There are endless ways to reduce stress both physical and psychological and if you’re like me, we’ve tried them endless times without much success.

Here are the thoughts that work for me.  Perhaps they might help you as well:

1. Whatever is going on will likely be insignificant by tomorrow.  For everything else, there is courage.  Look back on yesterday’s stressors to see what I mean.

2. I’m not going to let what’s stressing me now run roughshod over me without a fight.  Often just saying those words is enough to break the stress.

3. The best stress buster is – whatever is worrying me or freaking me out has only a 1% chance of happening.  That’s true.  Psychologists say we worry about things that have a 99% chance of never happening.

4. When stress between two people becomes palpable, the solution is to communicate the best we can with the other person.  Taking the initiative is an automatic stress reducer and if opening a line of communication helps, then we achieve peace.  If others cross our safe boundaries, defending them is invigorating and builds our confidence.

Almost anything that involves putting stress front and center helps it from gnawing away at our health and happiness.

“My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened” – Michel De Montaigne

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Many times we humans know exactly what we need to do when faced with a problem.

We just don’t always do it.

To put it another way, our instincts are better than we give ourselves credit for.

For example, we often know when it’s time to look for a new job or career, but we stay longer than we know we should.

We sense when a relationship has gone stale because we often seek the help of a professional to help us through it.  Yet, we move painfully slow.  Many psychologists say by the time a couple gets to their office, it’s often too late.

We know when something is not right between us and loved ones or friends but we stew and avoid confronting the other person.

So if we know, why do we not act?

Courage is like adrenaline in a crisis.  It’s there when we need it.

I had a high school math teacher who told an unforgettable story about how he and his wife were in a rollover accident after which he had to lift the car off of his injured wife who fell out of the car to save her life.

No problem, adrenaline kicked in.  He was 5’6” by the way and it was a big car.

I’ve always looked at courage the same way.

When we need it most, we must let it kick in.  We must take action to confront what we know in our heart of hearts we must do.  It is always available as a tool.

“Pearls do not lie on the seashore.  If desire one, you must dive for it” – Oriental proverb

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It’s not really about making the boss like you.

Not necessarily getting another degree.

Not so much always working late.

Not even being the best and the brightest because sometimes even they aren’t the person a company can’t live without.

The number one guaranteed way to be the most valuable person in your company is to continually show your employer how you add value to the company.

It’s that simple.

Can you help make more money?  Save more money?  Come up with great ideas? Work skillfully with other people?  Bring the best out of people?

It’s relatively easy for employers to part with employees in the digital age because employees rarely see themselves as people who can add value to the company.  Instead, we tend to gather up skills, work long hours, stress ourselves out and in the end find that we’re not getting the compensation or security we think we’ve earned.

Add value to the company you work for in every way you can and on a consistent ongoing basis – this is the indispensible employee of tomorrow.

“Creating value is what distinguishes good employees from those you simply can’t do without. Creating value is what makes you irreplaceable” – Kelsey Meyer, Forbes

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If you’ve ever used or heard the phrase “if I knew then what I know now” you have come to appreciate the benefits of learning from the past.

History repeats itself because too often we fail to learn from it – it’s that simple.

To be shortsighted is to have a lack of foresight.

That’s why when people remarry, they often marry the same type of person they divorced. 

Why we keep taking jobs in an industry we know, instead of an industry that we’d like to get to know.

It is within our power this very day to start learning from the past and applying that wisdom to the future.

We’re often advised to live in the present and not the past or the future.

Sound advice.

But the past is replete with many lessons that are worth thinking more seriously about because the past is the road map that tells us where we’ve been and how we got there. 

The future is uncharted waters for even the most gifted predictors of what’s ahead.

Now is a great time to learn more about ourselves from where we’ve been and it can make all the difference in the world.

“Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward” – Soren Kierkegaard

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Whether you are spiritual or not, here is the best way to deal with life’s challenges.

“Do the best that you can and put it in God’s hands”

If you’re not religious, working hard to resolve a problem and giving up control is another way to look at it.

Many people do not believe that their lives are pre-determined and that how they deal with adversity doesn’t matter.

It does.

Out of bad comes good because working hard to grapple with life’s issues is transformative.

So, the next time you are faced with adversity, do the best that you can and put it in the hands of a higher power.

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Clinical psychologist Meg Jay says 30 is not the new 20.

And that 80% of life’s most defining moments happen by our mid-30’s.

The first ten years of a career, which usually begins in earnest during our 20’s has exponential impact on earning power – that’s how important that decade is.

The brain rewires itself for adulthood in the 20’s so as Dr. Jay says if you want to change it, that’s the time.

Our personalities change in our 20’s more than any other time of life.

Today, postponing this important ten-year progression is validated by society.  We’re making a mistake by telling 20-somethings that they have an “extra” ten years yet to accomplish the important things that usually begin in their 20’s.

But this applies to all age groups.

There is always tomorrow. 

We’re living longer.

We can multitask and cram everything in life in.

But it’s actually the opposite.

Whether true or not, the secret is to live as if today is the last day we have.  That feeds the urgency necessary to live life to the fullest and keep growing at any age.

“To achieve great things, you need a plan and not enough time” – Leonard Bernstein

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The difference between fear thought and forethought is that fear thought is the negative thinking that makes life worse for all of us and forethought is the positive way to realistically look ahead to deal with problems.  

Sometimes just knowing the difference makes all the difference.

When we fear the future, we get what we fear even though 99% of what we fear will never happen.

When we plan for the future, we are actively dealing with potential problems.

Fear thought paralyzes us.

Forethought empowers us.

Never spend a moment fearing the future because the odds are in your favor that your fears will never be realized although you may make yourself sick and unhappy.

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When I taught generational media at the University of Southern California, I used to share thoughts about life to my students in the final minutes of class.

Last week, one of my students posted it on Facebook for all her friends to see.  It was an inspirational passage about the freeing benefits of taking risks and I’d like to share it with you today:

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.

To reach for another is to risk involvement.

To expose your feelings is to risk exposing your true self.

To place your ideas, your dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.

To love is to risk not being loved in return.

To live is to risk dying.

To believe is to risk despair.

To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live. Chained by their attitudes they are slaves; they have forfeited their freedom.

Only a person who risks is free.”

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The more a salesperson sells me, the more I don’t want to buy. 

The more someone tries to win me to their way of thinking, the more resistant I become.

And we’re being sold something constantly through advertising, popup ads, search, billboards and those around us.

So here is the secret to getting someone to listen to you.

Listen to them.

The sales guru Tom Hopkins is known for teaching a technique where a “champion” salesperson gathers information and looks for validation before asking for the sale.

“Would you like it in red?”

“Yes”

“I’ll make a note of it”

Listening and not talking is the key to getting people to opt in on what you have to say, or what you think.

Listening is so hard.  It seems to be against everything we’re taught in life.  To pursue what we want and do it vigorously.

Ironically, the secret to influencing others is to be skilled at sincerely listening to them.

Here are 6 ways to persuade and influence others from Steve Bressert, PhD:

1. People are more willing to comply with requests (for favors, services, information, and concessions) from those who have provided such things first.

2. People are more willing to be moved in a particular direction if they see it as consistent with an existing or recently-made commitment which is why when shopping for a car you are asked “What qualities are you looking for?” in a car.

3. People are more willing to follow the directions or recommendations of someone they view as an authority.

4. People are more willing to take a recommended step if they see evidence that many others, especially similar others are taking or buying or using it.

5. People find objects and opportunities more attractive to the degree that they are scarce, rare, or dwindling in availability.

6. People prefer to say yes to those they know and like.

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.” – Dale Carnegie

Millennials – the 80 million or so people who are coming of age in Gen Y – have many admirable characteristics not the least of which is pursuing their dreams.

We’re never too young or too old to chase our passions in life.

There is no total number of dreams we are allowed.  Everything counts – home, work, relationships, friends, causes.  We can have more than one at a time.

Dreaming is not easily outsourced to another, it must come from within.  No one can have your dream of the future exactly the way you want it and no one other than ourselves should be asked to be responsible for it.

People who discourage should be avoided because the guaranteed best way to dash your dreams is to allow someone else to tell you what isn’t possible.

Is there a dream that you want to pursue?  If so, it will not find you.  You will have to find it.

Try this.

Name 5 dreams you have for yourself.  Think big – the bigger the better but they don’t have to be earthshattering.

Think “can” instead of “can’t”.

Start today and never look back until you fulfill your dreams.

“All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them” – Walt Disney.

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How long is it normal to mourn a loss?

As long as we are able to go on with our day-to-day activities there is no timetable on mourning.

Television’s “Mister Rogers” in an interview with Karen Herman once had the ultimate challenge.  I’ll let Fred Rogers tell it in his own powerful words.

“My greatest challenge?  I suppose to walk through the door and sing ‘It’s A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood’ when I have had a real sadness in my life. I had to go to Miami one hour after my father’s funeral because they were having a Mister Rogers Day there that could not be cancelled. We had 23 fifteen-minute performances in one day. I had to sing ‘It’s A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood’ for each one of them.”

Gratitude is the elixir for sadness.

The more grateful we remain, the more we can live life with all its up and downs.

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Organizational psychologist Adam Grant never turns down an opportunity to help others.

Grant is the youngest-tenured and highest rated professor at Penn’s Wharton School. He has published more papers in his field’s top journals than those who have spent a lifetime trying.

This guy is the opposite of the four-hour workweek.

A full inbox is an opportunity to help, not just tantamount to answering emails.

When you look to helping others succeed, you succeed.  No one ever failed who also helped another.

Grant says there are givers, takers and matchers:

“The takers are people who, when they walk into an interaction with another person, are trying to get as much as possible from that person and contribute as little as they can in return, thinking that’s the shortest and most direct path to achieving their own goals”.

“At the other end of the spectrum, we have this strange breed of people that I call “givers.” It’s not about donating money or volunteering necessarily, but looking to help others by making an introduction, giving advice, providing mentoring or sharing knowledge, without any strings attached”.

“A matcher is somebody who tries to maintain an even balance of give and take. If I help you, I expect you to help me in return. [They] keep score of exchanges, so that everything is fair and really just”.

If this intrigues you as it does me, try what Adam Grant does.  He hardly ever says no to the “five-minute favor”. 

Here is an interview with Adam Grant, author of Givers and Takers that describes the benefits and research that backs up the concept that helping others helps us.

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I’ve come across a powerful paragraph that jumps starts our ability to transcend living in the past or future so we can fully enjoy and concentrate on the now. 

I thought I would share this with you from Gina Lake’s “Living In the Now:  How To Live As The Spiritual Being That You Are”:

“The ego is always trying to improve on the present moment, but instead, it ruins it with its dissatisfaction. It tells us the present moment would be better if: “if I had more money,” “if I were in a relationship,” “if I were thinner,” “if I were better looking,” “if I lived somewhere else,” “if that hadn’t happened,” “if I hadn’t…,” “if I had…,” and on and on.  Those are all lies. None of those things change your experience of the moment unless you believe they do. If you believe you need anything else to be happy, you won’t enjoy the moment. You won’t really let yourself fully experience it. If you don’t believe you need anything more to be happy than what’s here right now, you discover you have everything you need”.

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The professional golf instructor Sandy LaBauve has a great way of balancing happiness with productivity.

Think of what is important to you as the four tires on a car.

It may be faith, exercise, family and work.  Substitute your own priorities.

What drives you?

Then – and this is the part that will help keep life in balance when one of these “tires” needs inflating —  you devote attention to the one that is going flat and pump it up.

That way you’re literally always in the driver’s seat in achieving all four of the things that make you happy and productive.

“Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals and values are in balance” – Brian Tracy

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The author Pico Iyer wrote a piece in The New York Times over a year ago that I have not been able to get out of my mind.

It was called The Joy of Quiet.

But joy is not the only benefit – it is increase productivity and a happier life.

Iyer wrote, “The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug”.

In 2007 Intel mandated 4 hours of quiet time every Tuesday morning for 300 engineers and managers.  No phone.  No email.  Most of those participating recommended that it be extended to others.

The average office worker, by the way, gets only three minutes of uninterrupted time according to researchers.

The average American teen sends 75 text messages a day.

And the average American spends at least eight and a half hours in front of some type of screen each day.

We’ve got no time to think, enjoy, interact or recharge.

Iyer suggests an “Internet Sabbath” every weekend – no online connections from Friday night until Sunday morning.  Okay, that’s not going to work for me.

There’s yoga, meditation and tai chi.

Long walks on weekends without a cell phone.

Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows about how much time we spend online, suggests that people who spend time in rural settings “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition.  Their brains become calmer and sharper”.

Even simply becoming aware that a lack of quiet is a problem empowers us to find a workable personal solution.

“When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself” – Marshall McLuhan

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When new drugs are tested, placebos are used to ferret out whether the drug actually works or whether people just think the drug works.

Depressed people can have a 30 to 50% chance of feeling better whether they take an actual anti-depressant pill or a sugar pill.

Hotel room attendants who were told that they were getting a good workout from their job showed a significant decrease in weight, blood pressure and body fat – all this in just 4 weeks. (Published in Psychological Science, 2007)

Four weeks of simply thinking they were getting a real workout.

Patients with an irritable bowel condition were given inert pills and told that these pills worked by a mind/body process.  The patients started feeling better.  In other words, the medicine worked even after patients were told it was a placebo.

Asthma patients who were treated with placebos said they felt just as good as if they inhaled the medicine albuterol.

The mind is more powerful than the body.

We can harness the power of positive expectations today and every day.

If you expect good to happen, chances are they will.

We already know that when we expect bad, it never disappoints.

So, cop an attitude – a positive attitude about something you expect will happen and see if it doesn’t work for you, a friend or a loved one.

“Human beings are not made to take shortcuts … You’re to live your life, moment by moment. Your life isn’t here to entertain you – it’s to be lived.” – David Rotenberg, The Placebo Effect

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Sports stars get to negotiate contracts every few years with new benefits, conditions, incentives and pay.

There is something alluring to being able to refocus our wants and needs every few years.  And that’s what I recommend in my book – become a free agent.

At the same time each year, get away from your routine and take inventory of what you want next in life.  Too often, we just stay at the same job or with the same group of friends because it’s the easiest or safest thing.

Even if you want to do next year what you did last year, signing a mental contract with yourself gives more meaning and commitment to the time you are going to devote.


And if a change is brewing, thinking of yourself as a free agent instead of a person looking for another job can be transformative.

I recommend an off-season (to take inventory of your goals), pre-season (to acquire the skills you’ll need), “the” season (to ply those skills) and post season (to achieve new highs).

I sign a one-year free agent agreement with myself every year after carefully considering my goals, desires and dreams.  My off-season is a one-week vacation at the Jersey shore, which allows me to think more freely away from my regular routine.

“Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it” – Katharine Whitehorn

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One of the most amazing and destructive foibles of human kind is that we seem to have an innate knack of focusing on what’s wrong in our lives rather than what is right.

Life is a constant challenge and maybe that is why we learn inadvertently to give more weight to the things that plague us.

Some experts say that excessively focusing on what’s wrong is actually a biological instinct that makes it harder for us to live in the moment.

As long as we are alive, we will experience more right than wrong.


Focusing on what’s wrong tends to add stress to our lives.

Retrain the brain to focus on the good things that happen – it is our right.

“Why not accept the right that is right and savor it” – Amit Sood

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Ever shop for a greeting card only to find that the words of another are not suitable for what you want to say?

Some of us express love by saying the words “I love you” and that’s great.

But there is another way – one in which your actions speak louder than those three words.

An act of love.

The father who slipped a note into the glove box of the car he bought his daughter just in case she was ever involved in an accident – a note that said “I’m not angry about any accident, I’m just happy you are okay”.

Not asking your son or daughter who got 4 A’s and one B, what the B was for.  They’ll tell you on their own and will appreciate the fact that you waited.

Two acts of kindness from you for every one act you observe in another.

Some of us are shy about saying words like “I love you”.  Providing the evidence makes it all the more meaningful.


“Actions Speak Louder Than Words”

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Down And Out

When things go bad, they often get worse instead of better.


This is because we are confronted with the entire dilemma all at once often making it difficult to change with one decision or in a short period of time.

In sports, when a team gets down by a considerable score, it’s almost always over.


Several years ago, the Philadelphia Flyers hockey club faced elimination from the semi-final round in The Stanley Cup Playoffs.  The Boston Bruins won three games and all they had to do was win one more to advance to the finals.

The Flyers did what only a handful of professional sports teams have ever done – come back to win a best of seven series when they were down 0-3.   Their coach, Peter Laviolette simply asked his players to win just one game.

And when they did, one turned into two.  Two into three and miraculously, they won the fourth to win the series and advance to the finals.


And that’s the secret.

When we’re down and out at work, at home, financially, in our personal lives – chip away and try to fix one thing first.


Small steps without discouragement are the way back.

“The elevator to success is out of order.  You’ll have to use the stairs one step at a time” – Joe Girard

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