2026 August 4 Live your own life

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me to talk about being ourselves. So let's get started.

If you like what we're doing here, please leave a like, subscribe, tell a friend, send me a message. This week we're going to be talking about how to be ourselves when it seems everything around us is telling us to conform to someone else's idea of how we should live.

That may seem like a pretty simple topic — just do what we want to do. Oh, but modern life isn't that simple.

I was reading a post on LinkedIn, my favorite social media platform by far, from Dr. Patricia Brun, who writes about attention, addiction, social media, conformity, and society. It was actually a pair of posts, since she covered a lot of ground.

Now, one could argue that conformity is one of the essential traits of any society. But she also suggests there have been societies where the "conforming" piece of it was actually individualistic thinking — like in Athens in ancient Greece, or even nominally in the US at times.. But what does this have to do with our mind and our identity, which are two of the pillars most associated with these concepts?

Dr. Byrne's post was written in the context of Erich Fromm's writings on a "sane society." The question was: is a society that produces wealth, war, and conformity all in the same breath actually sane? His answer was no — not because the people are broken, but because a sick society can make sickness look normal.

This leads to what's called alienation — losing touch with your own judgment and prioritizing approval instead of instinct. Or, more succinctly, as Dr. Byrne put it: replacing common sense with consensus.

She covered this in a separate post called "Common Sense Lost: The Casino of Attention," which discusses social media, phones, self-identity, and how we fill the time that used to be filled with our own thoughts and reflections. In it, she talks about how phones, through social media apps, have essentially become pocket casinos — only instead of winning money, you might win a little attention, like a comment or someone's approval. You're never really sure which action might get you that attention, but you know there's a chance. And that uncertainty is a huge driver of addictive behavior.

Now couple that with the conforming, consensual behavior of a society that promotes and celebrates these addictive businesses, mix in a little ageism, and voilà — you have constant access to and influence from a device that might reward you with something you value, but also often berates you with advice, opinions, and proclamations about the "proper" way to live your life. Small wonder you don't have a great opinion of yourself as you get older.

One root cause of why this is so effective is that it's been normalized by society. We've been taught that being different is risky, so we tend to just believe what we see and hear on social media and other sources. So if you try a self-healing behavior — say, starting meditation or yoga, especially if you're older — the most likely response you'll get is something like, "Aren't you too old to be starting something like that?" Or you try it yourself and think, "I can't even clear my mind," so you give up.

Even worse, since society has become so conformist, many of the people saying these things believe they're protecting you — because you're straying from "normal" behavior for your age — and they think they're helping. To which we should say: enough.

There are so many accessible, simple, health-building techniques out there. Meditation and yoga, which we just mentioned. Breathwork exercises — two common ones are called box breathing (4-4-4-4) and the 4-7-8 method, different ways of managing and focusing on your breath. Simply taking a walk with no earphones in and no health monitor strapped on, just emptying your mind. Setting a reminder to get up every half hour and walk for two minutes. Picking up the phone and calling a friend instead of doomscrolling. Let alone all the more "woo woo" things, like going outside in the morning or evening sun — whoever thought going outside into the sunshine would become woo woo, but here we are — envisioning your future and staying open to opportunities as they present themselves. Call it manifestation if you want. Typically, you'll find what you seek, whether it's good or bad, so just keeping a positive attitude tends to bring positive things into your life. And a thousand other things you can do to bring joy and connection without the negativity and addiction of social media.

Having an adventurous attitude and taking care of yourself matters particularly at this time of year, because I'm already hearing people talk like it's the middle of winter and starting to slow down. Summer still has weeks to go, and there's all of autumn ahead. We usually have warm days into early winter — remember, I'm in the Northeast U.S. — so with three and a half months to go, people are already talking about stopping all activity and winding down for the winter. I think a lot of that is influenced by the news and weather forecasts that describe every act of nature like a targeted, mean action against humanity, so you'd better just stay inside and watch TV or go online.

I say no. Ignore that. Go for a walk outside, or even better, do it with friends, or arrange to call a friend — you can both walk wherever you are and talk on the phone while you do it. We have so many easier ways to communicate now, and yet we often voluntarily isolate ourselves, which is never healthy, and certainly not as we age.

And please be careful with AI. It's fun, it's often useful, sometimes impressive — and it's also very often just plain wrong. I take a limited number of supplements, mostly basic vitamins and minerals, and I was considering adding one to the mix. Gemini, through Google search, gave me a delightful, well-thought-out answer with plenty of advice on avoiding possible contraindications. So I took that entire conversation and plugged it into Claude Opus — their formerly top model, now more of a middle-tier one — and Claude found multiple questionable recommendations, and at least two pieces of advice that were flat-out wrong.

I haven't taken either response at face value, but keep my experience in mind the next time you ask AI for a recommendation, especially regarding health, wellness, and aging. Always cross-check, and ask a real, live expert to confirm. Remember, AI just takes all the available knowledge it can find and synthesizes an answer from that pool. If the common knowledge is wrong, or if recommendations have recently changed, the advice you get may be wrong or suboptimal.

I bring this up in terms of self-care and social media because having an "AI friend" is getting more common, and trials specifically for older adults — using AI as a kind of replacement for social interaction — are well underway. In most cases, I'd suggest that's a bad idea. Real people have their issues, obviously, but our minds generally know how to deal with real people. Multiple studies have shown that people tend to be overconfident in the information AI systems provide.

So again — don't be afraid to think outside the box, and take society's stigmas and guidelines with a grain of salt. You're mature, with decades of experience and decisions behind you, and you likely have a pretty good idea of what works for you. Have confidence in yourself. Don't get trapped living inside your phone — it's just an echo chamber of popular thought, and as we've covered often, ageism is common there and will influence what you see and read, often in subtle ways.

If you use AI, use it carefully. Don't be afraid to challenge it, or cross-check its answers with a different AI system, or even better, a real-life expert. And if you're tempted to use AI as your buddy instead of a real person, you might want to consider keeping a few real people in the mix for perspective. Yeah, people can be a pain sometimes, but they can also really care for you and about you — something AI can never really do.

So that's it for this week. Thanks so much for joining me. Remember, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. As always, please check out UKR7.com — there's a link there to organizations supporting the people of Ukraine, which is certainly still going on in a big way — and WCK.org, World Central Kitchen. Those are both international sites, but local charities are always looking for people to help too. Even something as simple as a smile you give someone on the street can change their day for the better in ways you can't even imagine.

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting and useful, please pass it along. Please subscribe and hit that like button, and if not, drop me a comment about other subjects you'd like to hear about. 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 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.