2025 June 3 Ramblings on AI, life and more

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Reimagining Your Life Through AI, Resilience, and Opportunity
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 several topics that came to mind this past week.

Tonight we'll be covering the place of AI in our lives, things you can do with AI, personal resiliency, faith in life, believing in opportunity, mentors, and maybe more. Why such a varied list? Because there are a lot of things I get involved in, whether in support of the podcast, my work, or my interests in different areas—and I want to share some of those with you.

AI: What's Its Place in Our Lives?

You've probably seen something about AI being scary, or that it's going to take over the world. There's actually a whole interesting set of topics around that, because new AI machines are starting to cheat and lie to users. The problem when you model things after humans is—they start to act like humans. AI is no different.

You hear a lot of fantastic things about AI, and you might wonder, What does that have to do with me? Maybe you're retired, or you just don't work with AI at all. Maybe you tried ChatGPT, typed something in, got a dumb answer, and thought, Whatever.

But I'll tell you this: I use Claude—from Anthropic—and I use Claude AI for a ton of support questions. For example, I asked, What's the proper equalization curve to make a home recording studio sound like a sub-club setting? Claude gleefully replied, including guitar emojis, and even offered to be the band's virtual sound person.

That was an AI question I actually did just this afternoon for a friend. It gave a very thorough answer, even explaining the reasons behind some of the settings it recommended.

Another one I used was, Please translate this English prayer into Spanish phonetic sounds so that a Spanish speaker can learn that prayer more easily. We had a back-and-forth, and it came back with a whole string of letters that, when said in Spanish, sound like the English words.

Most of all, I hope you see there are many things you can do with AI when you write careful prompts—which are just questions. Speak to it like you're instructing a child. Include all the needed information. Give it hints on how to do things. It'll often oblige with some pretty useful and unexpected replies.

That equalization question reminded me of an effect where, when the overall sound is loud, your midrange sensitivity drops. One of the things that happens in your ears is that you don't hear the midrange frequencies as well—your sensitivity to them gets reduced when there's a lot of bass and treble. Once Claude reminded me of that, I thought, That's why. If you've ever gone to a concert, you've probably seen these huge sound systems with speakers everywhere, and there's always a ton of treble speakers—the great big horns, blaring out all the voices and everything else.

I always wondered why they did that. The reason is, when the music is loud, you don't hear the voices quite as well. So they overemphasize those frequencies to compensate.

It was a simple question that ended up teaching me something along the way. Hopefully, my friend finds it both humorous and useful for his band.

So I'd suggest—if you can—try both Claude, which I mostly use, and ChatGPT, which we use for some podcast-related things. They both have free tiers, so you can go in and try a bunch of things.

I'd suggest you play with it. It's entertaining, for one thing, but it can also give you insights you might not expect. Don't bet your life on it. If you ask a serious question, really check all the replies carefully. They are known to fib. And sometimes the answers are less carefully crafted. There are ways around that, but that's more advanced AI use.

But even without doing all those advanced things, you can still sit down and ask it a simple question. Ask follow-up questions. Like, What's the best way to get from here to San Francisco? And maybe it says, Take a boat around the end of South America. You go, There's no faster way to get there? And it might respond, Oh, you could take a plane.

You may have to prompt it a couple of times, but once you do—once you start working with it—you realize it's a nice window into all the knowledge it's been able to accumulate from millions and tens of millions of sources. And it gives you access to that knowledge in a way that's very accessible and easy to use.

Personal Resiliency

As you may or may not know, I follow a lot of people in Ukraine and support a couple of them. They're all amazing—the ones I work with more closely, and the ones I just follow in general.
Their daily posts are mind-boggling, to say the least. Things like: I'm looking at the news and realize the building I'm seeing is where my parents live, and there's no phone service. Then, a post later: I finally got through to them. They were happily out shopping. They're not hurt. This is a daily occurrence.

And things like the recent big strike into Russia—it was amazing. Took 18 months to put together, all the logistics, the testing, the final implementation. And now I'm reading that admirals and other high-ranking officers in various armed services are saying, Wow, why didn't we think of that? This technique Ukraine used is actually something we could be using against our enemies too. And remember, this is coming from a country everyone said would be overrun in three days. Talk about resiliency.
Then today, I'm reading the Wall Street Journal, in the Personal Journal section. Someone's going on about the horrors of having a late flight and getting stuck in the airport overnight. She wasn't quite at that point, but many of the people they quoted made it sound like the worst thing that could possibly happen.
I spent a lovely night at JFK once when a flight got delayed. I got to sleep in those stupid little plastic seats—you know, the ones with armrests so you can't actually lie across them. I'm not saying it was a good time. But when I think about that, and then try to reconcile it with what's happening to people in other countries every single day, I have a very difficult time.
More and more, I think every young adult—without exception, if at all possible—should be required to leave the United States and travel the world for at least a year. Preferably working for much of it. Kind of like the Peace Corps, but with a different focus—not just to go do work somewhere, which is important, too—but to actually go and learn about other cultures.
I was really fortunate. I got a job that did that for me. And I'll just tell you—it made a humongous difference in every way in how I see the world. Seeing what other people's normal looks like really helps your own perspective.
I was in Singapore, actually, and some people I knew were walking with others they had just met. This was many years ago. These folks had just come from a country where drugs were pretty commonplace. So they took out some marijuana, thinking nothing of it.
And the people they were with—you could physically see the blood drain from their faces. They were saying, What are you doing? The response was, Oh, we just came from Djibouti. That's a death penalty. Death penalty for possession of marijuana.
And it really makes you stop and realize—everybody likes to complain about what we have here. But even though it's being tested very often lately, what we still have here are some real guardrails in terms of what the law can do. And we should think about that every single day. We should be glad we have them.
We need to realize how precious they are. And nobody—on any side of the political fence—should be saying, It's okay to ignore the guardrails. Because once you ignore the guardrails, you no longer have law.
And this ties into personal resiliency. I know a lot of people who, when Biden got elected, said, That's it, I'm leaving the country. And when Trump got elected—even more people said the same thing. What sort of personal resilience is that?
How about you stay and try to make the changes you want to see in the country? To me, that's a much better perspective—and one that generally leads to a far better outcome.
Faith and Life
I've pretty much always believed that things will work out. And honestly, I haven't been wrong yet. I'm not saying it'll always be easy, or that things will work out exactly how you expect them to. But they will teach you something. And they'll make you appreciate what you do have. They'll make you appreciate the things that came your way—sometimes in ways you didn't even see coming.
Sometimes you're in situations and you think, This is the worst thing that could possibly happen. Just nothing else could go worse. And then you're so focused on that thought that you, say, run out of gas. And it hits you—Oh yeah, things could get worse, couldn't they?
We talk ourselves into these corners. I'm no exception. But the trick, for me, when you get to that place, is to step back. Much like my whole travel the world idea—step back and ask, Really? Is this really the worst thing that could happen?
You're upset because your car ran out of gas—but are you forgetting that you have a car? Hopefully you've got enough money to put gas in it. If that's the case, you're already in the upper half of the world—probably even higher than that. And it's very easy to overlook all the things we have.
But when you do take that step back and look at everything around you, suddenly you realize, Wow—I've already had a lot of good rolls of the dice. Life has given me a lot of things. So I should be happy about that. I should be thankful. I've been very fortunate so far. That's true pretty much no matter what level you're at.
Like I said, the people in Ukraine—they're going through incredibly hard times. And if you read what they're talking about, it's not just the war or the people who've been killed—though of course that's a huge part of it. But they also talk about people they know who got married, weddings that still happened, the little children they were able to bring back from Russia—all these moments of joy and positivity in their lives. And that's what makes the difference.
If you have faith in life, yes, sometimes it will be very difficult. But you also have this underlying motivation—that belief that things will work out. It might be really difficult to get there, but things will work out.
And I've also come to realize a corollary to that: stressing about things—just sitting and stressing—changes nothing.
Stress can actually be a useful feeling, if it's not constant. If it motivates you, which it often does for me, it can be helpful. But stress alone does nothing. It should either motivate you or teach you something.
If you take that energy and use it, if you run with it, then it becomes a positive—a source of direction, or a kind of compass in your life. But just sitting there, stressing about things? That goes nowhere.
I see a ton of this on Facebook—people complaining about everything. You can go back many political terms, and it's the same thing: complaining about this person, or that person, about this law or that budget, why something did or didn't pass. On and on.
And I want to say to each and every one of them: Did you pick up a pen and write to someone? Did you call your representative?
Because if all you're doing is stressing, it's not doing anything to move things ahead. If you act on something—if you take that anger, that disappointment, that angst, that stress—and use it to motivate yourself, then you've turned something negative into a positive force.
It motivates you to try and change the world to be more like the way you want it to be.
So stress, for me, is actually a bit of a positive thing. In part, that's because I have faith that things will always work out. So I might as well get started on it. Just sitting and stressing doesn't move anything forward. But if that stress motivates you to take action, and to start sooner, then it becomes just another positive force in your life.
That doesn't mean the situation has already changed. It doesn't mean there still aren't bad things going on. But now you're working on making a change—and that changes your entire perspective on life and your problems.
Believing in Opportunity
Another thing I always believe in is opportunity. And I've said many times on the podcast: Change is opportunity.
That actually came from an old friend of mine. He used to say, If things are getting better, or things are getting worse—there's always opportunity. And he lived his life that way.
He was a funny guy, had a very dry sense of humor. Besides being a phenomenal classical guitarist, any time he picked up a guitar—though he usually didn't play anymore—he'd just blow you away. I think maybe he wanted to be a professional classical guitarist, and somehow felt like he'd failed at that. But he was still a phenomenal player.
He smoked a pipe—used to smoke cigarettes when he was younger, then switched to a pipe for years. One day, he just said, This is ridiculous. I've got to stop smoking. And he did. Quit completely.
Then three years later, he got diagnosed with lung cancer.
And he said, I feel the best I've ever felt. I'm in great physical condition. And now they tell me I've got lung cancer.
He could have been bitter and angry and everything else. But instead, he just kind of shrugged and said, You know... sometimes life just goes like this.
Hopefully they got it cured, and we just kind of went our separate ways after he and his wife moved to Vermont. We lost touch. But I'll never forget—he had a lot of hard things happen in his life, and he never tried to push those onto someone else.
No matter what it was, he'd say, The good part about this is... He just believed in opportunity. And that made a huge difference in my life.
Opportunity isn't there to the same degree for everybody. But probably the biggest differentiator is that a lot of people just don't look for it. And a lot of people won't recognize it.
I just saw a joke the other day: someone says, Hey look, there's a $20 bill on the ground! And the person walking says, Nah, if it were a $20 bill, someone would've already picked it up, and just walks past it.
That's opportunity in our lives, too. If you're not looking for it, you certainly won't find it. If you aren't trying to move forward in your life, you probably won't. But if you're forward-looking, you'll probably find a way to move your life in the direction you want it to go.
Just last week, I decided I wanted—probably really needed—to attend a conference. And I missed the cutoff date by minutes. I was going through some learning materials for the podcast, and I got distracted.
I should've done it earlier in the day—that's not an excuse—but I thought I actually had another day. Then I realized, Oh no! It ended at midnight. And I thought, I guess that wasn't meant to be. Maybe the lesson is to be more mindful next time.
And then—out of the blue—someone from a company I've done business with before called me. She said, Hey, I thought I was going to hear from you, but I didn't. I hope everything's okay. What's up?
So I called her back and left a message saying, I thought I was going to go to the conference this summer, but I missed the cutoff by a couple of minutes. I just wanted to thank her for following up.
And she called me back and said, Hey, lucky day—since you're dealing with me directly and not through the general website, I can extend the offer further.
She ended up giving me about $450 in discounts—which was most of the total cost of the conference. And I never would've gotten that if I'd signed up online.
So again—if you keep a positive outlook in life, if you keep faith that somehow, in some way, things are going to come around—I've found that, generally, they do. Maybe not in the way you expected. Like I said, at the time I was disappointed. I thought, Life lesson: be more mindful next time.
So I got the lesson—and got a huge discount.
And all because I didn't ignore the opportunity. I could have not answered the phone and said, I'm not gonna answer that. I already missed the deadline, they're probably just going to try to sell it to me at full price. And then not called back.
But instead, I did call back—and I ended up paying far less than I would've paid if I had been on time.
So opportunity is all around us.
Don't ever close your mind, if you can help it. More often than not, I've found that when you're upbeat and open to opportunity, some kind of opportunity will come around.
Nothing says it'll be the opportunity you expected, or exactly what you had in mind. But I have faith that it's probably exactly what I need.
As I always say: Life doesn't happen to us. Life happens for us. And that's something I really try to keep in mind.
Mentors and Peer Groups
I have some professional mentors in my life. One of them is James Wedmore. Another one is Pat Flynn—Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. Another one is Tony Robbins.
They all have different places in my life. They're all very similar, and all very different—it's one of those magical things in life. They talk about a lot of the same things, but in very different ways. And sometimes, that really helps you understand something.
Because we all get mental blocks. We'll think, That couldn't possibly apply to me. Then you hear someone else say it in a slightly different way and you go, Actually, that really does apply to me. That really fits this situation. And that realization helps you move forward.
So I think that having some professional or even just personal mentors in your life is a huge boost. It's almost like cheating at life.
These mentors don't have to be people who charge a million dollars. I know there are some who do—quite literally. But I don't hang out with folks like that. Most of the people I follow are actually pretty affordable.
Another one of my mentors is Dr. Shannon Irvine. I was with her for a long time on a more linear coaching basis. I have a certificate in neurocoaching from her. Eventually, I drifted away to focus more on the business side of things. But I've always kept in touch with her, stayed connected. And I'll probably be going back and doing some more work with her, because I see she's doing new things now—and I think it's very relevant to the topics we talk about here.
I'm not someone who subscribes to the idea that says, Surround yourself with five people better than you. You hear that a lot—this whole mindset of climbing the ladder of life by only associating with people who are ahead of you.
I don't necessarily agree with that.
But I do think there's real value in spending time with people who share your vision of life—who've done things you find amazing. They don't have to be perfect. They don't have to be amazing in every way. But if there's something about them that strongly motivates you, encourages you, or makes you a better person—that's the kind of influence you want around you.
And I'd really encourage that. It's been life-changing for me.
I started this probably 30, 40 years ago. And it wasn't official. I didn't sign up with anyone at first. But I realized there were things I wanted to change in my life.
I'm actually a very shy person. Talking to a camera, with people watching me, is probably one of the farthest things from my comfort zone ever.
But I've done that, and many other things, because I started to intentionally observe people I admired. And they weren't necessarily celebrities—they could just be friends. People I knew back in high school, literally. I'd look at someone and think, That person does something I think is really cool. I'd like to be able to do that. But they seemed to do it so effortlessly—and I couldn't do it at all.
So I thought, That's silly. Just watch them. See what they do.
It was little things. I'd walk into the cafeteria with my head down, get my tray, and quietly carry it over to sit somewhere. But they'd walk in and go, Hi Mary! Hey Bobby, how are you?—and just be open. Not fake. They genuinely liked being around people. They enjoyed people's company. They'd walk right over—if it was a guy, he'd walk up to a group of girls and say, Hey, can I join you for lunch? And they'd almost always say yes.
And I realized—it wasn't because he was so special or charismatic, necessarily. It was because he took the extra step of recognizing people. Maybe complimenting them. But even just saying hi—Hi Mary, hi Kathy. That simple action broke the ice. It said, I see you as a person.
And once you do that—once you treat people like people—they respond very differently to you.
So when I say you don't need a professional mentor with a fancy program to get guidance—this is what I mean. If there's something in your life you're not totally satisfied with, and you notice others doing something you admire—even something really simple—just ask them.
Maybe you're always the one who hears about the free concert the day after it happens. And then you find out it was three blocks from your house. Ask your friend who always seems to know: Hey, how do you always find out about those?
If it's about meeting people—just watch those who are good at it. See what they do. Not to mimic them robotically or follow them around, but to observe. Make note of what they do that's different. And try to do some of those same things—genuinely.
Your mentor doesn't have to be someone with a million followers or a big coaching group. A mentor can be anyone who has qualities you admire—things that inspire you to be better. And from that, you can grow. You can learn. You can be happier.
And just as importantly—you can become an example to other people.
So mentors—both formal and informal—have made a huge difference in my life. They've made it, quite frankly, a lot more fun.
And chances are, there are people you know—or know of—in your local area who are amazing in ways that really matter to you. I would encourage you: hang out with them. Find out what they're doing. See what's making them smile all the time. And maybe then—you'll smile more too.
Bringing It All Together
I hope you at least got a taste of how I generally live my life, and why I really do stay hopeful—even when things get pretty unpleasant. And you can pick whatever you want for unpleasant—the economy, world events, politics, local news. The world's never going to be totally perfect.
But you can either focus on the imperfections—or you can focus on the things you want to change, to help bring the world a little closer to how you'd like it to be.
The most valuable things in life usually aren't things at all. They're the expertise, the experience, the knowledge, the sharing, the emotions. And those things? They can be priceless.
They don't have to be expensive—but they're the things you really want to focus on.
And that ties back to everything we talked about tonight: staying optimistic, having faith in life, believing in opportunity, personal resiliency, mentors—those are the things that bring meaning to life. They're what give you the motivation and the ability to keep going when things get difficult.
So, if you're not already doing those things, I would encourage you to try them. If you are doing them, then double down—do more.
Because people look up to others who seem to be happy. And when they see you doing something—something that seems simple—and realize that your happiness doesn't come from anything extraordinary... maybe it's just that you walk through the store with a smile on your face.
That makes a difference. A bigger one than you might think.
Every time they meet somebody, they say, Hey, how you doing? or What do you think of that thing? You think that's a good color or not? Just any little thing that brings you into contact with people—some kind of interaction—tends to bring more happiness into your life.
Your Homework
Your homework is to think about some of the things I mentioned tonight that make me feel more positive and useful, and ask yourself if any of them might be useful for you too.
There are a thousand things you can try. I just listed some of the things that have helped me. Hopefully, they'll help you too.
And then, bonus points—if you do find something useful, try it for a few weeks. Remember, you build habits by doing something over time—not just for a day or two.
For example: I just decided today that I'm not going to snack before 11 o'clock. Actually, I've been doing intermittent fasting again. I do it on and off, and started up again maybe a week or two ago.
The first day or two, of course, is just horrible. Oh my God, I think I'm gonna die of starvation. But it's actually been really useful. Because this time around, I noticed what's really driving a lot of my eating—it's stress at work.
Everything's going along fine, and then I get some snarky email or a nasty Teams message and suddenly I'm like, Oh man, I've gotta go see if there's anything sweet in the fridge.
And it's like—no. Stop it. You don't need it. That's just your stress looking for something sweet, just to give you a little dopamine hit—and you don't need it.
After a couple of days, it's really interesting. When that moment hits, I might even get up and start walking toward the refrigerator—and then I just laugh, go make some tea, and the craving's gone.
Habits build on themselves. And when you make changes in your life, what you'll find is that once you do them for a little while, they start to become self-sustaining. You build momentum. So if you're trying to make a change, don't lose faith. You can do it.
Like we said earlier, there are a lot of opportunities out there. I hope you find some of them useful. And I'd love to hear from you—let me know what you found useful. Send me a message.
Ways to Help
Remember: there's a lot of unrest in the world. I'm sure it'll ramp up before it ramps down. Socheck out UKR7.com. That's our site. It supports some of the people I follow on LinkedIn. There's a very active community of people in Ukraine sharing daily updates, personal stories, and information. I'd encourage you to look there, or support them however you can.
And if that's not where your heart is, World Central Kitchen is another incredible organization. You can find them at WCK.org. They're active all over the world, going into disaster areas and helping get food and basic services up and running again. I recommend both of them: WCK.org and UKR7.com.
You can help people locally. It doesn't have to be a huge organization. A lot of people are always looking for volunteers, always looking for a little bit of money—or whatever kind of help you can give. And even if you're not in that situation or mindset, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others.
Something simple. A little hello. Good morning. Goodbye. You look nice today. Thank you. You know, when somebody does something kind for you, don't just grunt—say, Thank you very much. Have a good day.
Just make somebody's day a little bit better, and you've made a positive change in the world. That's good for you, and for the world.
As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along. And please—subscribe, hit that like button. If not, drop me a comment, tell me what you'd like to hear.
There are a lot of things we're trying to do that don't cost any money. This isn't about money—it's about getting the message out to more people. Because I still see a lot of ageism. A lot of things going on that just shouldn't be happening at this point. There's no reason for it.
So—pass it along, please. I really appreciate it. And maybe your friends will appreciate it too.
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.