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We're diving into the seven crucial lessons we should all take away from 2020. First off, it's clear that our economy really depends on everyday people spending money. We chat about how key workers kept everything running while some big businesses just sat back. Then, we explore the unpredictability of life, emphasizing that anything can happen, and that human connection is more vital than ever. We also tackle the confusing rules from governments and how they need to be clear and straightforward. Lastly, we discuss how the stock market doesn't reflect the real economy anymore, and how journalism has become too commercialized, losing its critical edge. Let's get into it!

Takeaways:

• The economy needs everyday people spending money to keep it running smoothly, that's a fact.
• Key workers, like nurses and grocery store employees, are essential and deserve better recognition and pay.
• 2020 taught us that anything can happen, and we should be prepared for the unexpected.
• Human contact is crucial, and we should never take it for granted, especially after 2020.
• Journalism is becoming more commercialized, and this trend needs to be addressed for better accountability.
• The stock market and the economy are out of sync, which poses serious risks for businesses and society.

2020 has been a wild ride, right? Stephen dives deep into seven key lessons we should take away from this rollercoaster of a year. First on the list is the reminder that the economy is all about us—the everyday folks who keep the wheels turning by spending our hard-earned cash. Without us, those big businesses can't thrive, no matter how many government handouts they get. This point really hits home as we reflect on the furlough schemes and stimulus checks that were meant to help us keep the economy afloat. It’s a wake-up call for governments to prioritize individual financial support because when we have money, we spend it, and that keeps the economy buzzing.

Next, Stephen emphasizes the incredible value of key workers. These are the unsung heroes who kept everything running during the pandemic—grocery store employees, nurses, delivery drivers, and so many others. Their dedication and sacrifice were crucial, often at great personal risk, and it’s about time we recognize their importance beyond just clapping on Thursdays. They deserve better pay and respect, not just during crises but always. Stephen hopes that this newfound appreciation doesn’t fade away once the dust settles.

As the discussion unfolds, Stephen touches on the unpredictability of life, human connections, and the need for clear rules. The pandemic has taught us that anything can happen at any time—no one saw this coming! It’s also highlighted how vital human contact is; we crave connection, and the absence of it has been tough. Through it all, Stephen lays out a thoughtful analysis of how government actions can be improved and how we, as a society, can ensure we learn from the challenges we faced in 2020. Each lesson is a stepping stone towards a better future, and he encourages listeners to reflect on their own growth during this unprecedented time.

Hey, welcome to this week's podcast.

No one would have predicted this.

But just before we start on that, I want to say thank you to you for coming back, listening to this podcast, and taking some time out from your day to listen to what I have to say.

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And when people come back and they share my podcast and they leave reviews and they contact me and say how much they enjoy the podcast, things like that, it really does fill me with a deep, deep gratitude for you guys.

So thank you, and thank you to my patrons and my supporters on Facebook.

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The first one I wrote down is the economy relies on everyday people spending money.

Boy, isn't this a true one?

You know, it's the big businesses still have the money in the bank.

They still have their government handouts and things like that.

But unless we go and spend money in the shops and buy the stuff and go to the restaurants and buy the fuel and things like that, they can't run without us.

You know, it might be most of the money is in the 2%, but it's the 98% that when we're given money, we spend it and give it back to them.

So really is what one of those things now with governments putting people on furlough and helping out people at home with like, in America, they give $1,200 to everybody, I believe, okay, they're given the private business about 36,000 equivalent to each one of the CEOs individually themselves.

I believe some of the kind of crazy statistic like that.

But they do know the importance of giving to individuals.

You know, if you want an economy to Grow, give money to the people that haven't got money because guess what they do of it?

They spend it.

And I think the governments know this.

It just doesn't happen in normal times.

And this is not normal times.

And my second one is about key workers.

You know, they're the most important people who kept their countries going.

You know, the people that distributed the food that works on the farms, that kept the hospitals going, that kept the childcare going, enable these people to go to work to transport people and you know, the, okay, the supermarkets were open for their money and, oh, don't get me wrong, but the people working in the supermarkets to keep these things going, the people that distributed to the supermarkets and the people that helped out each other by delivering the food, by phoning their neighbors and saying, is there anything you need?

You know, these key workers, these people that were out risking their lives and yes, they were risking their lives helping out the communities and helping out other people.

So a country really needs these key workers, these people that are on minimum wage, you know, these nurses, the frontline people, the dustmen, the people who work in the public sector, the police, all of these people that very often get overlooked in society.

They very often get the brunt end of everything.

And it really is humbling to see governments actually recognize that they're the people that need it.

And I hope that continues, I hope that really continues not only with the public, but with the government that we really recognize the importance of key workers, carers and people like that.

The people that really are on the breadline of the money.

You know, in the uk, every Thursday we were clapping for carers in the nhs.

You know, I just hope they up the money.

I hope they start to really appreciate what they did and they're not forgotten after this.

And so they shouldn't be forgotten.

They should be remembered and they should be looked after.

And clapping for them just doesn't cut it.

They literally need to have the increased wages.

They need to have a wage that gives them the ability to pay their bills and have some kind of freedom in their lives.

Number three, anything can happen.

We've learned really that there's no way you can predict what's going to happen next year.

And you know, no one would have predicted this if anybody had wrote a blog last year.

And bear in mind, there's 77.8 million blogs every month published.

Not one person.

And I know a couple of people said there'd be a virus at some point and things like that, but nobody expected a virus.

And then the Whole world shutting down.

Nobody predicted this whole thing in the way it planned out.

If anybody did publish something or looked up and said at the beginning of December, oh, the whole world's going to close down with the economy, all countries are going to be working together and it's going to be like.

It's going to be like turning the lights out around the world as the world goes around, just slightly slower than as the days go.

It's just going to be.

Take a few weeks to happen.

Even if anybody had read the blog alone, shared it or.

But then if you ask most people, what would you really like, they go, time out.

Just like three months out.

Please let the world stop while I get off, recoup, like rejuvenate my life.

Let me sort my life out and then I get back on, you know, that would have been ideal.

I think many people would have liked to have that happen.

Number four, there are very few things more important than human contact and human connection.

Then this.

On one hand, we've had a deeper and bigger connection around the world.

I've been to seminars that would normally require flying to the United States, and I've been.

I've able to pay a very small minimal fee of like $30 and join in on seminars that I would never have had the opportunity to before.

And I sit here and I get jealous.

I get jealous when I see these live events from these floors of these big arenas and they're going around, they're talking to fellow live people and I'm like, I go live here all the time.

I have a podcast, but I don't get to meet these people because I cannot fly to the States.

I don't have the money to go these places.

Or suddenly I was included.

So that's one aspect of it which is pretty amazing and brilliant and excellent, but the other aspect of it, cuddles.

Just to be able to have a conversation and see someone and look into their eyes properly, that's really difficult.

You know, I. I so took that for granted.

I. I'm a cuddler.

I like physical contact and suddenly I haven't had a cuddle for how long, and it's weird, it doesn't feel right.

And then when I started to go out again, and I don't go out a lot, I've only been.

I could probably count on one hand how many times I've been out the house properly in the past five months.

And when I do go out and I see people, it feels strange.

And because I'm in a wheelchair and because People are often very caring and they understand that I would be vulnerable.

It's obvious I'm vulnerable because I don't have a hidden disability.

They treat me like they're walking past a horse, like cars, you know, and they slow right down and they take a wide berth and they go out.

Well, people do that to me and I'm like, thank you, I really appreciate that.

But it's weird, it's strange.

And when people haven't got masks on, things like that, when you're pretty close to them and they're talking over you and things like that, it's like, oh, this is weird.

Please don't do that.

Just strange times.

So human contact is so, so, so important.

And I can't wait to get back to some kind of normality for that human contact.

I don't want to get back to the normality of the other stu.

I don't want to go back to the traffic jams and the commuting and the hustling and brat race of the busy life.

I don't want that.

I think we recognize that we can work from home.

We can be productive.

I think Twitter have said all their staff can work from home indefinitely.

Businesses have realized they don't have to commute all over the world to do these conferences.

They can do it on a virtual thing.

People that businesses that said it would be a security risk to work from home are now working from home.

These offices that are so full of all these staff that leave home, get in a car, park up, go into an office are now realizing they didn't need to go into the office at all.

So lots of changes and I welcome a lot of those changes.

Number five, you cannot be ambiguous with rules.

This is more for a government and businesses.

Well, everything really.

You need to be firm with the rules.

These are the rules and we're going to stick to it.

No, no questions asked.

Whereas our government in the UK is like, well, you can go out if you really need to, but if you don't need to, don't go out, go to work unless you can work from home, then don't go to work unless you need to go to work, then go to work.

Don't use public transport unless you need to use public transport, then use public transport, but don't use public transport unless you really.

It's like, what?

It's been a joke in the uk just, just when they locked down, they said we could do some exercise.

Well, then they said, can we travel to do exercise?

Well, yes, but no.

Okay, what does that mean, well, if you cannot exercise outside of your house, you can travel to somewhere to do some exercise.

Okay, so everybody flocked to the beaches and the walks in the countryside.

They said, well, you can, but you shouldn't unless you can do it locally.

Right, okay.

If I cannot do it locally, I can drive to the beach to exercise.

Well, yes, but the distance you have to exercise for more than the time it takes for you to get to the place.

It's like, what.

I don't know what to say to that.

You know, it's just.

It's just bar me.

In the uk, of course, we got a government that doesn't.

That wants to appease both sides.

They want to be seen to locking down, saving lives.

Let's protect the country.

That's very much on the left.

On the right, of course they want to protect the country, but they don't want to have their civil liberties taken away.

You cannot tell me what to do.

If I want to go out and go for a walk, I will go out and go for a walk, you know.

And so they tried to appease both, and you cannot do it.

You have to take a stance and say, no, this is what we are going to do.

You know, both sides will get over it at some point, but you cannot get lives back.

This is what us in America are going to badly learn.

We're gonna.

We're losing so many people over this because of ambiguous rules and trying to.

Trying to please both sides.

I don't know if the word ambiguous is right one, but basically, I mean, you cannot be flimsy with the rules.

You have to be strict with them.

You have to be to the point, you know, really black and white people don't understand, you know, like the murder rule, you cannot kill someone.

Well, can I do it in this instance?

No, you just cannot do it.

Okay.

When we were asked not to smoke in shops, we were told, you can't smoke in shops, you cannot smoke in pubs and restaurants.

Well, can I smoke just like.

Partly.

No.

Can I light it up in the.

No.

Whereas the rules on Mask in the UK are a bit.

They're a bit crazy.

They're a bit crazy.

Understandable, but crazy.

So number six, then.

This is one you may recognize, you may not, you may have noticed it or you may not, but journalism has become commercialized.

It used to be a while ago where a journalist would ask the strong questions.

Well, the problem is if they ask the strong questions, they no longer get asked back to do the interview.

Then Donald Trump is the big one.

Here we got Piers Morgan in the UK is about the only person that's allowed to interview Donald Trump.

He's not anymore because he's taken a different stance since COVID 19 and he's called out Trump and Boris for their failures in how to deal with this.

And so therefore, Piers Morgan has really changed his stance.

And to the degree that Donald Trump now has called him out on Twitter and said, I can't believe what's happened to you.

Why have you changed?

Well, I guarantee if Donald Trump comes over here again, Piers Morgan won't be allowed to interview him again.

So this is where journalism has become commercialized.

You know, unless you ask the nice soft questions, you won't get to do the interview.

And because those interviews are worth money on adverts and viewers, all these TV stations and these journalists want to be the ones to interview them.

So they become soft.

And I blame politicians for this and journalists for this and the public, we shouldn't be tuning in for, you know, an interview of a journalist should not be a party political broadcast.

It should not be advertising from a political person.

It should be information for the people.

And the tough questions to know whether they're working for us or not.

I can say that I'm a politician, I'm a local councillor, and I would rather be asked the tough questions to make sure I'm doing my job as opposed to, well, no, just ask me nice fluffy questions, ones that are going to get me re elected that I can give nice answers to.

So really, journalism has really sold it.

Sold to the politicians, I feel, in large areas.

And we need to have some politicians that will push back.

Chris Wallace, brilliant.

Fox News, he did it.

But he'll never interview Trump again because of what he did, because he questioned.

He said, no, I'm sorry, sir, but you're wrong.

You know, defunding the police, that's not what Biden's about.

And no one's talking about defunding the police and getting rid of the police anyway.

What we're talking about, I say we because I agree with it.

And that is, look, if we can prevent crime, then we don't need as many police officers.

We'll still need police officers because they do more than just prevent crime or they protect the public from other stuff as well.

When things go wrong, there are natural disasters and all the police are there to help protect us, things like that.

So it's not about getting rid of policemen.

It's about if we can sort out the suburbs that most of the crime is at with education and stuff like that, perhaps we don't need so many officers.

And that's what defunding the police is all about.

But of course, it's been hijacked by the right to say they want to get rid of all policemen just so all their criminals can just run around and do everything they want.

And unfortunately, people are fooled in for this right left argument.

The right says all political, you cannot put up a flag.

And the left say, well, we never said you couldn't put up a flag.

Yes, you did.

No, we didn't.

It's this battle and journalism are not helping this.

And I think it's really come to the forefront of this.

And the last one I'm going to say, and you will have many, many more of this, but the last one I'm going to go into detail with is the stock markets.

The stock markets are so out of whack with the economy, it's unbelievable.

They have become a game of how do we move the stock market?

When the stock market is climbing, they're making money.

When the stock market's dropping, they're making money.

So the stock market used to reflect what's going on in the economy and in the businesses.

It's not.

It's now a game.

It's a game of can the hedge funds and the investors move the stock market?

And the more they move it in a predicted way, the more money they make up or down.

So when it crashed, they made money.

When it went up, they made money.

The people that lose are the genuine businesses on there.

The business is behind the hedge funds, behind the investors, and there's in for a really big crash now, again, it will go right down and then it will go back up again.

And both ways people make money.

And when you get our leaders say, look at the stock market, it's record highs.

It's a game.

It's no longer representing the economy, far from it.

It's so out of whack with the economy.

The economies are in so much trouble right now.

It's a fake recovery.

They all know it.

They all know this economy is built on sand and they all know it's going to collapse soon.

But the hedge funds and all don't care because they don't care about the business and all they invest in, they care whether they make money or for the hedge funds.

Now, I know you don't tune into a Stillness in the Storms podcast to hear about the stock market, but part of the spiritual journey is about understanding these things.

You cannot disconnect and ignore these things.

The spiritual journey isn't about walking away.

So I'm going to quickly go through a few more that I wrote down.

But I did, but I'm not going to go into them in detail.

First of all, we should fear a virus more than we should fear World War Three.

That's a pretty obvious one.

And humans are not as caring as what we believe.

I thought humans were very caring about other people.

Just this whole face mask argument proves we're really not that caring about other people.

We're still thinking about ourselves collectively more than we do other people.

Even when handed many months of paid leave.

When we're handed this time out, we still will waste it.

You know, I said on a call last night that if I was.

If I had suddenly another hundred years to live and someone said, here, here's a pill, it'll make you live another hundred years.

I know what I'll do.

I'll waste 90 of them.

I think I got another hundred years.

I don't need a rush.

That's the reality.

Most of us didn't read the books, we didn't get fitter, we didn't change our lives during the three month lockdown that we were going to do when it started.

That's a whole different show.

No government can tackle the global problem alone.

Absolutely.

It's about time we started to really work together.

Just like.

But we've got lots of meetings about the economy of Truro and we cannot tackle it alone.

The council can't do it.

The businesses can do it alone.

The people can't do it alone.

It's.

It's got to be.

We all got to work together on this.

Governments cannot work to work alone.

To fix problems that are global problems.

Governments need to mature and take responsibility instead of blaming others when things go wrong.

Well, I would say this for humans as well.

Humans and governments, we need to take responsibility.

You know, we got it wrong.

How can we learn and don't just keep blaming other people.

Even when faced with the most difficult circumstances, humans will not forfeit their right to protest for what is right.

Well, I agree with this.

I really agree with this.

I agree with Black Lives Matter.

I don't agree with the way it's been hijacked and abused.

Now that's a different story.

That's the same as every kind of political movement.

Human apathy and complacency is our real danger.

We get used to what is comfortable even in times of adversity.

Look at the way we're opening up now.

The threat is as real today as what it was four months ago.

Yet we're opening up where been braver.

We're almost looking at it like it's not a problem anymore.

Well, it is a problem and it's growing now.

We are learning more about it.

We are saving more lives, more people have been treated better.

And I have to say the UK has been at the forefront of this.

We've come up with two treatments and we're quite far ahead on the vaccines as far as the information that is coming out.

So I that's one where the UK are doing terrible for everything else but we're doing okay on the fight against and in ironic that the countries that are doing worse in their lives are doing better in the science.

Yeah, that's quite interesting.

And one thing's for sure, it's a year that nobody expected at the year that everybody will be talking about for many centuries to come.

There'll be thesis and documentaries wrote about this in 300 years time.

If we're still here, we'll be learning from this.

The next pandemic hopefully will save lives because we learn from this.

Hopefully we'll put together teams that can descend on any country that has any outbreak within a few hours.

Yeah, let's learn a lot from this year.

Let's see if we can learn a lot about our lives in this year.

It's easy to point where the government, like I've done on this podcast, has failed.

There's not very often to see where we failed.

And I know where I failed.

I haven't, I haven't used and capitalized on this timeout as much as I should have done.

I thought three months, four months ago, I got plenty of time.

Four months were opening up and I haven't done half of what I said I was going to do.

That's something I've learned about myself.

Let's embrace it, let's grow through it and let's don't waste any more of it.

Thank you for listening to this podcast.

Thank you for tuning in and I really appreciate your time.

Deep Bow and I'm Stephen, your host of Stillness in the Storms.

Head over to my website and be and you can become a patron or support me on Facebook.

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Take care, guys.

Have a wonderful day.

Whatever you're doing, wherever you are.