When Tim Cook handed the Apple CEO position to John Ternus recently he left with 9 words of advice:  “This place is proof that culture triumphs over everything,” both revealing what made the company so successful and in a way served as a warning that it’s true of bad culture, too.

Your personal culture is what you repeatedly tolerate, reward, practice and expect from yourself. Over time, those patterns don’t just influence what you do; habits can become part of how you define who you are.

Your personal culture eventually triumphs over your intentions.

You can intend to be optimistic, disciplined, generous or courageous. But if your daily culture is complaining, procrastinating, avoiding difficult things or surrounding yourself with negativity, that culture tends to win.

And the reverse is just as powerful. Repeatedly choosing curiosity over cynicism, gratitude over complaint, action over avoidance and kindness over irritation creates an environment in which those behaviors become increasingly characteristic of you.

It’s not just for corporations.  The culture you create inside your own life eventually becomes the person you are.

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Michael J. Fox is returning to acting at 65 and 35 years after being diagnosed with Parkinsons on Shrinking.

Sometimes what interrupts the life you planned becomes the thing that gives your life greater meaning.  Fox didn’t choose Parkinson’s and doesn’t romanticize it. But he turned his diagnosis into the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which has become a major force in Parkinson’s research. And now, decades after that diagnosis—and six years after believing acting was behind him—he’s acting again.

His return is especially meaningful because Fox retired from acting in 2020 after realizing Parkinson’s was making it increasingly difficult for him to reliably remember his lines. That makes the comeback more than symbolic: he’s returning to something the disease itself helped force him to leave.

Maybe resilience is continuing to find a life worth living when the old plan no longer applies.

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We spend a lot of time working on our relationships with spouses, partners, children, friends and coworkers. But there’s one relationship we live with every minute of every day — the one we have with ourselves.

A study combining results from more than 16,000 people found a strong connection between treating yourself with understanding instead of constant criticism and greater well-being.

Becoming less relentlessly self-critical can reduce anxiety, stress and symptoms of depression.  This is not a hall pass to ignore your mistakes or overinflating your self-worth as a response.  The voice you hear more than anyone else’s is your own.

If that voice spends all day reminding you what you did wrong, what you should have done and why you’re not good enough, eventually you pay the price.

Show compassion inward instead of constantly judging yourself.

Treat yourself at least as well as you treat the people you love.

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Dolly Parton was so beloved because she made people feel good about themselves – that’s different from being nice.

She put it like this:  “We’re just people. And we need to be better to one another — and to ourselves.”

Dolly could laugh at herself without the need to demonstrate that she was smarter, richer, more important or morally superior to others. “This dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool.” “Hopefully people can see beneath the hair to know there’s a brain, beneath the boobs to know there’s a heart, and behind all the other stuff to know there’s some talent.”

Earlier this year, a UMass/YouGov survey found 70% of Americans viewed Dolly favorably and only 5% unfavorably. In an age when practically every famous person becomes somebody’s enemy, Dolly somehow didn’t.

Her fame never went to her head. Her Imagination Library, a program that mails free books to children from birth to age five grew from her father’s inability to read. When Tennessee families lost their homes to wildfires, she helped them directly. When Vanderbilt needed money for COVID research, she gave $1 million.

Her explanation was wonderfully uncomplicated:

“I just see a need and if I can fill it, then I will.”

That’s the part of Dolly worth stealing.  Make someone else feel more important.

She once said “I never quite understood why we have to let religion and politics and things like that stand in the way of just being good human beings”.

Like Dolly and in our own way, we just need to leave people feeling a little better than we found them.

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One way to feel better is to make someone else feel better.

In a randomized study of 777 people, those assigned to do acts of kindness for others for two weeks ended up not only less depressed but less anxious and lonely. Researchers found increased human connection helped explain the benefit.  Self-kindness generated more positive feelings, while kindness toward others increased people’s sense of connection. That increased social connection helped explain the improvements in depression, anxiety and loneliness.

Not that kindness is the cure for mental health or that we should ignore our own needs.  Helping someone else can interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves while reminding us that we’re connected to other people. And the act of kindness does not have to be earth shattering.  It could be an encouraging text or email, a compliment, helping someone you don’t know, a cup of coffee, touching base with someone who is lonely.

“There isn’t anyone who doesn’t appreciate kindness and compassion. It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives.” — Dalai Lama

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Nine out of ten worries we have will never happen.

A Penn State study published in Behavior Therapy had people with generalized anxiety disorder record their specific worries and then track what actually happened. 91% of their worry predictions did not come true. The median participant had 93.5% of worries fail to materialize, and for seven participants, 100% of their worries didn’t happen.

Better yet when the bad thing does happen, we handle it much better than we thought we would.  A new 2026 randomized controlled trial found participants tracked their worries using a smartphone app; 89% of feared outcomes didn’t happen. And when something they feared did happen, participants reported that they coped better than expected 84.% of the time.

Worry asks us to suffer today over a future that, most of the time, never arrives — and research suggests that even when it does, we’re better at handling it than we predict.

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Over the past week that I was off, I had the chance to work on my NYU classes that start after Labor Day.  One hovering issue is the use of artificial intelligence.  I like to encourage my students to use AI for research and ideas but to submit their own original work that reflects their point of view.  Some of my music business students are concerned that fake AI-generated music will replace live performers.  There’s reason for concern as fake music has made it to the top of Spotify charts faster than Spotify can shut it down.

I always see AI can do a lot of things but not everything – for example, it can predict what you’re going to do next but not know it until you actually do it.  AI is a tool, perhaps an overblown threat in some ways, but I found it fascinating that Fred Rogers (yes, that Mister Rogers) came up with these comforting thoughts long before iPhones and AI.

He said “No matter what the machine may be, it was people who thought it up and made it.”

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Progress not perfection is the goal.  I call it PPP – purposeful positive progression.

No need to wait until you have every answer. Instead, gather the best information available, accept that some uncertainty will always remain, make a thoughtful decision and adjust as you learn. In practical terms, it means asking: “What’s one meaningful step I can take today that moves me forward?”

Making progress in meaningful work is one of the strongest drivers of motivation and having a sense of purpose is associated with better psychological and physical health. Behavioral science shows that small, consistent improvements are more sustainable than waiting for dramatic breakthroughs.

Purposeful positive progression is the practice of taking intentional, meaningful steps that steadily improve your life, work, or relationships—focusing on forward momentum instead of perfection.

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VACATION NOTE:  Cheryl and I are going to take a few days off to recharge our batteries before NYU resumes Fall classes in a few weeks.  This seems like a good time.  Thanks for reading and sharing DayStarters.  See you Monday August 24.

Your brain doesn’t know it’s tired.  People who are sleep-deprived often don’t realize how impaired they are. Research has repeatedly shown that after even modest sleep loss, performance, judgment, attention and reaction time decline while people continue to believe they’re functioning normally.

One major study found participants restricted to 6 hours of sleep a night for two weeks performed cognitively about as poorly as those who had gone 48 hours without sleep, yet they consistently underestimated how impaired they had become. Fatigue quietly erodes judgment, creativity, memory and emotional control while convincing you you’re doing fine. That’s why exhausted leaders, executives, physicians and pilots can make confident decisions that are objectively worse.

Don’t trust how alert you are. If you’ve been sleeping six hours or less for several nights assume your judgment, attention and reaction time are worse than they feel. The recommended number of sleep hours per day is 7 and better yet, on a consistent sleep schedule.

Don’t let a tired brain evaluate itself.  Harvard Medical School’s Sleep Medicine Division says “Just one sleepless night can impair performance as much as a blood-alcohol level 0.10 percent.”

“The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.”  — W. C. Fields

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As the author and physician Amit Sood reminds us, everyone is resilient in a unique way.  Rather than ask whether you are resilient, upgrade that to “how resilient am I”.  Put the ways on a note app or paper as a reminder because we have a habit of emphasizing the need for more resilience without first recognizing that all of us are resilient.

You’ve survived 100% of your hardest days.  If you have to measure your resilience, do it on a scale not on a label.  Recognizing that your resilience makes you more resilient.  Psychologists have long found that beliefs about our abilities influence future performance.

Resilience is less about toughness than flexibility. The strongest people aren’t those who never struggle—they’re the ones who adjust, learn and move forward after setbacks.

You’ve already survived every difficult day you’ve ever faced. That’s not proof that you’ll never struggle again — it’s proof that resilience is already part of who you are. The question isn’t whether you have it. It’s how much more you can build.

Elton John had it right. “I’m Still Standing” isn’t just a hit song—it’s evidence. If you’re still standing after everything life has thrown at you, you’ve already proven you possess resilience. The challenge isn’t finding it. It’s recognizing it and building on it.

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