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I suspect we can all agree that the younger generations are much more used to electronics and figuring out apps and using handheld devices.
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As Gen X, that's me, you may be either Gen X or somewhere around there.
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We didn't grow up with that in the same way.
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And it does, it does mean that how we think is a little bit different.
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So let's take a lesson from the younger generation and use it to find all the options and try all the things.
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Let's talk about it.
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Welcome to Mind Your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time.
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Unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body.
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Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and oh my goodness, powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife.
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This is the Mind Your Midlife podcast.
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So in midlife, 40s, 50s, 60s, we are what's often referred to as a sandwich generation, meaning we are helping or even taking care of our parents' generation, potentially still taking care of our kids or that generation, and at least involved.
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And so we're kind of sandwiched in between.
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And our kids are gradually becoming more self-sufficient.
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But of course, we're always going to be involved.
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We're always going to want to be helping them or supporting them or cheering them on.
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So it can be challenging at times.
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I bring that up because I was recently helping a member of the older generation, the age our parents, our aunts and uncles would be with a phone, trying to help this person figure out how to use an app, how did it work, where was it, what would we find, how could we enter the information?
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And I noticed that they just weren't clicking on the little lines at the top or on the arrow at the bottom, or they weren't trying what I now know to try.
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You know, look all around the screen, click on anything there is.
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Let's see what happens.
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That was absolutely not how this person would think.
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And it wasn't how I would think originally either.
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And it made me realize the importance of this even more recently when I was complaining to someone.
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And you know, I talk about how we shouldn't complain in conversation as a habit, but I was venting, and I think maybe it was okay to have a moment venting on this.
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As I think in hindsight, maybe I was a little complaining.
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But anyway, I was complaining to someone that our front door ring camera, and whether you have a ring camera or you have some other thing, I know a lot of us have some type of camera on the front of our house.
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So someone rings the bell or comes and knocks on the door, we can see who it is.
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Maybe we can even talk to them.
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I was complaining that the ring camera kept picking up anytime a truck drove by on the street.
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And the reason that was happening is because I live in a townhouse, and while the front door is elevated pretty high off the ground, and there's a porch with a railing, I'm still fairly close to the street.
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So when a truck would come by, we you could see from the ring camera through the slats of the railing to the like the top of the truck on the street.
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So, yes, was there motion?
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There was motion, but it was a ways away.
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Nobody was coming to the door.
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And I was always getting these notifications.
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There's motion at your front door, there's motion at your front door.
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And so I basically had to stop paying attention to them.
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The problem with that is then when a package came, I did want to notice that notification.
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So I was complaining.
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I guess maybe I need to get a new ring camera, a smarter one.
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This one has been here for a long time, and I don't know if I want to go through that.
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Is it wired into the house?
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Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And I just had this realization.
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Have I actually looked inside the ring app to see if I could set it up differently with the camera I have?
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Maybe I embodied our Gen Z friends for just a moment.
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And so I got home from having this conversation.
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I opened up on my phone the ring app, and I noticed that I had the option of setting smart sensing or smart motion sensing, whatever it was.
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This is not an endorsement of ring cameras, whatever they call it, where I could ask it to tell me are there a person at the door and it could recognize if it's a person.
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And I could ask it to tell me, is there a package in the zone near the door?
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And it could recognize whether there was a package.
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And anything else besides a person or a package, supposedly the app was telling me it was not going to catch.
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So it was that simple to fix my problem that have been bothering me for months.
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And there's probably life lesson number one.
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So many things that we allow ourselves to worry over and fret over and complain over for a long, long time.
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If we just sat down with an open mind for a few minutes and we just dug a little further or looked at it a little differently, we might be able to solve it.
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And now I'm thinking, why did I spend so many months being annoyed about the trucks?
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Now, thankfully, I live on a pretty quiet street.
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So it's not as if there's trucks going by constantly.
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But over time, of course, I was this was happening a lot.
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The Amazon truck, right, is come through a lot.
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So I solved my problem, I solved it quickly and easily, and I waited a few days to see how it was going.
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And sure enough, it tells me if there's a person, it tells me if there's a package, and it doesn't tell me about all this other stuff.
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And it was right there in the app the whole time.
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And for me, there's a very practical, concrete lesson here, but there's also a bigger mindset lesson.
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So let me see if both of these might help you as you're in your midlife how do I deal with the world phase just like I am.
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So the practical, concrete lesson is that you are certainly savvy and smart enough to figure out any app, any service, any website, any course that's out there.
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I promise you, you are.
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And if there's a voice in your brain now telling you, oh, I don't know.
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No, you have 40 or 50 years of life experience, whether you've been around electronics a lot or not, you are savvy enough to figure it out.
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If you remember to just try all the buttons, try all the things.
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It is very unlikely that you are going to mess something up.
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And I think that's why we hesitate, right?
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I what if I push the wrong button and then I lose everything?
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Now, I can't tell you that that would never happen, but if you're pushing a button that is going to cause you to lose everything, there's usually a warning that pops up and says, Are you sure you want to do that?
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And then you can say, No, I'm not sure I want to do that.
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Stop.
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Let's go back.
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So trying things is how we learn.
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There's probably what we call in the software world a hamburger menu at the top of the screen on the left or the right corner with the three horizontal lines.
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So it's like the bun and the burger inside, the three horizontal lines.
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Click it, look and see what's in it.
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There might be a list of items on the screen of your app.
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Click them, see if they go anywhere.
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See if they're a dynamic link that will take you into the details.
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Or maybe there's a little arrow, like one of those little greater than or less than symbols.
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Click it, see where it goes.
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Try swiping.
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I recently learned that I could swipe to the right on Instagram and it would take me.
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Shoot, now I don't even remember.
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It would take me over to my stories, maybe?
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Is that where it takes me?
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I think so.
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I didn't know that.
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And I once had to ask my daughter-in-law how in the world in Spotify I could share a link because I could not see any button in the little buttons that would let me do it.
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Or maybe it was that I had clicked a button that I thought was going to be share, but the options that came up didn't have what I wanted.
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And she said, Well, scroll up so that you see more of the options.
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Oh my goodness.
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These things happen to us sometimes because we did not grow up with technology in the same way that the younger generations did.
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We grew up with a word processor, maybe a computer that you loaded floppy disks into, and user manuals.
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And it took me, and I'm so curious if this is true for you, it took me quite some time to stop missing the user manual because our new phones and our new computers, you can find help, but it's not like it comes with a paper book anymore, a user manual that you can read, right?
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And we're now we're getting used to that.
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I'm just encouraging you, one wrong tap is not gonna break the internet, it's not gonna ruin your information, and it's probably gonna warn you if you're getting close to that point.
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So, in a practical, concrete way, try all the buttons, scroll up and down, see what there is.
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Because even in things you're using right now, there could be more cool stuff you could do.
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And then let's make this bigger.
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If we take this out of the concrete application and we talk about life.
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In midlife, we're always talking here on the podcast about how much change is happening, and even in the private podcast episodes that are releasing now.
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So if you are not subscribing to that, make sure you go to CherylPFisher.com slash bonus episodes.
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Even in there, I'm talking about change.
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The the mini-series going on now is how to move through a job change you didn't want.
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And it will help you even if it's a job change you want.
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So there's a lot of change happening.
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Our parents are getting older, our kids are getting older, we're looking at retirement, our bodies are changing, maybe our living situation is changing.
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I'm just listing things out.
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There's more than that, probably.
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Things that we had for many, many years as our kids were growing up are changing.
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Our friends are changing, maybe.
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If a lot of your friendships came from your kids' parents as your friends, that might change.
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So there's a lot.
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So then if we take this, look for all the buttons, click all the menus, try all the things, metaphor, and we make it bigger.
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I want you to try all the things.
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I want you to click all the buttons in your life.
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And that means try a new hobby.
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Maybe you ask around to your friends.
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What do they do for fun?
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Do they play any games?
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Are they any clubs?
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I'm gonna recommend Mahjong.
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You could Google even what's in your area.
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You could look at mahjong, you could look at Domino's, you could look at Bunko, not my favorite if I'm being honest, but it's a social game.
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What's going on in your area?
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Do you like to walk?
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Look for a walking or a hiking group.
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Meetup.com is a great source for that.
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Something, try a new hobby.
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Maybe you want to learn to knit.
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You probably have a local yarn store if you're in a at least a medium to large size city.
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And those local yarn stores almost always have classes that you can go to to learn to knit or learn to crochet.
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And then you meet people as well.
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Now, maybe you can't stand this new thing that you're trying.
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Maybe you try and you hate, like hate it, you don't get it.
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Normally I would say try a few times, but overarching, trust your instinct.
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Trust your instinct as to whether this is something you want to keep trying or keep doing.
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But just think outside the box.
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Hit all the buttons, try all the menus.
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Maybe you start a new volunteering thing.
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Did you always like animals?
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Did you always like languages?
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Did you always like even shopping?
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You could volunteer for an animal rescue group.
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You could volunteer to help in English as a second language classrooms.
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You could volunteer to help older people get their errands done.
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I don't, there's so many things.
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Look for groups that do that.
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Maybe you start a podcast.
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Maybe you take a class.
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Where I live, the county provides continuing education and adult learning classes on, I mean, everything, all kinds of stuff.
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I've been thinking about taking a dance class.
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I mean, why not?
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I always was curious about Irish dancing.
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We often hold back because we do things the way we're used to doing it.
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Just like you go into your app on your phone and you use it the way you're used to using it.
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I want you to swipe left, swipe right, swipe up, swipe down, hit the menu, hit the button, press on things to see what will happen.
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Maybe that's even the best way to say it.
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Press on things to see what will happen.
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Check all the menus.
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There is something that might be an amazing and fun and meaningful addition to your life at this time that you haven't tried yet.
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And it might not be exactly what other people are doing.
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Knitting crochet, mahjong, all these things that are very popular right now.
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And I personally love to knit and I love to play mahjong, but that doesn't mean you have to.
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There could be something else that you love.
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Maybe you start up a poker group.
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I don't know.
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Something, there's something that you will love.
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And this season of life is perfect for exploring.
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Because I've said repeatedly that midlife can be stressful because there's so much change going on, and we're absorbing all of that, and we're trying to figure out where to go.
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But let's look at the other side of that coin.
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We have typically a little bit more time to figure out what do we want?
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How do we want the next 20, 30 years to look?
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And we still have the strength and we still have the energy and we still have the memory, short and long term, to do pretty much anything we want.
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If I can go to bar class, which is very challenging, it's kind of like Pilates, if you don't know of it, and and work out with mostly 20-somethings and hang in there really well, in my opinion, you can do anything.
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So the key is to look outside the lines and find the magic for you.
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And be willing to keep trying, be willing to go somewhere and try something and not like it, maybe try it again another time.
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But it's okay if you don't like it and you stop, and then being willing to try something else, or being willing to put yourself out there.
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If we stop worrying about whether it fails or whether it succeeds, because what does that even mean?
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You have to define that for yourself, and we just say, hey, I have something to say.
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I'm gonna make a podcast, or I'm gonna do a blog, or I'm gonna grow this on social media.
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This is the thing I want to share with the world.
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Try it.
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You get to decide if you like it, you get to decide what it looks like, you get to decide when it's successful.
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Just try it.
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So just like fiddling around with these apps where we don't have a user manual and we don't know what it's gonna do when we push a certain thing, try it.
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Try all the things.
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Look in the corners, scroll up and down, and remember it's not a big deal to try and see, and maybe because we're gonna find some cool stuff along the way.
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So, my challenge for you is think about one thing that you've been avoiding this week, this month, because you're afraid that you might mess up, or it might not go well, or your idea maybe isn't as good as you thought it was, or maybe you won't like it.
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Go hit that button.
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Try it.
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And in the meantime, remember to slow down, notice what's going on around you, what's going on in your head, and let's create something amazing.