A man in the hospital that I never knew taught me the greatest lesson about overcoming pain and disappointment.

While visiting a friend, my friend shared with me something I have remembered since the first day I heard it.

As I was trying to cheer her up, she wound up cheering me up by telling me of a young man who was in traction and forbidden to move his limbs for the best part of six weeks.

But it was his advice that resonated.

“I added up the number of days I was expected to be laid up and then figured out what percentage of my life this painful inconvenience would cost me.  And you know what, it was something like 0.0001 days of my expected life span”.

That’s how he reminded himself that while six weeks down and out is a sizeable inconvenience today; it is a very, very small part of his entire life.

The same applies to other health problems like the burden of chemotherapy.

Working in a job you don’t like but unable to find a new one – yet.

The perspective of time is a great healer in more ways than one.

Putting in perspective the bad break with all the time we are reasonably expecting on this earth is the secret to surviving short-term inconvenience long enough to get through it.

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us” — 
E.M. Forster

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There are many books on time management, goal setting and getting things done. 

But there are three words – just three words – that, if you make them part of your life, will produce better results that you might have ever imagined.

Organize.

Deputize.

Supervise.

Make a list of things you need to do and prioritize them.  The secret is to update this list all day in real time to focus on success. 

Make someone else responsible for some of the things you need to do.  Getting things accomplished requires teamwork and by asking people to help you, you empower them to succeed and do it gladly.  The key is to ask them.

Once you have someone helping you, take responsibility to turn to your list and see that each task or project is being performed satisfactorily.

This short course in effective management is attainable by the end of the day if you commit these three things to memory.

“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out” – Ronald Reagan

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When I taught Dale Carnegie, one of my adult students got so panicked in front of her audience that she ran down the aisle and darted out of the room never to return.

Studies have shown that more people fear speaking than death!

And it’s too bad because a little nervousness guarantees your success.

Let me repeat that:  a little nervousness guarantees that you will be successful whether you are speaking to a group, doing a presentation, meeting a new acquaintance for the first time or just about any situation that can cause anxiety.

I’d like to share with you the secret and if it works for you the way it works for me, I hope you will share it with others who are unnecessarily burdening themselves with negative stress.

Get your butterflies to fly in formation.

I have seen some of the finest professionals in radio, television and public speaking feel a bit of anxiety about doing a good job.  However, they have the attitude to keep the butterflies under control or as I like to say, flying in formation.

So don’t fear a case of nerves.

Welcome it because people who succeed know that a bit of nervousness means a lot of caring about success.

“Courage is not the absence of fear but the awareness that something else is more important” – Stephen Covey

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Parents usually have their children in their hearts when they want what’s best for them.

Fairly or unfairly, parents advocate for what they think is best.  To me, that’s fair game because it is eventually up to us to decide what we think are the right choices in life.

What’s tragic is when we allow others to live our lives.  And it happens all the time.

Those around us may want certain things for us.  How we should handle our careers, relationships, family and even personal interests.

That’s why today is a good day to stop living someone else’s life and start living our own.

What’s amazing is what happens almost immediately when we consciously take control of our life’s path.

It doesn’t need to take illness, or misfortune to wake us up.  It’s the prospect of feeling as if a burden has been lifted from our backs so that we are free to be fulfilled and happy.

Perhaps you or someone you know have dedicated their lives to not disappointing someone else. 

The best way to accomplish that goal is not to disappoint yourself.

“Tis’ better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else’s perfectly” — Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

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When you’ve tried just about everything and have decided to finally give up, consider this.

Edison tried 10,000 times (unsuccessfully) before he invented the light bulb.

Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper because he didn’t have any ideas.

Colonel Sanders tried to sell his chicken recipe to over 1,000 places before someone bit – seven years later he sold his fried chicken company for millions.

The first “Chicken Soup For Your Soul” was rejected by 33 publishers.

General Douglas MacArthur was turned down for admission to West Point not once but twice, but he kept on trying and was accepted the third time before his eventual march to military glory.

Henry Ford failed and went broke 5 times before he succeeded in making the Model T.

FedEx Founder Fred Smith got a C on a college paper outlining his idea for the successful delivery service.

And what was our excuse again for giving up?

Here are 50 more people who will inspire you to never, ever give up.

“I’ve failed over and over again in my life.  That’s is why I succeed” – Michael Jordan, cut from his high school basketball team.

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Perhaps nothing is more devastating than when we are disappointed by those closest to us – our friends, family, or colleagues.

All our lives we always wanted to believe these people would be there for us – stand up and speak up for us and yet when push comes to shove, most do not.

This can be the final blow in a relationship and it can launch a lot of understandable but needless negative self-talk in our minds.

The rule of thumb usually is when you’re riding high and happy, everyone around you is there for you.  In fact, some of them may be there because of you.

But when adversity strikes, people often choose to save their jobs, reputations and relationships even as we may they should also stand for us.

I have found this to be a most effective way in dealing with the feeling of betrayal from others.

A study was done recently about who tends to be saved when a ship sinks.  The study focused on numerous ship sinkings where 100 or more lives were at stake.

The findings are dramatic.

The captain gets off the ship last, right?  And the children get off first?

That would be wrong.

According to the findings, the crew gets off first (they know how), then the men, then the women and yes, the children are last.

The human condition is for one under duress to save their own skin first.

When I think of this graphic example, although I don’t like it, it makes me realize that when someone stands for us, be grateful.

When others disappoint, remember the Titanic.

                  “A good friend will always stab you in the front” – Oscar Wilde

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It’s hard to let go.

Maybe that’s why the world is filled with control freaks.  Maybe we are even a bit of a control freak from time to time.

But if you’ve ever noticed, control freaks are some of the unhappiest people in the world.  They can’t help themselves.  They just have to get their way to be happy.

Unfortunately, it makes them unhappy and it drives others away.  Think about it: the price of a relationship shouldn’t always be giving in to someone else.

The irony is that we gain control by giving up control.

So for one day, try this challenge:  see yourself as an enabler of others.  Actually try to let them have their way as much as possible without compromising your morals or ethics.

People I know who are able to let go and free themselves of the stresses and irritations of life, are active enablers of others.

We must stand by our principles but we can also enable others to stand by theirs.

“Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way” — Daniele Vare

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Why do we let others make us feel badly about ourselves?

And why do we forget good things almost as fast as we hear them?

This is backwards.

No one can make us think negatively about ourselves unless we allow.

And conversely, the most important weapon we have – that is rarely used – to combat the negatives comments, statements or attitudes we receive from others is remembering the good ones, erasing the bad ones immediately.

This is not to say we can’t work on being better – that’s actually life’s mission. More importantly, take control of the self-talk we allow in our heads.

Negative self-talk from others usually gets re-run by us – over and over again.

Pledge today to put a stop/loss on negative talk from everyone and let’s give ourselves a chance to be happy and successful.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” – Eleanor Roosevelt

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When we get hit with a problem, it seems like it’s always more than one at a time to add to our already growing list.

That causes stress that can actually force us to make bad decisions and prolong the grief.

But there is a better way:

1. Don’t try to solve a new problem on the spot, manage it.  Put it on a priority list with everything else. 
2. Resist the urge to solve the next problem that comes along.
3. Know the there are three kinds of problems and we would do well to know them inside and out:  the kind that can be solved, the kind that can’t be solved and the ones that for some reason or the other resolve themselves.
4. Put emotion in its place.  Getting emotional usually makes a problem more important than it may actually be.  Resist that temptation.
5. My favorite:  every time you chip away at an existing problem, try to see it as making a small payment one installment at a time as opposed to one giant move to make it go away.

“Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things” — Henry Ward Beecher

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One of the two teams that play in the Super Bowl has to lose.

At least one person loses each election, beauty contest or for that matter competing for future employment.

Disappointment needs to be owned – not ignored – because disappointment remains one of the most useful tools if we know how to use it.

May I share how I deal with it:

1. First night, sleep it off.  Don’t ruminate or over evaluate.  Rest first above all.
2. Be human, allow a chance to feel the disappointment but not for one moment allow that disappointment to be expressed as failure.
3. Then, focus on the great exhilaration that we are going to feel when we turn the disappointment into success.
4. Start gathering examples of disappointments that have been worth wading through – a second marriage, the better job you got when your dream job got away, the new friend that came into your life when a trusted friend hurt you.

Life is tough.

No one – not through power or money – can avoid disappointment.

It can be a great gift and very transformational.

The secret to rebounding from great disappointment is to eventually evolve into the positive person it can make us when we feel it, own it and come up with a plan to change it.

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope”  — Martin Luther King, Jr.

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My friend and well-known Philadelphia dj Michael Tearson shared both a heart breaking and heart warming story with me about the death of his wife, the love of his life – a person for whom he has found no replacement in the 18 years since she died.

They met, fell in love and married only to find out months later that his new bride, the former Lynne Pedersen discovered that she had advanced breast cancer.  Michael and Lynne lived like there was no tomorrow because there was no tomorrow.

She fought the good fight with her husband by her side but she didn’t lose her battle.  Yes, she lost her life but the two of them had what many people take for granted – a virtual moment in time when two people connect with each other in love and mutual appreciation.

In our world, we are often blessed with the long-term companionship of others.  I think if we thought about the uncertainty of time, we would conclude, as Michael Tearson has, that any time with the right person is better than lots of time with the wrong one.

It doesn’t take a fatal disease to make us appreciate the warmth, friendship and support of others, just the awareness to do so.

Michael Tearson and Lynne Pedersen is a love story – short in years, long on valuing the gift of time.

My thanks to Michael Tearson for allowing me to tell this personal story.

“You get what anyone gets. You get a lifetime” – Neil Gaiman’s character of death in the Sandman Comic Book

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When we’ve been hurt, it is understandable that it may take some time to put that hurt behind us.

Some people eventually do.

Some don’t.

The ones who don’t turn into the same person who hurt them in the first place when they hang on to the vitriol of being the victim as justified as it may be.

To be sure, we forgive others for our own sake not for the others.

The animosity of a divorce or child custody battle, an insult, a betrayal, a hurtful deed or lie – these things can make us crazy.

Forgiveness for one’s own sake is a freeing thing.

But forgiving does not necessarily mean forgetting.  Two benefits of not forgetting are to remember that this person hurt us in some way and the other is to keep in mind what the deed was so we can remain on the lookout for it in others.

Minnesota Wild hockey player Dany Heatley was deemed responsible for a car accident that killed his friend and then former Atlanta Thrasher’s teammate Dan Snyder in 2003.

But Snyder’s family was very supportive of their son’s friend and told prosecutors and the judge that nothing could be gained by putting Heatly in prison.  The judge listened to the family.

If the family of a son with so much promise who was killed in an irresponsible act of driving recklessly can forgive the driver, what’s our problem?

“We are all human beings and we know that humans make mistakes.  We do not lay the blame on Dany Heatley for the accident that took our son from us.  Forgiveness is also a part of being human and we know that there is nothing to gain from harboring resentment and anger toward others” – Graham Snyder

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I once saw a radio news director of a Philadelphia radio station get fired and after laying out the company’s case before he was actually fired his boss asked him one question – “Can you tell me why you shouldn’t be dismissed?”

Remarkably, his answer was “No”.

In the converse, I have often thought if we were asked, “Why should you get a raise” that most of the responses would be about longevity, loyalty and time spent working for the company.

What employers want to hear – in any economy – is that our value exceeds what they are paying us.

So an excellent way to set up the pay raise meeting is to ask ourselves to name 5 ways we can be more valuable than we are today.  List them.  Work them.  Achieve them.

Employees know even better than their superiors what it takes to be more valuable than what they are paid.

When that meeting occurs, mention the newly acquired skills and a brief example of each one of them.

Some companies plainly will not offer raises and if that turns out to be true of where you work, you can then list these 5 newly acquired valuable skills with the other advantages of employing you and take them elsewhere.

For 11 more ways to get a raise, click here.

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I love the wisdom of Dale Carnegie who said it best when he wrote, “If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically”.

For some reason human beings always want to be right but no one hits 1.000 in that department.

Admitting mistakes has even more value today than ever before because the emerging Millennial generation of which there are 80 million people coming of age puts a high value on authenticity.

The unbelievable hype of the Mad Men generation is no longer believed.

We want to know people who are real and who admit that they aren’t perfect.  In fact, the imperfections make our advantages look even more impressive.

So the worst thing we can do is to live like it’s 1999. 

Try for perfection.

Accept our best efforts.

And when we’re wrong, don’t waste an opportunity to be real and authentic.

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True friends are hard to come by.

We aggregate them on Facebook and gather them in our social circles but if we can count one true friend in our lifetime, we are extremely lucky.  Now, I’m not saying that the warmth and friendship of acquaintances is not valuable and rewarding.

I think you know what I mean.

We often overlook being our own best friend – the person who is always there for us, who never lets us down, who always tells us the truth.  Melody Beattie said, “If you want to meet the right person, you have to be the right person”.

And that applies to warm and close friendships.

So if we want to enrich our own lives, become your own best friend.

Some starting steps:

1. Laugh, dream, make plans.
2. Be positive and put a stop/loss on negative thoughts.  We can’t be our own best friend if we say negatives things about ourselves.
3. Instill in ourselves, the kind of qualities we would look for in a best friend.
4. Constantly move toward what we want to achieve – our dreams make us focus on that which is important.

“Stop looking out, start looking in, be your own best friend” – Van Halen

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Everyone has intuition.  Everyone.

Some of us don’t listen to our intuition because we may not like what we are thinking or we don’t have the confidence to believe it.

Intuition is that little voice inside that is never wrong when we allow ourselves to believe it.

When things work out well, few people say, “I heard a little voice inside my head”.  We usually refer to that little voice inside when we didn’t listen to it.

Nothing is more important than to consult with our own common sense before we make decisions.  And the more we do so, the more we build the confidence to hear even bad news from that little voice.

“I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us…if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do” – Christopher Reeve

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The human condition is that every time we do something wrong, we make a mental note of it.

And if we forget, there is always someone there to remind us.

The most valuable IOU has nothing to do with money or possessions; this one is issued for doing something right – something successful.

For trying and not giving up.

For a good idea or accomplishment.

Why is making an IOU to yourself (in writing, on your smartphone or in your mind) so valuable?

Because you can use them as needed the next time you take on a challenging task, hit a rough spot in life or feel like life is getting out of control.

I do this all the time.  Even a small success needs to be remembered for future use.  It’s a self-perpetuating motivational tool that always pays dividends.

“Self-suggestion makes you master of yourself” — W. Clement Stone

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Ever use the phrase, “I hear you”?

Take it to the next level.

Listen to what others are not saying.  The thing you didn’t hear.

Often people say what others want to hear or what is appropriate at the time.  Sometimes, we don’t feel comfortable sharing things that turn out to be critical to be properly understood.

That’s why the little known communication skill we should acquire is to listen to the other side of silence.

Try it today.

First listen (and that can be a major breakthrough because when we think about communication between individuals we often think of speaking not listening).

Then, look for the possibilities that the other person is not articulating.

If someone tells you that they are fed up with their girlfriend, boyfriend or mate, listen for what’s not being said (i.e., “I’m scared to leave and start over”).

If you hear, “I can’t stand this job” you might listen for what may not be said which could be “I have lost my confidence to do the job”.

And even if someone close to you says, “We never agree on anything anymore” listen for what may be hiding in the statement (i.e., “You don’t listen to me”).

“One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silences. Often secrets are not revealed in words, they lie concealed in the silence between the words or in the depth of what is unsayable between two people” – John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

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When I was once down and out in my career, a friend of mine, Malcolm Rosenberg, tried to lend me $5,000 to help me avoid losing my house. 

At first, I refused to take it because I could not at that point imagine how I would ever pay it back.

After several tries over several days, he said, “Take it, pay me back if you can.  I am betting on you”. 

Such a deal I could not refuse and because of his compassion and belief in me, I kept my house and survived long enough to catch the next big break.

I said what you may have said at some point in your life, “I owe you” and Malcolm’s response sticks with me even to this day.

He said, “You owe everybody and everybody owes you – that’s the way to think about it because you don’t need a good memory to do the right thing”.

We seem to have no difficulty investing in IRAs and securities, but it is just as satisfying to invest in other people.

No cash, no problem. 

Offer a service, an accommodation.

And always, constant reinforcement in terms of support.

Adopting the attitude that people owe each other even if it is not money transforms the way we think and act.

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The big question interviewers always seem to ask in one way or another, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?”

It is sometimes meant to be a trick question, but you should hope that they ask it.

The answer?

No one knows what will happen in five years.  I do hope to advance and achieve many goals along the way, but just as importantly, I want to make a difference today.

You’ve heard of living in the now.  This is working in the now.

Employers appreciate people who are honest and direct.  They like humility.  But they crave people who want to be of help immediately.

I can’t honestly recall being able to predict where I am today 5 years ago.  Too much changes – maybe even more today than ever before.

One thing never changes.

The desire to contribute from day one using the skills that you bring to the table now. 

This approach has worked for many of my USC students looking for their first post-graduate job and I wanted to share it with you for yourself, a friend or a family member.

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