If you practice the wrong thing, you will get good at something that doesn’t matter.

• Practice time is precious – think about what is worth your time and effort.
• Find what makes the most difference in your life and come up with a plan to improve your skills.
• Time spent toiling is not the same as time spent improving.
• Repetition is your enemy without a proven plan and an end goal.

Knowing what is right and what is wrong is worth more than spending hours chasing an ill-defined dream.

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Think of the past as a file that we retrieve but must return to its proper place to avoid living there permanently.

The future is where we go to plan, a necessary journey but one that still requires that we return to the present to get it started and see it through.

The present is all we are guaranteed – it’s where we live, it’s what we have and it’s the best place to reside.

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Teachers divide their year into two semesters, coaches often divvy the season up into smaller sections where they can start fresh if things don’t go the right way.

Dividing can multiply productivity.

The reason most people choose to do the easy things on their to-do list is because they don’t take long to complete even if more consequential time-consuming things remain neglected.

The trick is to divide the larger, more complex and usually more impactful things in life into smaller more bit-sized tasks.  This is what super achievers do because it is human nature to put off large projects because they take more time than most people have.

Are we working smart or working to harvest the easy stuff first?

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I forgot my phone the other day – left the house without it, went about my business and for some odd reason I was so busy or distracted that I didn’t notice.

I did have my watch on with email and other capabilities but, apparently, I didn’t look at it while I was out.

When I returned, I sat down, reached into my pocket when I realized that I must have lost my phone (I didn’t). The panic of being separated from my phone was real and I don’t have to tell you the thought was terrifying.

Then when I found it being charged, I felt proud that I could leave the house without it and survive.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to do this again or say how great it felt to be away from constant contact.

But I did learn something.

I can live without my phone, but my phone can’t live without me.

It works for me not the other way around.

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After my daughter’s wedding, my wife Cheryl and I were stressed so we attended an 8-hour stress-free living seminar with Mayo Clinic physician Dr. Amit Sood in Phoenix – not a moment too soon.

He started by telling the assembled group that we need to meditate at which point I raised my hand and said I have tried and can’t do it – many other attendees attested to the same thing.

Dr. Sood was not referring to the process of meditation where you empty your mind but instead the type he espoused where you fill it with thoughts of joy and gratitude.

What is it about gratitude that is the best “drug” available for what ails us.

Today, as I share this moment, I can reaffirm that when things go south – problems, stress, the feeling of being overwhelmed, the simple act of thinking about both who and what you are grateful for, can go a long way to brightening a dark mood.

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I learned to hate bullying when I was a young teenager and the bully of my neighborhood somehow got me to part with some of the best parts of my baseball card collection to trade for his lesser ones.

His name was Butch, you can’t make this stuff up.

To this day, I can feel the pain, the loss and the embarrassment of being snookered out of one of my youthful prized possessions.

The bullying didn’t stop there and when it became physical, I picked myself up and went crying to my mother who told me to go out and push him back – it worked.

He was so much bigger.  I was so skinny but it really had nothing to do with that.

Bullying doesn’t just happen to kids – I see it all the time in the radio industry where powerbrokers are vicious in their handling of underlings.

What I learned about bullying 101 was it has nothing to do with size or brute force, it’s all about standing strong at which point the bully looks for another victim.

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I always thought that fatigue was tied to diet or exercise – maybe stress.

It turns out that there is new thinking that kind acts created by you also helps feed the emotional appetite for sustenance.

There are three ways to create kindness which after it is shown to others, stays with you.

1. Sending silent good wishes to people when you see them without a word being spoken.
2. Random acts of kindness often make the enabler even happier than the target if that is possible.
3. Focus on someone who needs you, your attention and your ability to listen not yourself. 

Replay your acts of kindness even when no one is around and you need a boost.

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Years ago, I was hired to become program director of a Chicago radio station after an in-person interview that went very well – I had the qualifications and the motivation.

I flew back to Philly planning the on-air changes I would make, I couldn’t wait to move and get started but it never came to that.

I never heard from the general manager who hired me – his name was Charles Manson, no kidding, perhaps I should have known – and I was shipwrecked for months.

What did I do wrong?  Things went so well.  Was it something I said – he hired me on the spot and then this.  It made no sense.

What I didn’t know then was that the job I wanted so badly was not meant for me – there was something better.

I started a media publication for which I was a natural, after all, I had already programmed radio stations why not something different – I just couldn’t see it at the time.

As strange as it sounds disappointment has its virtues but be patient, something better is bound to come your way and exceed your expectations.

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Ever wonder when things go your way, you feel like you can do no wrong and when they don’t, you feel like you can barely do anything right.

A hot streak is contagious, a losing streak seems to be never ending.

Doubling down on effort makes little difference – of course you will do anything to regain confidence to make the good times return.

Confidence comes when we let it come to us not when we pursue it. 

Focus on past successes, times when you’ve overcome adversity, your strength not weakness, your resolve not fears.

Ironically, confidence can’t be trapped, we must create the circumstances to have it find us.

I was a Dale Carnegie Course instructor for 11 years and we often pointed out to class members wishing to learn to speak on their feet that from all surveys, people feared speaking in public more than death.

Now things have changed.

The number one fear according to a new Men’s Health poll is fear of failure – and again, second to death.

The advantages of failure outweigh the disadvantages.

Every misstep is an opportunity to learn.

An opportunity to test yourself to see how badly you really want what you’re chasing.

You find out who your friends really are.

And you must be developing more self-confidence because trying a second or third time shows you’ve got the guts to keep at it.

Success is not the only goal – learning about how you handle temporary setbacks is far more valuable in the long run.

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I recall reading most of Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning on a Jersey beach so far north you could see the financial district in Manhattan on the other side.

Nine short months after Frankl was freed from a concentration camp, he wrote this:

Live as if you were living for the second time.

To me that meant every crisis presents an opportunity.

Today, every problem is not just an irritation but an invitation to live better the second time.

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Remember when business schools advised making a five year plan?

Too much changes in five years to plan that far ahead and in fact, it’s hard to see from now until next New Year’s Day.

A plan that is revised no more than annually is the framework – that’s why teachers update their courses to keep them relevant.

Most importantly, remain nimble – the ability to change, adapt, add and delete making you more open to opportunities that cannot be seen in advance.

Dwelling in the past is often an unhappy place, focusing on joy is a better option.

6 proven ways to accomplish a mood upgrade.

1. Try to solve your problems before bed.
2. Think of five people who care about you for a few minutes every morning before getting out of bed.
3. Meet people including your family as if you haven’t seen them for a long time.
4. Try not to change anyone because it is a sure way to unhappiness.
5. Observe something new every day don’t just go through the usual motions of daily living.
6. Instead of judging people, silently wish them well because everyone is hurting not just us.

Our stress is not caused because we’re weak – it’s our brains, it’s the way they function so trying to be stronger and better may not be smarter.

Multi-tasking makes things worse the brain developed over ages cannot deal with it even if our digital devices can.

96 out of 100 events each day are good, four are bad according to Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Amit Sood.

Focus on the 96% good not the 4% bad as a major way to start making a dent relieving stress.

One of baseball’s greatest athletes ever was more than a baseball card, homerun record or statistics that those behind him are chasing today – it was the grace of making a difference.

Aaron was a civil rights icon who suffered the many insults of racial discrimination over the years but emerged as a gracious human being who never stopped fighting for civil rights.

• Legacy #1 – Living by example transcends racial bias.
• Legacy #2 – Humility looks better each day when chosen over championing your own accomplishments.
• Legacy #3 – A record breaking career, and no amount of money is a substitute for something more meaningful: “I think people can look at me and say, he was a great baseball player but he was an even greater human being”.

One of Aaron’s last public acts at age 86 was to take the coronavirus vaccine to help Black Americans overcome their understandable skepticism of historical medical abuse and discrimination.

The man who conducted over 50,000 interviews on radio, television and online had no formal education, was not even a high school graduate and was a voracious reader who was famous for not reading books written by guests before he talked with them.

King’s real genius was not talking perhaps the oddest quality for someone in the entertainment industry.

• He said “I never learned anything while I was talking”.
• Was a premiere conversationalist who let the other person have their say.
• If you were ever interviewed by Larry, you found him laser focused looking into your eyes while the distractions of doing a talk show occurred around him.

Larry King’s “unspoken” wisdom was that the art of good conversation is centered around the ears not the mouth – a potent lesson in the age of Twitter, texting and user generated content.

They work in a high stress profession with the lives of thousands of passengers in their hands so they can only effectively focus for short periods.

They work for two hours and then rest for 45 minutes.

The brain tires after two hours, minds wander, we become more forgetful, our error rate goes up.

Many Millennials are already burned out having graduated during a recession and now facing a pandemic, but in spite of your profession or age, a rest after every two hours can make you a dynamo.

Isn’t it remarkable that succeeding often doesn’t come down to how good your plan is but how quickly you get started and how long you persist?

Failure Method:  Need to do more research.  Have to check with a friend.  Haven’t had the time to think things through.

Success Formula:  Here’s what I want to do, let me start now.  I’ll divide things up into small projects.  I’ll stay with it even if nothing happens.

The benefit of failing is it tells you how badly you want something and what price you are willing to pay in persistence to get it.

I can’t

I won’t

If only

Problem (they cause stress)

Someday

Don’t

I hate

Impossible

Fear of failing is understandable – it doesn’t feel good.

Except that the only way to succeed is to learn from failures.

No one wins all the time – some do better than others but not by that much.

• If you’re not failing, you’re not succeeding – you’re playing it safe to protect your feelings.
• Times at bat matter – the more swings you take, the more chances you get to connect.
• Everyone has a number – the number of times it takes to succeed.

Replace the fear of failing with the fear of not trying hard enough because the more lessons learned, the more success is earned.