2026 September 29 Peace and opportunity, not emptiness

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 the difference between quiet and peaceful. 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 be talking about the difference between life being quiet and life being peaceful.

This course is based around the five pillars of life, which are identity, mind, body, curiosity, and contribution. There's a freebie you can download that explains the five pillars at 7EveryMinute.com/five-pillars-freebie, and I'd encourage you to go take a peek. Think of the five pillars as the overall architecture of what guides us through our lives. Identity is, as you would expect, how we perceive ourselves. The mind is how we interact with the world. The body is our health and the maintenance of the rest of us, which is very important, because it helps support your mind as well. Then we have curiosity and, finally, contribution.

Tonight's topic is a more complex arrangement, because it covers two of those pillars: mind and identity. Part of it relates to perception, but perception is grounded in how we perceive ourselves, so the two interact.

Remember from previous times that we've talked: one of the things we all get to choose is how to react to a particular situation. Even in very serious situations, we always have a range of reactions we can apply. To be really clear, and I've said this many times, that doesn't mean things are always peachy and wonderful. But we still have some latitude in how we choose to react, and in how we frame that situation within our lives.

One of the things that happens to all of us is that we get older. For better or worse, society attaches all sorts of meanings to that process, and at some point, society and perhaps ourselves decide that our lives have changed. Suddenly, in one way or another, we feel old. And that transition to "old" is being felt by younger and younger people, many of them now feeling old at 25 or 35.

I went on TikTok and, well, it can be kind of a scary place when you put your mind to it. I saw a series of posts that I found actually very interesting. One says, "Happy birthday to me. I feel so old, help," at 25 years. Another says, "They forgot to tell us that as soon as you're 25, life feels like a joke." Another says, "No one prepares you for when you turn 25 and realize you're aging, and so is your family, and you feel like a baby and also ancient." And the last one is from a person who is actually 30. She has this look on her face when she realizes she's officially aged out of the function. She went to a party and realized she was the old person there.

I found those pretty fascinating. Ageism isn't just for older people, obviously, but that's a different discussion. Remember that sorting society by age is actually pretty recent. It's kind of a marketing invention, and it's certainly recent in terms of totally defining a person by their age.

So, moving away from the perils of being 25 or 30, we come to the other end of what many would consider their primary career. Many of us have worked in one type of job or industry for much of our adult lives. We've talked previously about defining ourselves by our job or career, but this is a different aspect. Many of us advanced in stature, and often in pay, as we worked throughout our careers. But ignoring the titles and even the pay, there's another aspect of working, whether it's in a business, a factory, working for ourselves, working in the home, or in the fields as a farmer. No matter the specifics, there was usually a time aspect to it: many of our waking hours were consumed with tasks, problems, events, or activities related to our primary career.

You likely didn't often think about it, but you always knew the various deadlines, the activities, maybe the travel, the conferences, the meetings, and the people you were responsible for. Every day, whether you were working or not, you had this background cadence defined by your career. It was an occasional annoyance, but it was also a unifying factor, not only within you and your family, but wherever you worked, with the people you worked with, and even with other people you knew in your career path. Everyone in your industry or field knew when some big trade show or event was coming up, and they didn't even have to mention it by name. They'd say things like, "Hey Jim, you going to Chicago in August?" because they knew the big industry trade show was happening then, and they knew that you would know. There was a camaraderie to it. It wasn't presumptive so much as inclusive. It was a common time marker, a kind of shorthand for knowing that you may be competitors, but you're still working toward some common goals.

There was a family dynamic to it, too. If the event was at a regular time and in the same place, it may even have been a time when you'd arrange the family vacation around it, maybe traveling after the business part was over.

And this isn't just for white-collar jobs. New York used to have Empire Farm Days, out toward Rochester, which I believe was the largest agricultural show in the Northeast. I've been to the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, Kentucky, a monstrous agricultural show. The largest RV and camper show just ended in Hershey, Pennsylvania, about a week and a half ago, and there were hundreds, likely thousands, of regulars who go and meet each other in the industry year after year. The same is true in medicine, pharmaceuticals, engineering, construction machinery, and on and on. Even when you're traveling, you're still managing things back at the office, wherever that may be. So not only every day, but every week, and even time periods within each year, were an instrumental part of the regular cadence of your life within your career.

And then one day, it just stopped.

Quiet. But a silent sort of quiet, like walking out of a Pink Floyd or Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert, if you've ever been to one, when you forgot your earplugs. And yes, I saw them both live in a small venue in upstate New York. I was really lucky; other ticket prices were insane at the time. I think we spent something like $35. Ridiculous.

But your career was like the concert. There were all sorts of things going on, and only a small number of them were predictable. Everything's happening all at once, it's all consuming, and then, silence.

When you leave a concert, you know what to expect. You still have the same friends you went with, and you can talk about the concert on the ride home, probably shouting at each other because you forgot your earplugs and you're half deaf. Only one minor event changed and ended. But when your career or your current life situation changes, not only did your title change, your whole life cadence changed. We've talked about the title, and in many ways that's almost easier to rationalize and get over. But after the first few weeks of relaxing, you suddenly realize that this subconscious ticking clock of things that had to be done has nothing in the queue anymore waiting for your attention. And it's easy to all of a sudden start viewing this quiet time not as a vacation, but as the start of being meaningless, because there's no urgency for anything anymore that has to be done or completed.

This is exactly where perspective plays a huge role, because you can interpret the change in many different ways. Yes, it's quiet, but quiet can also be peaceful, and peaceful can be healing. Besides, no one said you have to stop doing everything. Just because you don't have a dozen people trying to get a piece of your time doesn't mean you have to leave all that time empty and unused.

Think back to when you were buried in work. What would you have given for the luxury of some time off, just to relax, or gather your thoughts, or get involved with some organizations you wanted to support, or a thousand other things? Well, now, that is the time you have available. Instead of feeling like no one needs your input, you have the opportunity to go find places that are desperate for your input and experience. Instead of feeling like every day is an empty void that you have some sort of duty to fill, view it as a beautifully clean slate, or drawing pad, waiting to be filled with your knowledge, joy, jokes, self-care, friends, family, and all the other things you wished you had more time for when you were working.

The time after your primary career ends, or after a big life change, is a time of huge growth opportunities. You aren't struggling to keep up with the latest technology changes; rather, you are the leader of change, in any way that matters to you. That doesn't mean you have to fill up all 168 hours of the week with things to do. It does mean you have the option to spend fewer hours, but leverage your skills in a way you never could when someone else was at least partially in control of your time.

This is one of the reasons I really enjoy being older. If I don't accomplish something I set out to do, I know exactly who to talk to. If my priorities change, or have to change, I only have to convince a few people, mainly only one, and not some management hierarchy. If it's sunny today and I decide to spend the day at the river shooting videos instead of inside typing, the only one I have to convince is my dog. And he's a pushover. Can you see the difference?

Society has told us being busy is good, and if we aren't, well, we aren't worth anything. But here's a big news break: I still study engineering throughout the week, even though I'm not currently working in it, because I really like it. If you like finance, go give free seminars to understand how to help underserved groups go beyond living on a cash-based life. In fact, I know someone who did just that and ended up on national TV and in national magazines for her amazing work. What a concept: doing what you enjoy, on your own schedule and on your own terms.

And as far as being busy, if you always wanted to learn some new skills, there's no better time than when you have more time. Once you become proficient, hopefully you can share those skills with others. That isn't busy work. That's productively being busy, helping society be more stable and developing real community, not just Facebook friends. I hope you're starting to see the difference between an empty, isolated quiet, or silence, and suddenly getting the opportunity to grow in ways you just didn't have the time to do before.

Is it a little scary when you first look at your calendar and there's nothing scheduled for the week? Actually, only if you let yourself interpret that as having no meaning. If you want a little trick to help get your brain on board, start writing down all the self-care things you meant to do but never had time for. Take a walk in the park. Do some meditation. Sit in all the churches in town. Practice piano. Learn to knit. These aren't just things to fill time; they're skills you're teaching yourself. Even meditation is going to a place where you can empty your mind and let your thoughts calm down. Then you can leverage those skills into opportunities to be more involved in the world and in your community, and from that, you will likely find you're far more in demand than you expected.

Maybe there's an entrepreneurs' group looking for some advice on an aspect of business you used to do all the time, not quite like the back of your hand, but close. To these people, you're a freaking magician. "How do you know all these tax laws by heart? How can you remember all this stuff?" And you're kind of like, "I've done it for 40 years. Trust me, it only looks hard when you start." You can give them your confidence and your knowledge. Maybe a 4-H group needs someone to help train youngsters to care for poultry. You've done that for years, perhaps. It's nothing magic to you, but you can share what seems like magic to them, in a way they can understand. There are endless opportunities like this.

And if you feel you absolutely must still be in an operating business, then this is the perfect time to start one. You have the experience, the knowledge, the connections, the context, and most importantly, the time to really focus and follow your dream. The second-highest age group for people starting new businesses is individuals over 55. Of American people working into their seventies, nearly 30 percent are self-employed. Globally, about 13 percent of people aged 65 to 80 are self-employed, a higher number than those aged 18 to 29. And the Wall Street Journal did a big study on this and reported that entrepreneurs in this older bracket overwhelmingly listed autonomy, personal passion, and societal impact as their primary motivators for starting a business. As we said above, this is the ideal time to do what you always wanted to do but never felt you had the time for.

So, back to the original premise: is it a time of quiet, empty silence? Or is it a time of peaceful re-energizing, allowing you to be as amazing as you wish to be? That will be influenced by how you choose to look at the huge opportunity provided by career and life changes. Will there be challenges? Of course. But there will be challenges for those who sit on the couch watching TV, too. Life just has challenges. But by living your life into your vision, and from a perspective of growth and energy, I truly believe these are some of the best years of our lives.

Do I work differently now than I did 20 or 30 years ago? Absolutely. But a lot of those differences are due to choice, not limitations. Choose to see the opportunity, and have an amazing time in all that you do.

Again, if you'd like to see the video that explains the five pillars, how our lives are shaped by those five major influences, and how we can balance, rebalance, and adjust them as we age, check it out at 7EveryMinute.com/five-pillars-freebie. I think it's actually pretty interesting. It's fascinating how, as you work through your life, you see these same concepts come up again and again.

As always, remember that one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. Visit UKR7.com and WCK.org. Those link to places that help the people of Ukraine and to World Central Kitchen, two international efforts, but local charities are worth looking for too. Even a simple smile can change someone else's 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, subscribe, hit that like button, and send me a message. Have a great week.

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.