The Cumberland Americans just got eliminated from this year’s Little League World Series.

They stood stunned and teary-eyed losing by the smallest of margins – one run.

But coach David Belisle had all the right words in a rambling and emotional post game pep talk.

• He built them up, didn’t tear them down.
• He told them what they had accomplished together.
• He said it was okay to cry – and most of these young boys did (and you will too if you watch the video).
• He said how proud he was of them.

There is more benefit to losing than winning.

Winning feels better.

But losing is transformative.

Whether it is a young person in your life or anyone of any age, positivity, accomplishment, feelings and pride are four things that help people recover from defeat to succeed another day instead of discourage them.

Here’s the video.  It’s 3:38 seconds like you’ve probably never seen before.

Sad, but successful people seem to grow tired of their mates often after they have both endured many trials and tribulations.

But what if we put as much work into our relationships as we put into our careers.

Now look, I am not speaking as a stellar example.

I am speaking as a graduate of that old School of Hard Knocks we always hear about.

The same things that drive our career success could really help make more marriages and relationships successful.

1. Spend as much passion in the marriage as you do at work.
2. Details always matter in a successful business and the same attention to detail is a homerun in relationships.
3. Show even half the enthusiasm upon greeting your loved one at the beginning and end of each day as you do meeting clients or associates you like.
4. Have goals.  If we’re successful at work, we have a game plan.  What’s our game plan at home?  Same old, same old leads to a mighty unhappy marriage.
5. Give up some power.  Take real and genuine pride in outsourcing an equal number of major and minor decisions to your spouse.  At work, no one likes a control freak.  At home, no one likes a control freak.

The skills we have at work are a great rehearsal for a better relationship at home.

Which means – we already know how to make our relationships better.

The current best thinking is to always provide references when applying for a new job.

The phrase “references available upon request” should be retired.

There is a better way.

At the end of your resume, include only the best references you have.  List their name, title, contact information AND …

A line quoted exactly as they summed your skills up.  In other words, ask them for it in a letter and include the quote after their name.  Most employers will not want to make more work and call all your references if they think the quotes are authentic.

And never fear a bad reference.

That’s right.  You may want to reread that line again.

Some people get pleasure or feel justified in hurting others from moving on from a bad situation for both of them.

I once applied for an on-air job at a big number one radio station in Philadelphia.  I had great references except for one difficult to work for employer but I had to list my employment at his station.

My prospective employer in fact called that mean person and sure enough got a not so nice reference.

Later when my prospective employer called me back for a second interview and an audition, he asked me point blank – I called this so and so and he didn’t have very nice things to say about you.

I was stunned.

But I said, “I am sorry about that, but I worked hard for him and I am grateful for the other mentors I’ve had”.

After what seemed like a verrrry long pause, he leaned over and said, “He’s an idiot anyway.  Never has a nice thing to say about anyone.  You’re hired”.

My willingness to be humble, authentic and honest overcame a glitch that could have ruined a breakthough career opportunity.

You’re never out if you’re never down.

I have a wristband called Lark that I can wear to bed that reports the quality of my sleep via Bluetooth and an iPad.

How many times did I wake up during the night even briefly.  How long did it take to fall asleep.  And I get a total grade from 1-10 on how well I slept – with suggestions on how to improve.

This kind of thing is likely to proliferate as Apple is rumored to be working on a wristband (iWatch maybe) that can report other vital heath and happiness signs to the wearer.

Some say it can even monitor blood sugar or tell you when your blood pressure goes up.

In other words, we’re about to enter the age of tracking exercise and social interaction, two of the main contributors to happiness.

But how do we get started?

1. Exercise – without that your health is compromised.
2. Make new friends, spend time with old friends because socializing is a main contributor to happiness.
3. Work for at least one accomplishment a day.  It can be anything but shoot for 365 accomplishments a year and they will soon dwarf the disappointments that rob us of happiness.
4. Be grateful not just for what you have but that which you don’t have.  Do we have to get cured of cancer to be thankful or can we train ourselves to say, thank goodness I am healthy and I appreciate it.
5. Questions to answer:  Have I gotten the most important things I want in life?  If I could start my life all over again, would I change anything?  In what do you find beauty?  In what kind of relationships do you find warmth?

If we start now, those wristbands are going to someday reflect the progress we are making toward a happier and more meaningful life.

Perhaps you have emojis activated on your phone’s text messaging.

For those who do not know what an emoji is think of a little smiley face that you’ve seen at the end of an email or text.  Except much more.

Emojis are replacing text.

What a long distance we have come – from Gutenberg’s first printing press, to books, newspapers, letters, emails, Twitter and text messaging and now a few icons and a few words.

The world evolves and we evolve with it.

Communication is the goal.

Whatever fosters better communication is what we should embrace.

No reason to fear the future because things are changing. Just don’t lose sight of our main purpose as a society – to communicate effectively to others.

Bring on the tools.

A Time Magazine and Real Simple poll of women released a few weeks ago indicates that women need to take more risks.

The poll illustrates that the fear of failure is keeping more women from top corporate jobs.

Everyone fails but according to the poll, women fear failure even more then men.

I like to take the gender away from this issue although the research speaks for itself.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained became an oft-used pearl of wisdom because it is true.

So what can we do about the fear of taking risks?

1. No one wins 100% of the time.  Substitute trying hard 100% of the time instead of concentrating on succeeding and the victories will come more readily.
2. Lack of confidence feeds the fear of taking risks.  You build confidence when you give yourself credit when you do succeed.  Most people skip this important step.
3. One person’s failure is another person’s next success.  Thomas Edison tried thousands of times to invent the light bulb but he never gave up.  That victory must have been sweet.
4. Here’s something you can do to prepare yourself for taking more risks.  Target a successful person you admire and see if she or he just walked into their success or learned from taking risks that could lead to failure.

Nothing succeeds like success, but success is built on the back of risks taken, lessons learned.

Incivility is increasingly fanned by social media.

Trolling – the mostly anonymous and often in mobs – upends decent social discussions.

Zelda Williams gave up.  With days of her late father, comedian Robin Williams’s death, she had to close her social media accounts rather than endure fake pictures of her father who committed suicide with marks around his neck.

Sadly, the more this practice of trolling comes to light, the more people do it.

What has happened to our world?

My theory is that we spend so much time interacting with our screens that we become insensitive to how people respond to us – both negatively and positively. And that emboldens some people who would never behave in this fashion if they had to look you in the eye face to face.

Most people are nice and considerate.

As rudeness proliferates in our digital world the best defense may be to do as Zelda Williams did and step back.

But rudeness occurs on airplanes, in hair salons where cell phones are pressed to the ears of heads being washed and many, many other situations.

Immediate contact via social media requires the same courtesy that we show to others in person.

It is not an excuse for bad behavior.

I am so grateful that you spread the word about what we do here? Thank you!  Please tell your friends that they, too, can receive these positive day starters in their mail at no cost by signing up here.

Things may have changed since you were single – five years ago!

That’s right — things have really changed.

A new survey of 2,000 people from the dating website Singles247 is an eye opener.

According to the findings, single girls now wait until the fifth “date” (if you can call it that) before having sex.

But what makes up their mind has changed, too.

1. Two gifts or tokens of affection.
2. Five social media messages.
3. 12 text conversations.
4. Five phone calls.
5. Three DVDs watched (really?).
6. Seven passionate kisses.
7. Five heart-to-hearts or meaningful conversations.
8. Four meals together.
9. One bunch of flowers.

That’s it.

It takes women a lot less time than men to make up their mind if they like someone on a first date – one in ten know instantly according to this research.

Nearly half have made up their minds on a person only 10 minutes in to a date.

Wait!

This is insane.

I love social media like the next person and it’s a great addition to dating tools.  No matter how one arrives at a decision to have a relationship, it should be based on two things.

1. What 5 things do you value the most in another person.
2. Is the other person living the values that you crave.

And take all the time you like.

Your future together is riding on it.

Thanks for reading me every day.  Please tell your friends that they, too, can receive these positive day starters in their mail at no cost by signing up here.

Comedians are often unhappy people who need to make others laugh.

And that’s what the very talented Robin Williams did.

He, like all of us, also had demons to fight – drug addiction, alcoholism, depression – but he fought the good fight until he couldn’t face his problems any longer.  Williams’ wife shared the knowledge that Robin Williams was suffering from early onset Parkinson’s disease – something that probably added to his woes.

The thought of not being able to no longer act or perhaps do standup comedy may have been too much to deal with.  Michael J. Fox did all he could and more to overcome the disadvantages of Parkinson’s.

It certainly has made me think about what life would be like if I couldn’t make speeches, write and do videos or be the husband or father I want to be.

So I have arrived at a place that helps me to understand Williams’ plight without condoning his suicide.

We are on loan to this world.

Our gifts may be shared in a finite way for a limited number of years.

There is always an ending but the focus should be on the present.

Robin Williams has given us many gifts in his career but the one we don’t want to forget about is a reminder to appreciate every day that we get to do the things that bring us fulfillment and happiness.

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Author Melody Beattie put her finger on it:

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion to clarity…Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow”.

My music industry students at USC understandably wanted to graduate, get high paying jobs in the field that they loved and be happy.

But I warned them that Los Angeles (among other places) is loaded with rich, powerful, unhappy people.  Don’t become one of them.

Looking for ways to find gratitude is what I am talking about not just being thankful for a good job or a nice car.

Even the flu is a reason to be grateful because you will recover and be healthy again.

If there is one game changer for all of us, it is the power of looking for ways to be grateful.

The good stuff follows.

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This is the best definition of worry that I have ever seen.

It is so good that it prompts us to actually put a stop to it.

Think of it the way Dr. Amit Sood sees it:

“Worry is the interest you pay on a nonexistent threat – the principal.  Or, if a threat actually exists, then each time you pay an installment on this principal, worry is a proportion that is added to the original”.

We drive with the airbags already deployed according to Dr. Sood.

Think of it like that.

Before it happens, we expect the worst.

99% of the things we worry about never happen.

And for the 1% that does, what we feared wasn’t exactly what eventually happened.

In other words the negative thoughts we increasingly bring upon ourselves are worse than what we fear.

Or as Mark Twain put it: “I have suffered several terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened”.

Thanks for reading me every day.  Please tell your friends that they, too, can receive these positive day starters in their mail at no cost by signing up here.

You are old when you outgrow the zest for enthusiasm.

Young people are naturally enthusiastic.

They haven’t been fully indoctrinated by the workaday world that often muzzles enthusiasm and discourages happiness.

Yet I know college students who are older than a 60-year old in their attitude and I have known 60-year olds who have the enthusiasm and curiosity of a teenager.

Botox erases lines but doesn’t infuse enthusiasm.

Personal trainers can get our muscles optimized in all the right places but they cannot show us how to be forever curious.

The world is youth oriented with 95 million Millennials coming of age and as old as 32, but there are a few things that belie age.

1. Smiling more is the best surgery for your face – it makes others open to relating to you.
2. The good old days were never that good, just old.  The real “good old days” are the ones we haven’t lived yet – the ones that are ripe with promise.
3. Diversity in interests, friends and passion are the true age interrupters.
4. An open mind is an eternally youthful mind
5. Humor is the great elixir that heals life’s hurts.

Or as Katy Perry sings:  “We can dance until we die, you and I…we’ll be young forever”.

We’re looking in the wrong place.

You will never find the right person for you by casting a net and hoping to snag them.  The divorce courts are filled with people who tried that trick one time too many.

Finding the right person is about finding what’s right for you or as the author Melody Beattie says, “to meet the right person you have to be the right person”.

1. Instead of checking the dating sites looking for the qualifications of others, sit down and take a look at your qualifications.  What makes you you?
2. Be able to name the five qualities that are most important to you in another person in order of importance.   Believe it or not, this isn’t easy to do. Knowing that, say, honesty, ethics, sense of humor, shared values or whatever may matter most to you is what you desire most in another.
3. Love at first sight happens because the people falling in love know exactly what they are searching for – no accident there.

Ironically, the more we look inward at ourselves, the more we attract people who possess the qualities we desire.

One more thing.

After a losing streak of bad relationships, take six months off – no dating, just hanging out with friends.  Spend the time to answer and embed the 5 qualities that you value most into your head.

Then when you start dating again, don’t be surprised if your luck changes.

I know.

It worked for me.

We all value being real and being honest.

The latest trend is young girls making YouTube videos and asking if they are pretty or not.

The New York Times recently ran an article on a 13-year old girl named Sammie who posted a video “Am I Ugly Or Pretty”.  She received 72,000 views in just a few months and 2,000 comments.

Sammie said she learned a lot about how cruel people can be.

Especially people who don’t know you.

Let’s put this one in perspective right now.

Beauty is hard to define and this is not really about beauty.  It’s about insecurity and looking to strangers to get that which many of us do not have.

1. Everyone is beautiful in their own way.  Is the second runner up in a beauty contest chopped liver?  Is a beauty contest even worth entering? If I ask you to tell me the most beautiful person you know, will you describe someone physically striking or the essence of a special person?
2. The only opinion that matters is yours – really.  Look into the mirror and see your soul. That is how to judge beauty.  Did you ever have a grandma who was ravaged by the years, hard of hearing and a mere shadow of what she used to be in her youth but you thought she was the most beautiful person ever.  She was.
3. Never, ever give control of your self-esteem to another person – not even a trusted one.  You are the guardian of all that is good about you.  This responsibility is not to be outsourced to another person.
4. Life is not a beauty pageant.  Can you name anyone more beautiful than Mother Teresa of Calcutta?
5. Don’t confuse good looks with self-esteem.  “Good looking” people are sometimes not nice.  And nice people are not always “good looking”.

If you must ask anyone to be honest with you and say whether you are beautiful, make that person you.

And the answer is yes.

I worked in television news where your likability is the most marketable asset.

TV stations and networks use what is called a Q Score to determine likeability.

Robin Roberts and Ellen DeGeneres are among the national TV figures who have high Q Scores and local TV anchors, sports and weather personalities are also tested because likeability means everything.

It also means everything to the rest of us.

Tom Brady, the New England Patriot’s star quarterback, is well liked in spite of the fact that he is good looking and has a beautiful wife.  We should hate him, right?

Here is Brady’s secret according to media consultant Randy Lane:

1. Be self-deprecating — “I’m the worst speller on the planet…”
2. Share your inner-dialogue — “I suddenly realized that I looked like a jerk…”
3. Be vulnerable — “I don’t think you ever have it all figured out.” Tom Brady

In short, be humble.

Humility allows people to get to know us and like us.

That’s what we all want – the two “A’s”.

We look for it when we do presentations.

We crave it in family and relationships.

It is the secret to being loved by others and encouraging love of self.

When we offer others unconditional acceptance and approval, we provide the glue that makes us stick close together.

Remember the power that we all have every day to offer those we care about the gift of approval and acceptance.

One of my readers tells me of a psychologist friend of his who has developed a way of shaking awake couples whose marriages are mired in arguing.

The first half hour is devoted to the litany of complaints from both the wife and her husband.

At that point, the psychologist asks the wife to leave the room while she (presumably) thinks he’s going to read the riot act to her husband.

Then he tells the husband “Buddy, you & your wife can come here once a week for a long time and do this and make my car payment for me or you can walk out of here today and never see me again if you answer this question correctly.  Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?”

It could just as easily work the other way around – the advice delivered to the wife and this is not to say that real issues should be avoided.

When arguing becomes a sport in which both spouses look to rack up points, the marriage is not going to be happy.

Choose your poison.

Be right or be happy.

14-year old Carleigh O’Connell is a Jersey Girl and thereby special to this Jersey Boy.

Unfortunately she was denigrated by bullies who made fun of her butt by spray painting “Carleigh’s Ass” on a cement abutment at the Jersey shore.

This is New Jersey – they’re going down.

Carleigh shows us the textbook way to stand up to such cowards by harnessing the power of social media.

She posted a photo in Facebook snapped with the graffiti in the picture and told her mom to post it as well.

Here’s what Carleigh’s mother wrote:

“[Carleigh] decided that she was going to be stronger than hurtful words on the concrete and that she was going to be proud of her figure … She also told me that she feels complete sympathy for the teenagers across the country who face this everyday. She understands and wants all of them to find strength inside to rise above the nastiness and be empowered by who you are, how you are made and what is in your heart”.

Many commenters said they wish they had Carleigh’s butt.

Isn’t Carleigh beautiful?

Isn’t she smart?

That’s what Uber does.

The popular replacement for mundane taxicabs allows customers to rate their drivers and now it has become known that the drivers also get to rate their customers.

In one article I read on this, the author was concerned that this information could be used against customers who were continually rated as being less than the best.

The company might even one day discriminate against their call for a ride if Uber drivers as a group thought little of you.

Whatever happened to the notion that the customer is always right even if he or she is a jerk?

But take this issue to folks under 30 and you’ll see that they think vendors and service companies such as Uber have a right to rate customers.

It’s only fair.

This is also a generation that has pioneered rating college professors on their teaching abilities.  As a professor, I rather looked forward to my ratings at USC.

Got me to thinking.

What would my rating be if the people I came in contact with in daily life could rate me from A to F.

Even my wife?

Especially my wife.

360-degree input has arrived and is just as useful as a tool for all of us to up our game and bring out the best we have to offer in terms of humanity and human relations.

What do you think?

If we could devote 1/100^th of the time we spend to being physically fit and direct it toward training our core values, we would transform ourselves and realize our dream to become all that we can be.

Self-confidence doesn’t come from books or from pep talks.  It comes from the inner core of our being.  And the way we develop it is to get in touch with what our vision is for ourselves.

May I offer a few examples?

• Honesty – when we see ourselves as an honest person and picture it vividly all the time, we tend to make honest decisions and live up to the reputation we set for ourselves when life happens.
• Compassion – Just a word until we picture what kind of a compassionate person we want to be.  Often, we are compassionate to some people and not to others.  But when we visualize the type of compassion that we are striving for, the virtue unfolds.
• Self-confidence – Accept the fine person you are and don’t try to change it.  But what about becoming better?  We tend to do the right things automatically when we accept the gifts that make us unique and even different.
• Intimacy – The number one malady of most human beings is the failure to risk intimacy.  That is, to share our humanity with others.  We hold back in fear of being hurt.  If we see ourselves as individuals who want to show the warmth of our being to others, we become more approachable and happier.

All good training begins when we stop trying to fix everything that is wrong with us.

Focus on what is right.