Segment: Peaks of the Weeks

Peaks of the week is my chance to share some very favorite things with you and I have two that I want to share today that are, one is new, one I’ve been using for a year, and I’m obsessed with, so I want to tell you about both.

Countertop Pebble Ice Machine

The first one is a countertop pebble ice maker. Are you a pebble ice fan?

I sure am. I love the crunchy little, tiny dots of ice that you would get like at Sonic, for example, or any great restaurant will have pebble ice. In fact, there’s a restaurant nearby in Richmond that I love to go to just so I can have the pebble ice with my giant Diet Coke and lime. My parents, knowing this about me, ordered me my very own countertop pebble ice maker as a graduation gift.

It arrived just about a couple months ago, and I love it so much. There is another version of a pebble ice maker that we had gotten for my parents for Christmas last year, and it’s a more popular one. It’s a GE version, and it works well, but then also has some funky cleaning issues and my parents only used it for a few months before it was on the fritz, and they needed to change some things.

My mom found a bunch of great reviews for the one that she got for me. And so far, so good. Not only is it fast and quiet and fantastic, it also is a couple hundred dollars cheaper than the other version. I’m going to link it in the show notes. It is an appliance that sits on the countertop. I have it tucked into the corner of my counter where I fill it with water, close the lid, an hour or two later I have a basket full of crunchy, delicious nugget ice.

I’ve been transferring my ice to a little bin in my freezer so that I can keep making more. If there is one flaw, I would mention maybe just that it doesn’t have a freezer on site. So, it makes ice, but it doesn’t keep it frozen. So, you either use it within a day or so. I dump it into the freezer if we’re not planning on using it right then.

It’s been making such great ice though, and I can just fill my water bottle up. I feel like I always drink more water when I have a nice ice-cold water bottle on hand. And the nugget ice is just making it all more fun. I’m putting scoops of it in our dinner. It’s just, if you like pebble ice, you’re going to love it.

If you don’t care about nugget ice, then of course it’s a non-issue. I will link this one in the show notes. It is an investment. It’s about $300 on Amazon right now. I’m sure that it goes up and down a little bit with pricing and sales and things. If you are looking into one though, I highly recommend this one and it could be a great holiday gift, a group gift for someone you know, you could ask for it, put it on your list, for the family.

Adult-Sized Electric Scooters

My next peak of the week is also an investment and a holiday item. I got Dave and myself electric scooters for Christmas last year. All the kids got push scooters.

We live in a very walkable/bikeable area of the city of Richmond. And so, we love being out walking and biking and scootering. And these really were a fun group gift that the kids got push scooters. I invested in electric scooters for Dave and myself. I knew they would be fun. We’ve really loved when we use bird scooters or lime scooters, like the renting ones around the city, I knew it’d be fun to have our own.

It has far exceeded my expectations. We not only use them for buzzing around to go get ice cream or to go to the playground, but we also actually use them as transportation. I ride the scooter to the co-working space, we can ride it to the library, we can buzz over to the grocery store to pick something up quick.

Last month Milo and I rode the scooters up to the barber shop for his monthly haircut. I found them last year through a friend who had recommended them, and I loved knowing that she had them for a year or two, and they worked well. I’m here to report, huge peak of the week, these SG5 Swagger scooters are amazing.

They would be a fun Christmas gift, even just one or two for a whole family where have a buddy who you can go along with. Highly recommend, especially if you live in an area where within about three or four miles of your house, you have a lot of things going on.

They have about a six-to-seven-mile battery at the highest speed. Huge fan. I will link that in the show notes as well. Coming up on a year, and they’re one of those Christmas presents that has just kept giving all year long. I wanted to let you know about them as you’re heading into the holiday season in case that’s something that someone on your list or you have in their dreams for the holidays. Those new updated tech electronic cool holiday items are my peaks of this week.

Two-Stepping

How familiar are you with the two steps? This is a classic dance move. Mainly associated with country music, where you stand facing your partner, with a regular comfortable distance between you, and then you take a quick step forward with one foot, and then a quick step to the side with the other.

And then, a slow step backward, and a slow step to the side. So, it’s one two, one two. 1, 2, 1, 2, like moving in a box formation with your partner, all around the dance floor.

I learned the two steps as a tot. I would stand on my dad’s feet while he held my hands, and we would two steps around the kitchen and the living room to music all growing up.

My dad would put on classics like George Strait, Reba MacIntyre, or Dwight Yoakam, and we would dance and laugh together. This dancing continued through my childhood.

Eventually I learned to step on the floor instead of on my dad’s toes. All the way up until the day I got married. We had a big dance floor and a live band and had so much fun. When it came time for the father daughter dance, my dad approached me and we uncomfortable position and two stepped this final time.

Truly, as I’m thinking about it now, it probably was the last time that I danced the two-step with my dad that day that I got married before I became a wife and moved into having my own family.

I’m realizing now that I do a lot of dancing in the kitchen with my kids, and I haven’t yet taught them the two steps, so this is a good reminder for me to pick up that tradition, that family culture of two stepping, and teach it to my own kids, because it’s a sweet memory that I have of growing up.

The Two-Step of Pragmatic Prospection

Today’s episode is all about a two-step. Not the country dance, but an interesting… philosophical and psychological process that I learned about a few weeks ago at a great conference. It’s going to seem simple, maybe even oversimplified, but I am excited about the way that these two steps will feel very sticky, very easy to remember.

And when you’re thinking about your future, you can remember to use this two-step method to have the most positive future possible.

I’m not going to hold out on you. I’m going to tell you the two steps right now, and then I’m going to rewind and give you some framework for how to think about them and why they matter. And then at the end of the episode, I’ll give you some practical tips for getting good at this two-step method.

The Two Steps: 1. Dream Big 2. Get Real

The two steps for how to think about your future are one. to dream big, and two, to get real. The two steps are dream big, get real. Those two steps come directly from Roy Baumeister, who is a critically acclaimed social psychologist.

He’s published close to a thousand papers in the last several decades, with the combined citations, at least according to Google scholars, of almost 280,000. That means his work is being used and cited and referred to broadly throughout the psychological community.

Some of his most popular work is about the theory of belonging, the need that we must belong. Also, negativity bias, how bad can often feel stronger than good.

His most recent research or what he’s focusing on right now is what people think about and how that impacts them. He expressed that in the world of psychology, people are often studying the past, how past relates to psychological current conditions.

I know a lot of clinical psychology refers to past events, past emotional trauma, things in the past that are affecting your present and your future. And when researched with devices– people are handed out these little beepers, pagers or they have their cell phones. They get reminders sporadically throughout the day over a certain period.

They are asked to record what they’re thinking about, how they feel about what the frame of time is that they were in, whether they were thinking about the future, the far future, the near future, the present, The early past, the recent past or the far back past, they gathered all of this information from all of the participants in the study and started to review the data.

Most people are thinking about the present or the future.

And he said he was really surprised because while most of the psychological research has focused on past, most people are thinking about the present and the near future. He said, only 1 in 50 was connecting past thoughts to future events, using the past to plan the future.

That goes against most general understanding of how we plan. Often, I’ve heard that we use our history, our past, to plan the future. What he found is that most people are thinking about the present and the near future rather than the past or the far future. Among all the participants in this research, only about 10%, when randomly surveyed about their thoughts, we’re thinking about the past.

About 30% included the future. And then, of course, there were combinations of past, present, and future. People who were not in time were daydreaming or were thinking of things that had nothing to do with time, like a math problem. For example, if you’re working on homework for math, you might be doing it in the present, but the actual thoughts about it don’t exist in time.

Humans think about the future to plan.

Roy talked about how people, humans, think about the future not as idle, daydreaming, or mind wandering, but that it’s pragmatic. We think about the future to have some impact upon it.

Often our thinking about the future includes planning for the future. What do we want to happen? What do we think might happen? What are the possibilities? And that’s a practical way to think about the future.

He found, in fact, that people who spent time planning felt more meaningful and positive emotions than people who were thinking about the future without planning. They were just worrying or anxious about the future. That felt a lot different than thinking about it with purpose.

Making Predictions and Taking Risks

Now come in a couple interesting psychological theories. One about predictions and one about taking risks. Most people, when they predict the future, are highly optimistic. We tend to overestimate positive predictions for ourselves and our capabilities. But when it comes to action, we tend to mitigate risk.

People predict optimistically, but they act cautiously. And this is where the two-step came in. Using a combination of the latest research in psychology, Roy told us that to optimize our futures and use all our natural psychological processes to do we should dream big and get real.

Sponsor: EveryPlate Code:49HAPPY

Today’s podcast is sponsored by EveryPlate. EveryPlate is now owned by HelloFresh. I’ve been talking about HelloFresh for years now. I’m a huge fan of the whole company and the concept of simplifying meals. Now, when I talk about it with friends and family in real life, one of the questions that comes up is about cost and value.

EveryPlate. is about 25% cheaper than grocery shopping and it doesn’t have any hidden fees, so you get to add more items to your cart for delicious holiday meals plus only pay for what you need because everything is pre proportioned so you’re not buying a whole pack of broccoli and then throwing away half of it when it, rots in the fridge after one meal.

I’ve long been a fan of simple meal planning systems. I love these. boxes where you get everything for several meals a week. You get to cook it fresh with pre-proportioned ingredients and the meals are interesting and delicious and filling and wonderful.

One of my favorites from every plate this week was a crunchy Buffalo ranch style chicken with mashed potatoes and roasted carrots. I love anything Buffalo. And this. combination and recipe are so good. Huge fan. My whole family ate it up, devoured it.

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Step One: Dream Big

We’re going to start with step one of the two step process. Step one is dream big. Dreaming big, thinking about the future is when you get to use your optimistic mindset.

When you think about your future, about what might happen, what is possible, this is a good chance for you to stretch out your positivity muscles. This is the time to unbridle your dreams and ambitions and to think about all the different things that seem like they might be fun or interesting to you.

It’s a good idea when you’re thinking about dreaming big to have present and maybe review what your personal values are, what some of the things that motivate you, that feel interesting and fun to you naturally are, where your strengths lie. You want to make sure that these big dreams are yours alone, yours and your family’s.

Listen to your own voice and values.

Sometimes when we dream big, the voices that very first come to the top of our mind are not ours. They’re the dreams of someone we follow on Instagram. They’re the dreams of our parents for us. They’re the dreams that, our teachers or even our spouses have told us are good for us. And you just want to make sure that you’re validating that you.

Want these things to that the dreams that you have in mind are personal, they feel meaningful to you. And I love to ask myself the question “why?” when I think about a big dream. If I follow it up with a “why?” I can answer myself in my own head and decide if I like the reason. Sometimes the reason is validation, or acknowledgement, or acceptance, or praise.

Years ago, I bought a cute pack of gift tags from a letter pressed artist in D. C., my friend Melanie Karlins. I laughed so hard because one of the first tags, they were this kind of cheeky letter pressed gift tags, and the first one that I read said, “This is a token of how much I want you to like me.”

Doesn’t that feel relatable? You give someone a gift with the stars in your eyes please like me, please acknowledge me, please be my friend. Sometimes we have big dreams that are for other people rather than for ourselves. So, check in with yourself about that as you’re dreaming big.

The Full-Body Yes

Also, with my coaching clients, I talk to them sometimes about the full body yes. This idea of being able to feel in your gut and your heart that something is good for you. Rather than just having a story that you’re telling yourself in your head.

It’s easy to talk ourselves into all sorts of different things, but when you can get quiet with your body and you can feel where this dream settles in, you’ll notice whether there’s a vibrant, buzzing, positive energy around it or whether it feels more like a sinking stone.

When you’re quiet with yourself, and you give yourself some space to feel into your dreams, often your body will tell you more about it than your head might even be aware of.

Heading into the end of the year is my favorite time to create big dreams and plans for the following year. I’ve shared about this in several other podcast episodes, and I’ll link a few of them in the show notes about how to plan for the year. Or a dream big list.

Often, I’ll pull out a piece of paper and just brainstorm, write down all the things that I can think of that sound fun or interesting or have been on my mind. Several years ago, I wrote down, “get a master’s degree in positive psychology.” And then a couple of years later, it felt like the right year to not only dream about it but plan to pursue it and make it happen.

I would love to invite you to take a few minutes in the next week and make a Big Dreams List. Brainstorm. Just write down different ideas of things that have felt interesting to you, things that you’re curious about, things you can imagine yourself doing, and when you think about yourself doing them, it makes you smile.

Make A Big Dreams List

This is what it means to dream big. As I’m recording this, I’m realizing that it’s been a little while since I checked in with my own big dreams. I’ve been so busy plugging away at accomplishing some of them that I haven’t taken a lot of time to think further in advance than right now.

I’m going to take advantage of this invitation and spend some time this week thinking about my big dreams for the next year or two. I’ll report back in a couple weeks and let you know what I’ve come up with.

Sponsor: BetterHelp

We’re going to take another quick break for a word from our sponsor and then we’ll be back to talk about step two. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Yesterday, I talked to my therapist, and I left the office feeling about a hundred pounds lighter than I did before.

This time of year can be a lot. It’s natural to feel some sadness or anxiety heading into the end of the year, especially as the weather changes. You know that I have a real tough time in the winter, and I need every tool in my toolbox to help give me those boosts of energy, enthusiasm, and motivation that I often lack during the winter season.

My therapist helps me with that. I can go and sit down, and chat and we brainstorm, and we dream big, and we get real together. Therapy can be a bright spot amid all the stress and change. transitions this time of year, it’s something to look forward to and helps you feel grounded and gives you all the tools that you need to manage what’s going on in your life.

If you’re thinking about starting therapy, some of the barriers can be that you don’t know where to go, where to start, how to deal with the benefits situation. It can be a lot. And this is where BetterHelp is so wonderful. It’s entirely online. Designed to be convenient, flexible, suited to your schedule, and affordable.

Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist in your area. And you can also switch therapists at any time with no extra charge, so you can be sure that you’ll find a good fit.

Find your bright spot this season with better help. Visit better help.com/livefree today to get 10% off your first month.

That’s betterhelp.com/livefree for 10% off your first month of online therapy.

Step Two: Get Real

It is now time to talk about step two in the two steps. process. We talked about dreaming big. You have your assignment, your homework, your practical tip for that to write down some of those big dreams for the next year or two, maybe even longer, but give yourself some focus somewhere to look. And next we’re going to talk about getting real.

Earlier in the episode, I shared that humans are naturally more risk averse when we’re dealing with reality. We can think about something cool and, be all excited in our heads, but when it comes to making decisions in our everyday lives, we are risk averse. We don’t want to lose things that we already have.

We’re going to judge and be a little bit more practical with the choices that we do make. Once we dream big, the next step is to get real, to take that dream and plot it out into a set of practical actions that we can take to get us toward that future.

This practice of taking a big plan and turning it into small practical steps is what I do in all my sessions with my coaching clients.

Once you figure out what you want and why you want it, you turn your attention to the how, what does it take to get there? What are the steps to move you towards that future?

While you put on your optimistic cap, when you’re dreaming big, as you move into step two, you want to put on your pragmatic cap.

You want to be a realist. If you’re unsure of that word pragmatism, let me tell you a little bit about it. It’s my new favorite philosophy.

Let’s Talk About Pragmatism

Pragmatism was developed in the 19th century by American philosophers such as Charles Peirce and William James. It was partly a response to the perceived limitations of traditional philosophy and its focus on abstract questions.

Pragmatism emphasizes the practical consequences of beliefs and actions. It holds us to the truth that an idea can be determined by its practical utility, pragmatists value experience and experimentation. This is a hands-on approach. This is where you get real.

In step two, you might not have all the information to make very clear and defined answers, so you step into experimentation, to what you might need to try to find out.

What you need to know to take further steps. In some recent research done about executives and managers, they found that when facing possible problems, the managers who had a flexible plan B or C and were able to adapt to changing circumstances did far better than the leaders and managers who could develop an idea but couldn’t adapt if something changed.

Getting real means being flexible

This is step two, the adapting and experimenting and being practical and adjusting as needed. This is what it means to get real. I’m sure you can think of a time in your life where you had a grand plan and if everything had gone according to your plan, you’d be sitting pretty, but something changed.

Something unexpected came along and the plan simply poofed into thin air. Two stepping into our future with positivity means that we are adjusting as needed for the real circumstances of our everyday lives as they come up.

While when you are dreaming big, you want to take down all the scaffolding and barriers, the limitations that you may hold for yourself. You want the world to feel like your oyster in that first step.

In step two, this is a chance to look at what is real and practical in your life. What are the circumstances that you’re navigating right now? And how do you use your currently available resources to move you in the direction of your dreams?

There is always a next right step. Sometimes we think we’ve got this big dream, but It’s like this far leap to get there and we don’t know how to take that first big leap. If the step seems too big to accomplish, that means that the step is too big. You need to break it down even further and further until you have bite sized action items. That will allow you to move in the direction of your dreams.

An example: Wallpaper

I’m going to give you a simple example that is very hands on and tangible so that you can just relate to what I mean here. One, this isn’t going to sound like a huge dream, but a big dream that I had a couple years ago when we moved into our new house was to have beautiful wallpaper in one of the bathrooms upstairs.

That is a several step process to it seems like in your head, you can say, oh, you, yeah, you put wallpaper up or you hire someone to put wallpaper up. Yes, and it can feel like zero to 10. The first step for me was to buy wallpaper. And I did that when I saw some on sale at Anthropologie that I loved.

I didn’t have plans to put the wallpaper up that day or that week, but I knew that I needed it on hand so that when time. So, I bought the wallpaper, that was step one that felt simple.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I was looking around the bathroom and realizing that I think I had space and time. I was finished with school. We were back from our trip, and I wanted to start moving on this process.

I thought, what is the next thing I need to do? I couldn’t put the wallpaper up immediately because there were wall plates over the light switches. There was a light fixture installed. There was a mirror and some shelving hung up on the wall.

The next step practical step that I needed to take was to remove everything from the walls. One afternoon I took everything down off the walls. Unscrewed the faceplates on the light switches and the electrical outlets, took down the shelving. Once I took everything off the walls, I realized, oh, these walls are not in great shape.

The next practical step was to fill and repair the walls. This was an even bigger project than I imagined because the mirror had been one of those contractors-grade mirrors that were stuck directly to the wall. So, I spent an afternoon using these little shims to hammer behind the giant mirror to unstick it slowly so that the mirror stayed intact, and it didn’t shatter all over the bathroom floor, which would have been a safety hazard.

Eventually I got the mirror unstuck, but it left gouging holes in the drywall in it. The next step was to pick up some mud and drywall repair. When I was at Home Depot, I spent a couple of days in my free time, in between other errands, filling the holes in the walls and needed another day to dry. I went back again and sanded it.

This is all just a series of practical steps. And then I was ready to install the first walls worth of wallpaper. I sectioned out some time. I made sure I had the tools on hand. I had scissors. I had a tape measure. I had all my wallpaper application tools, a brush and the adhesive and all the things that I needed.

And I went to work step by step, strip by strip, installing this wallpaper.

Today, after I record this show this afternoon, I am planning to complete this project. A line item, put wallpaper up in the bathroom, ended up being about 25 or 30 very small bite sized steps. All of those could have been possibly avoided if I had the budget and the desire to just hire someone.

But even then, I need to find someone. I need to call them. I need to maybe ask someone for a review. I need to set up an appointment.

Every big dream is a series of very small steps.

Sometimes it feels like you don’t know how to get there. You get there by chopping it up into tinier, bits until you have one bite that you can handle. This is what it means to get real.

Get real also means planning for what if something goes wrong. Where in Dream Big you want to take off the blinders, in Get Real you want to be open to what are all the things that could possibly go wrong and how might I mitigate them. This is what it means to be adaptable and flexible, to be aware and be able to move forward in experimentation to see what happens.

Character Strengths Related to Pragmatism

There are a couple specific character strengths related to pragmatism that I want to mention, and you’ll probably know if you feel like these are your strengths:

Open mindedness. Pragmatists encourage open minded approach to ideas and beliefs so that you can be adaptable in the face of new information.

Problem solving. This is a big skill when it comes to pragmatism because you want to focus on practical solutions. That is what being pragmatic and being realist is.

Adaptability. Feeling open to change when you see it to achieve better outcomes.

Critical thinking. This allows you to consider your ideas and their practical consequences.

When you are getting real, you want to consider being open and adaptable, focusing on solutions and problem solving, and evaluating your ideas for their consequences. There are probably a lot of reasons that some people feel like they can’t move forward on some of their goals and big dreams. One is probably that they haven’t gotten real.

Are you frozen by good options?

They haven’t broken it down into practical steps so that they can move in the right direction. Another one that I see often in my friends and coaching clients is being frozen by too many high priorities. A lot of the women that I work with have big dreams and they’ve got a lot of them, and they want to do all of them at once.

And so, they get so overwhelmed by their inability to have the capacity for five different big projects at once that they don’t move forward at all with anything. When you’re faced with lots of big dreams, I like to remember that I can do all the things that I want to do. I just can’t do them at the same time.

Prioritize Projects

A system that I like to use with my coaching clients is the green light, yellow light, red light system, where we’ll brainstorm all the big dreams and put them all on a sheet and then divide them by what is something that feels important to do now, the sooner, the better. What are important, but I can put them on pause for a while.

And what are the things that I really love the idea of? And it’s okay to wait and to just put them in the red-light category. We’re not getting rid of them. We’re not crossing them off or taking them away. We’re just deciding that they are going to stay put at the light while we move forward with some other ideas.

Realistically, only one idea can move forward at a given time. As women, we’re never just doing one thing at a time, but you may be able to move forward. One project at home, manage a couple background things, move forward with a project at work, take care of the kids, and move from one thing to another.

But you’re going to be better off the more time on task that you can in one area of your life, the more progress that you’ll make in that area with your free time. Maybe you spend one week working on a project until it’s all the way done before turning to the next one on the list.

It feels so much better to move things all the way through to completion before you move on to something else.

I will say in my experience, when you get to the last 10-20% of a project, your instinct is going to be to pivot because those last 10-20% feel so difficult. It’s almost like 80% of the mental energy comes in the very end of a project.

I have a podcast episode all about that, about closing those loops, and I will link it in the show notes if you want to go back and refer to that.

Remember, you can do all the things. Just not all at the same time.

The benefits of this two-step process

In review, the two steps that you can use to move positively into your future are to dream big and to get real. Research shows that when you combine these two steps and think about the future with enthusiasm and practically break it down into forward movement.

You will feel better. You’ll feel less anxious, less worried. In fact, when you are up at night with thoughts running through your head of everything that you need to make happen, simply writing them down and planning for how and when that’s going to Get done can make you feel better.

 12 Ways To Become More Adaptable

Now to finish up the episode, I want to run through quickly a dozen activities that you can pursue that will increase your open mindedness and adaptability

Remember, those are two of the character traits that are highly associated with being pragmatic being able to practically solve a problem. These are 12 ways that if you’re feeling like you’re lacking a little bit in that adaptability and open mindedness, that you could build some of those things into your life.

Travel

The first one is travel. Exploring new places and experiencing different cultures can expand your horizons and expose you to different perspectives. This will challenge your preconception and make you more adaptable to unfamiliar situations.

Read Widely

The second is to read widely. Diversify your reading material, explore books and articles and literature across genres and viewpoints, especially in our social media age where things get so siloed. Reach outside of where you typically are fed the news and read something that comes from a different perspective than your own to stretch your adaptability.

Engage in Discussions

Engage in discussions with people who have differing opinions. You want to do this meaningfully, connectedly, bravely, and kindly. But listening to and considering alternative viewpoints can foster open mindedness.

Practice Mindful Meditation

Mindful meditation helps you become more aware of your thoughts and your reactions. It can aid in your ability to reduce your cognitive biases, and it reduces your emotional reactivity.

Be a Beginner

Learning any new skill, just being a beginner, encourages adaptability, because this openness to a new experience is required as you’re learning something new.

Community Service

Community service or engaging in volunteer work in your community exposes you to different people and circumstances than you might otherwise encounter in your daily life. The same with cultural events and workshops. You can stretch outside of your regular circle of influence and go to seminars or visit museums, something to get you outside of your typical patterns to see something new.

Change Your Mind

Regularly questioning your beliefs. This is number eight is to challenge your own beliefs and it’s. It’s something that might not come naturally to you because beliefs are things that we tell ourselves repeatedly. Be open to the possibility of changing your beliefs or of changing your mind as one of my favorite books written by Adam Grant is titled.

Checking in with your beliefs and your whys will help you either confirm them again or recognize if you have beliefs that no longer serve you.

Reflect

Number nine is engaged in feedback and reflection, asking people for feedback about some of your ideas and then reflecting on it, embracing some of the critiques and using them to grow is a really great way to learn adaptability and progress.

Learn from Failure

Along with that, number 10 is to learn from failure. There’s something in business called a postmortem, where you finish a big project and then you go back and look at it and say:

Okay, what would we do differently? What did we love? What went well? What was terrible? How could we anticipate those things in the future? The next time this situation rolls around, what are we going to do about it? That’s learning from and experience, particularly when things don’t go according to plan. You have a lot to learn to apply to your future experiences.

Diversify your Friendships

Having a diverse set of friends. This is number 11. Seeking out diversity of background and culture and history in your friends and the people that you associate with regularly. Maybe that’s even professionals in your area. If you’re choosing to, see a doctor or a dentist or an attorney or someone from a different background than yours. It just opens you up to learning from other backgrounds and cultures, which makes you more adaptable.

Explore other Spiritual Traditions

Also, exploring different philosophical and spiritual traditions. A lot of our belief systems stem from deep spiritual traditions or cultural backgrounds, and that’s wonderful. It’s beautiful. Traditions can be so positive.

Also, learning about just so that you understand where other people might be coming from can help you gain a broader perspective and appreciate alternative worldviews, which better adapts you for understanding and engaging in different types of problem solving as different situations arise in your life.

I hope that you have enjoyed learning the two steps in today’s episode. Whether or not you’ve ever danced the two-step, now you know some research backed ways that you can use the two-step process of planning for your future to be better prepared.

Put on your optimistic hat to dream big. Check in with yourself about all those things that are floating around in your head that you want to accomplish or that seem exciting or fun to you.

And then turn on your pragmatic, realist thinking. So that you can break those big dreams down into simple steps, action items to experiment with, to pivot and to adapt to the circumstances of your life as they come along. Dreaming big and getting real is the two-step plan that can help your future be more practically happy.

I’ll chat with you next time. Bye bye.