Rebecca Marino took a break from her World Tennis Association career not because of the usual injuries that tennis imposes on a pro athlete.

But because of bulling from fans.

Marino was a rising star in tennis with an overpowering serve and a wicked forehand.  She climbed from a 192 ranking a year earlier to 38 seed by July of 2011.

But her quick ascent to stardom hit a bump in the road when Marino became the butt of cruel online and social media criticism from so-called fans.

Marino herself became addicted — not to drugs or alcohol — but to checking social media to see what harsh things these bullying fans were saying about her.  Finally, last February she took 7 months off from the sport she was so good at to deal with the insecurities she acquired from people she didn’t even know. 

Bullying is nothing new but because of social media and the ability of anyone anywhere to hurl hurtful comments at others, it is now an epidemic.  What’s worse, the bullying that used to be confined to the schoolyard or to a relationship is now open for the whole world to see.

Rebecca Marino is now back on the tennis tour but still sensitive about what is said about her.  She’s got all she can do to keep away from the criticism that is still out there on social media.  She has even returned to Twitter cautiously since giving it up during her time off.

Bullying stops when we say “no more”.

The push back doesn’t have to be physical, but it has to be forceful.  Take control of your life and don’t let anyone record hurtful messages in your psyche.

I just picture a digital chip implanted in my forehead as a visual reminder to not let anyone record negative messages in my brain. 

Marino’s advice on bullying:

“Don’t be afraid of the stigma of it, and talk about it.  There’s nothing to be ashamed of.  If you’re bullied or cyberbullied, or someone’s harassing you, it’s better to be open about it and talk to someone about it than to hold it inside.”

“When people hurt you over and over, think of them like sandpaper. They may scratch and hurt you a bit, but in the end, you end up polished and they end up useless.”  — Chris Colfer

I read an article recently, which asserted that teens who share their secrets are more confident in social situations than others who keep secrets to themselves.

So that’s what went wrong with my childhood!

About 79% of those surveyed in a Dutch study of 790 people said they shared at least one secret with parents, friends, teachers and neighbors. 

Students who tended to keep secrets to themselves were more likely to have increased rule-breaking behavior, illnesses, mood disorders and dysfunctional relationships.

In the study, girls shared more secrets than boys and were deemed more likely to reap the health benefits.

I don’t know if this applies to adults, but I’m thinking yes. 

Sharing secrets is less troubling and makes us happier.

This doesn’t mean go out and blab your innermost thoughts to the next person you see because it’s not that simple. 

Often we are troubled by that which eats us alive — the things that we needlessly keep to ourselves when sharing our secrets with a trusted person makes us feel better and healthier.

“Secrets are things we give to others to keep for us” — Elbert Hubbard

When stress and negativity starts creeping in, our lives are beginning to fall apart. 

Illness, relationships, employment, unresolved issues, loss — there is no shortage of ways that adversely affect our happiness.

Even when one problem is resolved, it seems something else pops up.

I’ve studied this all-too-frequent visitor to life — the lack of control — and have asked professionals their opinion on how happy, successful people respond when they feel their lives are beginning to go off track.

The “fix” is shocking perhaps because it is counterintuitive. 

Spiritual people turn everything over to God and if their faith is strong, that can effectively work for them.

But whether you are religious or not, the one way to defeat the awful feeling of life out of control is by saying this one line:

“I have no more control over this and I am incapable of dealing with it.”

Yes, admit defeat and declare victory.

That one line becomes a freeing thing.

It’s not that you don’t care, it’s just that you’re unwilling to keep paying a continued price for banging your head against the wall in an attempt to control that, which cannot be controlled.

Then move on. 

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t repeat this powerful line:  “I have no more control over this and I am incapable of dealing with it” and I thought when all else fails, you might like to try it, too.

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “If I didn’t have bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all”. 

That’s funny, but not true.

Blaming luck is a cop out of sorts – a way to see the negative side of things.

I know people – and I’ve worked with people – who seek out failure like a heat-seeking missile finds its target.  And I think they do it because of fear of failure.

If you blame luck, you don’t really have to take the chance of failing on your own.

If you read this space regularly you know I am a great believer that failure is actually the required precursor to success.  Tell me how many failures you’ve had and I can see a success coming.

Failure is a way to discover what works and what doesn’t.

A foolproof method of gauging your own desire and that of those around you.

“Lucky” people are rarely lucky.

Even those who think luck won them the lottery sadly find out that most big lottery winners become losers in life – losing their friends, family, job and, of course, the money eventually runs out leaving them destitute. 

You may prefer this great advice from Branch Rickey, one-time commissioner of baseball:

“Luck is the residue of design”. 

We make our own good luck.

Subscribe to This Feed – Free Updates by Email

Please share this email with your friends.

So the Postal Service is cutting out Saturday deliveries in August and somehow I can hear millions of people moaning about the email that is going to pick up the slack.

Even more junk mail.

More back and forth communication that used to be limited to fewer postings.

Gen Y has it right.  E-mail is so outmoded and yet we find ourselves stressed out over it.

There is so much volume and it’s not letting up.  Factor in Facebook, Twitter and other social media interactions and we conclude that what put the Postal Service out of business is putting us out of our minds.

So, here are some workarounds:

1. Open a new email address and give it out to others the way you would hand them a $100 bill – very selectively and infrequently.  Monitor this address the most once you have made the switchover.
    
2. Consider a new IOS app called Mailbox.  It’s a retro way of handling mail just like snail mail.  You can sort your inbox into three pretty neat columns.  But it’s a tool not a total answer.
    
3. You can answer your email at prescribed times each day but it might be better to refer back to #1 and start over.  A lot of email even handled twice a day can be stressful.
    
4. Try to make emails Twitter length where possible.
    
5. Sometimes the seemingly endless back and forth to, say, make an appointment might be better handled with a short phone call.

The answer is to take control of something that started as good and has now become a nightmare for many.

“I don’t believe in email.  I’m an old fashioned girl.  I prefer calling and hanging up” – Sarah Jessica Parker

Subscribe to This Feed – Free Updates by Email

Please share this email with your friends.

It is amazing how many beginners are lucky.

If you’ve wondered why that is, perhaps it is because beginners are not really lucky.

They are fearless.

The more we fear failure, the more we fear what it takes to be successful.

When we start something new – such as a new job, a new hobby, or a new interest, our best days are usually in the beginning before we hear the negative attitudes of others, or even worse – the repetitive words of constraint.

What can’t be done. 

What’s too expensive to consider. 

What someone else might not want.

You could say Mark Zuckerberg had beginner’s luck when he invented Facebook in college.  

But it was no accident. 

It was a lack of fear.

So beginner’s luck is a misnomer.  It should really be called beginner’s fearlessness.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few” – Shunryu Suzuki

Subscribe to This Feed – Free Updates by Email

If you liked this thought, will you help tell others about us and share it with your friends?

A friend of mine took me to lunch in his new car.

It was a brand new Cadillac.

I complimented it and wished him the best but I got more than a pleasant lunch that day.  I learned an important lesson.

He was a business owner/salesman who relied on his own work ethic and ability to sell himself to make a living.  And here is what he told me:

“I bought this car because I exceeded the sales goal I set for myself in the beginning of the year.  I knew if I could hit that goal, I would make enough to reward myself with a new car.”

But I asked him was there ever a time when he set a goal and fell short.

His response:

“Last year – which is why had I picked you up for lunch then, we would have been driving there in my old car.”

His advice:

1. Even if you get close to your goal, do not give yourself the reward anyway.  Getting close is such a strong motivator, you will actually more than exceed your original goal once you’ve fallen short.
    
2. Choose a reward that can be well defined – like a car, a vacation, a full day at the spa, etc.  The more tangible, the better.
    
3. Once you earn your reward, be mindful every time you think of it or use it (as driving in his car) that the material reward represents something more important – your commitment to work toward your goals.

Or as Confucius said:

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps”.

Subscribe to This Feed – Free Updates by Email

If you liked this thought, will you help tell others about us and share it with your friends?

The 2007 Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman movie The Bucket List contributed a few words to our vocabulary based on a wish list conjured up by two men who were terminally ill and wanted to embark on a road trip before they “kicked the bucket”.

The term “bucket list” has now been borrowed by the rest of us as a way to formulate a wish list of our own without the exclusive motivation of dying. 

The concept of 10,000 Things to Do Before You Die is also a bit wanting.

There’s nothing wrong with fantasizing and you never know, you may actually do something you would have not done had it not been for your bucket list.

But bucket lists should also be all about sharing your life and doing fulfilling things – not just focused on one person.

A better alternative to the bucket list is to live each moment to the fullest.

The things we do for ourselves, families or friends is not a sacrifice but a privilege.

Here are some ideas from wikiHow to live like there is no tomorrow:

1. Listen to music and enjoy it. Express yourself by dancing to it or singing along.
    
2. Participate in active conversation and engage in the subject matter with another human.
    
3. Forgive. Many of us carry grudges with us that haunt us, and those grudges also prevent us from opening our hearts to others because we’re scared of getting hurt again.
    
4. Children don’t worry about the future; they play and enjoy every moment for what it is. They haven’t yet learned to think ahead or mull over the past, so take the opportunity to learn from them.
    
5. Watch your breath, by noticing your breathing pattern your mind naturally quiets and pays more attention to the present moment.
    
6. Think about how happy your good deed could make someone!

Sometimes the fantasy of the future is found on no list at all. 

Subscribe to This Feed – Free Updates by Email

Please share this email with your friends.

Can you remember where you were 5 years ago? 

Who you were with?  Where you lived?  What your routine was like?  Your hopes?  Your fears?

One way to better understand how unpredictable life can be is to take yourself back 5 years and see if you could imagine being where you are today.  Most people could not.

Looking ahead can be useful but to really see what the future has in store for us is to respect how impossible it is – even for very smart people – to see even a year in the future.

5-year plans are useless.

Being docile and ready to respond (not react) is the skill we should shoot for.

This blog was not in my purview one year ago.  A change in where I live was not on the table.  I could not anticipate the new friends I met over the past 12 months that would change my life or the ones I lost to death.

The irony of life is that the future is impossible to predict.

In fact, predicting it is vain and senseless.

A better use of our time is to:

1. Prepare for the future by being able to deal with problems that invariably will crop up.
    
2. Act with ease on opportunities that occur and live with a sense of wonder that life is not a time tunnel but an adventure, which means when we fail, we get up and resume the quest.

Subscribe to This Feed – Free Updates by Email 

Please share this email with your friends.

Can’t and its cousin “cannot” should be banned from our vocabulary.

When I hear a person say can’t, I translate it to mean “I won’t”.

And that person is often me not just everyone else. 

One of the most overused words in our lives is “can’t”.

Coaches tell their players they can.

Teachers tell their students you will.

Dreamers tell themselves I might.

We are the sum total of what we think so ban the use of the word “can’t” for one day and see how much positive energy you create.

“Never say ‘I can’t.’ ‘I can’t’ is a limit, and life is about breaking through limits. Say ‘I will’ instead.” – Heather Vogel Frederick 

Subscribe to This Feed – Free Updates by Email

Please share this email with your friends.

Amit Sood is a remarkable man.

A physician at Mayo Clinic, Chair of the Mind and Body Initiaitve and Associate Professor of Medicine.

I have never seen a better case made for forgiving others than Dr. Sood makes in 14 pearls of wisdom.

I am anxious to share my discovery with you.

How to Forgive:

1. Consider forgiveness a life long process. Quick fixes are not likely to work.
    
2. It is okay to be selfish in forgiveness.  You forgive because you wish to heal and stop the pain.
    
3. Broaden your worldview to include imperfections.  Include the existence of evil which we must face in our lives.
    
4. Try to understand other’s actions.  See things from the other person’s point of view.
    
5. Consider forgiveness as an opportunity.  Take this as an opportunity to grow rather than hamper your progress.
    
6. Exercise the privilege to forgive as soon as you recognize the need for it.  Nurture the intention to forgive.
    
7. Forgive gracefully without creating a burden on the forgiven.  Don’t use forgiveness to advertise that others have been wrong.
    
8. Forgive before others seek your forgiveness.  Forgiveness is for you not for them.
    
9. Look forward to forgiving.  Do not consider forgiveness a burden.
    
10. Extend your forgiveness to what even may transpire in the future.  If you can forgive and accept future annoyances you have inoculated yourself against future suffering. This does not mean you will allow indiscretions.
     
11. Praying for others increases your ability to forgive them.
     
12. Prevent future situations where you may have a need to forgive.  Lower expectations, clearly communicate these expectations, keep an attitude of internal acceptance or disappointment if these expectations are not met.
     
13. Lower your expectations.  Low expectations avert disappointments.
     
14. Have a low threshold to seek forgiveness that is not just about forgiving someone else. Seek forgiveness from others if you think it is reasonable and might help.

“The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong” – Mahatma Gandhi

Subscribe to This Feed – Free Updates by Email 

Please share this email with your friends.

Bill Taylor showed up unexpectedly at my recent media conference.

I was worried about the flu.

He had just had a session of chemotherapy for a hereditary cancer that was recently diagnosed.  

Earlier Bill apologized for having to skip this year’s event but he changed his mind and brightened my day and that of those who he encountered by showing up to participate as usual.

There’s a new book called Picture Your Life After Cancer, which deals with the process of living life after a cancer diagnosis.

No one wants this dreaded disease, but it is remarkable the number of people who turn cancer into a positive way to live life in the present – the way we all must.

But why wait?

• Focus on enjoying even the smallest things in life.
   
• Do what you have put off – take that trip, spend time with your family, set another goal.
   
• Being forced to live one day at a time is not a direct result of the disease, it is exactly how everyone else – healthy or not – must live their lives, too. They just may not know it yet. 
   
• Optimism is as important as medicine, which is why almost to a person cancer patients are so positive, so determined.

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things”  — Robert Brault 

Subscribe to This Feed – Free Updates by Email

Please share this email with your friends.

Did you see what a power failure did to the Super Bowl game?

Everything was going along great for the Baltimore Ravens when the lights went out.  That was 33 minutes for them to stand around and think about how close they were to winning the Super Bowl over the San Francisco 49ers.

And the 49ers who were losing by 28 to 6 when the power failed, had a lot of time to realize that they were running out of time to put some points on the board.

Golfers hate to wait because then they have too much time to think.  Their muscles react differently and their minds can lose focus when they have to wait for the group in front of them to move along.

Time is always an asset.

Momentum goes to the person or people who can use that time to stroke the fires of positivity and not let in the doubts of fear.

I used to take my kids to the Flyers hockey games in Philadelphia and sit them on my lap observing with them what often happens on the ice when a team rolls up a comfortable lead.

It gets too comfortable.

And the other team uses the lack of time to make something positive happen – anything.

In our lives, momentum changes constantly.  When we feel like we’re on a winning streak, nothing can seem to stop us.  And when everything is going badly, it seems things will never get better.

Time is on your side when you don’t think too much about failing.

Just trying harder.

Which is why there are so many upsets and near upsets in sports and why people confuse too much time for too many fear thoughts.

Subscribe to This Feed – Free Updates by Email

Please share this email with your friends.

The Super Bowl is a time for parties and social gatherings that are as big as the event itself.  It’s a great time to try out a few new skills: 

1. Try talking to one or more people about themselves and not you.  You’ll see that the fewer words you say, the more the other person will like you.
    
2. Text in private while at social events – the bathroom, the corner away from people, outside.  For a few hours, try to be all-in by focusing attention on the others you meet.  I like texting a lot, but it is ignorant to text at a social event.
    
3. If you’re not good at names, try this:  meet someone new?  Hear their name and repeat it frequently in conversation.  See how good it makes them feel and you.
    
4. Follow up with a note, a card, a text or a Facebook message to people you have enjoyed and don’t forget the person whose hospitality you relied upon for a good time.

I’ll have a lot of time to practice these skills again this year as The Eagles will be socializing like me instead of playing football.

Thanks for sharing my pieces that touch you with others.

Sign up for free daily delivery here.

When I was a radio program director in Philadelphia, a listener visited the station to complain. 

Not about the programming, but the fact that because of a war injury that required a metal plate in his head he couldn’t turn the station off in his head.

You see, there was an array of broadcast towers next to our studios and unfortunately he lived next to them.

I never forgot that man because in many ways we are all like him when we let people into our heads 24 hours a day.

Sometimes it’s nice but too often the messages we carry around and repeat over and over are hurtful and unproductive.

Here’s what I do:

1. I picture a digital recorder like the one on my iPhone sticking out of my forehead.  It records everything that I hear in life.  But only I can record on it. No one else gets to push the button.
    
2. Even compliments are not allowed directly in – I appreciate them and record them in my own brain as validating good traits I know I have.
    
3. There are no messages in my brain that I have not recorded.
    
4. The only time a fault is worth pointing out is if you record it yourself otherwise it is unfiltered criticism.

If we reinvent the way we talk to ourselves, others will take their rightful places in in our lives and we will constantly feel good about who we are.

Thanks for sharing my pieces that touch you with others. 

Sign up for free daily delivery here.

He was one of the best hitters in baseball. 

Musial was so well respected that he had not one but two statues built in his honor outside the Cardinals Busch Stadium in St. Louis.

Musial won seven batting championships, hit 474 homeruns and got 3,630 hits in his career and a career in which he was never thrown out of a game in 22 seasons for arguing with an umpire.

He was such a great guy that 50’s era pitcher Johnny Antonelli reportedly said, “Stan was such a nice guy that I was probably happy for him when he homered off me.”

“Stan the Man” as he was known was a gentleman who had a quality all of us cannot get enough of – humility.

We live in a self-absorbed world. 

We collect Facebook friends just for clicking and document our lives in social media as if we won seven batting championships.

The quality that is so elusive is also so attractive – it’s the one we should all aspire to.

Humility.

“Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real” – Thomas Merton.

Thanks for sharing my pieces that touch you with others.

Sign up for free daily delivery here.

See if you can guess who said this:

“I call, I cling, I want – and there is no One to answer – no One on whom I can cling – no, No One.  – Alone … where is my faith – even deep down right in there is nothing but emptiness and darkness – My God, how painful is thus unknown pain – I have no faith”.

In researching my book I was surprised to discover that these words were said by Mother Teresa who is now being considered for sainthood for her work with the poor lepers of Calcutta.

If that great woman could question her faith in a higher power, what are the rest of us to do?

Finding your higher power is not an exercise of religion.  It’s a necessary means for transforming into a life well lived.

It matters not whether we have an official religion or any religion at all.

But we must have faith.

And questioning it is a good thing.  It means we take faith seriously.

For as Sir William Osler said:  

“Without faith a man can do nothing, with it all things are possible.”

And Scott Peck said,

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled.  For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”

Thanks for sharing my pieces that touch you with others.

Sign up for free daily delivery here.

A recent Wall Street Journal article on the power of concentration raises the issue of the importance of focused concentration.

The article says, “The world’s greatest fictional detective (Sherlock Holmes) is someone who knows the value of concentration of ‘throwing his brain out of action’ as Dr. Watson puts it.  He is the quintessential unitasker in a multitasking world.”

I had a freshmen student in one of my USC music class who visited my office one day and announced, “I have four different kinds of ADD”.   When I said, “Well, you’ll be able to overcome them, I’m sure”, he put me in my place by saying, “It’s not a disadvantage.  It’s an advantage.”

And so it was for that “A” student.

We’re becoming too obsessed with meditation, concentration and the ability to focus.  Not that these things are bad.  Meditation, for example, has many benefits.

My A.D.D. students were very bright.  They just approached things differently.

There is no one way to think, to decide, to learn.  I know that I became a better speaker when I learned new ways to teach students with attention deficit or what we should probably call Attention Positive.

After all, we all have it in some way in the digital age.

That’s why we advance our TiVos past commercials and click off of our iPods before the song has ended.

What really matters is to judge people by what they are, who they are and what they accomplish – not the method by which their minds work.

Subscribe to This Feed – Free Updates by Email

Please share this email with your friends.