2026 March 17 Transformation into self-belief!

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 turning transformation into action. Let's get going. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, and send me a message.

This week we're going to talk about what even a simple transformation can lead to when we let ourselves reimagine our future in terms of evolving instead of ending something. As we touched on last week, the goal of transformation isn't money, per se, but rather to live a satisfying and fulfilling life.

That may involve money for some people, or it may not. But even when it does, it's a far different perspective than the typical "money equals happiness" equation we usually see in society. Money's just a tool, and like most tools, it'll typically make you more of whatever you already are. So if you're generous, you can be more generous. If you're always cranky, you'll just be a bigger crank. Seriously, money alone is typically just an amplifier for however you normally act. So while it can change certain aspects of how you live, it rarely changes who you are — and even more rarely for the better.

We also talked about how we retain our ability to change ourselves even as we age. Society paints us all as being fixed in our ways, but in reality, if you stay socially engaged and purposefully open-minded, you'll find that you're still just as capable of acquiring new skills and viewpoints at pretty much any age.

As I've mentioned before, my mother learned to use email and Facebook when she was about 85 years old. Did she suddenly decide she wanted to be a tech genius? Not at all. That's when she realized that was how she could keep getting regular updates and pictures of the grandchildren and other family members.

As we often say, pull motivation — where the result is pulling you toward itself — is much stronger and easier to maintain than push motivation, where we're trying to push ourselves to do something because we feel we should. For my mom, there was probably no stronger pull than being able to see how the next generation was doing. So keep that concept in mind. Whenever you try to do something new, if you're pushing yourself to do it, it'll probably be pretty difficult. However, if you can reframe it as pull motivation, you'll tend to find reasons to be successful. Simply put, if you can show your brain why doing something is good for you, your brain will be totally on board and find reasons for you to succeed.

And finally, we hinted at how retirement is a huge change for our brain and almost every aspect of our lives. Our social routines change. Our income streams change. Our personal schedules change. Our sense of worth usually changes. And we generally get very little warning that this is going to happen.

Happily, there are more people who have been focusing on this transition period over the past few years. Here at 7EveryMinute, we refer to this specific time of life as the identity gap, and we'll go into that in depth another time. But it's when our former life identity — usually built up over decades — suddenly transitions, often in a matter of days, maybe weeks if you're lucky. It's when you transition from your career identity to... what, exactly?

And this is where all the societal pressures, social media, memes, ageist comments, and all the other negative influences we've been exposed to for basically our whole lives come home to roost. Because there used to be relatively few pathways for older adults to continue contributing to the world. Those ways existed, to be sure, but they weren't particularly emphasized. In reality, unless you were one of the upper classes of society, there was relatively little marketing directed toward you at all — and the little that did exist was all about how to spend your money having fun.

Another spoiler alert: research has shown that satisfaction with life doesn't come from having fun. Rather, it comes from a sense of accomplishment. Traveling around the world staying only at water parks near the equator will likely satisfy far less than traveling around the world teaching grammar school teachers English so they can better teach their classes. And it makes sense. The first is a self-focused activity that happens and then it ends, and when it ends, so does the direct pleasure. The second is an outwardly focused activity that you can think about again and again and continue to get pleasure from — and hopefully even receive updates from those you taught. The accomplishment stays fresh in your mind.

But how many people talk about those kinds of transformations? Not very many, unfortunately. And that is part of what I want to talk about, because to not use the combined knowledge, experience, and energy of older adults is both a waste and a huge societal loss. I know a number of people who have so much to give back to society in so many ways, who after retiring just had no idea what to do. No sense of worth, no meaning. And for many of them, the solution was to go back to work at some job or other — not because they wanted to work, but because it gave them a sense of meaning in their lives. And to me that's really unfortunate, because this is the time of our lives when we can truly shine and truly share our knowledge and our experiences.

It's important to realize that life happens in chapters, and we tend to think of those chapters in very broad categories: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and retirement. That's kind of how you hear it. But in reality, the segments are much finer than that. There are many phases in our childhood, many phases in our teenage years — some we'd rather forget, but nonetheless, they were there — and certainly throughout our adult lives. Similarly, retirement isn't about the end of our lives. It's just the next chapter. And even if you retire from one career, there's nothing preventing you from doing something else that you find interesting.

But that's just a taste of what's to come. It's an important topic because, just like my mom let her desire to see pictures of her grandkids pull her into the computer age, you too can find new experiences and opportunities to make your life full of meaning, joy, and satisfaction. So just a brief recap and a little hint of what's ahead.

That's it for this evening. No homework again tonight, because we're still doing the overview. But there are a lot of exciting things to come. We'll probably do some more overviews because we want to try to catch this up — and we're going to put it together so you can see the whole path and how this really leads into a different phase of life with a different mindset.

As always, thank you very much for stopping by. Remember, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others.

We regularly highlight two wonderful organizations doing amazing work in the world: UKR7.com, where you can find links to help the people of Ukraine, and WCK.org — World Central Kitchen — an international organization that works in disaster areas around the world. Both do wonderful things. But you also have a lot of local charities, and they're always looking for help. As we often talk about, looking outside yourself really changes your view on the world. If you have the energy to do that, it can give you a very different perspective on life. And even just a smile to someone you meet on the street can change the day for the better in ways you can't even imagine.

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along. Subscribe, hit that like button, and if not, please drop me a comment about what else 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.