It’s that time of year when we spend, spend, spend on holiday gifts for family and friends. According to The Conference Board, the average US consumer is expected to spend $1,063 this season on holiday-related items and $677 on gifts for others. When adjusted for inflation, holiday spending is at or near all-time highs. However, the most disturbing statistic is that a large proportion of shoppers are still paying off the debt they accumulated in 2023 to purchase holiday gifts.

I get asked fairly often how an individual can improve this skill. So today, I’m going to provide listeners with a tool to improve critical thinking. Before we get started, a word of caution—improvements in critical thinking seldom happen overnight. Critical thinking skills are developed over years and maintaining this skill takes real effort—critical thinking can atrophy quickly if we abandon or reduce our commitment to continuous improvement and lifelong learning. It is sooo easy to get lulled into the status quo and easy to adopt a fixed, unyielding mindset.

So what’s your plan for retirement? Yes, you may want to step off the treadmill of a fast-paced career path, but it’s essential that you not stand still. Standing still is the fast pass to a slow and oftentimes painful slide into oblivion. Instead, commit now to developing the habit of continuous improvement and lifelong learning. Keep moving in retirement. Give back. Mentor. Take a part-time job that fits your purpose. Living a full life means living a full life. Don’t give up on yourself.

Increase financial literacy, get educated, adopt an agile, lifelong learning mindset, periodically unplug from social media, advocate for changes to our educational system to improve the skills of critical thinking, creativity, and decision-making, do what you can to reduce your impact on the planet, and understand when you’re being played by politicians and the media. We are all in this together. Support your neighbor, get to know individuals from other cultures and other parts of the world.

I can’t put enough focus on the value of education and good decision-making that’s accompanied by a lifelong learning mindset as ways to reduce stress and anxiety. Too many in our society are on auto-pilot, going through the motions of life. Life is happening to them. Self-reliance developed through learning and education coupled with better decision making skills is the path to making things happen in your life and taking control of your narratives and outcomes.

If I’m living my personal purpose in both life and work and striving toward my long-term personal vision, then the likelihood that I feel unworthy of my successes is reduced because my success is more genuine to me and, no pun intended, purposeful. So if natural feelings of unworthiness and self-doubt creep in, I can remind myself that my success didn’t come out of nowhere, but was instead the result of planning, skill, and hard work.