Haters are not just jealous.

They don’t necessarily want to be you.

They simply cannot be happy for success so they focus on something that is wrong about that which is good.

Or, something wrong about you.

Haters are a creation of the times in which we live – the unparalleled access to each other’s lives through social media connections and the digital lives we live.

Calling out haters just gives them more attention.

Using the word almost justifies their behavior.

I treat haters the way I treat jealousy although they are two separate things.

You’re going to have to trust me on this.  Okay?

Use compassion first and then you will shed them.

For example:  “I feel really sorry for him/her having to put me down when I have accomplished so much”.

The moment you do this – show compassion for their depravity.

You are responding (that’s good) instead of reacting (not so good).

Try it.

Share it with family and friends.

Nip haters the moment they strike by doing the one thing that neutralizes them – feeling sorry for their bad behavior.

And if the hating takes place on social media – go through the same drill privately.

Never give haters a larger platform to ruin your good thing.

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The one thing about successful people is that they are seemingly allergic to the word “no”.

When they hear it, they immediately get to work.

Some people become discouraged when they first hear “no”.

Dale Carnegie always said to get the other person to say yes, yes. That’s two yeses. And then you’re on your way.

Here’s how I see it:

1. Eliminate “no” from your vocabulary. When you hear it, start working to get to yes.       You may be surprised how good you can be at this.
2. When you are prevented from getting that which you want, welcome it. Really!       Because the more you hear “no” and the more you get working to accomplish your mission the more you really want it.
3. Nothing worth happening landed in the lap of anyone who didn’t fight naysayers along the way.
4. “No” is temporary. Yes is permanent.

If you don’t get the job you want, let the rejection propel you into doing what you must to get in on the next try.

If you’re not chosen, fight harder.

Lose the election? Try again.

The irony of a life well lived is that the things we value most are often out of reach until we step it up and prove to ourselves first how much we want it.

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You can never seem to do anything right.

They are the ones who take the credit.

They treat you like you are subhuman but expect that to motivate you.

They make you uncomfortable.

They are jealous.

It seems they want you to fail – it makes little sense.

Here’s the rule of thumb.

If you love your job but hate your boss, dig in and outlast that person because even the most powerful abuser of human spirit gets it in the end.

But if you can find fulfillment in a similar or different job elsewhere, leave with dignity and be more diligent about the type of person who will become your next employer.

In the radio industry over the past decade, good and loyal employees have been treated like slaves.  A bad economy and their love of radio have kept these fine people in harm’s way.

Millennials would rather quit a job where they are mistreated then continue working for someone they don’t respect.

This is forcing companies that want to succeed to change the way they talk to and work with employees.  After all, there are 95 million Millennials and it does matter what they think.

In the end, our careers are in our own hands.

Never let anyone get into your head and tamper with your dreams, your desires or self-esteem.

When that happens, it’s time to stop them.

No job is worth holding if you pay for it with the way you feel about yourself.

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There is almost no hurt greater than to lose a friend.

Friends are hard to come by.

We have many, many acquaintances in life but real friends can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

And yet, what was once so close can also inflict great hurt when a trusted friend turns on you.

I don’t know many people who have not experienced this pain – including young college students not just limited to adults who have lived a great deal of their lives.

There are no easy ways to nurture the hurt but there are ways to get back on track after the loss of a friend.

• There are many reasons for breaches in relationships – among the most likely is jealousy.  Plainly put, jealousy kills friendships.
• Leave the door open to reconciliation and forgiveness down the road if and when the offending friend also realizes the hole in their life that was created when they stopped being a friend.
• It is helpful to remember that your other friends need you and that they should not be subjected to undo ruminating over someone else’s loss.

Concentrating on being a friend is a better use of time than ruminating over the friend someone else wants you to be.

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I read a most encouraging article in The New York Times recently called “A Natural Fix for A.D.H.D”.

It reminded me of a music industry student who sought me out the day before he attended my first class.

As I recall, he said, “Professor Del Colliano, I have four different types of attention deficit diagnosed”.

To which I replied, “Well don’t you worry, we’ll work with them”.

But I’ll never forget his response which was “Oh, it’s not a disadvantage.  It’s an advantage”.

And the Times article went on to suggest that people with attention deficit – an estimated 11% between the ages of 4 and 17 may simply be craving more excitement, more stimulation.

Plainly put, they may be bored.

That’s why a smart professor will lose those PowerPoint slides and do interactive teaching.

And why we shouldn’t define our children as being damaged when they actually may be more suited for a different age – the hunter/gatherer era of history in which they would have been best suited to the dangers of life before our agrarian society was born 1,000 years ago.

Take the limits off.

Rest the preconceived notions.

We’re treating people who are good and smart and loving and kind as if they had a disease when it may well be that their minds are restless and looking for new challenges.

Every “disadvantage” has an “advantage” – that is the main lesson of life.

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Yesterday I found myself quoting word for word two friends of mine that are no longer on this earth.

“Never outgrow your zest for enthusiasm”.

“Adversity introduces a person to him or herself and to those around them”.

Wynn Etter, the Dale Carnegie sponsor for whom I worked for many years, lived by his pledge of enthusiasm.

And Jim Weinraub, also a Dale Carnegie associate and friend, was wise in ways I thought I knew then, but really know now especially when it came to observing the human condition.

How I would love to hear them again.

Or hear my mother remind me that “every dog has its day” when I faced disappointment.

It is true that special people cannot be replaced, but the best way to keep them alive – to keep a clear memory of them advancing in the future – is to quote them, talk about how special they are, share the gift of their joy or wisdom with others who have never met them.

Life is a continuum and we don’t get to decide when we must say goodbye to special people, but we can keep them alive in our minds and hearts every day by not forgetting the specific things that made them special.

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Change is difficult.

Sometimes it even seems impossible and we grow frustrated and give up.

Change is a scary word.

Politicians use it as if people really want it when what they really want is for things to get better.

Let’s replace change with getting better.

Here are the secrets to effectively make changes.

1. See vividly in your mind’s eye that which will make you better, happier, more fulfilled, more loving or more loved.
2. Make a road map. Just wanting to be better is a prescription for failure.  We have to know how to move toward that which we want.
3. Change that matters usually comes from turmoil so if you are expecting to flip a switch and emerge as someone else or someone better, that’s not going to happen.
4. Change comes to those who refuse to give up pursuing it. In other words, after making a plan, your ability to doggedly stick to that plan almost always guarantees success.
5. When it feels like change is coming too slowly, remember that good things come to those who want it the most.

That’s why New Year’s resolutions never seem to make it past the first week in January.

Even failing to change is valuable.

It tells us that we didn’t want it enough to work for it.

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Ali:  “So everything the God made, the cows, horses, the moon, stars, ants, everything has a purpose … Now what’s your purpose? You’re a human being. If God made the sun have a purpose, humans have a purpose too. You haven’t found your life purpose yet have you?”

Maryum Ali:  “To make people feel better … To fix people up.”

Ali:  “That’s good, Maryum”.

This is what we learn from a documentary about the amazing boxer Muhammad Ali as he spoke to one of his daughters.

It makes me take pause and ask some questions of myself.

What is your purpose on this earth?

Am I proceeding in the right direction?

Am I using my God-given gifts – all of them?

We wouldn’t travel from New York to New Haven without a roadmap or certainly Google Maps.

Why do we live our lives without knowing where we are going.

It’s never too late to change course to match what our purpose is on this earth.

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That’s the conclusion of Shawn Achor who speaks of the happy secret to better work.

That means that thinking we’ll be happy when we make a certain amount of money (or win the lottery) is not correct.

If we meet another person, it will make us happy (not always true).

If we lose weight, we’ll feel happier (healthier but not always happier).

What Achor is isolating which I find empowering is that we would be wise to put our expectations second to our happiness.

Be happy, then don’t worry.

Not don’t worry, be happy.

Intelligence and technical skills only predict 25% of success.

“75% of long term job success is predicted not by intelligence and technical skills, which is normally how we hire, educate and train, but it’s predicted by three other umbrella categories. It’s optimism (which is the belief that your behavior matters in the midst of challenge), your social connection (whether or not you have depth and breadth in your social relationships), and the way that you perceive stress”.

As a college professor I preached optimism over everything to my students.  Now there is research to back it.

Our homework then is to work at being happy.

The other benefits will follow and not the other way around.

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It seems like there are so many school shootings these days.

I’ve heard people say, “Back in my day that never happened”.

Here is how I choose to look at it.

99.99% of our school children are educated in safe environments.

But to make every young person safe we have to put politics aside and focus on the stressful world in which we live.

Most people are stressed beyond belief and to make things worse, they are tied to their stress through digital communication and social media.

Bullying is not the exception but the rule at all schools, in all grades and in every part of the country.

There are things we can do about school safety and things that educators must do – such as become more skilled looking for early warning signs because it seems every time we have a tragedy like the recent one in Washington, officials have to admit that they didn’t see this behavior coming.

Bullying is not acceptable – and I am speaking of the workplace and in personal relationships as well.

Bullying is ten times worse in the digital age because it can be conducted publicly.

So rather than shake our heads and mourn another sad day, let’s roll up our sleeves and do what we can do – become a vocal advocate against bullying all people.

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The secret is not looking back and determining that all those bad breaks you overcame actually led to a better outcome.

The secret is remembering that good comes from bad.

I hate to even admit it but we don’t usually know what we really want.

We think we do.

Sometimes we are convinced we do.

But adversity introduces a person to him or herself and to those around them.

And so often things could only have happened because we didn’t get what we wanted.

The mate you would have never met if you hadn’t experienced the pain of a broken relationship – this is true for me.

The career you could have never thought of until some employer terminated your position, made you feel pain and launched you into a new career.

All the unexpected good things that seem to happen when we take the death grip off our lives and look forward to that which we have never sought.

To make this powerful message a strong part of your life, make a list of great outcomes in your life and the lives of those around you that we unanticipated and unasked for.

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Not the stress in you.

Eject those people from your lives.

I know.

Some of them are relatives – and you can’t choose your relatives.

But you can choose who you will let have your ear.

Drama queens are stress producers – we know who they are – so failure to withdraw from their world is asking for more stress.

Reject those friends who have lack of character because we eventually become the people that surround us – family, friends, teachers, mentors, mates.

Often we waste a lot of emotional time on people that we allow to bring stress into our lives.

At best, avoid them.

If you can’t avoid these negative influences, reduce the time they get your ear.

And if these people are so close to you that they are impossible to avoid, the only way out is to banish them from your life.

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Nothing stings more than putting it all out there to get a new job only to find out that you didn’t get it.

I tried for three years to get an on-air job at a Philadelphia television station and for three straight years I never received as much as a courteous response or acknowledgment.  And I included a tape of my voice as well monthly potentially magnifying my vulnerability to rejection.

But I knew – and know – that nothing worthwhile comes easy.

So, every month – off went another tape of me to three Philly TV stations until one day the program director at Channel 6 called and said he needed a booth announcer for just two days.

He even went as far to caution me that this is a very temporary job and that was that.

I accepted the two days and wound up staying.

Here’s how I think:  If being lucky is what it takes to get the job or promotion of my dreams, I’m out.  But if being persistent is the criteria, I will always get it.

And I do.

I share this because we need to change the way we think about putting it on the line and taking prudent risks.

Deal with any potential hurt feelings the way athletes do for injuries – part of the business.

Celebrate being bold and persistent and expect a positive result.

We are our own worst enemy when we should be our very best friend.

Before you readjust your thinking, take a moment to name three people you admire the most and then look into how they got to where they are today.

Rejection is the fuel for a motivated person.

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In the Showtime hit series Ray Donovan, every phone call shown on screen ends with a click not a goodbye.

Of course, we know the producers are taking theatrical license, but still – it reminds me that even with texting as big as it is for all generations, people find themselves ignored.

Text a message – you may get an answer, you may not.  Or you may get into a long back and forth.

Make a phone call (what’s that?) on your smartphone and leave a message – chances are better than ever that you will get an email or text as a response.

Even some salespeople would rather do it all by email than in person or on the phone even if you would rather not.

But what hurts the most is when a friend ignores us.

That couldn’t happen in a world where it is impossible not to receive a quick response, could it?

When this bothers me I fix it right away by focusing on what I can control which is what I am communicating not the anticipated response.

Keep expectations low and motivation high.

If there is one way to become a better person with virtually little effort it is to never ignore another person whether you’re in their company, on the phone, by email, texting or social media.

This is also the secret to making people crave you and listen to your ideas and points of view.

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When we set goals, we tend to set them in ways that will not help us accomplish them.

Save for a rainy day is not very sexy and most Americans do not have enough money when the rain begins.

Save for something specific in the next 6 months and you’re actually helping to pattern the habits you will need for the long term.

When we get a few extra bucks (and sometimes when we don’t), we tend to spend here and now instead of save for later – and that’s quite understandable.

But here are some solutions:

• Split any extra money in half – one part goes to the future, the other you can spend now.
• See vividly what money really buys – when I buy gas at the local Costco, I have figured I am saving enough to buy 30-50 shares of Apple (at about $100 a share).  I love Apple and love to invest in it but that investment grows when I can see the gas savings at Costco.
• And here’s the big one.  We spend our lives working our butts off often with little to show for it financially.  So I take some of what I earn (or have earned in the past) and put it in a safe but productive investment that grows the money and pays me a dividend.  I spend ALL of the dividend every year and since the principle keeps growing, there’s more to spend every year.

This isn’t brain surgery, I admit.

But setting intermediate goals in all areas of life (I just covered financial here today), guarantees you’ll stick to the plan.

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Hollywood entertainment reporter Mike Evans says famed Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda (now 87 years young) has the perfect saying for dealing with problems.

Talking about your problems is no good, 80% of your friends don’t care and the rest are glad.

That prompts me to add, the solution may very well be to identify your problems – the things that eat at you, haunt you or rob you of happiness – and come up with a plan to attack them.

Too often we assume that the first solution is the best, but that is not always the case.

When Thomas Edison was trying to invent the light bulb, he famously failed frequently.  But Edison claimed, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times.  The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps” and that “Great success is built on failure, frustration, even catastrophe”.

Why is it that we expect the one or two things we do is enough to solve a lingering problem?

Successful people.

Better yet happy people know the road to life is always under construction and that there are no simple answers to complex problems.

Just recognizing that failing is a rehearsal for winning is enough to keep us going.

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Ever wonder why a cancer patient can see life vividly even during treatment and many of us cannot.

Why we spend our valuable days chasing after things that in the end will not make one bit of difference in our happiness.

It’s good to be goal-oriented.

Life is to be lived to the fullest and goal-oriented thinking can provide us with accomplishments that feed our zest for living.

Then again, looking around for that which is already in our lives and taking full advantage of these things is a hidden key to happiness.

Hate your job?  Maybe your part-time job or avocation is begging you to choose them instead.

Disappointed by a friend?  Probably somewhere in your daily footprint is a person waiting to interact with a good person like you.

Stressed out so much it is affecting your health?  All the stress reduction books and programs in the world are not as effective as a regular walk on the beach, through the park or along some unknown vista.  Physical exercise plus time to think are two powerful bromides.

Sometimes everything you want in life is already there – in the background, under the radar or still unnoticed because of busy lives.

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May I share a few of my secrets?

1. Use a notes app on your smartphone to quickly jot down every success you have in a day – large and small.  (Examples:  from helping your daughter fall asleep after a bad dream to hitting it out of the park on your presentation).
2. Scroll through this ever-growing list of accomplishments at least once a day – most recent accomplishments on top.  Amazingly, most people forget that which they did well and record in their brain that which they didn’t – or at least were told they didn’t.
3. Memorize a line that I use before I make a speech:  “I’ve done it before, I can do it again”.
4. Trying something new often brings anxiety and a loss of confidence.  The cure:  Keep track of new things that you’ve done well and review them when you are out of your comfort zone.
5. My personal favorite:  think of the sport you like the most (it’s hockey for me).  Reflect on how every athlete wants to win every game, score a lot and be the star.  A realistic reminder that preparation breeds confidence and the best that we can do is to play hard to win but develop a sincere love for being excellent at what you do; not being perfect.

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I had a professor in college who was also a Dale Carnegie instructor.

It was my first exposure to the wonderful world of Dale Carnegie thinking.

But after class when our professor was showing apparent person centered interest in his students, he had the habit of glancing at his watch when they responded to him.

Later when I became a trained Dale Carnegie instructor, I learned that no less than Mr. Carnegie himself said don’t try using his human relations principles without being sincere about them.

Sincere person centered interest is what my friend Bruce St. James has for his KTAR audience.

I have been to lunch with him on many occasions and Bruce is always recognized for his authentic personality, voice and easygoing style.

He’s no b.s.

They ask about him, but more importantly, I have seen him always ask about them.

Even getting their names so he can mention them in social media or on the air.

No one can resist humility.

Being the fine person you are is always good enough especially if you practice treating people with person centered interested.

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When I was a communications student at Temple University, I was lucky enough to get my first radio job on a Philadelphia station while in school.

It was on the all-night show – midnight to 6 am six days a week — and I went to school five of those days, but I was very happy to have it.

As you can imagine, I was tired all the time.  I slept on the office chairs from 6-8 am when I got off the air, shaved in the bathroom, drove to school and slept in the late afternoon and early evening.

Then one day – or should I say in the middle of the early morning about 3am – I fell asleep on the air.  The album track that I was playing played through to the end and when I woke up horrified, there was dead air.

The next day I was fired.

The station’s program director was wide-awake and listening in.

It was devastating.

The man who fired me taught me so much – so there was that.

The money was useful but not a factor however it was getting such a good opportunity while in college and blowing it that did me in.

I know talent in broadcasting is always fired but this soon?

Turns out it was the best thing to ever happen to me.

I took what little experience I had and my deep albeit untrained voice to the local television stations where I finally got a break as a booth announcer for channel six.

Why do I share this now?

The end of our world as we know it is often the beginning of better things.

Learn from unfortunate and unfair experiences.

Work your way back vigorously and expect that you will make better use of your next chance.

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