After all, here were are in 2022 at a place I never thought we’d be. A place where people can’t or are afraid to even define what it is to be a woman (see Matt Walsh’s appearance on The Dr. Phil Show). A place where people feel pressured to insert pronouns to which they “identify.” Well, folks – we have met the enemy and he is us. We’ve lost our collective minds in bending to the pressures of abhorrent and aberrant behavior. Immorality is now an acceptable lifestyle choice. We’ll raise millions of dollars to stop animal shelters from killing, but we’ll abort about a million babies each year in America.* Maybe more. I couldn’t find data beyond 2014, but I likely didn’t try hard enough. No matter, it’s an enormous number and mostly, we think very little of it because it’s a matter of selfish convenience. And if you think I’ve gone to preaching, well, it’s my podcast and I’ll preach if I want to. 😉 * According to 2014 data from the Guttmacher Institute, there were a total of 926,240 abortions in the United States. I don’t mention all these things for political wrangling but to point out that such things are impacting us. Deeply. I mean, after all, if we don’t know whether or not our pronoun is HE or SHE, and we don’t know if we’re a MAN or a WOMAN, then it stands to good reason – we’re completely lost and without a compass. Or a flashlight. Hopelessly and desperately lost. And that’s today, not in the late 70s when Jan (and yes, Jan is a woman) did her work, which wound up as a book. Do you suppose things have gotten better? Or worse? Oh yes, Virginia, they’ve grown much, much worse! And the quiet desperation is still mostly quiet with the exception of a few who live out loud, but privately are filled with all kinds of angst and fear. The strange thing about self-examination is that it’s necessarily self-centered, but the result hopefully is anything but. What’s the point of self-examination? And improving ourselves? Why should we be interested in growth? Because the alternative isn’t very good. It could even be disastrous. Zooming out is about understanding – the clear comprehension of risks and rewards. It’s largely about consequences – both good and bad. And our ability to properly comprehend our choices ahead of time. You know my definition of wisdom is “getting it right in real-time.” That’s what Zooming Out is about. Figuring out the best course of action before we move. It beats the impulsive actions that have to be corrected. That’s gonna happen plenty so we might want to minimize making that our way of life.  When I was a young parent I thought if we could just train our children to have a strong conscience based on God, then we’d be giving our children the best leg up possible. As I’ve aged, my mind is even more made up that my wife and I were correct with that goal. That’s what we did. We leaned hard into the work.  It’s the work of Zooming Out and helping our children (and anybody else) train their thoughts to think soberly about their behavior before they engage in it. Of course, it begins with me. The work is personal to each of us. We have to concentrate on our own ability to understand – the clearly comprehend what we think, how we think, our choices and our actions. Those of us dedicated to the art of Zooming Out are devoted to the pursuit and practice of wisdom. We want to behave wisely and live the most profitable life we can – profitable in the sense that we’re responsible, helpful people committed to always doing the right thing. That graphic to the left is my work email signature. It’s a business philosophy that I wrote over 33 years ago. Nothing has changed except my resolve to live up to it.

I registered the domain – <a href="http://ZoomingOut.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ZoomingOut.com</a> – on May 22, 2004. It had nothing to do with photography – or my video conferencing platform of choice. Instead, it was focused on our attempt to see a bigger picture as a means of seeing the finer details. There never was a website at that address. I still own the domain, although it’s been for sale at a fairly high price for a while. I’m not anxious to sell it or get rid of it, but a person can only actually use so many domains and I already have too many (even though I’ve gone through one major purge about 2 years ago). I suppose I’m due another purging. Zooming Out was a phrase I first wrote down in early 2004 for reasons I don’t remember. My best recall is people were likely talking about narrowing in on things and that whole inability to see the forest for the trees was something I’ve battled in others all my life. While I’m very detail-oriented, I’ve mostly been frustrated by folks who can get intensely focused on the bark on a tree that they’re unable to see anything larger. It was my experience with such types that caused me to craft a sentence that I’ve lived by professionally for much of my life – “If everything is important, then nothing is important.” In other words, if we’re not able to prioritize and acknowledge that at this moment, something is more important than anything else, then we’ll chase every tangent that comes along deluded into thinking it all matters equally. I’ve never found any situation in life – personally or professionally – where that’s true. I’ve spent countless hours trying to help myself and others look at the bigger puzzle that we’re all trying to put together. My conviction – and experience – have proven that knowing we’re attempting to assemble a 1000 piece puzzle of a seascape can help us better figure out where any single specific piece may fit. And that’s largely how we may be able to best figure things out, including ourselves. In the mid to late 80s a Ph.D. consultant in San Francisco named Jan Halpern wrote a book based on research she had done about successful men. The book was entitled, “Quiet Desperation: The Truth About Successful Men.” I’ve still got my copy and think of the book often – so much so, I’ll pick it up pretty regularly to go back through various sections of it. On page 49 is a section titled, “QUESTIONING THE ETERNAL TRUTHS.” Sure, it’s a bit click baity – written before the Internet and clicks were even a thing – but she makes some grand points. She writes… <blockquote>There are many intellectual and emotional barriers that must be broken through, reevaluated and discarded before you can become comfortable in your own skin. I suggest you begin to question the messages and premises you have been raised with that prevent you from knowing your private self. By challenging these “eternal” truths, many have come to reject the notion that men don’t feel. Moreover, doing so has helped them to alleviate the haunting emptiness and confusion that plagued their moments of solitude.</blockquote> Let me make an allowance here that while the author’s research was specifically on successful men, much of it has a broader application. It began as a market research project in 1977 and wound up involving some four thousand men who operated within leadership roles of Fortune 500 companies. Even the author acknowledges in the preface of the book that it could apply to some women, but she focused on men. And I’m not so interested in the details of her research for today’s show – or the fact that it’s solely about men. I’m coming at it in true Zooming Out fashion looking at a bigger, broader picture of all of us – as humans. After all, here were are in 2022 at a place I never thought we’d be. A place where people can’t or are afraid to even define what it is to be a woman (see Matt Walsh’s appearance on The Dr. Phil Show). A place where people feel pressured to insert pronouns to which they “identify.” Well, folks – we have met the enemy and he is us. We’ve lost our collective minds in bending to the pressures of abhorrent and aberrant behavior. Immorality is now an acceptable lifestyle choice. We’ll raise millions of dollars to stop animal shelters from killing, but we’ll abort about a million babies each year in America.* Maybe more. I couldn’t find data beyond 2014, but I likely didn’t try hard enough. No matter, it’s an enormous number and mostly, we think very little of it because it’s a matter of selfish convenience. And if you think I’ve gone to preaching, well, it’s my podcast and I’ll preach if I want to. 😉 * According to 2014 data from the Guttmacher Institute, there were a total of 926,240 abortions in the United States. I don’t mention all these things for political wrangling but to point out that such things are impacting us. Deeply. I mean, after all, if we don’t know whether or not our pronoun is HE or SHE, and we don’t know if we’re a MAN or a WOMAN, then it stands to good reason – we’re completely lost and without a compass. Or a flashlight. Hopelessly and desperately lost. And that’s today, not in the late 70s when Jan (and yes, Jan is a woman) did her work, which wound up as a book. Do you suppose things have gotten better? Or worse? Oh yes, Virginia, they’ve grown much, much worse! And the quiet desperation is still mostly quiet with the exception of a few who live out loud, but privately are filled with all kinds of angst and fear. The strange thing about self-examination is that it’s necessarily self-centered, but the result hopefully is anything but. What’s the point of self-examination? And improving ourselves? Why should we be interested in growth? Because the alternative isn’t very good. It could even be disastrous. Zooming out is about understanding – the clear comprehension of risks and rewards. It’s largely about consequences – both good and bad. And our ability to properly comprehend our choices ahead of time. You know my definition of wisdom is “getting it right in real-time.” That’s what Zooming Out is about. Figuring out the best course of action before we move. It beats the impulsive actions that have to be corrected. That’s gonna happen plenty so we might want to minimize making that our way of life. When I was a young parent I thought if we could just train our children to have a strong conscience based on God, then we’d be giving our children the best leg up possible. As I’ve aged, my mind is even more made up that my wife and I were correct with that goal. That’s what we did. We leaned hard into the work. It’s the work of Zooming Out and helping our children (and anybody else) train their thoughts to think soberly about their behavior before they engage in it. Of course, it begins with me. The work is personal to each of us. We have to concentrate on our own ability to understand – the clearly comprehend what we think, how we think, our choices and our actions. Those of us dedicated to the art of Zooming Out are devoted to the pursuit and practice of wisdom. We want to behave wisely and live the most profitable life we can – profitable in the sense that we’re responsible, helpful people committed to always doing the right thing. That graphic to the left is my work email signature. It’s a business philosophy that I wrote over 33 years ago. Nothing has changed except my resolve to live up to it.

Zooming Out: The Process Of Figuring It Out

We were young adults, maybe 20 or so, when it became a common refrain among us. “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” We’d chuckle, but it was true. Sadly, it was mostly just a humorous comment and not some moment of newly found determination. We never attempted to improve our circumstances. Rather, we just chuckled at poking fun at how our lives were going. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to improve, but we didn’t do much in the way of affecting change. Talk is cheap. And we were really cheap! I’ve been down. I’ve been out. And I’ve discovered that when you hit bottom you’re not necessarily done. There are always new lows you knew nothing about standing ready to show you firsthand, “Here we are!” The myth is persuasive. Wrong, but persuasive. Like all the deep fakes that infiltrate our brain daily (if not hourly). We see stories and believe them to be true. Never mind that it’s an illusion propped up behind some insecure, fear-filled idiot behind a keyboard who has less of a clue about things than we do. And we know we’re stupid! 😉 Bigger is better. And so is more. No, it’s not. There’s enormous value in small, powerful, and profitable endeavors. Mostly, there’s value in small, powerful, and profitable steps toward improvement. That’s the point of today’s show, but such steps don’t get taken until we reach our “enough is enough” point. We’re just one big break away. One bit of luck that will change everything. I was in my teens when I started selling stereo gear at a local hi-fi shop. No sales experience other than going from house to house in the neighborhood asking people if I could mow their lawn for $10. I quickly learned, as a straight commission salesperson (which means I earned nothing unless I sold something), salespeople can behave like gamblers, always thinking “the next one” will be the big one. Even more quickly, I learned there is no next big one. There was some moronic, delusional fantasy that the Universe would bend to our need for the next sale to be a big one that paid high commissions. Why would the Universe care that I wanted a new set of wider tires for my car? Fact is, the Universe not only lacks concern for such things, but mostly the Universe has no say in the matter. Shoppers did. And if shoppers came in the store they certainly didn’t want new tires for my car. They had their own desires and if I wasn’t able to help them get what they wanted, well, see ya later new tires! I had read and re-read Dale Carnegie’s book, “How To Win Friends &amp; Influence People.” I knew the truism he taught about helping others get what they want. Some guy in Dallas with a funny name would come along later and make it one of his more famous quotes… You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want. – Zig Ziglar Never one to fawn over those “motivational” speaker types, I was skeptical from the get-go about all that. And I was smart enough to know absolutes are dangerous, so when Zig told me I could have EVERYTHING IN LIFE I WANTED…well, I knew it made for a powerfully good quote, but I also knew it was complete rubbish. 😉 But by the time I turned 17 I absolutely knew, as a salesperson, that I had to deliver what shoppers most wanted in order to achieve whatever financial goals I might have. So I quickly realized it wasn’t merely about helping others get what they want, it was – at least for me as a hi-fi sales guy – about helping shoppers get whatever they wanted in a stereo system. If, like me, they wanted wider tires for their car, well, I wasn’t going to be much help. But if I wanted wider tires for my car – and I did – then I knew my path forward was in helping them get whatever they wanted in a hi-fi setup. Context matters. That path forward was a fast lesson for me. And I wish I were better at remaining disciplined about it, but I haven’t been. Looking at somebody else makes it seem so easy. So clear. But looking at oneself can be difficult. He tells me he’s going to go get a job. “What kind of job?” I ask. He rattles off the name of a big company known for hiring manual labor workers for a pretty good hourly rate. “Okay,” I said. “And why?” He proceeds to convince me it’ll be his best path forward. I ask him about a few professional certifications he has. Ones he’s earned through many hours of study, effort and money. “What will you do with those?” I ask. “Nothing,” he says. He’s focused on trying to earn a living. No matter how modest. I get it. “If you consider the resources you have available to you, it seems to me, these professional qualifications are near the top of the list,” I remark. “Anybody, even poor-performing professionals with those credentials, earn far more than the job you’d be applying for to work in some warehouse,” I say. I challenge him further because it all seems so clear to me – and I know at this moment, he’s confused. Even desperate. Which is why he has to get to place where he’s thinking more clearly. “Picture the least successful person in your area with these professional certifications. How much do figure they earn in a month?” I ask. It takes a while, but he comes up with a number. A number significantly higher than the starting wage of the job he’s talking about applying for. But it’s also a number that doesn’t seem terribly reasonable given what he and I both know about these certifications. I suspect he’s guessing low. Very low. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a lofty number. It’s not write-home-and-brag-to-your-mamma kind of money, but it’s not likely what the LEAST successful person in his area is earning either. And it certainly beats an hourly wage. He sees it. I see it. Question is, what’s he gonna do now? And what about those times when we’re in the muck alone with nobody to help us see what we can’t see? What then? I’ve sold everything I can sell, including some things I didn’t want to sell. But you gotta do what you gotta do. I did. A friend expressed interest in a piece of video gear I had. I was desperate for $100. One hundred dollars. It may as well have been a million. It seemed like such an enormous amount of money to me at the time. I called him up, reminding him of his interest in this gear. It was easily worth more than $100, but in that desperation, I asked him if he’d buy it. He said he’d better not. And there went my dream of the Universe answering my need for one hundred dollars. I don’t remember what happened, but here I am today telling you that story so I clearly survived it. Even though I didn’t get $100 from him in exchange for that piece of equipment. I know this, my head was so far down I couldn’t see up. Maybe you’ve been there before. Maybe you’re there now. Scrambling just to figure out, “Now what?” It’s a tough row to hoe! Sadly, I’ve hoed that row too many times over the course of my life. It’s not the Universe. It’s YOU. It’s ME. We’re the constraint. We’re the hurdle and impediment. But we don’t think so. Surely it’s something else. Or somebody else. Partly it’s not wanting to accept blame – a’hem, responsibility. Easier to blame somebody else. Something else. Partly it’s because we think it’s more complex than it really is. If it’s US, then that can seem too easy. And we know nothing is easy. Everything is hard. Until it’s easy. (my favorite quote) Change is hard. Very hard. Even when we encounter some proverbial wake up call. Taylor Hawkins was the drummer of the rock band, The Foo Fighters. He was 50 when recently he summoned help due to chest pains. He died on March 25, 2022, with multiple substances in his bloodstream, including weed (THC), opioids and other things that may have contributed to his death. Turns out his heart was twice the normal size, likely due to years of drug abuse overworking the muscle’s ability to perform. Over 20 years ago on August 1, 2001, he overdosed on heroin, resulting in a two-week coma. He described it as a “real changing point.” Turns out, not so much. Like us, Taylor was likely delusional thinking he didn’t really change much. Or improve much. I mean, when you’re a top-rated rock star living a rockstar life…life is good. Until it isn’t. The wake-up call may have impacted him, but it didn’t stick. I’d love to tell you we’re better than him, but mostly we’re not. It doesn’t often stick for us either. Because we adjust. We acclimate. We settle into a certain way of thinking, believing, and behaving. Never realizing we’re neglectful. Or destructive. Or at the very least, getting in our own way – preventing ourselves from being better. Forget being your best – how do we even know what that is? – how about we just try to be a bit better than we are? I don’t do drugs. Never have. Yeah, I’m a prude like that. Always have been. Always will be. So I have no clue what a heroin overdose might be like, except watching them depicted in movies or on TV. Maybe some documentaries where you see the real thing. I’d think, for me, that might be a reaching your enough-is-enough moment, but it illustrates the depths of our delusions. I don’t have to take heroin to understand that. I’ve been deluded enough to pawn things for $40 cash before. Not for drugs, but for food. I’ve wept in the arms of my wife before because I couldn’t see daylight for all the darkness. I’ve experienced the weight of being a young father while working 80 hours a week to find a way forward and wondering if there even was such a way. Listen, it’d be great if the path forward was that hockey stick growth curve businesses are so fond of pursuing, but I don’t know anything who has lived such a life. I know plenty of people who want you to think that’s been their life, but I’m here to tell you – it has not been mine. Not by a long shot. I’m grateful to have strung together some good years, even a few great ones. I’m more grateful to have survived and learned from those pawn-shop years and the years where liquidation was as much the path forward as anything. It’s true that cash is king and when you’re willing – no, anxious – to take dimes on the dollar because your needs are so desperate, then you’re more in touch with the idea of reaching your “enough is enough” moment. I think of it often, and I even refer to it here in the podcast more than you might like, but the story of the prodigal son in the Bible is at the forefront for me when I think of hitting a point in life where I say, “Okay, enough is enough.” You can read it for yourself in Luke 15:11–32. In the parable, the boy who left home with the inheritance he demanded from his father, finds himself destitute and empty of everything. The money is gone. The friends, too. He left home so he’s got no family. He doesn’t even have enough food to eat, but he reaches a point in life where he’s had enough. The Bible describes it like this, (verse 17) “But when he came to himself,” he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!” The story doesn’t end there. Sadly, most times…ours does. We say things to ourselves just like he did. We think things. But we know he reached his “enough is enough” moment because verse 20 says, “And he arose and came to his father.” He acted at that moment. He used it. Leveraged it for his welfare. What was it about that moment? I don’t know. For reasons of his own, he’d had enough. I wish walking out of a pawn shop with forty dollars cash would have been my “enough is enough” moment, but thinking back…I’m not sure it was. I was so down and out I couldn’t see straight. Or think straight. And my confidence was so shot there was no way I was thinking, “I’m better than this.” Likely, I was thinking, “I deserve this.” Here’s what I’ve learned through the many “enough is enough” moments that I’ve endured — it’s not yet enough until I stop thinking about myself. It’s not yet enough until I stop focusing on my plight and suffering long enough to think about others and how they don’t deserve what I’m putting them through. Selfishness. Self-centeredness. It’s the culprit that stands in our way of being better. Ironic, isn’t it? That we don’t often achieve what we want or can because we’re the problem. It’s amazingly easy to get in our own way. To block progress. To refuse to change. To stubbornly dig in that things will never be better. To bury ourselves in pity thinking this is what we most deserve. But it may not matter what we deserve. What matters is what we’re going to do to alter the outcomes. What are you going to do? If this isn’t your “enough is enough” moment, then what’s it going to look like? What will it feel like? How will you know you’ve reached it? Like the prodigal, you’ll know when you know. And not until then. For him, it happened when he took a menial job feeding pigs and began to crave what they were eating. Yep, that’ll do it. 😉 It happened for me when I couldn’t even sell a friend a piece of gear for a hundred bucks. Or when I pawned something for forty dollars cash. And it has happened countless other times when I was so low I didn’t know what to do. It’s likely why I’ve spend most of my life fixated on a singular focus of helping others figure out “now what?” A singular question concentrating on the very next step…all because I have experienced what it is to not have the answer to that question in my own life. Something bigger.  Besides gratitude – which is largely an answer for most things – something bigger is also an answer. That something bigger is God. Oh, I know. You don’t believe in God. Or maybe you doubt there’s a God. Or maybe you think religion is some voodoo cult-type brainwashing. I don’t know when enough is enough for humanity to understand and believe the Bible account of creation. I don’t know what it’ll take for people to realize how much faith one must have that random chaos formed our world and our lives. And I certainly don’t know what it’ll take for you to reach an “enough is enough” moment where you’re so desperate you realize there’s help you need no human being can provide. Knee-bending moments where we cry out to God because we’ve nowhere else to turn. Been there, done that. Many, many times. The years of being dragged down and out, then back again have taught me a few things that I’ll leave you with. Do with them as you please.  My “enough is enough” moments have never been strategically planned. They’ve simply happened based on the circumstances of my life. Not all my “enough is enough” moments have been my own doing, but they have all been within my power to respond better. Some “enough is enough” moments can be overcome. Others must simply be endured. Eternity changes everything and that’s why God matters. Because this life isn’t all there is. I have to leverage all my “enough is enough” moments to make the journey from this life to the next life. The only goal of life here is to make sure heaven is the next stop. Nothing else matters!

We were young adults, maybe 20 or so, when it became a common refrain among us. “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” We’d chuckle, but it was true. Sadly, it was mostly just a humorous comment and not some moment of newly found determination. We never attempted to improve our circumstances. Rather, we just chuckled at poking fun at how our lives were going. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to improve, but we didn’t do much in the way of affecting change. Talk is cheap. And we were really cheap! I’ve been down. I’ve been out. And I’ve discovered that when you hit bottom you’re not necessarily done. There are always new lows you knew nothing about standing ready to show you firsthand, “Here we are!” The myth is persuasive. Wrong, but persuasive. Like all the deep fakes that infiltrate our brain daily (if not hourly). We see stories and believe them to be true. Never mind that it’s an illusion propped up behind some insecure, fear-filled idiot behind a keyboard who has less of a clue about things than we do. And we know we’re stupid! 😉 <blockquote>Bigger is better. And so is more.</blockquote> No, it’s not. There’s enormous value in small, powerful, and profitable endeavors. Mostly, there’s value in small, powerful, and profitable steps toward improvement. That’s the point of today’s show, but such steps don’t get taken until we reach our “enough is enough” point. We’re just one big break away. One bit of luck that will change everything. I was in my teens when I started selling stereo gear at a local hi-fi shop. No sales experience other than going from house to house in the neighborhood asking people if I could mow their lawn for $10. I quickly learned, as a straight commission salesperson (which means I earned nothing unless I sold something), salespeople can behave like gamblers, always thinking “the next one” will be the big one. Even more quickly, I learned there is no next big one. There was some moronic, delusional fantasy that the Universe would bend to our need for the next sale to be a big one that paid high commissions. Why would the Universe care that I wanted a new set of wider tires for my car? Fact is, the Universe not only lacks concern for such things, but mostly the Universe has no say in the matter. Shoppers did. And if shoppers came in the store they certainly didn’t want new tires for my car. They had their own desires and if I wasn’t able to help them get what they wanted, well, see ya later new tires! I had read and re-read <a href="https://amzn.to/3Nz0YQF" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Dale Carnegie’s book, “How To Win Friends &amp; Influence People.”</a> I knew the truism he taught about helping others get what they want. Some guy in Dallas with a funny name would come along later and make it one of his more famous quotes… <blockquote>You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want. – Zig Ziglar</blockquote> Never one to fawn over those “motivational” speaker types, I was skeptical from the get-go about all that. And I was smart enough to know absolutes are dangerous, so when Zig told me I could have EVERYTHING IN LIFE I WANTED…well, I knew it made for a powerfully good quote, but I also knew it was complete rubbish. 😉 But by the time I turned 17 I absolutely knew, as a salesperson, that I had to deliver what shoppers most wanted in order to achieve whatever financial goals I might have. So I quickly realized it wasn’t merely about helping others get what they want, it was – at least for me as a hi-fi sales guy – about helping shoppers get whatever they wanted in a stereo system. If, like me, they wanted wider tires for their car, well, I wasn’t going to be much help. But if I wanted wider tires for my car – and I did – then I knew my path forward was in helping them get whatever they wanted in a hi-fi setup. Context matters. That path forward was a fast lesson for me. And I wish I were better at remaining disciplined about it, but I haven’t been. Looking at somebody else makes it seem so easy. So clear. But looking at oneself can be difficult. He tells me he’s going to go get a job. “What kind of job?” I ask. He rattles off the name of a big company known for hiring manual labor workers for a pretty good hourly rate. “Okay,” I said. “And why?” He proceeds to convince me it’ll be his best path forward. I ask him about a few professional certifications he has. Ones he’s earned through many hours of study, effort and money. “What will you do with those?” I ask. “Nothing,” he says. He’s focused on trying to earn a living. No matter how modest. I get it. “If you consider the resources you have available to you, it seems to me, these professional qualifications are near the top of the list,” I remark. “Anybody, even poor-performing professionals with those credentials, earn far more than the job you’d be applying for to work in some warehouse,” I say. I challenge him further because it all seems so clear to me – and I know at this moment, he’s confused. Even desperate. Which is why he has to get to place where he’s thinking more clearly. “Picture the least successful person in your area with these professional certifications. How much do figure they earn in a month?” I ask. It takes a while, but he comes up with a number. A number significantly higher than the starting wage of the job he’s talking about applying for. But it’s also a number that doesn’t seem terribly reasonable given what he and I both know about these certifications. I suspect he’s guessing low. Very low. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a lofty number. It’s not write-home-and-brag-to-your-mamma kind of money, but it’s not likely what the LEAST successful person in his area is earning either. And it certainly beats an hourly wage. He sees it. I see it. Question is, what’s he gonna do now? And what about those times when we’re in the muck alone with nobody to help us see what we can’t see? What then? I’ve sold everything I can sell, including some things I didn’t want to sell. But you gotta do what you gotta do. I did. A friend expressed interest in a piece of video gear I had. I was desperate for $100. One hundred dollars. It may as well have been a million. It seemed like such an enormous amount of money to me at the time. I called him up, reminding him of his interest in this gear. It was easily worth more than $100, but in that desperation, I asked him if he’d buy it. He said he’d better not. And there went my dream of the Universe answering my need for one hundred dollars. I don’t remember what happened, but here I am today telling you that story so I clearly survived it. Even though I didn’t get $100 from him in exchange for that piece of equipment. I know this, my head was so far down I couldn’t see up. Maybe you’ve been there before. Maybe you’re there now. Scrambling just to figure out, “Now what?” It’s a tough row to hoe! Sadly, I’ve hoed that row too many times over the course of my life. It’s not the Universe. It’s YOU. It’s ME. We’re the constraint. We’re the hurdle and impediment. But we don’t think so. Surely it’s something else. Or somebody else. Partly it’s not wanting to accept blame – a’hem, responsibility. Easier to blame somebody else. Something else. Partly it’s because we think it’s more complex than it really is. If it’s US, then that can seem too easy. And we know nothing is easy. Everything is hard. Until it’s easy. (my favorite quote) Change is hard. Very hard. Even when we encounter some proverbial wake up call. Taylor Hawkins was the drummer of the rock band, The Foo Fighters. He was 50 when recently he summoned help due to chest pains. He died on March 25, 2022, with multiple substances in his bloodstream, including weed (THC), opioids and other things that may have contributed to his death. Turns out his heart was twice the normal size, likely due to years of drug abuse overworking the muscle’s ability to perform. Over 20 years ago on August 1, 2001, he overdosed on heroin, resulting in a two-week coma. He described it as a “real changing point.” Turns out, not so much. Like us, Taylor was likely delusional thinking he didn’t really change much. Or improve much. I mean, when you’re a top-rated rock star living a rockstar life…life is good. Until it isn’t. The wake-up call may have impacted him, but it didn’t stick. I’d love to tell you we’re better than him, but mostly we’re not. It doesn’t often stick for us either. Because we adjust. We acclimate. We settle into a certain way of thinking, believing, and behaving. Never realizing we’re neglectful. Or destructive. Or at the very least, getting in our own way – preventing ourselves from being better. Forget being your best – how do we even know what that is? – how about we just try to be a bit better than we are? I don’t do drugs. Never have. Yeah, I’m a prude like that. Always have been. Always will be. So I have no clue what a heroin overdose might be like, except watching them depicted in movies or on TV. Maybe some documentaries where you see the real thing. I’d think, for me, that might be a reaching your enough-is-enough moment, but it illustrates the depths of our delusions. I don’t have to take heroin to understand that. I’ve been deluded enough to pawn things for $40 cash before. Not for drugs, but for food. I’ve wept in the arms of my wife before because I couldn’t see daylight for all the darkness. I’ve experienced the weight of being a young father while working 80 hours a week to find a way forward and wondering if there even was such a way. Listen, it’d be great if the path forward was that hockey stick growth curve businesses are so fond of pursuing, but I don’t know anything who has lived such a life. I know plenty of people who want you to think that’s been their life, but I’m here to tell you – it has not been mine. Not by a long shot. I’m grateful to have strung together some good years, even a few great ones. I’m more grateful to have survived and learned from those pawn-shop years and the years where liquidation was as much the path forward as anything. It’s true that cash is king and when you’re willing – no, anxious – to take dimes on the dollar because your needs are so desperate, then you’re more in touch with the idea of reaching your “enough is enough” moment. I think of it often, and I even refer to it here in the podcast more than you might like, but the story of the prodigal son in the Bible is at the forefront for me when I think of hitting a point in life where I say, “Okay, enough is enough.” You can read it for yourself in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+15%3A11%E2%80%9332&amp;version=NKJV" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Luke 15:11–32</a>. In the parable, the boy who left home with the inheritance he demanded from his father, finds himself destitute and empty of everything. The money is gone. The friends, too. He left home so he’s got no family. He doesn’t even have enough food to eat, but he reaches a point in life where he’s had enough. The Bible describes it like this, (verse 17) “But when he came to himself,” he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!” The story doesn’t end there. Sadly, most times…ours does. We say things to ourselves just like he did. We think things. But we know he reached his “enough is enough” moment because verse 20 says, “And he arose and came to his father.” He acted at that moment. He used it. Leveraged it for his welfare. What was it about that moment? I don’t know. For reasons of his own, he’d had enough. I wish walking out of a pawn shop with forty dollars cash would have been my “enough is enough” moment, but thinking back…I’m not sure it was. I was so down and out I couldn’t see straight. Or think straight. And my confidence was so shot there was no way I was thinking, “I’m better than this.” Likely, I was thinking, “I deserve this.” Here’s what I’ve learned through the many “enough is enough” moments that I’ve endured — it’s not yet enough until I stop thinking about myself. It’s not yet enough until I stop focusing on my plight and suffering long enough to think about others and how they don’t deserve what I’m putting them through. Selfishness. Self-centeredness. It’s the culprit that stands in our way of being better. Ironic, isn’t it? That we don’t often achieve what we want or can because we’re the problem. It’s amazingly easy to get in our own way. To block progress. To refuse to change. To stubbornly dig in that things will never be better. To bury ourselves in pity thinking this is what we most deserve. But it may not matter what we deserve. What matters is what we’re going to do to alter the outcomes. What are you going to do? If this isn’t your “enough is enough” moment, then what’s it going to look like? What will it feel like? How will you know you’ve reached it? Like the prodigal, you’ll know when you know. And not until then. For him, it happened when he took a menial job feeding pigs and began to crave what they were eating. Yep, that’ll do it. 😉 It happened for me when I couldn’t even sell a friend a piece of gear for a hundred bucks. Or when I pawned something for forty dollars cash. And it has happened countless other times when I was so low I didn’t know what to do. It’s likely why I’ve spend most of my life fixated on a singular focus of helping others figure out “now what?” A singular question concentrating on the very next step…all because I have experienced what it is to not have the answer to that question in my own life. Something bigger.  Besides gratitude – which is largely an answer for most things – something bigger is also an answer. That something bigger is God. Oh, I know. You don’t believe in God. Or maybe you doubt there’s a God. Or maybe you think religion is some voodoo cult-type brainwashing. I don’t know when enough is enough for humanity to understand and believe the Bible account of creation. I don’t know what it’ll take for people to realize how much faith one must have that random chaos formed our world and our lives. And I certainly don’t know what it’ll take for you to reach an “enough is enough” moment where you’re so desperate you realize there’s help you need no human being can provide. Knee-bending moments where we cry out to God because we’ve nowhere else to turn. Been there, done that. Many, many times. The years of being dragged down and out, then back again have taught me a few things that I’ll leave you with. Do with them as you please. <ol> <li>My “enough is enough” moments have never been strategically planned. They’ve simply happened based on the circumstances of my life.</li> <li>Not all my “enough is enough” moments have been my own doing, but they have all been within my power to respond better.</li> <li>Some “enough is enough” moments can be overcome. Others must simply be endured.</li> <li>Eternity changes everything and that’s why God matters. Because this life isn’t all there is.</li> <li>I have to leverage all my “enough is enough” moments to make the journey from this life to the next life. The only goal of life here is to make sure heaven is the next stop. Nothing else matters!</li></ol>

Reaching Your Enough-Is-Enough Moment

As much as I’d love to be completely transparent, there’s just so much that would be improper about it. So I’ll give you the broad brush of it. There hasn’t been a physical death, but the carnage is deep and vast. It’s personal. It’s family. And it’s been going on a long, long time. A slide. An erosion. Lots of pain. Lots of suffering. Lots of preoccupation with the loss. But no control because we can’t (nor should we) control other people. I rounded the corner of closing out February 2022, realizing that sorrow and grief have preoccupied me for going on four years. Fact is, I’ve been grieving for many, many months, but something happened (I don’t know what) and one day I decided to draw the proverbial line in the sand. “April is going to be the month I fully devote to my grief, then I’m going to emerge with a new – albeit less whole – normal.” Well, life gets in the way. Even of planned grieving. Sorrow and grief are odd things. They impact us in unique ways to us. Processing emotions isn’t something you can necessarily generalize. VIA Survey – mentioned in today’s show – click here: https://www.viacharacter.org/surveys/takesurvey My number one character trait is forgiveness. Here’s what the folks at VIA say about it.

As much as I’d love to be completely transparent, there’s just so much that would be improper about it. So I’ll give you the broad brush of it. There hasn’t been a physical death, but the carnage is deep and vast. It’s personal. It’s family. And it’s been going on a long, long time. A slide. An erosion. Lots of pain. Lots of suffering. Lots of preoccupation with the loss. But no control because we can’t (nor should we) control other people. I rounded the corner of closing out February 2022, realizing that sorrow and grief have preoccupied me for going on four years. Fact is, I’ve been grieving for many, many months, but something happened (I don’t know what) and one day I decided to draw the proverbial line in the sand. “April is going to be the month I fully devote to my grief, then I’m going to emerge with a new – albeit less whole – normal.” Well, life gets in the way. Even of planned grieving. Sorrow and grief are odd things. They impact us in unique ways to us. Processing emotions isn’t something you can necessarily generalize. VIA Survey – mentioned in today’s show – click here: <a href="https://www.viacharacter.org/surveys/takesurvey" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.viacharacter.org/surveys/takesurvey</a> My number one character trait is forgiveness. <a href="https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/forgiveness" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Here’s what the folks at VIA</a> say about it.

Giving Sorrow A Time Limit

Wednesday, April 6, 2022. An update sparked by recent random thoughts. Consider this a bonus/special episode ’cause it was completely unplanned…until I watched a YouTube live stream of a governing body meeting where people seemed largely driven by…well, I’m not sure what drove them. Suffice to say, the behavior wasn’t exactly exemplary. 😉 Enjoy!

Wednesday, April 6, 2022. An update sparked by recent random thoughts. Consider this a bonus/special episode ’cause it was completely unplanned…until I watched a YouTube live stream of a governing body meeting where people seemed largely driven by…well, I’m not sure what drove them. Suffice to say, the behavior wasn’t exactly exemplary. 😉 Enjoy!

Should We Intentionally Remain Naive?

I’m new to this podcast, but have been enjoying it immensely! I’ve always been a huge fan of podcast &amp; during my sometimes multi-hour long commutes to work as an interpreter I like having shows that keep my attention, but also help me think critically &amp; learn something - this podcast does just that!

New listener

I have a new routine. I recently moved to a place that has lakes and geese. There is a walking path around the lake, so once dinner is done, and the sun begins to hit the road, I grab my phone and earbuds and head to the lake. It is my time to work on me. To reset my attitude, my outlook, and perspectives on life. It is my time with my friend Randy who makes me think. The music gives me time to consume the last thing Randy just said that has me going Hmmmmmm (and to drown out the Geese who are really beautifully annoying). It not meditation, but it does have me looking inward. So click subscribe, and give it a shot. You&#39;ll be glad you did. - Dave Jackson

Make Me Think - And I'm Your Friend

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