2025 December 9 Field trip to reengergize

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Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me today to talk about changes that help your energy levels and creativity. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, tell your friends, and send me a message.

This week we're going to be talking about how even small changes can really help your mind gain a fresh perspective on the world around you, on problems, and all those things that you normally deal with.

I'm currently traveling for a conference and a teaching meetup that I attend every year, and it's far and away the most energy-filled event in my schedule. That's exactly why I attend—for the energy levels. From a technical standpoint, sure, you learn some things, but you can always do that with an online course. But there's something about meeting in person with a bunch of other people. The conversation flows differently, and there is an energy—we talked about it last week—that your heart puts out, a field that goes three feet from you. So when you're in a room full of people like that, and they're all pumped up and energetic as well, it really helps you open your mind to other ideas and looking at other ways to solve problems.

The big bonus of doing an in-person event is the perspective you get and the energy you get from other people. Because as I talked about, if we stay in the same environment all the time, our mind really kind of gets into a rut. Remember, our mind's whole purpose is to try and keep us safe. When we stay in that same environment, we develop these habits and patterns, and they're familiar, but they may not really be serving us well in the long term. But when we're in new surroundings, we're doing a different routine, especially when we're surrounded by a group of super energetic people. It's a great way to open up new perspectives and truly re-energize us.

When you do the mundane, the mundane is good because it's efficient, but mundane also becomes very limiting because there may be a different way of doing it that could make things even easier. When you stop looking for that, you tend not to move forward as fast in your life. And this isn't talking about getting more done and making lists and things like that. This is just moving forward in finding ways to bring joy into your life. Like I said, our brains are designed to keep us safe and to do what worked before, but we live in a changing world. Oftentimes the things that served us well yesterday may not serve us well tomorrow. So you may decide to change. You may not. But it should be done from a place of choice rather than a place of habit.

Your brain will often come up with some justification—it takes time, how to make arrangements and things like that. Your brain will come up with all sorts of reasons why you shouldn't invest in yourself in this way because it's a big investment. I'm not at home doing other things. I'm in a different place. And so there's a real cost, a life cost to do it. And your brain will say, "Well, what about the money? Oh, what about the time? Oh, you should be doing this. You have other commitments." Again, that's just your brain trying to keep you safe because it knows that the other routine worked, and this is something different. When that happens, try and push back a little bit, because until you really take a break from the routine, even for half a day, it can be very difficult to get your mind to a place where it can look at problems and try to solve them with a new perspective.

Today will be quite short because the concept is very simple. While there might be a cost to taking a break, there's also a hidden cost to trying to solve today's problems from yesterday's perspective. I wasn't here an hour in this particular location before I learned of some other people doing similar things to the work we do on Envisionment, but it was from a different perspective. So obviously, naturally, I'm going to be reaching out to them to try and do some work together. But if I had just stayed home, even if I followed it online, I wouldn't have had that conversation. I wouldn't have learned that knowledge. And that's happened dozens and dozens and dozens of times already. You talk to somebody, they say something, you go off on a tangent, and you're like, "Wow, that's a whole new perspective I hadn't thought of. That's a whole different aspect of looking at health that I hadn't really considered."

So it's worth it to try and change up your routine fairly regularly. Not extensively—it doesn't have to be crazy, but just to do something different. Go to a different place for coffee if that's what you do, or whatever, just to meet some new people, just to hear something new, just to challenge your brain a little bit. The breakthroughs I've had only happen when you're in a place where other people are around. I would encourage everyone, even if you're busy, to try and take even a little bit of time and use it differently to kind of switch things up.

Even if you take your same routine and do it in a different order, just that is enough. It takes it out of automation in your brain and turns it into conscious thought. And when it has conscious thought, now you're reevaluating it. It's kind of like if you always drive the same way to work, you kind of get in that habit. You hardly even notice the places you're driving by, and you don't even notice they built a new exit that could save 10 minutes off your trip because you just get in this habit. If you do things in a different order, your brain can't run that automation completely automatically, and it makes you think and see the world around you in a different perspective.

Like I said, even a short break can make a huge difference. So I hope that gives you some ideas of ways you can do some things a little bit different. And if you really can get half a day or a day or something like that and just really take some time away, go for a walk in the woods. If you live in the woods, go visit somebody in the city, whatever. Change your environment. Change your perspective. If you can do it around people, even better, because they'll be talking and looking at things differently than you have. You could find all sorts of new things, and I hope you enjoy all the new things that you discover.

So that's it. Your homework: think about some way to change up your routine, force your mind to work from a slightly different perspective. Again, it could be some trip—that's the obvious one people always think of. But it could be even something really simple, doing things in a different order. Change up your schedule a little bit. Take a different day off from work if you're still working, whatever. Just something a little different to help your brain find a new perspective. Extra points if there's other people around. That's even better, because when you talk to them, you'll definitely get a new perspective. Even if you end up exactly where you started, it's still worthwhile just to challenge your brain.

As always, remember, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. We often talk about UKR7.com, links to help people in Ukraine, and WCK.org for World Central Kitchen—they work in disaster areas—local charities, whatever you have. But just something as simple as a smile can change somebody's day for the better in ways that you can't even imagine.

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something useful or interesting, please pass it along. If not, please let me know what you'd like to hear about. Subscribe, hit that like button—it always helps. And if not, just let me know what's on your mind.

Have a great week. As always, remember to live the life that you dreamed of, because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7Every Minute and 7EveryMinute.com.