2025 September 2 What is our purpose

Getting Back to Basics: The Core Focus of 7EveryMinute

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me today to get back to the basics and what our focus is all about. So let's get started. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, and send me a message.

Tonight we'll be talking about some of the basics around why the podcast was really started, what we're trying to accomplish, and what our focus is all about.

First up is the name. What does "seven every minute" really mean? At the time we started, that was the rate at which baby boomers were retiring. Basically, every minute, seven more baby boomers would retire. Every minute, every day, every week. It's actually a really big number and has gotten bigger since we started. Plus now we have to add in the Gen Xers, and retirement is becoming a really important piece of the economy.

With the advent of the baby boom after World War II, the working population got a lot bigger. Suddenly you had all these people in the workforce, and now that whole cohort is starting to retire at once, with the Gen Xers retiring right behind them. This has a big effect on not only the workforce but the population demographics as a whole, and it makes a difference. We talk about how it affects us personally and the laws and policies being set around that.

Our initial focus was basically on Medicare because that was most important to me at the time. I was getting to that age and started looking into it, and it was purposely kind of obfuscated. It was really a horrible system. It still is. We were going to talk about that in a general sense, and we still do a little bit, but it turns out that Medicare is really different in every state. That wasn't a great choice for a podcast because it would mean we needed somebody with expertise specific to each of the different states and territories.

Looking beyond Medicare, we started talking about money and retirement, especially for those who aren't prepared for retirement, which by the way is roughly two-thirds of baby boomers. Similarly, Gen X is not far behind the baby boomer cohort, with roughly 50% of people not feeling they're adequately financially prepared for retirement.

I started interviewing people, asking them about their retirement plans and if they're comfortable with money. A funny thing happened though. When I started talking to people to find out their biggest financial concerns related to retirement, many of the people I spoke with, even though they weren't necessarily overly financially prepared, weren't especially concerned about it. Certainly, some were very concerned, some were even frightened, but many were not.

This led me to realize that the deciding factor between these two groups was how they viewed life, their place in life, and their views of themselves. That was a real breakthrough for me and for the podcast because it was true not only for older adults but also for people of any age. That's become one of our core focuses on the podcast. That's when I got my certificate in neuro coaching and started practicing brain priming and envisionment techniques to support all that. It was also when I started doing the weekly podcast very consistently. Currently, we have about 265 episodes, and I've been pretty consistent in my weekly visits with you all since then. I really appreciate all of you who follow me and talk to me. It's actually pretty nice and very considerate.

While this history is interesting, what exactly is it that we're trying to do, and what is it that we're sharing with you? If there's one overriding message or attitude that comes out over time, I hope it's that we should have self-respect and faith in ourselves. We have to understand that you can't always control what the world does, but you can control how you respond to a situation. You have the ability to reframe a situation to better align with your life vision. It's really important to never give up. We have an amazing amount of energy and talent. Don't let the naysayers say, "Oh, don't do that. You're too old, you're too anything, you're too young." Whatever it is, just never give up. Have faith in yourself and look for and appreciate the good things that exist in life around us. I know sometimes there are a lot of really big issues, but it's important that you never lose sight of the good things.

I know those things might sound a little hippy-dippy optimistic, but we teach you all the ways to actually do those things and how to have your own brain come naturally to help you along this path and guide you into the successes that are really important to you in your life.

We certainly don't shy away from faith in some form, whether it's some higher source, nature, God with a small g, or God with a capital G. It's different for everybody. Your source of energy may even be the collective consciousness of all things that ever existed in the world, past, present, and future. The specifics are less important than the realization that the little world we live in, that we've created for ourselves, is just that—something we've created for ourselves. The power and energy we can harness by being aware of all our interactions with each other and all the energy we can get from the world is very important. It makes a huge difference.

It's important to realize that we're one part in a very large system. In my perspective, this system is not out to get us, but to help and guide us. Opportunity exists for those who seek it. It may not be the opportunity you expected or necessarily want, but generally, if you're looking for opportunity, you will find it. To clarify, that doesn't mean that if you just desire something, you can manifest some amazing thing that will magically appear. Your own reality may take a different path than the one you expected. It's always beneficial to keep an open mind because sometimes things happen differently than we expect.

What I teach is actually far less important than what you can accomplish. What I teach is how to accomplish the things that matter most to you. There are a few steps to this. None of them are particularly difficult in the abstract, but some require a lot of self-honesty, and that is often a challenge for any of us. Things like coming to grips with limiting beliefs. Many limiting beliefs we've had since we were little children or even infants. They're deeply rooted, so deeply rooted that our brain is hesitant to even consider they might not be correct.

Then there's the fear of change. This is a well-intentioned, built-in mechanism to keep us safe. It was a good idea and helped a lot when we were surviving as primitive humans because we lived around animals that wanted to eat us and had very basic needs. Those primitive instincts served us well. But as humanity aged, the world changed.

Back in the bad old days, if something traumatic happened, we quickly hardwired that into our brain as something to avoid at all costs because it had to do with our physical survival. But now, when we're small and something traumatic happens, we may have misunderstood the context, but we still thought it was important and hardwired it into our brain as one of those absolutes, those things we can't change. Things like "if we stand up for ourselves, we're being unkind to somebody else," or "if we try something new, it might be too risky."

These things in our ancient history served us very well. If the community didn't work tightly together, it didn't survive. If something was working and we tried something new, like going to a different place to hunt or fish or gather grain, it might mean that was a bad place, and that was the end of us.

These days, things are different, and these hardwired reactions are difficult to both discover and change. But with practice, they can be overcome, reframed, and replaced with newer guidance that serves us better as we're older.

Finally, we cover how to re-envision your life to be more aligned with how you really want to live. That doesn't mean you can instantly change the state of the whole world, but there are steps you can take to clarify your own life vision. Do things to create, work on, and develop goals in a way that makes them more likely to be reached in a timely fashion. Then live your life in a manner that helps you live in a world that's more aligned with your own vision of how the world should be.

Imagine getting up in the morning refreshed because yesterday was a really good day. You have plans for today that you find invigorating, and you're excited about the day. You have an attitude such that even if your plans change or completely fall through, you know you'll still get done all the things that are most important to you today. That sounds pretty good, doesn't it? This is all possible, and you don't have to be independently wealthy, or number one in your field, or have any amazing, talented characteristics—except for one: you have to believe in yourself. You have to be willing to make some changes, which might be a bit scary, but you can be confident that you'll be living and moving closer to your own life vision.

Next week, we'll talk more about some of the specifics, including some upcoming webinars, challenges, and things we have coming on. Hope you're pretty excited about some of the things we're going to be talking about and focusing on. We've been doing it over the past five years, which is how long we've been on, and a little more than that. But now this podcast is going to really focus on those things so that we have a consistent theme.

So that's it for the evening. Your homework tonight is to think about one or two changes or accomplishments that you want to make in your life. They can be big or small, and they might be something that you tried working on before. Once you think of what to do, simply write them down—and I really mean write them down with a pen and paper. Write down the why of wanting to make those changes.

For extra points tonight, once you write down those changes, write a paragraph or a few sentences about not only the factual why but the story around how that why benefits you, or why it's important to you or to others, or what other things it would allow you to do. Basically, write down a little story about your world after you make those changes and how much better it feels.

Thank you again. As always, remember there are wars and unrest going on in the world. If you can and you're able, consider donating to UKR7.com to help the people of Ukraine. Also consider World Central Kitchen at WCK.org, a group that works throughout the world, usually in disaster areas, bringing food and services to people typically following a disaster or natural disaster.

There are big international organizations, organizations overseas, organizations in the US, and organizations in your neighborhood. All these people can use some attention. When you work in someplace like that, it helps you understand how people who are less fortunate than you live. If you're not in a position where you can help either financially or time-wise, just something really small, like saying hi to somebody or smiling at them as you walk past on the street, can make someone's day better in ways that you probably can't even imagine.

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something useful or interesting, please pass it along, subscribe, and hit that like button. If you didn't find anything useful in what we talked about tonight, please drop me a comment about what you'd like to hear, and we'll see if we can fit it in.

Have a great week. Remember to live the life that you dream of because that's the path you're on. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.

You can view the original Facebook LIVE here.