Is it me or are people putting themselves down a lot more these days?  There has never been a shortage of other people willing to do it for you, but taking this matter into your own hands seems like needless self-sabotage.

Arthur Brooks writing in The Atlantic has a partial cure:  “Don’t talk to yourself like someone you hate.”  That kind of makes sense.  You wouldn’t talk to others like they are “an incompetent idiot”.  We’d be nicer than that.  Kinder self-talk is what we deserve even when we screw up or want to do much better.

So, change the inner dialogue as author Louise Hay suggests:  “You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”

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I started my first business during a bad recession, a weekly publication for the radio industry.  Then I took it daily in a recession.  I started the publication I currently own (Inside Music Media) in a – you guessed it – recession.

I’m not that smart, but I have smart friends one of whom reassured me that the best time to start a new business is when everyone else is retreating.  That took a lot more guts than I thought I had.  I mention this because the new CEO of Zillow said he started there in 2009 on the tail of the real estate inspired recession during the subprime crisis – this guy Jeremy Wacksman is different.  The wildest thing he’s ever seen for sale on Zillow is a missile silo.  Nonetheless.

Start that thing (whatever it is) in spite of downturns or bad timing not because of them or as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman puts it “If you’re going to start a company, you might as well do it when things are tough. That’s when everyone else is giving up.”

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Before class students come in, sit down and text.  When class starts, I ask them to power down and stow digital devices and they rapidly adapt to in-person.  We take five minutes or so to talk to each other – me too! Yes, they get up to use the bathroom (My two classes are each an hour and forty minutes) and yes, they check their phones (in the hall before returning).

When class ends, they pull out their phones as they exit the room often leaving behind their coats and water bottles and even expensive Stanley Cups!  We have great in-class discussions and students often thank me for asking them to turn their phones off (in front of other students most of whom agree).

What I learned:  you can’t ask someone to give up the phone if you are not willing to offer them something of equal value.  Something interesting.  Something social with others. Maybe something surprising.

I am thinking about this a lot as I prepare to return for the fall semester and as I digest the latest research which shows we humans spend 50% of our waking hours on digital devices – that’s not good, not healthy and requires ways to wean ourselves back to real life.

In a TED Talk in 2012 MIT Professor Sherry Turkle highlighted how devices change our social expectations—and why in-person conversation is the higher-value offer: “We expect more from technology and less from each other.”

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47% of Americans feel they are in a constant state of worry with the average person spending more than two hours a day worrying.  Younger Gen Z and millennials worry even more – 62% reporting perpetual worry.  Talker Research did the study for Avocado Green Mattress who believes worry affects sleep.

I was a Dale Carnegie Course instructor for 11 years and dealing with fear and worry is nothing new.  The remarkable thing is almost all worries never happen and the rare ones that do don’t happen the way we fear.  I’ve come to look at worry as something we add on to existing worries or absorb from those around us that activate fear.

Worry feels urgent, but it rarely reflects reality. It’s more a reaction to uncertainty than a useful response to actual danger.

Radio personality Earl Nightingale with that deep voice of his had it right:  “Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.”

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Alan Lakein, is the author of personal time management book How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life.

He’s big on planning (“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.Failing to plan is planning to fail.”)

He lists 61 ways he saves time – here’s a sampling:

• #7 — I remind myself:  “There is always enough time for the important things”.  If it’s important I will make the time to do it.
• #16 – I’ve given up forever all “wait time”.  If I have to wait, I consider it a “gift of time” to relax, plan or do something I would not otherwise have done.
• #27 – I do first things first.
• #31 – I ask myself, “Would anything terrible happen if I didn’t do this priority item”.  If the answer is no, I don’t do it.
• #61 – I’m continually asking myself:  “What is the best use of my time right now”

I love Lakein’s famous quote:

“Time = Life, Therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life”.

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Some of our young people today are pretty tough on themselves – they want to be better, because they don’t believe they are good enough.  I see it in academics, as friends – it’s a seemingly impossible task.

One of my music business students confessed that she needs to do better, that she is not performing at her capable level but the problem with thinking like this is you can’t get to better until you will admit you are good enough.  It’s an endless frustration process of always trying to be better – better than what?

You can’t truly grow until you believe you’re starting from a place of worth. You have to believe you are enough before you can become more. Otherwise, “better” becomes a moving target—always out of reach, always just a little farther away. And no matter how much progress you make, it never feels like enough. Growth is not about fixing something broken. It’s about building on something valuable.

As Tiny Buddha founder Lori Deschene puts it “We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.”

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Only 43% of remote workers say they have close friends vs. 69% who go into the office according to an ezCater study designed to get more people to return to the office.

80% say having friends makes them more engaged and collaborative.

44% would like food perks, 86% would be tempted with daily or weekly meals.

Many employers don’t consider the expense of childcare that becomes an increasing post-COVID burden if they are forced to return to an office and lose family flexibility.

95% in one survey said more money would be the ticket for them.

“Having a best friend at work boosts employee engagement by 50%.” (Gallup)

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Here’s how Mayo Clinic would like you to reframe the way you talk to accent the positive and eliminate the negative.

We live in a world of negativity so some of our unhelpful self-talk is adopted by osmosis but this list attacks some main issues.  The brain is designed to keep us safe – an alert system to beware of danger.  What it is not is a happiness organ or even a data bank of positivity.

Author Louise Hay who wrote:  “You have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”

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Turns out one in four Americans would pay an average of $290 for a good night’s sleep.

That survey surprised me for a second before I looked for where I could sign up.

Seventy million suffer from a sleep disorder, so you do the math.

The most popular position to fall asleep was on your side (37%), yet most people agreed the best quality of sleep occurred when they slept on their backs.  About a third of those surveyed (32%) needed the TV on to fall asleep and most lull themselves to bed with 15-minutes on the phone before going nite nite (and we wonder why we can’t sleep?).

Here’s a free tip underwritten by no mattress company:  keep a consistent sleep schedule. Maybe a good laugh:  Hemmingway’s advice, “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake …”

There’s an anonymous quote widely-referenced in Arianna Huffington’s The Sleep Revolution — There are two types of people in this world: those who can fall asleep instantly, and those who hate them.”

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The urge to quit is strongest right before a breakthrough – that’s the best reason to keep going, something good and better is getting ready to happen.

Napoleon Hill says “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”

Thomas Edison who failed thousands of times inventing the light bulb said “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

The idea of failing again can feel worse than stopping and never knowing.  People quit when they are tired and are no longer able to see their own goals but cultivating the ability to see them vividly in your mind’s eye can help reframe failure as “learning” not a final judgement.

You didn’t come this far to only come this far or as Nelson Mandela famously said: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

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