Something is Shifting

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Welcome to Still Here, Still Trying. I’m Mira. Mike has spent years insisting that optimism should be grounded in reality. He has written about hope doing the work, he has talked about looking directly at what is broken. He has reminded people that optimism without honesty does not help anyone. So naturally, tonight he wants to talk about a shift in the universe. I know. The realistic optimist has looked at everything happening around him and decided that reality itself might be changing.

Before anyone gets concerned, Mike is not here to decode the stars, predict the future, or explain why Mercury has ruined your group chat. He has been noticing something much more human. Old conflicts are beginning to soften. People are finding the courage to speak. Communities are becoming less willing to accept toxic leadership. More people seem tired of fear, outrage, and the constant pressure to see one another as enemies. Mike thinks something is shifting.

He also thinks we have a role in shaping what comes next. Tonight, he is asking what happens when we step away from the noise, reconnect with real people, spend time outside, repair what we can, and put hope to work close to home. For a man who keeps telling everyone to stay grounded, he’s reaching pretty high tonight. Honestly, that sounds about right. Here’s your host, Mike Baker. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Still Here, Still Trying. I’m your host, Mike Baker.

I’ve had this feeling lately that something is shifting. And I hear other people saying different versions of the same thing. And these are people with different beliefs, different uh politics, different backgrounds, and different ways of understanding the world. Um, some people talk about this shift, they they kind of talk about it through faith. Some talk about energy or consciousness, and and some see just cultural change. Um others just don’t really even have a language for it, and I think that’s okay, but there’s just this feeling that something is different.

And I don’t know why so many people are feeling it at the same time. And but but I’m paying attention because I see signs of it in the people all around me at my work and just in the vibe and the community. But like I have good friends who have lived in conflict for years, and they are beginning to find a way through it. Um, and these are not small disagreements. I’m talking about hurt that lasted long enough to become part of how people understood the relationship.

For years, everybody knew where lines were. Certain subjects stayed off limits, every conversation just carried history. Um, people protected themselves by keeping their distance or repeating the same argument in slightly different words. And then it just feels like something opened. Someone became willing to listen. Someone decided that defending every part of the past mattered less than figuring out whether their relationship had a future. And somebody said the thing that had been avoided for years, and the other person stayed in the conversation.

The pain did not disappear, trust did not return in a single moment, and sometimes these relationships shifted and people are starting over. But something moved enough for people for both people to see that the conflict did not have to control every year that came next. I am seeing that in more than one place. I also see it in communities that are waking up from just toxic leadership. For a long time, people accepted leadership that was built around fear because they thought they had no other choice.

They learned to stay quiet, avoid attention, and survive the environment. They watched people get punished for telling the truth. They saw leaders protect their own power while expecting everyone else to carry the consequences. And that kind of leadership changes the people living under it. You start questioning your own judgment, you read the room before you speak, you learn which subjects create danger, and you just watch good people become smaller because they are trying to make it through the day without becoming the next target.

Toxic leadership depends on isolation. Each person needs to believe that they are the only one who sees the problem. And the structure starts weakening when people talk honestly to one another. Someone says, Oh, I thought I was the only one. And another person says, You weren’t. And then the truth becomes harder to contain after that. I see people comparing their experiences. I see employees setting boundaries, I see boards asking harder questions, I see communities deciding that charisma does not excuse harm and authority does not remove accountability.

Some people leave unhealthy systems, some stay and help rebuild them, but both paths require courage. And this is part of the shift that I’m talking about. People are becoming less willing to surrender their peace, dignity, and relationships to leaders or systems that survive by keeping everyone free. I also feel the shift in my own work. Over the past year, I wrote more books than I expected to write in a lifetime. And my family would probably tell you that my brain does not know how to have one idea at a time.

That is fair. We’ve covered that before. But the books cover endometriosis and menopause and masculinity and women and leadership, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, faith, artificial intelligence, human connection, grief, and hope. And I know that’s a long list. But for a while, I thought I was working on a lot of separate projects, but each book just kind of came from a different part of my life and seemed to have its own audience. But I see the connection now.

Every book is asking a version of the same question. How do we become more human inside a world that keeps pulling us away from one another? Believe her the first time asks what changes when women no longer have to prove their pain before anyone offers care. Man versus menopause asks men to approach change with curiosity, patience, and love instead of defensiveness. Get out of the way, asks men to examine how we hold power and whether our need to stay in control keeps better leaders from having room to lead.

The Better Man Field Guide, which you guys have to check this one out, asks men to take responsibility for our choices, our anger, and the impact we have on the people around us. Still good was a hard one to write, but it explores what happens when faith changes and you try to build an honest life without pretending that the last did not hurt. Still, my mom broke my heart. But this is about loving someone through Alzheimer’s when love cannot stop what is happening.

Beautifully Unfocused asks us to see different brains clearly instead of judging them against one narrow version of how a person should work. And then the future still needs us, asks whether the technology we are building will strengthen human dignity, creativity, agency, and care. Each book enters the conversation from a different place. They are all moving toward the same future. Human first. Human first has become more than a title for me. It is the direction underneath everything that I am building.

It means remembering that every decision eventually reaches a person. A healthcare policy reaches someone who is already scared. A leadership decision reaches an employee who still has to go home and be present for their family. A technology decision shapes how people work, create, communicate, and understand their own value. A political choice reaches people whose lives are more complicated than the categories that we put them into. Human first asks us to keep those people visible.

It also asks us to take connections seriously. We have spent years being trained away from one another. Social media gives us constant access to people while flattening them into opinions, posts, pictures, and reaction, right? The news keeps our attention locked on danger, outrage, and conflict. We’re hyped up all the time. Political leaders learned that fear mobilizes people faster than trust. And that’s so sad. Algorithms learned how long anger keeps us looking at a screen.

It’s crazy. After enough exposure, the whole world just starts looking hostile. You begin to believe that everybody is furious. Every institution looks broken, every disagreement feels like proof that the country, the community, or the family is falling apart. The feed rarely shows the full picture. A father apologizing to his adult child does not become breaking news. Neighbors working through a disagreement do not trend. A leader choosing humility during a hard conversation rarely earns millions of views.

A woman finally being believed after years of pain does not dominate the news cycle. Those moments still shape the future. They shape families, they shape workplaces, they shape what children learn about love and conflict and responsibility. They create small pieces of evidence that people remain capable of growth. I think we need to become better at noticing those moments. And that is where the first little cute book, The Optimus Wave, fits into all of this, right?

I have spent so much of my life being called too optimistic. And sometimes, I’ll be honest with you, the criticism has been fair. I’ll give that to you. Optimism becomes harmful when it refuses to see reality. The optimism that I have grown to trust looks directly at what is happening. It names the damage, it studies the problem, it accepts the facts that feel uncomfortable, and then it looks for the place where our choices still matter. Hope has work attached to it.

You look at the situation honestly, you identify what sits within your influence, what can I change? You take one step and watch what happens. That is also how I have started thinking about optimism and manifestation. And I know the word carries a lot of baggage. People hear manifestation and they think about wishing hard enough, picturing a new life, or expecting the universe to deliver something because you asked with enough confidence. And maybe that works for some people.

That’s great. You do your thing, let’s make it happen. But my version stays grounded. You define the future that you want clearly, right? That’s what you want. You see it, you want it, you’re gonna go get it. You pay attention to the forces that are shaping it, and you decide where you have influence. And then you align your behavior, relationships, resources, leadership, and creative work toward that future. You try things in the real world, you learn from what happens, you keep adjusting without losing sight of what you were trying to build.

The future becomes more likely when people begin acting as though their choices belong to it. And that is the foundation beneath this episode. The future that I want includes more real connection, more joy, calmer homes, healthier communities, and leadership that protects human dignity. I want people to feel less manipulated by fear. I want disagreement to leave room for relationships. I want technology to serve people instead of quietly shaping every part of our lives without consent.

I want women to be believed. I want men to grow. I want people who feel tired, lost, or alone to know that their presence still matters. The future will not arrive because I described it on a podcast. Now that would be incredible, and wow, if it happens, let’s do it. But it grows when enough people begin creating pieces of it wherever they are. And this is the exciting part. Attention shapes behavior, behavior shapes relationships, and relationships shape families, workplaces, and communities.

Over time, those environments shape systems. That process moves in both directions, and we felt it. A toxic system affects how people behave. A group of people changing how they behave also puts pressure on the system. You have more influence than the news feed teaches you to believe, and you have to remember that. Your influence has limits, right? Limits do not make it meaningless, though. The way that you speak to someone today matters. The choice to listen changes the conversation.

The apology that you offer could interrupt a pattern that has traveled through a family for years. The moment you refuse to participate in humiliation changes the room. The person you believe might, just might, begin believing in themselves again. That is so cool. So today, I want to give you five things that you can just try. These are not productivity hacks or another set of instructions to add to a life that already feels full. Think of them as ways to create enough space to notice what is happening around you and decide what part you want to play.

And this is gonna be fun. So, number one, turn down the noise. Give yourself one day away from the constant stream. Turn off the news, step away from social media, put the phone in another room for part of the day. Guess what? The world will continue. I understand the feeling that staying informed is a responsibility. I get it. I promise you, I get it. I lead a healthcare organization. I’m involved in public policy, I’m involved in funding and community events and decisions that are made far outside of North Idaho.

And I know that those things affect the people that we serve. I have to pay attention. But there’s a difference between being informed and being continuously activated. Think about that word, activated, right? Most breaking news just repeats the same limited information throughout the day. Social media then adds millions of reactions from people who often know more than you do. You take in the event, the speculation, the outrage, and the fear surrounding it, right?

We all feel it. And your body just responds to it, right? Your shoulders tighten, your breathing changes, you carry the anger into the next room. And then somebody you love asks an ordinary question and receives a response that was shaped by a crisis happening hundreds or thousands of miles away. Take a deep breath. Give yourself permission to step out of that stream for 24 hours. You can do it. And then notice how often your hand reaches for the phone without a decision.

Notice what happens when there is silence. Notice whether your mind starts forming its own thoughts again. A quiet mind does not disconnect you from reality. It actually gives you a better chance of seeing reality without thousands of people shouting their interpretation of it. Choose when you engage. Choose which sources deserve your trust. Protect some part of your day from people and platforms that profit from keeping you upset, right? Profit from keeping you upset.

Just remember that. That’s so important. The shift might already be visible beneath the noise, and you’re gonna start to see it. Number two, talk to somebody who sees the world differently. And this is this is my favorite activity, and so I know you can do it. Find a person that you disagree with and have a real conversation. Now, obviously, choose someone safe, right? I mean, this this does not include a person who has abused you or repeatedly violated your boundaries.

Human connection never requires returning to harm. Think about a friend, a family member, a coworker, or neighbor whose politics, faith, or worldview differs from yours. And then, here you go, just ask how they arrived there and listen for the experiences underneath the opinion. Try to understand what they fear losing and what they hope to protect. You do not have to surrender your values, you do not have to pretend that harmful beliefs carry no consequences.

The goal is to see the person in front of you clearly enough that they become more than a category. Most people carry a complicated mix of beliefs. They have contradictions and doubts and memories and loyalties and fears and hopes. Social media removes that complexity because certainty performs better on screen. We know that. Real conversation just restores some of it. I have talked with people whose politics frustrate me. And once the talking points fade, I often hear concerns that I understand.

Guess what? Most people they worry about their kids. They want work to mean something. They feel ignored by institutions. They do not trust leaders who never seem to carry the consequences of their own decisions. And we might still disagree about what should happen next. The human concern underneath the disagreement, though, often feels familiar. Ask a question you do not already know the answer to, and then stay curious long enough to hear something unexpected.

And then share where you feel uncertain. Because you might leave with the same opinion, and you might also leave with a relationship that holds more room than it did before. And that is so cool. I know you can do it. That right there, that is movement. Okay, number three, go outside and return to your senses. This one’s just beautiful. You gotta do this. I got this from my mom when she was struggling with Alzheimer’s, right? She just loved being outside.

She loved going for walks. She saw the beauty and joy and everything amazing about the world. So this is what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna go outside and just do nothing. Just listen. Spend time outside without turning it into another assignment, right? Just leave the headphones inside and feel the sun on your skin. Listen for the birds, watch the trees move, look at the sky long enough to notice its shape and color. And then feel the breeze reach you.

You do not need a mountain, a lake, or a perfect view. Like those things help. That’s awesome. But guess what? You can just sit on the porch. You can walk around the block. You can stand in the yard. You can find a park. Modern life pulls us into abstraction. We spend much of the day thinking about meetings that have not happened. We think about messages waiting for a response. We think about bills and deadlines and problems. And every possible version of what might go wrong.

And what is your body doing? Your body remains in the present while your mind lives somewhere else. And the physical world helps bring you back. Feel the ground under your feet, right? People talk about, you know, doing the whole barefoot thing. Just take off his shoes and stand in the dirt or stand in the grass, but notice the air. Listen for sounds that were already happening before you arrived. Let yourself enjoy something while you were there.

We’ve become so focused on fixing ourselves and surviving everything that even rest starts feeling like a project. We track the walk, we photograph the sunset, we count the steps and wonder whether we are being present correctly. For a few minutes, just let the experience belong to you. Laugh when your dog does something ridiculous. Sit near the water. Listen to a song that you love without doing anything else. Watch light move through the trees. Joy deserves a place in the future that we are building.

A calmer and more connected world needs people who remember what they are trying to protect. Joy gives weight to that work. It reminds us that being alive includes more than reacting to problems. So look for one small thing that just feels good and let it be enough for that moment. You’re gonna enjoy that one. Go do it. I want to hear all about it. Okay. Number four, reach toward one relationship that matters. This one’s gonna be great. Think about someone that you miss.

Maybe there’s distance between you, maybe a disagreement lasted longer than either of you expected. Maybe you both care and neither person knows how to begin. Just send a message. Say, I’ve been thinking about you. It can be that simple. Say, I don’t like the distance between us. Or say, I’m sorry for the way that I handled that. Or say, I want to understand what happened. Just keep the opening simple. Do not place the entire history of the conflict into the first message.

It shouldn’t be like 14 sentences long or 30 paragraphs. Just open the door and give the other person room. To decide whether they are ready. Repair requires patience. You control the honesty of your approach, but you do not get to control the response. Look, they might need time, they might remain angry, they might decide that reconnecting is not healthy, and respecting that response is part of taking responsibility. An apology needs to acknowledge what you did and how it affected the other person.

Be careful with explanations. Too much explanation turns into a request for the other person to excuse you. You might have to listen to pain that is hard to hear, but just stay present. Some relationships have spent years waiting for one person to lower their defenses. Both people care. Neither wants to risk rejection. Time passes while each person waits for the other to make the first move. Decide whether the relationship deserves an honest attempt.

Connection does not always lead to reconciliation. Sometimes a healthy boundary remains, that’s totally fine. Sometimes forgiveness happens without returning to the old relationship. Sometimes the next honest step is just releasing the fight while keeping your distance. Movement takes more than one form. The shift that I am seeing often begins in relationships, right? A parent listens differently, friends stop keeping score. An adult child finally describes what growing up felt like.

Someone accepts responsibility without demanding immediate forgiveness. One real conversation carries more power than a hundred public statements about healing. Just choose one relationship and take the next honest step. Okay, number five. I love this one. You’re gonna have fun with this. This is a fun episode. I hope you guys are feeling it. But just put your hope to work close to home. Okay? This doesn’t have to be extra extravagant. Just put your hope to work close at home.

Choose one action that makes the world around you more human. Help a neighbor. Thank someone whose work goes unnoticed. Speak up for a person who keeps getting talked over. Bring patients into a room that usually runs on pressure. Support a local organization doing work that you believe in. By the way, I had a great weekend at Matt’s Place Foundation. You guys need to go check it out. Do that, right? Support a local organization doing work that you believe in.

Reach out to someone who seems alone. Just keep the action close enough that you see its effect. That’s the important part of this. Large problems leave people feeling powerless because no individual has enough reach to solve them. Look, we gotta solve those problems. But that feeling often turns into withdrawal. Right? We decide that our actions are too small to matter, and then the problem continues without our participation. The way that you lead a meeting matters.

How you respond when someone makes a mistake shapes the environment. Your decision to believe someone’s pain changes their experience. Your willingness to tell the truth gives other people permission to tell it too. Hope becomes credible when it changes behavior. You look at what is happening and you decide what kind of person you want to be inside it. And then you act from that decision. You do not need certainty that the world is improving before contributing to improvement.

You build evidence through what you do. When you treat someone with dignity, there is more dignity in the room. Look how that works. When you repair a relationship, one part of the world becomes less divided. Imagine that. When you challenge toxic leadership, silence loses some part of its power. That’s so cool. When you create a moment of joy, somebody’s day becomes lighter. Isn’t that so cool? And that is how we help build the shift that we hope to see.

I want to turn these five practices into a shared experiment. I’m gonna give you homework this week and I want to hear about it. So choose one of them and then practice it for the next seven days. You could try them all, that’s great. But minimum, try one of those things and practice it for the next seven days. Step away from the noise, talk with someone who sees the world differently, spend time outside, reach toward a relationship that matters, and put your hope to work close at home and then just pay attention.

You’re gonna love this. Notice what changes in your body, your attention, your relationships, and the way that you see the people around you. It’s gonna be so cool. Just look for a moment of calm, look for an unexpected conversation, notice a relationship just beginning to soften, and then pay attention when someone finds their voice. Watch for leadership that chooses dignity over fear. Notice joy when it happens, and then tell me what you saw. So, look, most people that listen to this show, you know you have my phone number that you can message on the app, you can send me a carrier page, and I don’t care.

But send me a message wherever you found this episode or reach out through mikebakerhq.com, call me, text me, email me, whatever it is. Just get a hold of me and tell me where you are seeing the shift. Because I want to collect these stories. I actually believe that we can we can influence where we’re headed, but it’s gonna require all of us to do some work. The worst parts of the world receive plenty of attention, right? We all know that. Harm deserves attention.

We absolutely have to pay attention to harm. We need truth, we need accountability, and we need honest reporting. Okay? I’m not saying like dismiss those things. But the good that’s happening between people often stays quiet, and we need to fix that. Quiet does not make it unimportant. It’s actually so much more important. A person ending a family pattern matters. A community finding the courage to confront harmful leadership matters. A man learning to listen matters.

A woman finally being believed matters. A child growing up in a home with less fear matters. I want to make those stories more visible. And I want us to begin building a shared record of people choosing connection, honesty, joy, and hope. That record does something very important. It reminds the person struggling in one community that healing is happening somewhere else. It helps people recognize that they are part of a wider movement even when they have never met.

And this is so cool. It helps us find one another. That is how this work begins to move beyond books, podcasts, music, and posts. The work becomes a network of people practicing the future that they want. And that is what I think all of my work has been building toward. Still here, still trying, gives us permission to continue when we were when we are tired and uncertain. And human first gives us a direction, it puts people back at the center of our decisions, relationships, institutions, and technology.

And that cute little The Optimist way ride, it gives us a practice, it asks us to see reality clearly and keep working where our choices matter. Together they point toward the future that I want to help build. This is a future where people tell the truth without throwing away their humanity. This is a future where leadership protects dignity. This is a future where women are believed and men take responsibility for growth. A future where technology expands what people are able to do without reducing their value.

A future with room for joy, repair, friendship, laughter, nature, music, and just the ordinary moments that make life worth living. Now I do not know whether the world is moving toward that future, but I know that I am, and I know that many of you are too. And maybe it’s maybe it’s not the stars, maybe it’s not, you know, the astrology that it’s out there, maybe it’s not the year of the horse. But maybe it’s just more simple than that. Maybe that is the shift is that I’m working on it, and that you are working on it, and we’re noticing it.

Because maybe enough people have become tired of fear and disconnection. Maybe, just maybe, we are beginning to remember that the future belongs partly to the choices that we make today. We make today. Every honest apology adds something, every repaired relationship adds something. Every leader who chooses dignity adds something. We have to add, right? We’re adding, we’re not taking away. Every person who steps away from the noise long enough to hear their own heartbeat adds something.

Every moment of joy adds something. The future is shaped by what we repeatedly give our attention to and what we do with that attention. Think about what you have been paying attention to the last few years. It’s impossible to focus on that positive happiness when everything around us is so loud and just pulling us apart. So let’s do this. Let’s pay attention together. Let’s look for evidence of people finding their way back to one another. Let’s create more of it.

Let’s help each other see it. Because guess what? We are still here and we are still trying. And that still counts. I’ll see you next week, and I can’t wait to hear how this experiment went. So please leave your comments, share it with me, text it to me, put it on the social media. I need you to share and then share it with other people. Share this episode with other people. This is the movement, this is the work that we have in front of us. So let’s get it done.

I’ll see you next week. All right. Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. I tried to dial up the energy and just be there for you today. I’m excited about where we’re headed. I’m excited to hear about your stories. But before we go, I want to send you out the way that I do each week with a song. I wrote this one special for this week. I wrote it after just kind of sitting with everything that we talked about today. And sometimes a conversation just reaches the point where words start asking for music, and this episode just felt that way to me.

So this song is called Something Is Shifting. Imagine that. But it’s simple on purpose. It’s one voice, it’s one guitar, and a little room to breathe. And I hope that it gives you a few quiet minutes to think about where your own life feels different right now and what you want to carry forward from here. Thank you for spending this time with me. I do not take that lightly. Please share this with anyone that needs to hear it right now. Let’s bring people together and let’s build something beautiful.

So here is the song Something Is Shifting. I hope you enjoy it. I’ll see you next week. After years of going quiet, anytime the other came around, nobody changed the story. Nobody changed the past. They got tired of caring. Something never meant to last. Something is shifting. I can feel it where I stand. People reaching for each other, trying hard to understand. No losing power. When we turn and face what’s true, they make the world gets a little better.

When I start with me, speak people wake up. Start speaking to each other, saying I thought I was alone here. Of course that comes a doorway when the science five people start remembering how much everything you’re stretched. I think for it was the forest, go stand out, the door is through the fight, don’t fight. Of the country’s future, like we do. I can still take shape in the truth inside an apology that calm we help create. We are still here, still trying, still becoming something new.

Maybe the future starts appearing when I start with me and you I don’t know where this is going. I know what I wanna do. Stay tuned in the middle.