The number one malady for most people today is anxiety.

That is why anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills are flying off the shelves.

Anxiety is another word for worry and it breeds panic attacks, health problems and is the leading cause of unhappiness especially in younger people.

Those who have not experienced anxiety just don’t get it.  The fear of having a heart attack, chest pains, loss of breath and the fear of dying are among the many symptoms.

As a professor at USC I saw the toll young students paid for anxiety much of which was fueled by high expectations to perform and achieve.  Unfortunately, many of these expectations were driven by parental expectations.

• Replace negative self-talk with coping self-talk.  For every negative thought, come up with a positive one.  Never let negative thoughts exist without a positive counter thought.
• Manage stress in your life.  How?  Just be aware of what you can take and not take and then advocate for your best interest.
• Do not be around people who make you feel more stressful.
• You don’t have to convince anyone or everyone of the physical toll that anxiety has on you.  It is wasted energy. Put to better use by being kind to yourself.
• Isolate your fears and find a path to conquering or at least making a dent in them.
• Beware of social media.  Many anxious people are irritated or not relieved by investing their time in social media interaction.

Love and accept yourself as you are – a work in progress, a good person and human being who must be mindful of not taking on more than you can handle.

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Meaghan Francella is a Ladies Golf Tour winner who experienced a bad patch and found herself losing pro golf status.

For most that would be the beginning of unhappiness – imagine tasting success at such a high level and then having to live without it.

Except Meaghan decided to become a caddie – not just for family and friends but for those who could be considered her former competition on the pro tour.

This brave young woman who found herself dejected while on tour, found happiness being around the game of golf without all the pressure.

She downsized her house, her life, her car.

When Meaghan caddied for Min Lee of Taiwan she was able to help Lee go from 13^th to fifth on the Symetra Tour’s money list.  She has also caddied for young women who wanted to do what she had done – make the pro tour.

Sometimes being number one is not all that is cracked up to be.

Meaghan’s tour friends want to know why she played golf almost every day last year if she was just going to caddie.

The number one thing Meaghan Francella wants in life is to find happiness and in spite of the adversity she has faced, she says “I feel like I have”.

Question:  When was the last time we asked ourselves the question what makes us happy and had the courage to pursue it putting ego, money and power aside?

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There are more kind people in the world that there are naysayers, haters and evildoers.

But when enemies permeate our lives, they can make us miserable and even sick.

Harboring hatred simply eats away at us which is why there is a more effective solution for dealing with unresolved feelings for people we consider our enemies.

• Imagine how happy our enemies would be if they actually knew how much we despised them.
• Vow not to give them power over you.
• Animosity toward others almost always eats away at us even more – no matter how deserving, hating your enemies is tantamount to punishing yourself.
• When enemies are so close to us that we cannot avoid them, consider putting distance between you and them.
• Take away their power by refusing to react to what they are saying or doing. Don’t give them fuel to continue.
• And most important – this will always work if you can do it – take even one short moment to have compassion for your enemies. This does not mean liking what they do or accepting it. It means feeling sorry that they feel they have to hurt someone. Just this brief moment of compassion changes the way you respond and puts the power in your hands.

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The easiest thing to do seems like the hardest – to put a stop/loss on worry.

Worry is fear thought and nothing more.

Get a grip on fear by changing the way you look at it.

• 99% of what we fear will never happen – obsess on that, not the 1%.
• And the 1% hardly ever happens the way we fear it – know that and be reassured by it.
• Since we always fear the worst, be prepared to accept it and deal with the consequences on the 1% chance that it actually happens.
• Stay busy because it is impossible to be busy and worried sick.
• Gratitude reduces worry.
• Get the facts – most worry is based on assumptions not based on reality.
• Focus on what is right in our lives, not what is wrong and put both in its proper perspective.

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ESPN Anchor Stuart Scott died at age 49 after a long battle with cancer but his inspiration lives on in these 2 lines:

“When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live.”

All of us must die of something.

We can postpone it with good healthy habits and some luck, but no one ever evades it.

But we are always in control of the way we live.

How we face adversity.

The manner in which we make choices to enjoy relationships, discover new challenges and show gratitude for our many riches.

You beat adversity by how you live.

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Keep right on listening to them.

I’m kidding!

But that’s what we do.  We keep supplying the oxygen that keeps narcissistic people talking about themselves instead of making it a two-way conversation.

The best defense, as always, is a good offense.

Most self-absorbed people are happy to just ramble on so – cut off the oxygen – I mean, the ability to commandeer the space.

Rule of thumb:  If another person doesn’t recognize you within a few minutes of talking about themselves – if they don’t ask, don’t care, don’t listen – vacate the premises.

Say bye.  Sign off.  Move on.  Don’t feed self-absorption.

The sad reality is that many of us don’t want to be rude to people who are being rude to us.  But that doesn’t mean suffer another round of self-absorption.

As a college professor I learned that people who may come off as self-absorbed are capable of better when we take the initiative to demand a conversation; not a monologue.

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Perhaps you heard others say that this past Christmas just didn’t feel like Christmas with all the self-gifting, lack of spiritual focus and emphasis on consumer spending.

Christmas cards?  Fewer than ever were sent out this year.  That’s cool but it’s easier than ever to replace snail mail with email and texts.  But there is no evidence this shift has taken place.

Focus on Self.  When was the last time you checked up on a friend or relative you have not had the time for.  A call, a card, a text, an email – a visit?

Selfishness.  One major retailer told me that 70% of all their December 26^th returns comes from purchases made four days before Christmas suggesting that last minute shoppers buy anything, any size and let the recipient worry about taking it back.

Self-gifting.  What’s the need?  We live in a society that self-gifts constantly.  The alternative would be to give to someone else – or serve them (i.e., a soup kitchen, battered spouses, etc.).

In the end it doesn’t matter what the world does.

What we decide to do is what’s important.  It doesn’t even take a village.  It takes one person at a time listening to their conscience.

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Now, we’re really going out of our way to make our young folks self-absorbed.

If you haven’t seen the New York Times article on health spas for toddlers, here it is.  No kidding.

Let’s be honest – the best gift we can give our children is to get their attention off themselves and onto someone else.

Cellphones for children, really?  That’s peer pressure in lieu of real parenting.

Unrestricted screen time?  Not a gift.  We’re hurting them.

Being on our phones when we’re in their company – well, what do you expect? You’re raising a narcissist.

Children have the highest rate of attention deficit and depression now than in any previous era.

When we learn – and teach by our actions – that redirecting attention to others is more fulfilling, we’re also teaching gratitude.

Unbelievable self-absorption such as manicures and a ride in a health spa limo (you’ll see the picture in the story above) starts as a curiosity and becomes a standard.

Nip it now.

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For family:

Greet people as if you haven’t seen them in two weeks.  No more coming home from work and walking into a room as if no one is there.

It doesn’t matter if they’re on their mobile devices.  Make sure you’re not.  Walk in, and greet them with the most sincere and heartfelt hello – the kind you can resurrect from times when you’ve been away from loved ones for an extended period of time.

For someone you’re meeting for the first time:

Grasp their hand, look into their eyes and flash the biggest smile you are capable of producing.  The kind that says, “I just won the lottery” or “I just got a promotion” or “I won the sales trip to Hawaii”.

No one – absolutely no one – can resist a big smile and warm person centered interest.

Keep the good vibes going by asking this new acquaintance the first question about them not you.

The secret is people like us more when we warm them up with a smile and get them talking to us.

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Dedicate your day to someone special in your life – no need to tell them, but of course, you may.

This special person could be a spouse, a relative, a child, a friend – alive or somewhere fondly in your memory.

When facing tough times or tough hurdles, think of doing your best to stay motivated for someone by picturing their face.  Do it for them.

Remember how it felt to have a parent or someone special attend a sports event you were involved in or a presentation that you were doing.  How you looked around to notice and acknowledge them – you wanted to do even better than your best.

That extra push we’re all looking for from time to time comes from the pride of making someone special proud of us – it is a powerful motivator.

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I don’t know how New Year’s resolutions got started, but we all ought to agree to put a stop to them.

They most often start out good and end up forgotten sometimes as early as the first week in January.

Resolutions are good intentions gone bad.

Try making promises to yourself.  No public discussion of them.  Just best intentions that mean something to you.  We tend to treat promises we make to ourselves with more determination than resolutions.

Some examples:

• Promise not to demean yourself and when you catch yourself doing it, stop and substitute a positive example of your goodness.
• Retire the word “can’t” for as long as possible.  Then once you say it, retire it again – the goal being to extend the length of time between the last time and the next time we say, “I can’t”.
• Assume a virtue if you have it not – that’s a Shakespeare quote and a darn good positive reminder to all of us to assume we can do something we have never done before.
• Use the word “I’m sorry” as much as possible – and mean it.  I’m sorry means I am fallible but admitting it means I am not arrogant.
• Put on the top of your list of goals for 2015 – humility.  The one quality that people cannot resist and that inspires confidence is humility.  Nurture it.
• Do not try to make more money in the year ahead – promise your new goal will be to be better at what you do instead of getting rich at it.  The dirty little secret is that people who earn higher incomes almost always do so when they improve their ability to do their jobs not when they chase higher earnings.
• Promise yourself that you will live in the present and only visit the past.
• Stop with diet talk – start accepting your body as a gift the way it is.  Focus on healthy living not obsessive demeaning of your body.

A promise is the potential for excellence.

Happy New Year!

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With the recent Sony Pictures hacking of the movie The Interview about the assassination of North Korean President Kim Jong-un and the increasing number of similar invasions of privacy, there is evidence people are talking about changing the way they communicate.

It’s actually making people pick up the phone again.  A recent New York Times article quoted Girls producer Jenni Konner tweet “The worst thing about the Sony hacks is people using the phone again”.

Some thoughts:

• Never put anything into an email or digital communication that cannot be read by you in front of a jury in a court of law.  Think I’m kidding?  Lawyers make defendants read their own poison in open court all the time.
• You can’t unsay anything you say on the Internet and, believe it or not, even deleting messages from a hard drive can be undone.  That, too, happens in lawsuits, as incredible as it may seem.  And don’t get me started on what the FBI can do to bring a hard drive back to life.  So it can be done.
• Even social media services that champion privacy such as SnapChat are not fool proof.  The sender can decide how many seconds up to 12 that a message or image can be seen and then it disappears forever.  Forever? Well, not if the receiver made a quick screen shot of it.  See what I mean?
• We all have the right to say whatever we want but it is harder to assure privacy now in the insecure digital world.  So assume that your digital communication will be read by someone unintended and match the form of communication necessary to the need for privacy.

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• A day with your son or daughter with phones and digital devices turned off – yours, too.
• A two-sentence card to your spouse that says what you love about them and a second line to give a meaningful example.
• The gift of discovery – set out to do something alone or with someone or people you care about to do something you have never done before. No cheating.
• Self gift this to yourself – a list (as long as possible) of all the good things you’ve done for others and for yourself since last holiday season. Then post the list on the mirror where you shave or put on makeup.
• Forgive someone – the harder, the better.  Carrying around animosity even when it is deserved eats away at our happiness. Release it this holiday season. No big announcement. Just do it.
• Give the gift of your time to someone who really needs it – even a stranger you may never see again. Go to a nursing home – see a relative or friend.  Choose a person who needs a friend or a friendly ear, and make it you.
• Here’s one I do every year – call the spouse of a person who has lost their husband or wife. Call on Christmas Day or a few days before or after. You will make their day and make yours as well.
• Give to the needy or homeless in the names of those you care about (your children, spouse, friends or employees).  Then include a letter with your check honoring those folks and send them a copy. Okay, I cheated – I said gifts for under 0 cents, but the other ones have saved a lot of money. The size of the gift isn’t important – the thought and consideration is.

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The romanticized view of the holidays is that family and friends come together around food, in front of roaring fires in the warm glow of harmony and appreciation.

That’s not always the way it is in the real world.

Family conflicts. Strained relationships. Dealing with illness or loss. Celebrating with absences of people we love and care about.

The answer is gratitude – and an extra dose of it for the holidays.

We simply cannot feel down when we are making a conscious and repeated attempt to be grateful for that which we have.

First holidays without a loved one can be mitigated a bit by making a favorite recipe or tradition that fondly reminds you how fortunate you were to have them.

Can’t stand a sibling who ruins the holiday ever year?

Try getting empathetic instead of angry.

Something like “how awful it must be for her/him to have to create such turmoil at a special time of the year”. Just a brief moment of such empathy takes the power away from disruptive people.

Or you can do like I do, visit the past and then put it away, look to the future and plan with great anticipation but try to dwell in the present protected from those who have not yet discovered the meaning of valuing time and relationships.

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Can you go just one day without —

–       saying the words “I can’t”

–       putting yourself down

–       underestimating your potential

–       making it all about you (nothing kills self-esteem like self-absorption)

–       being afraid to try something new

–       saying you failed (instead of congratulating yourself for trying)

–       putting someone down (when we build others up, we build ourselves up)

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Give them their way.

Pick a day and then get ready to grant them as many things as they want without protesting.  And no, you don’t have to let on what you’re doing.

This gift costs nothing and Nordstrom doesn’t have to take it back like a pair of worn shoes.

At the end of the day you will find that you have received the best gift ever – and all along you thought you were going to be making just your spouse happy.

We live in argumentative and combative times – sometimes we unconsciously overthink things.

Be Santa – grant as many wishes to your spouse as you are able to do in one day and see if it you don’t have a smile on your face.

Being the enabler of something good is a reward unto itself.

In giving we receive.

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Is it possible to live without stress in our lives?

But I ask, is it necessary to relinquish all stress or just get it under control.

When I taught public speaking I used to tell my students, don’t work on not being nervous, just try to get the butterflies to fly in formation.

Stress is necessary but an imbalance of stress is what hurts us.

Take action.

This is easier than it sounds because we all really know what is stressing us out.

So pick three things – no more.

Say, stress at work, stress with your spouse and feeling overwhelmed in a fast moving world.

Target them and choose just one thing you can do to mitigate each one.  Only one.

Stress at work – change the way you work, write down tasks, build in breaks, avoid stressful or unpleasant people to the extent that you can, make sure you are working at something you really like.  If not, work to change jobs.

Stress with your spouse – declare a day when you give up as many things as you can that come between the two of you.  See if you survive.  You will likely find that this is the easiest stress reliever you’ve ever tried.

Stress of feeling overwhelmed in a fast moving world – Take a yoga class or take a walk alone.  Talk to yourself.  Ask the question:  “Is this thing that is killing me really worth it?”  And put a stop/loss on it.

Good stress makes us competitive.

Bad stress is that which, believe it or not, responds to just about any positive step to recognize it and change things.

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There should be a moratorium on death at holiday time.

That unsettling feeling that time is growing short for relatives and friends that we really care about.

There are no shortcuts to grieving – the necessary step we must all pass through dealing with the loss or anticipated loss of a loved one.

Often the months or years left with an individual we care about are strained because we feel the stress and anticipate the loss in many negative ways.

One helpful thing may be to be grateful for the time you have had together.

Gratitude is like aspirin – it works on almost everything.

Instead of counting the days left, emphasize the days we’ve had together.

When we fear the end, focus on the beginning and the middle – it can be so rich and soothing.

Let go – not of hope, but of control.

Magically, letting go makes us feel like we have more control over things.

In fact, these principles are not just good when we anticipate the loss of a loved one, but enrich relationships that continue along at any age.

Nothing can rob us of beautiful memories except the fear that life cannot continue endlessly.

Live for today.

Visit the past as if it were a file cabinet and close the file when you’re done.

And see the future as a perishable gift that is not ours to give but ours to rejoice in.

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A recent New York Times article said many people in a survey say they have lost confidence in the chance to live the American dream.

The American dream is the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.

Dreams or ambitions are the fuel that drives our lives.

When we give up on them, we run the chance of losing life.

I propose a Dreamers Bill of Rights:

• A day without a dream, hope or aspiration is a day that has no meaning.
• Be vocal in stating your dreams – to speak them is to take the first step toward realizing them.
• No dream is ever realized without bumps along the way – sometimes significant roadblocks. Expect them. People who accomplish that which they set out to do tend to use each discouragement as a recommitment to staying the course.
• And my favorite – this is what I do – see that which you aspire to vividly in your mind’s eye. Not, I want to make money. Or I want to be happy. See in living color all the things you envision that money doing for you.       Or picture the happy moments you want to achieve specifically – as many as you can. The more you can see and envision what you aspire to, the more driven you will remain to achieve it.

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The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl survived concentration camp during World War II only to be freed from internment to find his wife, father, mother and brother had been killed while he was in prison.

Yet Frankl wrote the most inspiring book I have ever read Man’s Search For Meaning — a book he cobbled together while he was held captive under the worst situations often memorizing key thoughts and crudely writing down what he could on whatever he had available.

Man’s Search For Meaning in the end was about hope.  How do you come away from horrific pain and loss such as Dr. Frankl endured to write a book about hope?

The answer is summed up in Frankl’s own words:  “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing:  the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.

I first read this book on a northern New Jersey beach that overlooked the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and Southern Manhattan including what would later become the ill-fated World Trade Center.

These thoughts bolster me when adversity strikes close to home.

That no matter how out of control my situation may seem, I don’t ever have to give up my ability to choose my out.

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