TOPLEY’S TOP 10 July 02, 2026

1. Nine Sectors Expected to Grow Earnings Double Digits Next 12 Months

Nine sectors are expected to grow earnings by double digits over the next 12 months.

Chart Kid Matt


2. The Big 6 Banks New All-Time Highs


3. Silver was Worst Performing Asset in Q2

Barchart


4. Record Retail Investor Volume was in January 2026…Including a One-Day $171m Inflow…Right Before -50% Correction

Perplexity


5. WPP Advertising Stock -55% One-Year as AI Kicks In

Google Finance


6. Crypto Funding Fell 70% in the Silicon Valley

Ed Elson


7. China Large Cap Stocks FXI Closing in on New Bear Market

StockCharts


8. Ukraine has Taken Out 30% of Russian Oil Refining Capacity

Putin Faces a Political Crisis as Fuel Shortages Ripple Through Russia-WSJ

Moscow might have to import gasoline and ban diesel exports as long lines form at petrol stations

By Yaroslav Trofimov

Ukrainian drone attacks have caused widespread fuel shortages across Russia, with 28% of refining capacity offline as of June 20.View more

Fuel shortages across Russia have triggered a new political challenge for President Vladimir Putin, as a relentless Ukrainian drone campaign aimed at the country’s oil refineries has brought the war home for most ordinary Russians.

While Ukraine has targeted Russian energy facilities for years, the quantity and firepower of Ukrainian drones and missiles have risen. This has allowed Kyiv to hit refineries as far as Tyumen, 1,200 miles away in Siberia, and permitted the spectacular raid that broke through thick layers of air defenses and destroyed Moscow’s main refinery on June 18, the turning point of the current crisis.

Some 28% of Russia’s refining capacity was offline as of June 20, estimated Sergey Vakulenko, former head of strategy at Gazprom Neft, a large Russian oil company, and now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/putin-faces-a-political-crisis-as-fuel-shortages-ripple-through-russia-8991cd9


9. Pie Chart Breakdown of Student Loan Debt in America

Dave Lutz Jones Trading–President Donald Trump’s student-loan changes are here — and for many borrowers, the biggest change will be their monthly bill.  On July 1, the Department of Education rolled out new repayment plans, stricter borrowing caps for graduate students and parents borrowing for their kids, and new limits that could reshape who qualifies for a popular loan forgiveness program for public servants.  Millions of borrowers “will face massive sticker shock this summer and autumn as they are pushed to transition into other repayment plans


10. The Four R’s of Nervous System Recovery

Psychology Today Creating the conditions for recovery, clarity, and renewed hope. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe Ed.D.

Key points

  • Coping manages stress, but true recovery restores what stress depletes in body and mind.
  • The four R’s—restore, regulate, reflect, and reimagine—build capacity for lasting nervous system recovery.
  • Recovery isn’t a reward after tasks; it’s necessary groundwork for adaptation, clarity, and hope.

Most of us have been taught how to keep going. Few of us have been taught how to recover. We tend to move from one demand to the next, carrying the weight of our work and our responsibilities, often without enough time to restore what each of those things asks of us.

Part of the challenge is that we’re living in a fast-paced world where many stressors never truly resolve. Many of us are carrying open stress loops that quietly consume our energy in the background.

The reality is that we have become quite skilled at coping. We go for the walk, do the breathing exercise, practice gratitude, or take a short break to manage our state. These practices matter. They can help us feel calmer, more grounded, and more present in difficult moments. Yet many people still find themselves feeling depleted, because regulation and recovery are not the same thing.

Think of your phone battery for a moment. If it drops to 10 percent, switching it to low-power mode is regulation. It conserves what’s left. Plugging it in to recharge is recovery. It restores what has been used. Low-power mode genuinely helps in the moment, but eventually, you need a charge.

Your nervous system is not broken; it may just be weary from carrying more than it has had the opportunity to recover from. Sometimes what we need most isn’t another coping strategy. It’s replenishing what’s been depleted. When was the last time you felt truly restored? For many of us, that feeling has become unfamiliar or something we’ve been postponing for a long time.

This is where the four R’s of nervous system recovery come in: restore, regulate, reflect, and reimagine. Each step helps create the conditions for the next.

Restore (create capacity)

What has been depleted? What part of me needs support right now to feel replenished?

Recovery begins by identifying what needs restoring. While stress impacts all of us differently, depletion often shows up across four connected areas: our body, heart, mind, and community.

Your body may be carrying tension, effects of poor sleep, or deep exhaustion that started long before you noticed it consciously. Your heart may be holding emotional residue, disappointment, grief, or worry you haven’t had space to process. Your mind may be tired from constant decision-making and problem-solving, even when nothing is technically wrong. And your sense of community may feel diminished, because stress often pulls us to withdraw at the exact moment we need connection most.

When you take the time to restore your body, heart, mind, and sense of community, you create the capacity to show up more fully for the people and the goals that matter most to you.

What can help: Try asking, “What part of me needs support right now?” and listen to what you’re truly wishing for. Then get specific. What physical signal is my body trying to get my attention through? What have I been feeling or carrying and not yet acknowledged? What story have I been telling myself about this season or situation? Who makes me feel safe, seen, and supported?

Regulate (create stability)

What helps me feel safe enough to respond?

When our nervous system is dysregulated, even small challenges can feel overwhelming. Once some capacity has been restored, regulation becomes far more effective. Regulation isn’t about eliminating stress or staying calm all the time. It’s about creating enough internal safety and space so you can respond thoughtfully instead of reacting automatically.

What can help: Breathwork, movement, music, nature, prayer, laughter, stepping away for a moment, or anything that genuinely helps you feel safe enough to come back to the present moment.

Reflect (create perspective)

What is this teaching me?

Reflection invites us to slow down long enough to notice patterns, recognize needs, celebrate growth, and learn from challenges. It helps us make meaning of what we have been carrying rather than simply carrying it forward. Reflection isn’t about judgment or overanalyzing. It involves looking back with curiosity and compassion so you can move forward with wisdom.

What can help: Ask yourself what’s helping, what’s hurting, and what you’re ready to do differently. Notice the dual truths and acknowledge your efforts and successes alongside the areas you wish to improve. You may be tired and still showing up with care. Both can be true at once, and naming both is what real self-awareness and honest self-check-ins are all about.

Reimagine (create possibility)

What might be possible from here?

Once we have restored some capacity, regulated our nervous system, and reflected on our experiences, we are better able to lift our eyes toward the future. This is where hope begins, not because every problem is solved, but because you finally have enough capacity and perspective to imagine that tomorrow doesn’t have to look exactly like today.

Reimagining invites us to consider what is possible. It helps us reconnect with our values, priorities, goals, and aspirations. It reminds us that even in difficult seasons, we still have agency, choice, and influence over what comes next.

What can help: Picture yourself on the other side of whatever is weighing on you most right now. Notice how that feels in your body. This isn’t wishful thinking. Imagining a future state genuinely helps your brain begin building a path toward it.

Final thoughts

Many people are feeling weary, overwhelmed, or stuck in a never-ending stress cycle, and when capacity is depleted, the solution isn’t always another coping strategy. Sometimes the next right step is restoring what has been drained so you can rebuild your energy, capacity, and hope.

Recovery has to come before the goal setting, the planning, and deciding what comes next. Recovery also isn’t a reward for finishing everything on your list; it’s part of the work. A nervous system that feels safe and supported is far more capable of learning, growing, adapting, and imagining new possibilities.

My gentle invitation is to ask yourself: What do I need right now?

What is one small step you can take today to move closer to feeling truly restored, and why does it matter?

Maybe it starts with your body. Maybe your heart, your mind, or your community. Wherever you begin, remember that small acts of restoration create the conditions for the recovery, clarity, and renewed hope you’re looking for.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/everyday-resilience/202606/the-four-rs-of-nervous-system-recovery

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 July 01, 2026

1. Happy 250th America

Michael A. Arouet


2. Happy 250th America

Irrelevant Investor

The Irrelevant Investor


3. Hyperscalers Today vs. 5 Year PE History….At or Below Median

Jack Ablin-Cresset.

Cresset


4. Re-Shoring Index is Winning

Van Eck The UBS US Reshoring Index, which includes companies such as Caterpillar, Rockwell Automation, Steel Dynamics, and United Rentals, has outperformed the S&P 500 Index over the past three years. These are not AI companies. They are the companies building the world AI requires

The Builders are Winning

VanEck


5. GLD ETF 50day thru 200day to Downside

StockCharts


6. IPO Returns Historically Bad….Especially Bad 2020-2025

Meb Faber


7. Regional Banks Breaking Out to New Highs….Not a Negative Economic Signal

StockCharts


8. Warren Buffet and the Power of Compounding


9. Here’s What It Means to Be a Democratic Socialist-NY Times

Universal health care, taxing the wealthy and opposition to military aid to Israel are among the movement’s key tenets.

By Emily Davies  Here is a closer look at the pillars of democratic socialism.

End Military Aid to Israel

The defining feature of primary races in New York on Tuesday was a litmus test on American support for Israel. Democratic socialists won that ideological battle handily, since staunch opposition to continued military aid is a key part of their campaigns.

Expand the Social Safety Net

Democratic socialists want the government to lower the cost of living for Americans. Under their platform, child care, pre-K and public higher education amount to a collective good and should be completely free and funded by the government. They also support universal rent control, and want every worker to receive paid family leave.

Guarantee Free Health Care

The D.S.A. wants to create a single, government-run national program providing essential health care for everyone.

Tax the Rich

There is no consensus about how much such a system would cost the federal government, nor exactly how it would be funded.

Defund or Abolish Prisons and the Police

The D.S.A. is widely skeptical of police power and the American penal system. The organization wants to “defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets” and calls for “freedom for all incarcerated people.”

Raise the Minimum Wage, Shorten the Workweek

Democratic socialists believe in raising the minimum wage and instituting a 32-hour workweek with no reduction in pay or benefits.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/us/politics/heres-what-it-means-to-be-a-democratic-socialist.html


10. Medical advances mask epidemic of violence by cutting murder rate

Roger Dobson 1


Murder rates would be up to five times higher than they are but for medical developments over the past 40 years.

According to new research, doctors are saving the lives of thousands of victims of attack who four decades ago would have died and become murder statistics.

Although the study is based on US data, the researchers say the principle applies to other countries too: “There is reason to expect a similar trend overall in Britain,” said Dr Anthony Harris, the lead author of the study.

In the research he and a team from Massachusetts University and Harvard Medical School found that technological developments had helped to significantly depress today’s murder rates, converting homicides into aggravated assaults.

“Without this technology, we estimate there would be no less than 50 000 and as many as 115000 homicides annually instead of an actual 15 000 to 20000,” they say in a report of the study in the journal Homicide Studies (2002;6:128-66).

The team looked at data going back to 1960 on murder, manslaughter, assault, and other crimes. It merged these data with health statistics and information on county level medical resources and facilities, including trauma centres, population, and geographic size. The researchers then worked out a lethality score based on the ratio of murders to murders and aggravated assaults.

They found that while the murder rate had changed little from a 1931 baseline figure, assaults had increased. The aggravated assault rate was, by 1997, almost 750% higher than the baseline figure.

The team also described the dramatic overall decrease in trauma mortality in the second half of the 20th century.

The period of greatest change came between 1972 and 1977, on the heels of the US involvement in the Vietnam war, which triggered big advances in trauma care.

The team found that at county level significant drops in lethality of assault were linked to availability of high levels of care. The impact of a county simply having a hospital also had a significant impact, reducing lethality ratios by as much as 24% a year.

The researchers also highlight an irony in the life saving achievements of medical technology and doctors. Keeping down the murder rate may, perversely, have influenced the debate on gun control.

“Our lethality findings are strongly consistent with the hypothesis that progress in emergency medical care has converted an ever increasing proportion of homicides into non-lethal assaults and thus, by virtue of good intentions, ironically and unintentionally masked a continuing epidemic of violence in America,” says the report.

“Clearly, there is less perceived need to find common cause on gun control if the perception is that severely wounded victims of knives and automatics are routinely ‘repaired’ and back on the streets in no time.”

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1124155/?utm_source=news.theideafarm.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=facts-from-1h26

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 30, 2026

1. European Large Cap Just Breaking Out Above Year 2000 Highs

J.C. Parets


2. Broadcom AVGO -25% Correction from Highs….Co-Founder Sells $250m Stock

Barchart


3. Last Week’s Net Selling of Tech was Largest in 10 Years….Not the Usual Action in Bubble?

Hedge funds vs. Tech. Last “week’s net selling in US Info Tech – in both $ and % terms – was the largest in more than 10 years (-4.0 z score).”

Robbie Stankard – Goldman Sachs


4. Sovereign Wealth Funds Buying Hard Assets

Dave Lutz Jones Trading Sovereign wealth funds and central banks managing $29 trillion in assets ‌are turning to energy assets, and raising concerns about the dollar, in a portfolio reassessment driven by unprecedented geopolitical shifts, according to an Invesco survey published on Monday.  The survey of 90 sovereign wealth funds and 54 central banks showed an increasing focus ​on diversification, and investment portfolios that can “take a hit and still hold it together” amid trade tariffs, closed ​shipping channels and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.


5. Old Content Dominates Viewing on Streaming

Former glories

According to the recent and aptly-named “Retro Revival” report from entertainment industry analysts at Luminate, the “2026 is the new 2016” trend that dominated social media feeds earlier this year was perhaps more prescient than it seemed at the time, with that same sense of nostalgia seeping into everything from the music we listen to and the way we listen to it, to how adverts and branding look now. Unsurprisingly, the world of TV and movie streaming has not been immune to the backward-looking movement, as content from streamers’ back catalogs increasingly comes to dominate the hours that viewers are spending on the platforms.

Across the first quarter of 2026, Luminate data shows that every major streaming platform it studied, with the clear exception of Netflix, keeps viewers hooked with older classics from its catalog, rather than fresh original content; Luminate highlighted the staying power of comfort TV like “Friends” and “Suits” as key retention drivers.

Netflix, often an industry outlier, makes sense as the sole platform where original content even nearly matches up to catalog offerings: the company has spent big on licensing and original content, laying out $135 billion over the last 10 years while other platforms, in Ted Sarandos’ words, “pull back.” Zoom out though, and it becomes clear that even Netflix’s content, alongside its competitors’, has become a little less original compared to previous years.


6. Iran War-IRGC Use of CoinEx to Avoid Sanctions

Perplexity


7. More Women in Workforce than Men

Axios


8. Data Centers by State Virginia and Texas Lead

The New York Times


9. Technology and Jobs

You’re probably doing a job that didn’t exist in 1940. Will yours exist in 2040?

New research looks at the complex interplay between changes in technology and what we do for a living.

BY Shalene Gupta

Changes in technology drive changes in work. Manufacturing jobs have slowed over the decades, while new professions such as Uber drivers and social media managers have emerged.

A recent paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics examined the role of technology in creating new jobs and reshaping our economy. The researchers created a database of job titles from 1940 to 2018 and used natural language processing to analyze new professions.

The researchers found that about 60% of jobs in 2018 did not exist 1940. Since 1940, the bulk of new jobs has shifted from middle-class production and clerical jobs to high-paid professional jobs and low-paid service jobs.

They also identified two different impacts of technology. First, augmentation creates new types of jobs (think social media manager) while automation reduces the need for workers of other jobs (grocery store cashiers being replaced by self-checkout). The researchers found that automation eroded twice as many jobs from 1980 to 2018 as it had from 1940 to 1980. While augmentation did add some jobs to the economy, it was not as many as the ones lost by automation.

As of yet, the researchers have no insight into whether or not AI will boost augmentation of jobs or automation. They listed this as a direction for further exploration.

“We’re in an era where we have this new tool and we don’t know what’s good for. New technologies have strengths and weaknesses and it takes a while to figure them out. GPS was invented for military purposes, and it took decades for it to be in smartphones,” lead author David Autor, a professor at MIT, told MIT News. He added: “We’re hoping our research approach gives us the ability to say more about that going forward.”

Join us in New York City this September for the annual Fast Company Innovation Festival. Advanced-rate tickets are available now through Sunday, July 12. Grab your festival passes today.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91073170/jobs-that-didnt-exist-1940-wont-exist-2040-automation-study?utm_source=news.theideafarm.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=facts-from-1h26


10. A Reality Check on the Inequality Panic

Alarmist narratives shape public opinion and encourage policymakers to pursue sweeping interventions that may do more harm than good.

By Chelsea Follett

This article appeared in Washington Examiner on March 23, 2026.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for far higher taxation in a recent blog entry, arguing that current wealth concentration is higher than that of the Gilded Age and is about to get worse globally. The chart-topping singer Billie Eilish implored billionaires to give away their money, while New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani has gone further, opining, “I don’t think we should have billionaires” because we live in “a moment of such inequality.” If anything is having a moment, it is the conviction that inequality has grown urgent enough to justify a muscular policy response.

But the facts don’t support this. Not only has global income inequality fallen over the long run — contrary to the popular narrative — but inequality has also declined in education, health, and a host of other areas. The world is now more equal across a range of factors, from lifespan and childhood survival to internet access and schooling. The more broadly one examines inequality, the more encouraging the data appear. It turns out that even the shock of COVID-19 failed to erase decades of progress toward a wealthier and more equal world.

Indeed, the data show a pronounced decline in global inequality over the past few decades, driven largely by rising prosperity in poorer countries. During the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, progress slowed sharply. Some indicators stalled and a few modestly worsened. But the gains accumulated before the crisis were not undone.

In short, the damage to human well-being was more limited than many feared.

Alarmist narratives shape public opinion and encourage policymakers to pursue sweeping interventions that may do more harm than good.

Another recent analysis published in The Economist finds that global inequality in consumption spending is falling. In 2000, the richest 10% of humanity spent 40 times more than the poorest 50%. In 2025, they spent around 18 times more. Using data from World Data Lab, they find that the poorest 50% now out-consume the richest 1%, breaking from past trends.

Yet many think that only large-scale redistribution can stop runaway worldwide inequality. Figures as diverse as Amodei, Eilish, and Mamdani are far from alone in embracing this view. Over the past few years, calls for a worldwide wealth tax, a vast increase in foreign aid spending, and other unprecedented measures are gaining steam across academia, non-profits, the press, and international organizations like the United Nations.

That conclusion is premature. Getting the facts straight is essential, because misunderstanding global inequality can push policymakers toward harmful solutions.

The record on foreign aid is far less encouraging than its advocates suggest: decades of evidence show that aid frequently fails to deliver sustained development and bears no reliable relationship to long-term economic growth. Worse, the fixation on ever larger aid flows often crowds out the harder work of domestic reform. In some cases, foreign aid has been shown to weaken political institutions, entrench bad governance, and slow the process of democratization.

Wealth taxes have their own problems, from high administrative costs and enforcement challenges to low revenue production and invasion of financial privacy. These problems help explain why so many of the countries that have implemented wealth taxes in the past — such as France, Germany, and Sweden— later abolished the tax. Perhaps the worst of all, by discouraging risk-taking, wealth taxes suppress investment and growth, effects that would be felt in both rich and poor countries and would likely prove especially damaging to development in the world’s poorest economies.

Recent work on multidimensional inequality suggests that the world has not been drifting toward ever greater gaps, but that the rich and the poor have been converging in material comfort. Calls for global wealth taxes or massive new aid programs often rest on the assumption that international trade and economic freedom have failed to deliver broadly shared gains. Yet the long-term evidence suggests the opposite.

The pandemic offers two lessons here: First, it highlights just how sensitive progress is to disruptions in markets. It depends on conditions that allow growth to occur and persist, including functioning markets and stable institutions. Many of the proposed policy solutions risk undermining that progress.

The second lesson is that while the pandemic represented a hurdle in the path of progress, the long-term trend toward lower global inequality is holding strong.

Alarmist narratives shape public opinion and encourage policymakers to pursue sweeping interventions that may do more harm than good. A clearer view of the data counsels caution rather than panic.

Chelsea Follett

https://www.cato.org/commentary/reality-check-inequality-panic

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 29, 2026

1. Goldman Earnings Growth 2026—43% QQQ and 41% Small Cap


2. The Bond Bear Market-2010’s 3.2% Return…2020’s 0.6% Return

The bond bear market. The 2020s (so far) are the worst decade ever for bond investors:

 A Wealth of Common Sense


3. The Russell 1000 Growth and Russell 1000 Value Share 246 Names

Savvy Investor


4. Healthcare Services ETF XHS-Breaks Higher After Going Sideways for 3 Years

StockCharts


5. Leveraged Bull and Leveraged Bear Gold Miners Wiped Out—Leveraged ETFs Not Buy and Hold

Morningstar


6. Hormuz Traffic Increasing but Well Below Pre-Collapse Levels

Hormuz traffic. “Tanker traffic through Hormuz is recovering, but remains well below pre-collapse levels … Activity has clearly moved off the lows seen from late-February through early June, but the rebound is still modest versus the 50-80 tanker-crossing range seen earlier in the year.”

@m_mcdonough


7. Record $17 Billion Estimated Stolen in Crypto Scams and Fraud in 2025 as Impersonation Tactics and AI Enablement Surge

January 13, 2026 | Chainalysis Team TL;DR

  • We estimate $17 billion was stolen in crypto scams and fraud in 2025 — as impersonation scams show massive 1400% year-over-year (YoY) growth. AI-enabled scams were 4.5 times more profitable than traditional scams.
  • Major scam operations became increasingly industrialized, with sophisticated infrastructure, including phishing-as-a-service tools, AI-generated deepfakes, and professional money laundering networks.
  • Strong connections to East and Southeast Asian crime networks were identified, particularly through forced labor compounds in Cambodia, Myanmar, and other regions, where trafficking victims are forced to operate scams.
  • Law enforcement made record-breaking seizures, including a 61,000 bitcoin recovery in the UK and a $15 billion seizure linked to the Prince Group criminal organization, showing improved capability to combat crypto fraud.

https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/crypto-scams-2026/?utm_source=news.theideafarm.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=facts-from-1h26


8. America-Only the South is Growing Under 18-Year Old Population

Axios 


9. Where Do Americans Gifts Go? Barrons

Barron’s


10. VO2 Max-Doctor Hyman

Linkedin

TOPLEY’S TOP 10 June 26, 2026

1. Hyper Scalers vs. Chip Stock Free Cash Flow

Holger Zschaepitz


2. Along with Data Center Buildout…Hyperscalers have $850B in Off Balance Sheet Leases

Bloomberg


3. AI Scaling 3x Faster than IT Build Out

AI economy. “AI is scaling three times faster than any IT wave”.

Exponential View


4. This Chart Shows SMH Semiconductors vs. Mag 7 Stocks MAGS

StockCharts


5. History of Bitcoin -50% Drawdowns

Bespoke The chart below shows Bitcoin in the year after each of the prior periods when prices first fell 50%+ from an all-time high. One of the things you always hear about Bitcoin after it sees a large decline like the current one is that “prices always come back”. That’s an accurate statement, but after prices experienced a 50% haircut in the three prior periods, the road back to new highs wasn’t necessarily short or smooth.

As shown in the chart, one year after each of the prior three periods, Bitcoin was lower a year later than it was when the drawdown first reached 50%. Not only that, but in two of the three periods, it barely even experienced a bounce. The one exception was after the June 2021 drawdown when prices quickly rebounded to new highs, but almost as quickly returned back to new lows. Perhaps the best thing Bitcoin has working in its favor is that you don’t hear much about $500,000 or even million-dollar price targets anymore.

Bespoke


6. United Kingdom Market Underperformance

Abnormal Returns


7. Hedge Fund Managers Earnings Dwarf Pro Athletes

Meb Faber


8. Households Sitting on $3.2 Trillion in Cash Plus $8 Trillion Money Markets

Household cash. “U.S. households are sitting on $3.2 trillion of cash”.

Deutsche Bank via @gunjanjs


9. Home Price Increases by State 2021-2026

Visual Capitalist


10. 10 Meaning Questions for Your Midlife and Retirement

Reflections to make a difference in the direction and quality of your life.-Psychology Today Elaine Dundon

Key points

  • Retirement can often present a crisis of meaning.
  • It is up to us to determine how we will embrace midlife and beyond.
  • Our choices are shaped by our inner perception of ourselves.

We are the ship that travels our life’s journey, our odyssey. Along the way, we encounter many adventures; some enjoyable, some challenging, some upsetting.

The phase of retirement and our corresponding older years represent a time where we are faced with new challenges. It is up to us to determine how we will embrace this new phase: growing, evolving, and actualizing our potential; or instead, stagnating, complaining, and even ending up further adrift or shipwrecked.

Socrates, an ancient Greek philosopher, taught us the importance of asking questions to raise our awareness of our thinking patterns, to uncover our biases, assumptions, and blocks, and importantly, to see the direction and consequences of our current thinking.

10 “Meaning Questions”

Here are 10 “Meaning Questions,” derived from my research in MEANINGology, designed to stimulate your deeper understanding of yourself as you prepare for, hopefully, a happy and very fulfilling future:

  1. Our choices are shaped by our inner perception of ourselves. Do you believe you are now too old to change the direction or the circumstances in your life?
  2. In what ways do you feel discontent with your life, question your past decisions, or feel that you failed to manifest the life you thought you would have by now?
  3. Who will you be without the identity you have adopted from your previous jobs, titles, and trophies; social status; or material possessions?
  4. What do you need to do to live more authentically—to stop living by other people’s expectations and instead live a life truly your own?
  5. Do you dread the future or do you see a vibrant future, full of hope and possibility?
  6. Do you prefer the safety of staying the same and within the current borders of your current life or do you want to embrace the challenges of change and growth?
  7. What dreams have you lost along the way? What have you always wanted to learn and experience?
  8. How do you plan to build new social friendships so that you will feel alive and connected and to combat potential loneliness in the future?
  9. How will you contribute to humanity and help to make the world a better place in this next phase of your life?
  10. What is limiting you from moving forward?

Retirement can present a crisis of meaning when we leave the safety of our jobs and find ourselves without the structure of work and without a sense of identity and belonging.

Remember, just because you may have been able to save money for your retirement does not mean you will live a meaningful life during your later years. Life with money but without meaning suggests you are simply surviving, not thriving. As I shared in our book, Prisoners of Our Thoughts1, the world-renowned psychiatrist and existential philosopher Viktor Frankl so wisely concluded, “Even more people today have the means to live but no meaning to live for.”

Now is the time to start reflecting and asking these existential questions that will truly make a difference both in the direction and the quality of your life in midlife and beyond. Outside forces may control the external circumstances but you control your internal world. Importantly, your choices create your own unique journey or odyssey in life. It is up to you. You are the captain of your life voyage! Every day is a new day to be enjoyed, not simply endured.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-search-for-meaning-after-age-50/202606/10-meaning-questions-for-your-midlife-and