Leaning Toward Wisdom

The headline was clearly meant to tempt me to click it. So I did. But I didn't read it...until I hit the record button.

29 Careless Ways Retirees Waste Money

Let's see how well this list was curated.

I also give a shout-out to a golfer in today's show. Shocking, since I don't golf. But I love rather love golf courses. Especially the ones inside Hot Springs Village.

“The wise adapt themselves to circumstances, as water molds itself to the pitcher.” – Chinese Proverb

Things change. Sometimes quickly.

A phone call wakes you. Middle-of-the-night phone calls are never good. Dream jobs aren't offered at 3 am. Sweepstakes winners aren't awakened with the news.

Suddenly your life is different. How different depends on the news at the other end of the phone.

There was a pre-phone call ideal outcome. Now there's a post-phone call ideal outcome. They don't likely resemble each other.

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw

Other changes - even sudden ones - may not be as dramatic. Or devastating.

But they can still prompt a change in direction. A change in motivation. A change in our ideal outcome.

Have you ever wanted something so badly it consumed you? You thought of it often. You planned. Strategized. Committed yourself to figure it out. Then something changed. A circumstance. A new situation. A new challenge. A new opportunity.

Maybe suddenly, maybe not - your passion diminished. The passion for pursuing that ideal outcome weakened. Maybe it even evaporated.

Because you now have a new ideal outcome. You changed your mind. You adjusted. Adapted. To new information, a new situation or something that prompted you to see things differently.

“Change before you have to.” – Jack Welch

Some dreams die. Others change.

New dreams are born. Maybe. But new directions undoubtedly emerge...dream or no.

What do you most want when it comes to an outcome?

Why?

Are you in this alone or does your ideal outcome involve or include somebody else?

Age, experience, insight, wisdom. These things matter. But their counterparts do, too. Youth. Inexperience. Lack of insight. Foolishness.

That's why ideal outcomes are personal. Johnny Deep's ideal outcome would be a massive multi-million dollar judgment against Amber Heard. Ms. Heard's ideal outcome would be a massive multi-million dollar judgment against Johnny Deep. One or both are going to be horribly disappointed. Maybe one of them will do a celebration dance when this ordeal is over. Maybe both will leave the courthouse slumped shouldered and weeping. Or screaming. That seems more their habit. ;)

Ideal outcomes can be influenced by life's circumstances, too. Professionally I've pursued and sought after a number of outcomes that happened...and many that didn't. In retrospect, some of the failures served me well because the circumstances changed. Drastically in some cases. If your ideal outcome is an egg sunny side up, but the shell never break and the egg is boiling in water...well, bad news. You won't be eating a sunny side up egg. But you'll have a hard-boiled egg. You might want to make it a deviled egg. But it most certainly will never be a sunny side up egg! And you might find that's to your advantage. I'll bet you could tell us all about one time - likely more - where that happened to you.

I never wanted to be in business. I wanted to write. To speak. To communicate stories. But I fell in love with music and that method of storytelling. Some kids grabbed guitars or sat at pianos or drumsets. Their ideal outcome was to learn to play. My ideal outcome was different. The urge to play an instrument never dawned on me, except in some wishful thinking kind of way. "Wouldn't it be great if I could play the guitar reasonably well?"

Instead, I most wanted to listen to music. My passion was enjoying the performance of others. But my passion for listening to music led me to walk in cold to a local hi-fi store and ask for a job selling stereo gear, something I'd never done before. It seemed like a good idea 'cause I knew a lot about stereo gear even though I ...

Archie Karas appeared on the YouTube channel, Soft White Underbelly. The two sound clips from Archie's appearance on that web show provoke today's conversation about two words: expectation and desire. Today's show is a special - unplanned - episode. I hope you enjoy it.

Today's show was provoked by watching Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger conduct the 2022 Berkshire Hathaway stockholders' meeting. Well, that and getting older. There's a good reason why "Hey, get off my lawn" is attributed to old guys. ;)

Today's show is about YOU. Helping you through whatever you're going through right now.

Whether you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s or 60s --- or whether you're younger or older than that...you're going through something right now. Probably a number of things!

Recorded in the early morning hours of Monday, May 16, 2022, today's show has just one aim: to help you figure out what's next. Just the very next step.

It's about making a decision, then acting on that decision. I hope this episode is helpful.

Daily news is scary.

Really scary.

Real estate news.

Tax news.

Gas prices news.

Inflation.

Short supplies.

Healthcare.

Moral decay.

Cancel culture.

Deep fakes.

Personal finance.

Career.

Scary is everywhere! Everywhere.

As a little kid one particular movie on TV scared me, Bunny Lake Is Missing.

Encore.org is an organization I've been aware of for about 10 years now, thanks to an author who wrote a book I'm fond of - Marci Alboher. The book, published in 2007, was before Ms. Alboher was involved in Encore. I'm a fan of the book: One Person / Multiple Careers: The New Model For Work/Life Success. Here's an explanation from the Encore website:

Encore.org was founded on the belief that the aging of America isn’t so much a problem to be solved as it is an opportunity to be seized. For 20 years, we’ve worked to change cultural expectations for the years beyond 50 and spark a movement around second acts for the greater good. In our own second act, we bring older and younger changemakers together to solve problems, bridge divides, and co-create the future.

I'm at the encore phase of life. Truth be told, I've been at the encore phase for years! And it can be scary. No, it is often scary.

When you're determined to cash flow your life - and I am - it's both scary and invigorating. Scary because like everybody else - and everything else - it's largely unpredictable. We aim for an ideal outcome with the realization that there are going to be challenges we know nothing about. Add those to the known challenges and it's enough to make a body want to stay in bed all day!

What's going to happen with this economy? Interest rates are on the rise reaching new heights that an entire generation (or two) have never seen. Me? I've had a 14% mortgage before - and that was with an excellent credit score. But I've not seen anything like this - uncontrolled inflation, abundant supply of money, limited supply of products, out of control demand for almost everything. It's an intersection of things that don't make sense to me. Scary.

We're all afraid of something.

We're all going through something.

And we're all just trying to figure it out.

I hope to be helpful as you make your journey.

P.S. It was 9 years ago today when I lost my lifelong best friend, Stanley. I won't belabor it today because I've talked about him here enough I suspect.

There are many personality assessments - and other kinds of "tests" that can help us better understand ourselves. Hubspot has a nice list of them.

Maybe our differences aren't so much the issue. Maybe there's something else that needs our attention.

This week I'm busier than a one-armed paper hanger so rather than take the week off I fired up the webcam and recorded a show exclusively for the folks in our little Facebook group. If you'd like to see it, then go here and answer an easy question and I'll likely let you inside. It's a 36-minute episode that's mostly about regret!

I registered the domain - ZoomingOut.com - on May 22, 2004. It had nothing to do with photography - or my video conferencing platform of choice. Instead, it was focused on our attempt to see a bigger picture as a means of seeing the finer details. There never was a website at that address. I still own the domain, although it's been for sale at a fairly high price for a while. I'm not anxious to sell it or get rid of it, but a person can only actually use so many domains and I already have too many (even though I've gone through one major purge about 2 years ago). I suppose I'm due another purging.

Zooming Out was a phrase I first wrote down in early 2004 for reasons I don't remember. My best recall is people were likely talking about narrowing in on things and that whole inability to see the forest for the trees was something I've battled in others all my life. While I'm very detail-oriented, I've mostly been frustrated by folks who can get intensely focused on the bark on a tree that they're unable to see anything larger. It was my experience with such types that caused me to craft a sentence that I've lived by professionally for much of my life - "If everything is important, then nothing is important." In other words, if we're not able to prioritize and acknowledge that at this moment, something is more important than anything else, then we'll chase every tangent that comes along deluded into thinking it all matters equally. I've never found any situation in life - personally or professionally - where that's true.

I’ve spent countless hours trying to help myself and others look at the bigger puzzle that we're all trying to put together. My conviction - and experience - have proven that knowing we're attempting to assemble a 1000 piece puzzle of a seascape can help us better figure out where any single specific piece may fit. And that's largely how we may be able to best figure things out, including ourselves.

In the mid to late 80s a Ph.D. consultant in San Francisco named Jan Halpern wrote a book based on research she had done about successful men. The book was entitled, "Quiet Desperation: The Truth About Successful Men." I've still got my copy and think of the book often - so much so, I'll pick it up pretty regularly to go back through various sections of it.

On page 49 is a section titled, "QUESTIONING THE ETERNAL TRUTHS." Sure, it's a bit click baity - written before the Internet and clicks were even a thing - but she makes some grand points.

She writes...

There are many intellectual and emotional barriers that must be broken through, reevaluated and discarded before you can become comfortable in your own skin. I suggest you begin to question the messages and premises you have been raised with that prevent you from knowing your private self. By challenging these "eternal" truths, many have come to reject the notion that men don't feel. Moreover, doing so has helped them to alleviate the haunting emptiness and confusion that plagued their moments of solitude.

Let me make an allowance here that while the author's research was specifically on successful men, much of it has a broader application.

It began as a market research project in 1977 and wound up involving some four thousand men who operated within leadership roles of Fortune 500 companies. Even the author acknowledges in the preface of the book that it could apply to some women, but she focused on men. And I'm not so interested in the details of her research for today's show - or the fact that it's solely about men. I'm coming at it in true Zooming Out fashion looking at a bigger, broader picture of all of us - as humans.

After all, here were are in 2022 at a place I never thought we'd be. A place where people can't or are afraid to even define what it is to be a woman (see Matt Walsh's appearance on The Dr. Phil Show).

We were young adults, maybe 20 or so, when it became a common refrain among us. "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired." We'd chuckle, but it was true. Sadly, it was mostly just a humorous comment and not some moment of newly found determination. We never attempted to improve our circumstances. Rather, we just chuckled at poking fun at how our lives were going.

It wasn't that we didn't want to improve, but we didn't do much in the way of affecting change. Talk is cheap. And we were really cheap!

I've been down. I've been out. And I've discovered that when you hit bottom you're not necessarily done. There are always new lows you knew nothing about standing ready to show you firsthand, "Here we are!"

The myth is persuasive. Wrong, but persuasive. Like all the deep fakes that infiltrate our brain daily (if not hourly). We see stories and believe them to be true. Never mind that it's an illusion propped up behind some insecure, fear-filled idiot behind a keyboard who has less of a clue about things than we do. And we know we're stupid! ;)

Bigger is better. And so is more.

No, it's not. There's enormous value in small, powerful, and profitable endeavors. Mostly, there's value in small, powerful, and profitable steps toward improvement. That's the point of today's show, but such steps don't get taken until we reach our "enough is enough" point.

We're just one big break away. One bit of luck that will change everything.

I was in my teens when I started selling stereo gear at a local hi-fi shop. No sales experience other than going from house to house in the neighborhood asking people if I could mow their lawn for $10. I quickly learned, as a straight commission salesperson (which means I earned nothing unless I sold something), salespeople can behave like gamblers, always thinking "the next one" will be the big one. Even more quickly, I learned there is no next big one. There was some moronic, delusional fantasy that the Universe would bend to our need for the next sale to be a big one that paid high commissions. Why would the Universe care that I wanted a new set of wider tires for my car? Fact is, the Universe not only lacks concern for such things, but mostly the Universe has no say in the matter. Shoppers did. And if shoppers came in the store they certainly didn't want new tires for my car. They had their own desires and if I wasn't able to help them get what they wanted, well, see ya later new tires!

I had read and re-read Dale Carnegie's book, "How To Win Friends & Influence People." I knew the truism he taught about helping others get what they want. Some guy in Dallas with a funny name would come along later and make it one of his more famous quotes...

You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want. – Zig Ziglar

Never one to fawn over those "motivational" speaker types, I was skeptical from the get-go about all that. And I was smart enough to know absolutes are dangerous, so when Zig told me I could have EVERYTHING IN LIFE I WANTED...well, I knew it made for a powerfully good quote, but I also knew it was complete rubbish. ;)

But by the time I turned 17 I absolutely knew, as a salesperson, that I had to deliver what shoppers most wanted in order to achieve whatever financial goals I might have. So I quickly realized it wasn't merely about helping others get what they want, it was - at least for me as a hi-fi sales guy - about helping shoppers get whatever they wanted in a stereo system. If, like me, they wanted wider tires for their car, well, I wasn't going to be much help. But if I wanted wider tires for my car - and I did - then I knew my path forward was in helping them get whatever they wanted in a hi-fi setup. Context matters.

That path forward was a fast lesson for me. And I wish I were better at remaining disciplined...