3-Letter Lesson #39: T.F.G.

The Eyres are casting from Phoenix today where they are spending time with their daughter Shawni and son Josh, and where Richard is playing in a national tennis tournament. They start by saying that Social second-half thinking is all about relationships that matter and that need thought and work to be preserved and improved. They then share some ideas for doing just that.

In the Autumn of our lives, it's not about how to win friends and influence people or about how many contacts we have or how many friends on social media -- it's about the quality of the relationships that matters most. The Eyres talk today about the most important relationships with family and how to gather, how to set relationship goals, and how to have 5-facet reviews.

The Eyre's having been vacationing in Morocco for the holiday season, so we are revisiting their thoughts from November 2023 on Thanksgiving and Christmas! "This episode (despite the fact that Richard has almost lost his voice from the Thanksgiving revelry) is about Thanksgiving and Christmas family traditions and how these rituals are more than fun little habits--they are the glue that holds families together, and observing them and making a big deal of them is important. And its not a bad idea to modify and create new traditions that teach the values we want our kids to have."

In this episode, Richard and Linda suggest that becoming deliberately and intentionally more thankful (the opposite of "taking for granted") is more than a path to happiness, it IS happiness in its most obtainable form. They share their own history of gratitude journals and thanks-giving traditions and challenge us (and themselves) to center our Thanksgiving holiday around a lasting gratitude list.

As November begins, the Eyres introduce the month's theme of a higher way to live emotionally with a question: How can we FEEL MORE of four things: Joy, Love, Peace, and Beauty? Are there things we can do, ways we can think, and attitudes we can cultivate that increase and deepen these four emotions? They suggest that we each search for methods to do so during this Thanksgiving month.

Due to Halloween, grandkids, and travel, the Eyres didn't record this week and asked us to pick a favorite re-run...which we did. Richard and Linda will be back live next week with the latest in their How To Live series. "Casting from Las Vegas today, the Eyres finish a discussion they started last episode about the 3-letter lesson ALM referring to the acts of mercy and compassion that Jesus called alms. An act of service or lifting is called an "almdeed" in the New Testament. They then juxtaposition that word with the 3-letter lesson WIN which is a blessing when we make it a win-win, and a curse when we make it a win-lose."

Today the Eyres suggest that "Independence" is a mindset for the first half of life which proves, in the second half and in the spiritual and emotional and social sense to be a lie. We are dependent on God and interdependent on strangers, as well as on those we love. An alternative mindset called "Synergicity" is suggested and metaphors and examples are given.

The Eyres are devoting their October podcasts to How to Live the Second Half of life MENTALLY, and this episode contrasts the "Ownership mindset" with the "Stewardship mindset. The former leads to comparing and competing on many levels and promotes win-lose attitudes and grows branches of envy, jealousy, superiority and condescension. The latter is about win-win and sprouts cooperation, empathy, and peace.

The Eyres advocate a paradigm-shift in the second half of life that moves away from the desire for control and instead adopts the mindset of Serendipity, defined as being able, through sensitivity, awareness and spiritual guidance, to frequently find something better than that which we were seeking. They tell their serendipity-discovering journey through Sri Lanka and the British Museum and challenge us to join the quest.

In this episode, the Eyres transition from second-half living PHYSICALLY to second-half living MENTALLY which will be the podcast's focus for October. They point out that the fear of mental decline is greater in most people than physical worries, and frame the focus not only on our minds but on our mind-sets, and on getting away from the first-half notions of control, ownership and independence.