Allen Stone was an iconic, longtime newsperson on WFIL in Philadelphia when one Sunday, the station’s programming suddenly changed from adult music to top 40 and Stone’s career on Monday morning was thought to be over.

The dean of newscasters was told in no uncertain terms that the new rock-and-roll news format that involved loud voices, short sentences, screaming, yes screaming – would be beyond him.  After all, he was a dignified adult newscaster.

Stone asked for a chance – one week to prove that he could do it.

Within hours everyone knew Allen Stone could not only do it, but set a high bar for his younger associates to rock the news.

What if he never asked?

What if they never gave him the chance?

Life is a continual audition – always be prepared to ask for the chance to show your stuff.

Living with a sense of purpose has been shown in studies to add years to life and improve happiness.

A recent article in The Washington Post put it bluntly:

“In his 1946 book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” the Austrian psychiatrist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote that belief in something “external” — potentially as mundane as unfinished work, or the hope to reunite with a loved one — helped prisoners survive.”

Getting through the day is admirable but not purposeful enough to reap the benefits.

Younger people live happier, older people live longer.

What is the purpose that drives you?

Did you hear about the 23 year-old Italian woman who was mistakenly given six doses of the Pfizer vaccine at once by a distracted nurse?

Sounds like the patient may have been distracted as well as she sat there for the six jabs – six!

Healthcare workers may be forgiven considering the stress that they have been under but this illustrates the stressful world we’re living in – it’s not just the person in the car ahead of you texting when the light turns green.

You can’t just stop distractions because our minds live in a distracted state 24/7 – multi-tasking is working by distractions and it’s considered normal.

Rest is the key to better focusing – the mind can only take so much and then it needs a break.  Changing activities, refreshing your mind and putting the brakes on a life that is aroused by interruption.

An average 41.5 texts sent or received every day.

Over 120 new emails a day with most people responding to only 25% of them.

Over 560 billion texts sent every month globally.

Focus does not require concentration — it begs for fewer distractions.

Phil Mickelson who won the PGA Championship this year one month before his 51^st birthday is the same person who fought bad luck, trouble of his own creation and adversity in his career.

A lefty who was never supposed to win a major just keeps on winning through physical problems, the cancer of his wife, Amy, some classic meltdowns, a few unfortunate comments from his own mouth and his age.

Even non-golfers were taken with his PGA victory recently – some because they wanted the “old guy” to win at the younger person’s game and others because of the pure theater when he was rushed by fans as he approached the final green.

Comebacks happen when you expect them not because they surprise you.

The person who underestimates the potential of others overestimates their own ability.

Some of the most accomplished, famous and successful people in the world were marginalized by those who for one reason or another were not able to accurately gauge

the strong will of another to succeed.

A person who can recognize the good in others guarantees to raise their own ability simultaneously.

The brain tires out at about two hours.

This explains why it is so difficult to focus.

And we spend 80% of our day in the default mode of tired brain at which point we make more mistakes, become less efficient and turn to stimulants.

So, today’s DayStarters suggests that we live like an air traffic controller.

Work two hours on and then 45 minutes off to rest, rewind and refocus.

We can have 1.5 at the most intimate friends (it’s an average).

5 close friends.

15 best friends.

50 good friends.

150 generic friends.

500 possible acquaintances.

1,500 known names.

5,000 known faces.

A new report in The Atlantic says there are different kinds of friends and that we can have between 100 and 250 with 150 being the average total.

Not all friendships are equal.

The question is: are we spending the appropriate amount of time on the intimate, best and closest friends where the value is greatest or dissipating our efforts over all types of friends even though they may not be as personally rewarding?

Live like there is no tomorrow but savor each day along the way.

All we have is now – the past is useless, the future not assured.

Live life like there is no tomorrow does not mean live recklessly.

It means live today like it is your last day.

Not to get it all in but to eat it all up.

Amazingly the most common regret for people at the end of life is not that they don’t have more time but the time they previously wasted.

Sometimes you’re ready for a restart.

Products often relaunch to freshen them.  Homes get redecorated.  We change jobs.

Restart also works for personal.

First hit delete – careful to eliminate the things that you want to improve, get away from or prevent from happening again.  In other words, delete before adding to your personal life.

Then protect the things that you don’t want to change.

I know people who have survived serious surgeries that want to live their future life in a different way.

People who want to change what they do for a living who have made sacrifices to find something that reinvigorates them.

Even people in relationships who want to improve them or cancel them before the rest of their life slips away.

Restart is a second, third or fourth chance and worth it if gets you to happiness.

A new study out of Germany indicates that people who claim to feel younger are healthier, less stressed and live longer than those who bemoan their age.

People who may otherwise be healthy but feel old lose cognitive abilities, have more life threatening inflammation and feel the ravages of stress.

Stress is killing all of us – this is a fast world we live in and there are lots of pharmaceutical solutions, online counseling and physical solutions that people have been turning to.

For free – no fees or cost of entry – a youthful attitude is a proven life extender and answer to the stresses of our digital world that are not going away.

Providing that Henry David Thoreau was right when he said none are so old as those who have outlived their zest for enthusiasm.

Perhaps you heard about the dog who flunked out of service school – part golden and part lab.

Sheldon was trained as a service dog but the gregarious dog has been certified in State Farm’s arson dog program and can detect a Molotov cocktail in about 30 seconds.

He made a better arson dog than a service dog.

Same concept is true for the two-legged species – never give up, keep trying because success isn’t always about being able to predict what we will be successful at as much as what is our special thing.

I’m saving the story of Sheldon for the next time I feel discouraged by barking up the wrong tree.  Read about Sheldon here.

When we talk too fast, we make it easy for others to ignore our message.

When we are not deliberate when talking about things that are important, we missed an opportunity to communicate.

When asked “what do you think?”, try responding slowly and adding “what do YOU think?”

As counterintuitive as it may sound in our fast paced world, slow and steady still wins the race in communication in spite of the noise, connectivity and self-centeredness.

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

Actually, dreaming is easy – making good on them is the hard part.

Tenacity.

The willingness to go it alone even (and especially) when others don’t see yours.

The willingness to fail, learn and reboot.

A plan.

A plan is the Google Maps of a dream, where is it, how do you get there, how long might it take and what other things will you come across on the way.

NASA Astronaut Mark Kelly spent 340 days in space and had plenty of time to think about loneliness.

His advice.

Keep a journal.

Stick to a schedule.

Go outside (not easy for an astronaut in space).

Get a hobby.

People who are constantly around others are also lonely and we haven’t even begun to know the consequences of “social distancing” which is now an accepted term in our vocabulary when we probably meant “physical distancing”.

In 2018, a year ahead of the pandemic, Cigna did a survey that discovered 54% of the 20,000 people they surveyed reported feeling lonely.

A year later that number rose to 61% with 18-22 year-old members of Gen Z feeling the loneliest.

Astronaut Kelly’s article on his time in space is here.

Just weeks after Apple made active a new feature that allows users to opt out of ad tracking, only 4% are choosing to allow Facebook, Google and others to invade their privacy.

So, it turns out people really care about being watched in a world that has cameras everywhere.

Steve Jobs said “Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain language, and repeatedly.”

Seth Godin calls it “Permission Marketing”.

To individuals it is the courtesy of asking first and assuming nothing.

If there is a lesson watching big tech companies scramble to force users to let them be tracked, it might be that “asking first” for anything is what people really want.

A new study from Denmark concludes that children who grow up near green spaces may have a lower risk of developing ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).

Less green means more chance of developing ADHD in early childhood.

One advantage of the pandemic is that families rediscovered each other, did simple outdoor things together and most importantly, spent time away from their mobile devices.

We’re going to recover from the pandemic – it’s happening now.

But will we recover from the all-encompassing world of social media, connectivity and self-imposed social isolation.

They say before you can change a habit you have to replace it with a better one and now there’s evidence that experiencing the green of outdoors is a step in the right direction.

I have no need to be respected by people I don’t respect.

Chasing after their approval is a fool’s errand.

A better use of time is to build respect from yourself, the other type will follow.

Discussions are always better than arguments, because an argument is to find out who is right and a discussion is to find out what is right” – Buddha.

One of my DayStarter readers, Henry Harrison, sent this along because it’s popular today to use the phrase “we need to have a conversation about that”.

It is just as important to make that conversation a learning experience for all and not an exercise about who will eventually prevail.

When the coach of an NHL hockey team was asked at a post-game conference what he thought of his goaltender’s big mistake that cost the team the game, he did not fall for the bait.

Instead of criticizing the player, this coach said the goal was probably one that his goaltender probably would have wanted back.

Direct criticism has the effect of firing up the instinct to defend ourselves.

But indirect criticism like the words of this coach allow those being criticized to be less defensive and more willing to listen.

I don’t know about you but 20 years ago when I finished my work during the week, I had the weekend off.

I never opened my laptop – in fact, rarely took it out of my bag.

Today life is more complicated – if you turn off digital communication, you will certainly have to deal with it later.  If you leave it on, you’re always on.

The reason we like vacations is because they force us to change our routines, to simplify them and give us a break from all the things that accumulate in our lives that weigh us down.

While we can’t have a vacation every day, we can adopt the vacation attitude – change the routine if only in a minor way, find a different way to work.  The great WLS Program Director John Gehron takes pictures on his different walks to work in Chicago.

There’s a vacation in Hawaii and then there’s a vacation from every day hum drum that keeps us balanced with always being on.