Pretend that you haven’t seen your spouse in years – not as if you just saw him or her when you left for work 8 hours ago.

Take ten seconds before you greet your family – before you open the door and walk into the room.

When you try these two things – the response will be amazing and addictive.

When you haven’t seen a person for a long time – maybe even years – recall how you felt and how they responded to you.

If they are hurting, be compassionate.

If they want to talk with you, listen with 100% attention.

If they feel down, help lift them up.

When you try this, you may be well intended but the other person may be distracted by screens or multitasking so be patient and flexible.

Nothing changes things more than a person’s ability to appreciate the ones close to them as if they hadn’t seen them for a long time.  In this way, you will enjoy loved ones without regrets and feel powerful in a good way.

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Stress isn’t always your fault. 

More than a 40-hour workweek.  Balancing family with work.  The constant barrage of digital distraction.  No time to think or refresh. 

It is never too late to retrain your brain.  Our brains adjust to every new thought and experience. 

If companies can “right-size”, we can “right-wire”.

The Mayo Clinic Stress program proves it.  If a loved one baked your favorite chocolate chip cookies but hid them from you for your own protection (so you don’t eat them all at once), but you found the stash – will you be able to find the cookie jar again?

If your answer was yes, you have the ability to form new memories.

To be honest, it isn’t easy distressing in an increasingly stressful world, but we have the amazing ability to protect ourselves against stress and make our lives happier.

A vacation is one example, but when we return we to return to stress.

What if we returned but protected ourselves against the stressors around us.

In other words, return from vacation to take a vacation from stress.

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This is both funny and sad at the same time.

A bride checking her cellphone in the middle of her wedding ceremony — caught on YouTube.  And it’s no joke.

Look at the face of the dismayed husband to be.  Could he be worried about the wedding night as well?  Let’s not even go there.

Even if you do not abuse texting and social media connections, you can be sure there are people around you who do.

We can read “how to” books on happiness but it’s harder to be happy when these great digital tools we have take over our lives.

I was driving on Interstate 295 in New Jersey today in rush hour traffic observing many drivers face down into their cellphones while going 55 to 65 miles per hour.

Do not reject digital technology.

Take control of it.

• Set limits on when and where you will make and accept text messages, emails or social media connections.  And stick to it.
• Ban digital from dinner, have face time with people important to you and private moments away from digital availability.
• Focus on faces – look into the eyes of those you are with. 
• New rule:  anyone who is worthy of your time, gets 100% of your focus without distraction.  You decide who is worth this attention.  You can always catch up with your digital life later.  Maybe parents should rethink checking their cellphones at dinner with their children.

Just as the best marriages have togetherness and time apart in some kind of balance, our digital lives get better when we work at spending time away from devices.

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It’s no secret that people are less happy when their minds are all over the place than when they focus on living in the present.

Nothing – not even thinking pleasant thoughts about happy times – is more effective than doubling down on what you are doing right now at this very moment.

Living in the now is all well and good but it seems a lot harder to do on a regular basis in a world that is as distracted as ours.

One workaround is to stay busy and focused on something that is meaningful.  It doesn’t have to be major, just meaningful.

There are pills, potions, psychologists and psychiatrists to cheer up an unhappy mind, but a cheaper and more effective way to get a head start is to …

• Avoid living in the past – just visit there to learn so history does not repeat itself.  Once the visit to the past is over immediately return to the present.
• Avoid spending too much time in the future – go there to plan but keep in mind that the only real satisfaction comes from today – now.
• Worries are disturbing thoughts about the future – keep in mind that 99% of what we worry about will never come true and the 1% that does happens in a way different than we feared.

When we get ruminations under control whether past or present, we accomplish what previously may have been so elusive to happily dwell in the present.

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Gratitude and compassion.

No matter how hard you try to live a more meaningful, less stressful life, your most effective go-to weapons are gratitude and compassion.

Gratitude changes the way you are — even in adverse situations.  Change your internal wiring now to focus on being grateful.  Especially for things that most of us would never be all that grateful for.

Like the flu.

The flu will pass after it makes us miserable for a week, but the cancer a young boy or woman must fight is so much more serious than the flu, as much as we hate it. Therefore we can even be grateful for the flu.

When we work hard to find something to be grateful for in almost every situation, we are transformed.

The other fail-safe weapon is compassion.

We have a choice.

We can overreact to the anxiety that others direct our way or we could take a second and channel some much-needed compassion.

“It must be awful for her to have to be so nasty to her friends – she must be hurting”.

This is everything.

Two strategies that you can rehearse over and over again in daily life that will never disappoint.

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Millennials, born 1977-1996, are the most stressed generation of all. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s 5.4.

Baby Boomers, born from 1946 to 1964 are the least stressed but not by all that much.

The national average is 4.9 according to research from The American Psychological Association.

Our digital lifestyle and fast paced living helps contribute to stress and underemployment, unemployment, complicated relationships and anxiety over college loan debt.

Our bodies and minds are human, as Popeye used to say, “that’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more” so we’re all looking for relief.

Here are the best and most solid ways to do more than just put a Band-Aid on stress:

• Gratitude – Constantly recognize in real time your gifts.  Don’t wait until you lose them.
• Let go of that which you cannot control – I find this the most freeing thing I can do.  Take the leap.  You’ll live — with less stress.
• See the big picture – The most that stress can do is distract us from that which really matters to our happiness.  Never take your eyes off of the big picture.  Doing this reduces the noise that results from the anxiety of others.
• Forgive your enemies – and avoid the useless drama that stresses us out.  Try to have compassion for people who have to always make it about them, but don’t play into it.

If you are serious about putting a stop-loss on stress, rotate the above four concepts and see the difference.

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1. All dinners are to be enjoyed with cellphones turned off – including yours.
2. The family eats at least one meal – preferably dinner – together every day.
3. For every update of a social media site such as Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, commit to some type of equal and opposite contact with a real live person in your life.
4. Replace connecting with nurturing – this is how the human spirit is raised and how we feel fulfilled in our relationships.  It’s not how many contacts we make, it’s how authentic they are.
5. Do not reject technology – use it as the great tool of our generation – but do not immerse yourself into a digital lifestyle at the expense of in person contact.
6. When you are in the presence of another person, give them 100% of your attention.

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The fastest and most effective way not to play in to someone else’s drama is to postpone judging what you hear when they are speaking (or overreacting).

People who obsessively focus on themselves and their wants, needs and lives react instead of respond and who incite that special part of our brain that makes us do the exact same thing.

We are then held hostage by a person who is out of control.

When someone challenges you, think to yourself “It must feel awful to be that unsure of yourself”.  Or if a person makes it all about them, think “This poor soul is really needy.  I don’t like it when I feel needy”.

That’s when freedom comes.

Freedom from the histrionics of others, from disturbing and hurtful exchanges of text messages, emails or thoughts. 

When the conversation is all about the other person, postpone judgment on what they are saying – even if only for one second if that is all you can muster – and decide to relate to what is making the other person beg for such attention.

Do this and you are less likely to be drawn into selfish exchanges that ruin relationships.

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The average teenager texts more than 3,400 times each month.

And that figure is from 2011.

Up 300 alone from 2010.

Parents can’t point the finger of blame because as with everything else, they are teaching their children by example how to abuse digital devices.  In fact, research shows more adults than teenagers text while driving– a bad example to set for sure.

The average time we spend on a website is 20 seconds and the average number of websites a day that we visit is 40.

We are all living drive-by lives.

Things are so bad that Dr. Amit Sood, the physician who runs the stress program at Mayo Clinic says he attended a conference of meditation instructors where more than half were scrolling through emails and surfing the web during presentations.

This is insane.

The solution is to focus attention on the now.

No one is going to give up their digital devices but making them tools instead of a destructive lifestyle is our present day challenge.

Commit to focusing attention on what you are doing presently without distraction.

It’s a good way to bring balance back to your life and to teach those around you how to participate in life not just skate past it.

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When you’re out of work, can’t find a new job and the prospects look slim, it is easy to give up hope.

When you are still searching for that one soulmate with whom to share your life but you keep meeting the same person again and again, it’s understandable to become discouraged.

If you’ve been disappointed by someone close to you and feel this type of thing is happening too much, it is perfectly normal to want to throw the towel in.

We become depressed, forlorn and disheartened for good reasons.

But before you give up, try this one last thing.

Think like a champion.

In sports, players never walk off the field and say, this is getting to be too much.  They persist even if the loss they are enduring is discouraging and embarrassing.

Sleep it off, learn from mistakes and try again tomorrow.

For how long should you keep coming back to try again?

For as long as it takes to attain what you are seeking.

I am always most motivated by the thought that we learn more from failure than success so when you are on a losing streak, try to remember that you are practicing for your next success which will come in time.

Like sports, success is a game of averages. 

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Some people are hard to forgive.

Others don’t deserve forgiveness. 

Nothing in life is so painful than people who hurt others and yet when this happens to us, we often hurt ourselves more by harboring this animosity for years and sometimes to our graves.

That’s why it is helpful to view forgiving others as a gift to you. 

Not an open invitation to allow the same abuses to happen again and again.  Forgiving is not forgetting.

Almost every dastardly deed that hurts can be forgiven and the number one beneficiary is the person doing the forgiving. 

The alternative is to live life holding grudges and hurt feelings. 

Forgiveness is a gift to you.

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Internet social media entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk makes it a practice to meet people and do something for them.

In his own words Vaynerchuk told The Wall Street Journal, “In my career there have been 500 to 1,000 times when I approached someone, done something for him or her and then figuratively walked away.”

He expected nothing in return and benefited from the interactions that have aided his career and benefited his companies.

And the 5 or ten times that Vaynerchuk said people did the same thing for him, it was the beginning of a great relationship.

Effective networking is about patience and buildup – to use his words – not the close.

The secret to more effective networking:  be the first person in a network relationship to provide value.

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My USC college students used to worry away their senior year by suddenly having to deal with the prospect of full-time employment.

Lately, that prospect isn’t good and many people find themselves underemployed or unemployed.

Years earlier in a better economy, I knew a student who insisted he would not work for less than $70,000 a year.  He remained unemployed until he got a job working for his father at way less.

Once, my students asked me for the secret to getting rich in the music industry.  I promised them an answer at the end of the semester (I’m no fool). 

When I told them the secret to getting rich is not trying, they were incredulous.

Don’t try to make a lot of money.

Try to be excellent at what you do.

If you do, you win in two ways.

You are on the best path to rapid salary growth, but just as important, by making your life about being the best that you can be instead of the richest, you have the only real chance to attain both.

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Surveys show that most people fear speaking more than their own death.

But what is a worse fate that never seems to get surveyed is not living the life you want to live.

If money and power isn’t enough for many, then what is?

Being trapped in a relationship, a job, a life that is not the one you were supposed to have – the one you dreamed about before settling to pay the bills and feed the family — is a slow death of the spirit.

It’s not always practical to walk into your employer’s office and up and quit nor is it easy to extricate yourself from long-term relationships that have turned negative. 

And sometimes we’re born into a family that we can’t easily escape.

What we can do – right now – is make a priority of reimaging the life we want to live now.  Without that, we have no roadmap, no plan – no way to live that life.

When you ask the question “What is the life I was meant to live?” over and over again, it transforms unhappiness into the joy of fulfillment.

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CNN correspondent Miles O’Brien was on assignment in the Philippines a few weeks ago when his arm was crushed helping his crew access their equipment on a truck.

O’Brien’s arm needed to be amputated to save his life.

He is not bitter.

In fact, he says the treatment he got in the Philippines was probably the same as the treatment he would have gotten in the U.S.  So far as we know he didn’t sue his employer for workplace negligence. 

O’Brien suffers phantom pains in his arm (portions of it may be gone, but he feels like it is still there). 

Shortly after the accident, Miles O’Brien kept a previously scheduled date to moderate an event back in Washington at The National Academy of Sciences on climate change.  He said he had committed to host the event “obviously long before my accident”.

O’Brien has the same long road ahead of him that other amputees have (my father had his leg amputated later in life so I can relate to this story a bit).

By refusing to blame others or pity himself, Miles O’Brien is on his way to full recovery.  Or as he says, “this is a great opportunity for me to buy some really cool new gadgets.”

For the rest of us, do we have to lose an arm to say what O’Brien is saying?

“I’m alive.  I’m glad to be alive”.

If he can say it after his traumatic accident, what is our excuse?

Let’s be a little more glad to be alive today.

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It’s not money.

What they want is cheaper than that, in fact, available at no cost and brings even greater satisfaction.

It’s appreciation.

Workplace surveys have reinforced this over the past four decades.

This is not to say money is not important.  It averages fourth on the list of important things. 

Only fourth.

The ability to have a say in conducting their jobs usually ranks second in employee workplace surveys.

Appreciation is the real carrot at the end of the stick.

A good employer can use this need as a way to motivate and reward good workers.  Be cognizant that appreciation is more powerful than more money.

Sincere, honest appreciation or else it is just manipulation and that can backfire.

P.S. – Appreciation is the one thing that trumps everything at home and in our personal relationships, too, so any time you spend time and effort becoming better at giving appreciation, the happier everyone will be.

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Often unhappy employees complain that if they knew the real description for the job they were hired to do, they would have never taken it.

To test whether the job you accepted is the job you still want, try the following.

Write an honest job description for the job you now hold in your own words. 

Read it to someone you trust and ask what they think of that job? 

Then, most importantly, compare your “real” current job description to that which your employer described to you during the interview process.

If your present job is not everything they described in writing – or happily better – it’s time to search for new employment.

Work occupies the majority of hours in our daily lives.

We are happiest when that time leads to satisfaction and accomplishment.

Money is not the entire story.

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Employers today expect one person to do more than one job. 

In some industries such as radio, workers are routinely required to do many jobs for multiple stations often at the same rate they were paid for doing one job.

McDonald’s is answering an employee lawsuit that alleges practices such as requiring minimum wage employees to pay for their own uniforms effectively plunging their salaries to below the minimum.  There are also allegations that employees are asked to clock in, clock out and wait until the restaurant gets busy so they can clock back in again.

How to handle working in a world where enough is not enough.

You may find it helpful to think of your favorite sport.  In hockey, for instance, you would never jump onto the ice and play with less intensity because your contract is not going to be renewed or because you are underpaid.  You play hard for the entire game.

That’s our answer as well.

Play hard no matter what the circumstances.  No one can ask more. 

Appreciate the effort you are putting in with pride because it says a lot about you.

And if the conditions repeatedly are more than a good person can handle, seek employment elsewhere with the knowledge that even under duress, you are a person who gives a least 100%.

That’s how you deal with employers who expect more than is humanly possible and who break their employees’ will by creating unbearable stress.

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Love their mother.

Love their father.

And demonstrate it.

Express the perception of love for their other parent (your spouse) and you will be doing more than anything money can buy for them.

When it is not possible to demonstrate love due to a divorce or other relationship problem at least show respect.

Family courts are filled with parents willing to tear their spouses apart for one reason or another.  No one wins this battle and children of the unfortunate marriage suffer in many ways. 

Litigants and lawyers alike are fond of saying that kids are resilient but psychologists would question the extent of their resilience.

Out of bad marriages come good people ready to live and love again.

But where there are children in our lives in families that are still whole, the most important thing is to love your children’s mother or father.

And respect is the most powerful antidote to helping them live through divorce.

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Tomorrow, the first 20 people who you encounter – even strangers – look them in the eye and say to yourself “bless you”.

That’s a hint from the Mayo Clinic physician and author Amit Sood who has written books about the unlocked power of our brain.

Even if these people you encounter are in a worse mood than you are.

“Bless You” (silently).

If you think this is a whole lot of psychobabble, think again. 

Dr. Sood says taking control of your own mood improves it, may positively affect others without knowing what you’ve done and most importantly, “bless you” to the first 20 people you see each day patterns the pre-frontal cortex of your brain – the part that among other important things is responsible for your good moods and wellbeing.

Do you dare try it?

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