The Year That Was 2025

It's been a rollercoaster of a year with triumph and tragedy both personally, professionally, and in the world around us. Welcome to a special edition of Wife's Thoughts, a look back at twenty twenty five with some highlights from the podcast. As we look forward to twenty twenty six, may this coming year be the best ever. Thank you for listening to Wife's Thoughts, and now let's hear some highlights from the year twenty twenty five. Welcome to Weis's Thoughts. Let's get ready to gather around the virtual campfire and see what's on his mind. And if you like the program, please leave a rating and share it with your friends. Now, let's get ready to gather around the virtual campfire on another episode of wh Spots. Then the second one that comes to my mind when I'm thinking about movies that have to do with time travel, is going to be a movie with it? Didn't It became a cult classic. It was made in the mid to late seventies, early eighties. I think it was a late seventies. It was with Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steinbergin, and I believe it was the actor's name who played the villain in it. He played Jack the Ripper. David I don't want to The name that's popping into my head is David Niven, but it wasn't. It was David something. But it was called Time after Time, and it's about what would happen if HG. Wells built the time machine and used it, you know, to chase Jack the Ripper because he used his machine to state escape prosecution back in those days into the modern era. Really a cool concept for a movie and kind of a cool movie. I remember being enthralled with that and as a younger person. But my favorite, my favorite all time time travel movie slash under trilogies has to be the Back to the Future series with Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd amongst others. You know, just those movies just captivated me and there was just something about them when I saw the first one, and I think out of all all three of them, all three of them in the series, my favorite of the Back of the Future trilogy has to be Part two. Now I know some people are what, Yeah, Part two has to be my favorite because I love how they tied it into the first movie, went back into the first movie, and so you had kind of all these paradigm is happening and what happened when you know, when you can mess it if you mess up time travel on the timeline, and how it can alter the future. But anyway, that's what I think of, you know, as far as time travel movies. But the thing is is if if you had the opportunity, you know, let's say the technology was here and it was available and they said, yeap, it can be everybody. You know, if you I don't know, you win a contest or something, or you pay so much money, you have one shot to go back in time for a day or whatever x amount of hours and you can change one event in your life. First of all, would you go And second of all, what event would you go to? Now? I know there's also some of you authors and thinking, yeah, but Terry, if you went back in time change one event in your life, you know, it's the ripple effect, like throwing that pebble into a pond, it would also affect people around you and their futures, et cetera. And see though, that's the that's the conundrum, isn't it. Oh, let me use some of the college vocabulary. That's the conundrum. If you don't know what that means. Look it up. That's the conundrum with time travel, because not only would you be wanting to change your own life, but we affect everyone and many many people around us, and then the people around us we affect, they affect the people around them, and sort of like that old doublemin commercial and so on and so on, so on. Hey, thanks for tuning in to the show. If you want to contact me, you can tweet at me on Twitter at Terry Weiss. You can also follow me on Facebook. It's facebook dot com backslash Weiss's thoughts, and if you want to check out my YouTube channel, just search for wife's thoughts on YouTube. Now let's get back to the show. The first step, I believe is identifying your own personal noise. What are specific sources of distraction and overwhelm in your life? Think about this for a second, folks. For some it might be an addiction to checking their phone every five minutes. For others, it could be spending too much time consuming negative news or engaging in online arguments. I've been there, done that. It could even be a cluttered living space that creates mental clutter. Take a moment, even right now, and reflect. What are your. Biggest noise contributors. Once you've identified them, then you can start to address them. And it doesn't have to be a drastic overhaul of everything and a big shift. Let's do this, Let's start small. Consistent steps can make a huge difference. Consider let's say our digital habits. Are you constantly bombarded by notifications? We'll go into the settings and turn off anything non essential and be honest about this. You want to be really honest about this. Okay? Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling social media? Set timers for your usage, or even designate specific times of the day for checking in. Better, yet, do what I've done, and we've done past episodes of the Wisest Thoughts podcast on this. Take a digital detox for a few hours a day, or even a weekend or even a week. You might be surprised at how much mental bandwidth you can reclaim beyond the digital I think it's about the people and environments in our lives. Are there certa conversations or relationships that consistently drain your energy and fill your mind with negativity? I've had a few of these. It's not always possible to completely avoid these, But what we can do is we can learn to set boundaries. And you know, this is one thing I struggle with. I'll be just honest with you here, I struggle with boundaries. I like to be the yes man, the person who says, yeah, i'll help out, I'll do it. This might mean politely excusing yourself from certain discussions, limiting time with individuals, or constantly negative saying no once in a while when you're asked to do something and you're already spread too thin, or even if you really don't feel like doing it, and also choosing to consciously not to engage in gossip or drama. Your physical environment also plays a crucial role. A cluttered home or apartment can lead to a cluttered mind. Taking even fifteen minutes a day to declutter a small area have a profound impact on your sense of peace and order. Try this. Think about creating a quiet zone in your home, even if it's just a comfortable chair in a corner where you can read or just simply be. How's that that's always a good thing. Now, let's talk about internal noise. This can be the trickiest to tune out because it comes from within. It's the constant stream of thoughts, worries, and self criticisms that we all at times face. This is where practices like mindfulness and meditation become incredibly powerful. Mindfulness isn't about emptying your mind, but rather about observing your own thoughts without judgment. It's about bringing your attention to the present moment, to things like your breath, to the sounds around you, the things you see, to the sensations in your body. Even five minutes, just five minutes of mindful breathing each day can help you create a little bit of space between yourself and the incessant chatter of your own mind. I am a firm believer of everyone's right to speak. Okay, even if you do not agree with that speech, if you do not agree with an opinion. But we should all be able to express ourselves in a peaceful, nonviolent matter, and we should be able to have conversations. And unfortunately, about a week or so back, a person who is trying to have conversations with people of a different belief system or peoples that have different beliefs other than his, and different political beliefs as well, not just ideological ideological beliefs, religious beliefs. What have you and but different some different political beliefs. This person would go to the college campuses and go to you know, arenas and different venues throughout the country and just talk with people. From what I've seen, from what I know of Charlie Kirk, he would just go and talk with people. He never called for violence. He never called for you to hate someone to shun them. That in all of videos I've seen, and I've watched a lot of his, I watch a lot of different things because I like to not live in a fish bowl. I like to not like be like certain segments of the popular that just get their own beliefs parroted back to them and never listen to the other side. I'll listen to differing points of view in different belief systems. Doesn't mean I agree with them always, if ever, or maybe in part. However, in the United States of America, which is where I live, I'm not sure where you're listening. In a nation founded on freedom, especially religious freedom, freedom to be able to speak out against what you feel are injustices or things that you don't feel are right. What this country's fundamental tenants were founded on. Okay, you should not have violence perpetrated against you for speaking your mind, as long as when you do that, you are not calling for violence or harm to anybody else. You know, if somebody says, hey, I love chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and that's all I believe in. I don't like vanilla cake, I don't like you know, yellow cake. I don't like strawberry type cake. Chocolate cake is the only cake that should. Ever be served anywhere in the free world. And if someone comes up and says, well, you know, Terry, I like yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I even like yellow cake with strawberry frosting, I'm gonna be like, Okay, well, you have the right to believe that. I don't agree with you. But for me, I just think chocolate cake is the is the cat's ass, the cat's mew. It's the way it should be, and it should be chocolate cake and chocolate frosting. For all. You do you, I'll do me great to meet you. What's wrong with scenario like that, my friend, or what's wrong with saying, well, you know, sir Adam, why do you not like chocolate cake? Why do you think yellow cake with strawberry frosting is better? Explain it to me, tell me about your experiences, what leads you to that point of view, and then I would listen, and then I would retort, well, it's been my experience that strawberry, A lot of people are allergic to that, etc. And we could have a back and for dialogues. This is how I viewed Charlie Kirk. He you know, and that's just a really goof ball off the wall example. But that's kind of what Charlie Kirk he did. Okay, he would go and because he went to college campuses where a lot of minds are forming, you know, people are moving out of their house for the first time or second time or what whatver, or maybe still living at home and going to college, but they're being exposed to different thought system belief systems, different information. And he just went there to find out and to challenge them a little bit and say, well, you know you're being told this bay let's say XYZ institution. Have you ever thought about that or have you ever thought about this point? Or have you ever thought about this this other point here? And tell me, mister student, miss student, why do you think the way you do? Why do you feel is it because this is what professors are telling you, or what your peer group is telling you, or what your maybe your people in your neighborhood tell me, why do you believe the way you do? And they would have it back and forth, and sometimes it would get intense as far as people challenging Charlie. But he was always, from everything I've seen, always respectful. Sometimes it did get loud back and forth when people were talking over it, but he was always respectful. He never, in my experience, in what I've observed of him in print and in video and audio, and in interviews I've seen with him during his interactions on his time on our glorious planet, was never disrespectful to people that I saw. Now, if I miss something, then, but I watched a lot of hours, listen to a lot of audio, read a lot of things. And for someone out there to decide to be judge and jury on Charlie Kirk, to try and silence him and say you don't have a right to speak, that person deserves the fullest extent of punishment to the law, up to and including whatever the state and the federal government may decide. Hey, waste. Lots of listeners are looking for a simple way to level up your focus and energy. Well, you know on this podcast, I talk a lot about health and vitality. That's why I'm excited to share some information about empower Plus. It's a functional superfood green powder from in Dear Life. It features powerful ingredients like lions main for cognition and broccoli microgreens for anti inflammatory support and it's all in one scoop. Want to try it out, well, right now, you can get fifteen percent off your entire order. That's right, fifteen percent off your whole order at a Dearer Life. Just visit a dear life dot com. That's ed E r R A l y FE dot com. Use my special code Weiss Save. That's wyce e s a ve e. At the checkout that's Weiss Save for fifteen percent off at a Dearer life dot com. Fuel your thoughts and save. Today we're in his sunglasses indoors just because he wants to. Let's step back to the program. Here's your host, Terry Weisse. I was regaling the tail of my water woes over the past month or so. We've been out without running water in the home for about a month, a little bit over a month. Now here in twenty twenty five because the well had runneth dry. Emvoy did that stink? But anyway, I digress. It looks like I talked with the gentleman today. There's a crane sitting in the front of the property ready to hook us up to the water line here, and we are all ready to go inside. So I am so super stoked about having running water, being able to just take a shower here instead of bumming it from friends and everything, and you know, being able to use water and do our own laundry again. And all those I know a lot of you out there are going, yeah, whatevertary, We don't really care, big deal. But I'll tell you what, when you're without a utility, that especially here in the United States of America, wherever you may be listening, I hope you have access to easy and reasonable utilities. But here in the United States of America, my friends, you know, you turn on the tap, you expect just good, clean water to come out. You flick a switch, you expect electricity to work. You know. Yeah, you hop on the computer, you expect the internet there things that we take, things that we take for granted. And it's just amazing, amazing, And if this has taught me anything over the past month is that don't take anything anything for granted, my friends, don't be thankful and grateful for everything in your life, the good, the bad, and the ugly. So what did I want to talk about on today's program of Ye Sots as we gather yet again around our virtual campfire. Well, I want to talk about being thankful. I guess that's that's one of the topics I want to talk to you about today. And I think a lot of us, especially in modern society, we're not thankful as we could be, as we should be. We should be thankful for a lot of things, and we take a lot of things for granted. We really do, just like I was talking about a few moments ago, utilities, you know, having access to clean water for bathing and sanitary reasons and cooking and drinking. It's amazing. It's amazing when you lose it's like losing one of your five senses. I really really think it is. And it really made me stop and take take stock of things and think about things. You know, the adjustments we had to make here in our household. We're just extraordinary because I've never run into a situation like this. Now, I've talked to people in my in my area because I live in a rural area and we've always had a well and our well has never run dry, and people in our area are the wells have never run dry. Now, some of you might jump out and say, wow, climate change, terry, climate change. Okay, maybe to some extent it has been a dry summer. But you know, in the past twenty five to thirty years of living here, we've been through droughts before in this area and never never have gone to this extreme, never had it to be to this extreme. Let me take a sip of this. By the way, today's program is brought to you by Lemon Ginger Herbal hot Tea. Lemon Ginger Herbal hot Tea. Yeah, that's that's today's sponsor. I no, I don't get any money or kick I just happened to see it in the in the health food store and I'm like, oh, Lemon and Ginger, let me try that. The tea bag smelled pretty good. Tell you what, folks, it's a winner and it's so good for you. It's so good for you. Lemon Ginger hot Herbal Tea. Look for it on your grocer's shelf. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, we've been through droughts here before in my part of the country, in my area where I live, and never to this degree did we run into the difficulties with water. You know, there's been times where we said, okay, you know, don't be doing five loads of laundry a day and running the dishwasher and flushing a toilet one hundred times and taking four hour showers and all that, you know, leaving the water run. We had to ration a little bit, but it never got to the point where my well ran dry. I'm talking dry. And it was to the point, like I mentioned on the last episode of the Weiss Thoughts podcast, where I had paid paid money good old green bags and the last episode, by the way of waste Thoughts, if you want to hear about that, is called say What. That's the title of it. Say What. Look for that on your favorite podcast provider or over at waste thoughts dot com. But I had paid good money, a few hundred dollars to have three three hundred gallons of water pumped in and it didn't even last a day. And we didn't do anything crazy. We flushed a toilet about a half a dozen times each, you know. For going to the bathroom, it took a quick five minute shower each, you know, within a span amount of time. And ran a dishwasher which tony took up about four gallons of water if that, and that would folks that had washed our hands a few times, and that was it and the water was done. We had the water pumped in at like nine thirty ten o'clock on that morning. I remember that day vividly. It was on a Tuesday, and by that evening around ten thirty eleven, it was back down to almost to dribble again through the system. Good good old tea, herbal tea anyway, so you know, definitely taught me a lesson, and me and the wife discussed it and we said, you know what, no, now we're not we're not going to go through this. You know, we're gaining in years a little bit and we're not going to go through this kind of nonsense. There's other factors beside the environment that caused the well. There's an organization here that does a certain type of mining and it's a gravel type company and that I won't mention its name, you know, for the quorum's sake, because I can't I cannot say for certainty that they are the cause of it. But it certainly can't be helping the area with the water table. But they pump millions upon millions upon millions of gallons every year out of this area by doing their quarry mining and things to make gravel and stone gravel and such, so I'm sure they're not helping things. But again I can't say for any degree of certainty that they're the direct impact. I think it's a combination of all factors and just time, you know, good old Mother nature and earth doing what it's doing. But anyhow, any hoot, as they say, we are thankfully had the water. County water came down through town, you know, through town, through our rural area, you know, over a decade ago, and the line was sitting there across the road. But it was a substantial expense to pay the county to have them do it, and to have our private contractor come in and run the water line for our house and hook us up at the house and everything. But we're ready to go. Like I said, the big drill is on the front of the yard. Gentleman's here today with that set it all up, and he said, you will be hooked up. We're going to be here bright and early in the morning, between six thirty am and seven am. Do you is that okay with you? Is at too early? I said, you can come overnight if you want to, dear friend, we need water, we want water. So we are going to be hooked up forthwith by hopefully around twelve o'clock noon tomorrow Eastern time, we should be all hooked up with water and running in the home and all set to go. And thank goodness for that. But being thankful, definitely being thankful for things in your life. And I know I've talked about it a few times on the show here at Wi's Thoughts, I've talked about, you know, being thankful, being grateful, being grateful for everything you have. And I think as a society, a lot of us are ungrateful. A lot of us, you know, we take for granted, taking things for granted. Maybe that's what we'll title the episode of this podcast, taking it for granted, And whether it's a utility, taking for granted, your health relationships okay, your your employment, your financial situation, the weather okay, your vehicle, whatever, don't take things for granted. That's what we're going to talk about. I want to talk to you about on the podcast for batim. This last experience, especially with the utility of the water and that, you know, made me think. And again, when I talk about these topics, I like to preface it by saying, I am not standing here on a pulpit. I am not standing here on a soapbox saying. I am the almighty and I am perfect this. I am going to lecture you. No, that's not it at all. Okay, that's not it. There's a lot of things and I when I speak to everyone out there, when I speak to you, okay you, yes, you are right there walking down the street listening to this podcast. Are you in the car listening. When I'm talking to you, it's I'm talking with you, not at you. I'm giving you my experiences and things that have happened in my life. And there's a lot of things I've taken for granted over the years. Health, you know, physicality, having a back that doesn't hurt every so often, don't hit you know, as I gain in years, I'm noticing certain aches and pains are starting to come to life. All right, nature, what cruel joke is this? Did you ever do this? Did you ever do something? And then two or three days later you're like, oh man, my side hurts, are oh my, I'm a little sore on my shoulder or this, and you and you do the you do the detective deductive reasoning. Okay, what did I do yesterday? The day before? What did I do? And you try and backtrack to figure out what the hell did I do and why am I so sore? Well, if it hasn't happened to you, don't worry, my friends, it will. It will. Uh, it's going Trust me, it'll happen. It's people have said that to me when I was younger, and I'm like, ah, wooie wooie, let's bring that back. Hey, thanks for listening to the program today. I truly appreciate each and every one of you out there. And remember to see a change in the world, you have to be the change in the world you want to see. It all starts with you, the person looking back at you in the mirror every morning. Remember to be kind to yourself, be kind to others. If you want to tweet at me on Twitter, it's at Terry Weiss. Stop by the website Wis's thoughts dot com just to make sure you spell my name right, Wye Wis thoughts dot com, and hey, leave us a positive rating and review on your favorite podcast provider. Won't you tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets about wife's thoughts? And I look forward to gathering yet again around the virtual campfire with you real soon. Take care three, every every every