2025 July 8 Be open to life's hints

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Life's Little Hints and Examining Our Beliefs

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 life's little hints and our beliefs. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, send me a message.

Tonight we're going to be talking about how life tries to give us little hints as we go along, although we may not always be open to listening to them. The message is pretty simple in one way. 

Simple doesn't mean trivial or useless, and a simple presentation is often very different from doing something that may be new and challenging. Whether you consider it God whispering in your ear, nature trying to guide you, or just a gut instinct, the world around us is usually filled with signs and guidance—if we develop the mindset to listen for it.

The past few weeks have been pretty intense for me on a few levels. Nothing horrible—just a lot of things going on. It's a good time to feel totally overwhelmed and lost and angry at everything, right? There's all this stuff going on. First, it seems like everything's out of control, but it's also a good time to step back, look at all the information that's being presented to you, try to keep track of it, and see where it might be trying to lead you.

Situations that initially seemed totally overwhelming turned out to be amazing examples of teamwork and good people coming together to do good deeds for someone who needed and deserved it. A situation that seemed totally unfair and senseless started to present itself instead as a long overdue reset and cleansing for some of us who were involved—and a wake-up call to others to realize they were actually in a very similar situation now.

All of us involved could have easily just focused on the negative sides of all the events and the negative impact it was having on our lives, but most of us instead chose to use it as a real wake-up call to look at our own lives, beliefs, expectations—all those things that we tend to take for granted, whether they're serving us or not.

Remembering from that commencement speech by Tim Minchin I mentioned a couple weeks ago—opinions, and I would add beliefs—should be constantly and thoroughly examined. It's easy to say we should do it, but sometimes it takes a significant external event to remind us that we're getting perhaps a little too set in our ways.

These past two weeks, and the few months leading up to them, were a perfect situation for this kind of rediscovery. There were obvious heroes and villains, unreasonable demands, people in places of power acting like a 4-year-old having a tantrum. There were clearly good and bad players—could easily have been judged—but when you look past all the obviousness, there were also tons of subtleties.

Factors that perhaps challenged your belief systems, or made you realize you had gotten a little off track in what belief system you thought you were following. Human nature is such that when you aren't challenged, you tend not to think—other than occasionally remind yourself about how clever you are with all the great beliefs and thoughts that you have. When suddenly large swaths of your reality are challenged all at once, and you're forced to go back to your core beliefs to look at all possible outcomes...

That's when great discovery and advancement can happen.

To be clear, not everyone involved accepted that invitation to grow. Many dug in their proverbial heels so as not to upset their existing beliefs. And I totally understand—it's sometimes scary to make new discoveries. But that's perhaps the most important part of the lesson.

We were all having the same big life challenges, but as we often say here, it's up to us to determine our response to those challenges. Some people grew. Some people made a conscious decision to stay with their old beliefs—and that may be fine if it's serving them well. And some people took the opportunity to realize that the old beliefs and opinions really weren't serving them well and had become just another habit.

So don't always be put off by life's challenges. Yes, they can be very trying and difficult, but often they are life giving us amazing opportunities to grow and to clear out some of those old beliefs that no longer serve us or our vision.

That's it for the evening. A very straightforward message—but when life gives you challenges, you really have the opportunity to grow. And although sometimes it's difficult, I'd encourage you to try not to look past that opportunity.

Your homework tonight really is quite simple: Think back over the past day, or maybe the past week, and when you think about the events and situations—looking back—do you see hints that were there, but that you didn't see at the time?

If not, then try and keep an eye out for them in the coming week. Write them down. The meaning may not be immediately obvious, but revisit them in a few days to see if something useful emerges.

Extra points if you also think about your beliefs and opinions, and how they may be inadvertently filtering out many—perhaps most—of those useful hints from life. We tend to notice the things that we already believe. So try and stay aware of things that you don't agree with, and see if that opinion or belief is still serving you well. But most of all, do it from a place of learning and of love.

So that's it for the evening. As always, remember there are many wars going on in the world.

Political unrest, social unrest—lots of things, no matter where you turn, near and far. So, as always, please check out UKR7.com. Those are links to places that directly aid the people in Ukraine, who definitely need help right now. They definitely need a lot of aid that has been promised to them.

And don't forget about World Central Kitchen at WCK.org. World Central Kitchen works in areas where there's disaster. I actually haven't looked to see if they're down in Texas, but I wouldn't be surprised. That's the sort of place they would go immediately, to start getting basic needs met for people.

There's a lot going on all around us, including in our own communities. So if you can, and you're able, and you don't want to support one of the big organizations, donations of time or money to local organizations are also good.

However, if you're just not in a position or mindset to make donations right now, that's totally understandable. You can still easily make the world a better place. One of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. Something as simple as a smile to somebody you meet in the street can change their day in a huge way.

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along. Please subscribe, hit that like button. If not, please drop me a comment as to what you'd like to hear. Have a great week. Remember to live the life that you dream of, because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.