2025 June 24 How to focus amidst the chaos

You can view the original Facebook LIVE here.

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 focus amidst the chaos of today. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, send me a message.

Tonight we'll be talking about how to focus and look past all the public theater to discover the real motives behind the news, and then work to align those things that we discover with our real-life vision. Kind of a different, more proactive version of typical life coaching.

But first, a quote from Alex Hormozi. The quote is, How to be productive: Don't do anything besides the task you set out to complete. That's literally it. Now, Alex and Layla Hormozi have been very successful, and they often have these little quotes like the one I just read. And honestly, they're these little sleeper quotes because they're literally true—but very hard to actually do unless you make it a priority. That's where the magic happens.

Political theater these days has reached new heights in the past three months or so. But although it's theater, much of it still has huge consequences. We have mass secret police and people vanishing. We have these same police refusing to identify themselves even to sitting senators—let alone to you and me.

And there are 101 other very significant distractions going on these days. But we have to remember, that's what they are. They're distractions. It's not accidental. Don't misunderstand me for a minute—distractions can be very important, even critically important—but you cannot take your eye off the goals, both your personal goals and your worldview goals.

Are the violent deportations appalling and totally un-American? Absolutely. But most people are surprised to learn that under President Biden, through the last fiscal year, he's actually been deporting about 742 people each day on average—while Trump, currently, has been averaging about 660 people per day. You can check the numbers. These are right from national papers.

So it's not the deportations per se that are the issue. It's the purposeful theater—replete with hooded, anonymous thugs breaking car windows over screaming infants—and the also purposefully indiscriminate arrests of people who are contributing to our economy. That's really the issue. And it's also the effort to scare the people of the U.S. into being afraid of the government. That's another real issue. It's disrupting everyone's routines to the point they can't function—so they can't pay attention to what's going on in Washington. And that's the real issue.

Now again, this may not sound like life coaching—but think for a moment how you've felt over the past few weeks. Are you looking forward and moving towards your goals? Or are you appalled at the news and writing frantically on Facebook and every other social media account? And how does all that venting help move you towards your goals?

Realistically, it probably does little—if we're honest about it.

Now think back to last week's topic: the No King Rally in protest. The first one was laser-focused and had over 5 million participants. And there was a follow-up scheduled for the July 4th weekend. Well, now there are some individual state and local protests on the July 4th weekend, and the next rally is scheduled for July 17th. But now it's going to be called Good Trouble Lives On Protests.

The organizers say these protests are to respond to the attacks on our civil and human rights by the Trump administration. See what's happening here? The focus is being lost. There are now two sets of protests on two different days, with two slightly different focus points. This isn't a criticism, but it's an excellent example of why you have to be careful about trying to follow two priorities—or more. It rarely works out well.

The same is true in your personal life. The first step in maintaining focus is to find out what is theater and what's the real point. Biden was deporting more people, but he was following the rule of law and returning them generally to their own country. What we have now is this change in the public character of a new federal police force—but the focus is being taken off of that and turned into an immigration issue. And that's a very important distinction.

It's not being called out as such, but they're now allowed to burst into church services, schools, medical facilities. They can wait outside the courts and arrest people who show up with a court order—who show up to go to court—and then the government suddenly removes their whole asylum paperwork and says, No, you're not being held for asylum anymore.

And the government says that immediately makes them illegal, and they arrest them as they walk out of court. That's why one of the candidates for mayor last week was arrested in New York. Later, he was allowed to go free, but it was exactly that—he was part of a team that walked people out of court.

So this is where the focus should be. No matter what specific actions they're taking, the focus should be on: why is this new unaccountable police force being created? They're called ICE, yes, part of the Department of Homeland Security and all that stuff. On one level, it's kind of the same—but it's not the same really.

Back to just focus in general. If you have monetary goals, then the distractions—like the amateur hour in the trade tariff group—can really throw you off. We're watching as the tariffs go up, they go down—these are friends, these are not friends anymore—blah blah blah, and all the follow-on effects on the stock market and consumer prices. Prices are going up, prices are going down. People are happy, people are sad.

It's all theater. The whole point of that is not to return jobs to the U.S. That can happen, but it has to be done with planning, cooperation, and diplomacy. It most certainly could happen and be successful for everyone—but again, what we're seeing is just theater designed to keep people anxious and feeling uncertain about making any changes in their lives.

But how do you make lasting changes in your life? You know the answer. We've talked about it a lot. You push your limits. You work outside your own personal box. You define your vision, and you live your life in alignment with that vision. Your vision will change and mature. Your goals will adapt as your life changes. But you still have the ability to control so much in your life, despite the theater going on all around us—purposefully being created to make you feel uncertain.

Because when you feel uncertain, you're less likely to take any chances, less likely to speak up, and less likely to live your life to your full potential.

If you look at many of the successful life coaches right now, what are they saying? They're saying the same thing as me. Now is the time to be focused and proactive—to find your future and work to make sure the environment can sustain what your vision is.

There's a lot of divisiveness going around right now. And it's often painful to see some of the people I know—and kind of sad to realize what they're saying. But I know, and I have to step back from it, and realize they're not saying it from a place of evil. It's from a place of uncertainty and fear, and looking for someone to blame—so that they might find a solution, find some certainty they can hold onto and feel better about.

And I would encourage you to try not to get caught up in that game. Yes, you can always blame someone else—but at every incident in our lives, we all look at the same data. We all try to make the best decision we can. Sometimes it works out like we want. Sometimes it doesn't.

There really aren't a lot of people who try to make the worst decision. So stop blaming them, because most of them aren't any more happy with the situation than you are.

What made the No Kings protest so successful was that they had a single goal. And people from many walks of life worked together to support that single goal, that energy. That's what comes from singular focus. Blame just dissipates that energy—and that's exactly why so much of what we see is so divisive. It just makes us too tired to focus on anything. We get all wrapped up in blaming each other. And the cat's not there, so the mice will play.

So take back your power. Regain your strength and your focus.

Think about what you're seeing in a critical fashion, and don't be distracted by the theater. Look up the facts. Read differing viewpoints—even ones you totally disagree with. Understand them. Don't read the headlines about what us say and what them say. Read the materials they write and see if it matches the headlines—because it probably doesn't.

Then make a conscious decision to find the common ground and try to engage people on those things you have in common. Once you get your first goals accomplished, then you can try to work out some of the other differences. But stay focused and harness that energy that comes from many good people working together for good goals—especially a particular goal that you have in common.

There are 340 million people in the U.S., in kind of round numbers. We aren't all going to agree on every single little thing—even on some important things, bigger things. But even with all the divisive news and social media, we still agree on most things. Especially the really big, important ones.

So think critically. Look behind the theater. Look behind the headlines. Reach out to other people. Double down on what's important to you, and focus on living towards your life vision.

That's it for the evening. Your homework tonight: pick any major news event or claim that you see in the news or on social media. The news is more fun because it's ostensibly real. Then look at it critically. Look behind it—behind the scenes, behind the obvious—and see if it still makes sense. And don't be surprised if it doesn't make any sense at all.

Then think: is the news behind the theater still important to your vision? Extra points if you take that realization—of what's actually behind the headline—and try to talk to some other people about it. See if they agree. If they do, great—start a group. Keep in touch with each other, because you can work together to make a change.

If they don't, try and understand why. And if you really don't agree—or if it's just that they're making bad assumptions about what they think you're thinking—try to talk things through. Discussion is the best way to bring people together.

And like I said, remember—it's super important to remember the first No Kings rally and protest. They had a single focus. It was amazingly successful. That's what you want in your life. Focus on the important things. Try not to get distracted by the theater—because they're putting out more theater now on purpose. They're just trying to distract everybody. There's important stuff going on, and that's not what the headlines are.

As always—remember, there are many bad things going on in the world right now. Remember the people of Ukraine—the situation there is just horrific right now. Since Trump took office, the number of attacks on Ukraine has skyrocketed. And now, my understanding is most of the targeting information that the U.S. was supplying has been stopped. And of course, they're running out of ammunition because we decided to put that elsewhere. So it's a really bad situation right now. They could really use a lot of help on many different levels.

So, UKR7.com—links to places where you can donate to help out. And then World Central Kitchen—WCK.org. As always, they work in disaster areas around the world. A really great organization. I encourage you to look at both of those.

The people in Ukraine—that's a big, important piece to me, and World Central Kitchen—they work around the world. Great work they do. But like I always say, whether it's Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa—there's a lot going on throughout the whole world right now. 

Sometimes it seems overwhelming. Sometimes it really is. You might feel like, What can I do to make a difference? But you can always make a difference locally. There are a lot of local organizations that always need help, can always use donations—whether it's money or time.

And even if you're not able to muster the energy, or it's just not your thing to donate money or time to something like that, then just remember: we often talk about living outside yourself. It gives you a different perspective on life, a different perspective on the people you share this world with.

One of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. It can be little things. See somebody who looks a little down—or even if they're looking happy—just say, Hey, good morning. That's all it takes. Just acknowledge that they're there. That can turn somebody's day around.

So if you can and you're able—UKR7.com, WCK.org, lots of great organizations locally too. Just make somebody's day a little bit better by saying, Hey, hope you have a good day. Hey, you look nice today. Good morning. That's all it takes.

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. Thank you so much.