Why do we utter so many words of discouragement to those around us?

• You’re really going to do that?
• What if it doesn’t work?
• You need something to fall back on.

And why do we not recognize that every time we help another person up, we give ourselves a gift.

• There is only one you!
• If anyone can do it, you can!
• I believe in you!

No matter your political views, we have learned that Melania Trump when her husband told her he was thinking of running for president said “you will win”.

When you bet on people, you always win.

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In a way, if you reclaim the time you spend with people who are not real friends, you would have a lot of free time.

Sometimes it takes an illness, a near-death experience or the loss of a job or a marriage to find out who our real friends are.

Just because we spend time with people does not mean that they are friend-worthy.

And social media has nothing to do with friends at all – you don’t count the number of friends, you count on them.

When families live in a neighborhood and their children play together, it is not unusual for those ties that bind to be loosened when one of the families up and moves elsewhere even in the same town.

The “friends” we accumulate at work by proximity are often sacrificed when our place of employment changes.  We make new friends with those close to us.

Even though I am Hoboken-born and Jersey bred, one of the lessons I have learned from the state of Arizona, home of rattlesnakes, is that snakes take on the camouflage of their surroundings making it harder for other predators and hikers to see them.

They become like their surroundings.

That’s why it is important to increase the time spent with people who are true friends – the kind that will last a lifetime (and even beyond in some cases) rather than hang out with those who may be friends by proximity.

Up the time with true friends and be 100% present in their lives.

Reduce the time with so-called friends who you could live without someday and it is a guarantee that you’ll never have to live without the people that really matter.

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What a great world it would be to leave our troubles behind but in today’s connected world that is harder to do than ever.

If what happens in Vegas really stays in Vegas, why can’t what happens at work (or at home) stay there, too?

People are created to think holistically which is why it is difficult to have a work persona and a home persona.

One way to keep problems from seeping into parts of life that don’t deserve being affected is to put aside time to deal with problems.

How does it look?

If your boss puts you in a bad mood when you walk in and see your spouse or children, put aside 15-30 minutes to deal with all that bad stuff.

I had a friend whose marriage was in jeopardy because when he returned from work his wife was anxious to tell him everything that went right or wrong in her day.  Their psychologist suggested they build a buffer in – an hour in their case – from work and returning to family.  It saved their marriage.

Look down at your phone and you’ll see your life at a glance so another way to disconnect for everyone’s sake is to put the phone down and be 100% present with the people you love.

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When things go our way, it seems that our energy is boundless.

When frustrated, discouraged, overworked, anxious or depressed, we tend to feel it the moment we wake up.

Make the first thing you do in the morning something that energizes you.

Exercise, yoga, reflection or prayer.  Coffee only goes so far.

Allowing a new day to start feeling defeated is likely to bring on another frustrating day.

But find something that energizes you – even temporarily – provides a real chance to deal with problems and move on.

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Both political parties nationally and locally play hardball at election time. This year was worse where all parties are guilty of taking nastiness to a new level.

To those who can’t fathom a Trump presidency, there is another election in four years.

To those concerned about lying, lack of trustworthiness and broken promises from Secretary Clinton, the best advice is do, don’t stew. Get to work to bring about change you can live with.

But today’s nastiness goes beyond politics.

Bullying on line.

Cold relationships built on texting and email without the softness of a voice or emotion.

Rudeness from looking down at phones instead of looking into someone’s eyes to get the measure of emotions from the people we talk to.

No law can be passed that will make people nicer but there is no reason not to continue to live the life of your dreams by treating people the way you would want to be treated.

When I talk to a senior, I refer to them as “sir” or “ma’am” out of respect to my parents who would want me to talk that way.

In talking to a child, treat them with respect.

Dale Carnegie changed my life – I taught the course for 11 years – every Dale Carnegie principal is as relevant today as when he wrote the book decades ago. Live by his principles and teach them to those around you by example.

Dale Carnegie principles are your blueprint to changing a world of nastiness.

If I ate pasta every night, I would get sick of it (okay, it would take time, but still). We crave variety and should crave the differences in others and see it as enrichment of our lives

Agree to disagree. Even when others stand for things that I find unacceptable, I must say to myself – dislike the deed, not the person or we will live in a never ending world of hate.

We change the world one person at a time.

And yes, we can change the world – those around us, tomorrow’s leaders who may be looking to us today – by being the person who is big enough to say I will fight for what I believe but I will not become my own worst enemy.

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The only reason to doubt yourself is to look for a way not to believe in you.

When a football player breaks loose from a tackle and runs for a touchdown, they don’t momentarily say, I wonder if I can make it for a touchdown.  They just go as far and fast as they can.  No second thoughts.

If a kicker has the game on his foot with the next field goal, if he doubts he can kick it through the uprights, he’s toast.  Maybe that’s why opposing coaches call a time out so late that the kicker can’t stop and then has to stand around, think about it, and do it all over again.  Coaches know that mind works both ways.

The mind is a tremendous asset or adversary if we allow self-doubt into it.

Doubt that you will meet the right person for you someday and you won’t.

Doubt you’ll get the promotion then be prepared to be passed over and if you do get it, the chances for success are hanging on a thread of no confidence that got you there.

Doubt that you can be a great parent (as opposed to a great friend) in this era of self-absorption and you will be rendered ineffective.

Failing is no excuse for doubt.

No one succeeds 100% of the time.

Remember the Ted Williams story.  He bats over .400 one year, an almost impossible feat, but he still failed 60% of the time.

Who cares?

Failure is temporary.

Success is permanent.

Unless self-doubt is allowed in.

No second thoughts unless they are the same as the first thought which is “go for it” and never doubt your ability to succeed.

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A job interview or employee review is not a test, it is an affirmation of competence or even better, excellence.

There is a difference between confidence and arrogance.

Of expectations and entitlements.

Before a job interview or review, write in one sentence why you have earned the opportunity for the job or pay raise and promotion.  If it can’t be compelling in one line, then you probably have no business applying or expecting much from a review.

Assess what you are worth by identifying your skills – things that you and your employer value or will value (i.e., ability to get along with others, to listen to new ideas, to complete projects on time or ahead of deadline, etc.).

Assign an annual salary value to your skills – not from the point of view of your employer or potential employer but based on other jobs similar to yours in related industries.

When applying for new positions, share a list of seven things that you can specifically do for your new employer (not a generic list of warm and fuzzy things) and – this is important – back it up with specific evidence that proves you’ve done these things before.

And, the day of the interview as you open the door to the office where it is taking place, say these words to yourself “I have earned the right to be here”.

Winging an interview or review is a waste of time but thoughtful preparation of the kind successful people do as described here is the best rehearsal for a good outcome.

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There is a saying that reminds us “if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person to do”.

Busy people are less likely to be stressed out.

Overwhelmed people who have trouble managing work, home and themselves are most probably going to complain of stress.

Manage your work effectively, reduce stress.  The secret?  Only 20% of everything you need to do daily is responsible for 80% of productivity.  Good time managers know multi-tasking is an excuse for bad prioritizing.

Phones work both ways – texting/emailing and calling.  Believe it or not, a short call takes up less time than continual emails.  Email to confirm, phone to discuss.

Saying no is okay.  Busy people who get more things done with less stress also know how to say no, I can’t – sorry.  Adding tasks on to an infinite list of things to do spells a life of stress.

See digital devices as tools not a way of life.

Not everything needs to be a burden on your shoulders.

But when you accept a responsibility, own it and see it as an opportunity to prove once again that busy people put stress in its place by creating a life of order.

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Cut off their air.

Ignore everything they say and do so they are living in an alternate universe – alone and sequestered.

The worse thing to do is listen to them followed by respond to them or maybe even chiding them.  Repeating their comments to others just gives them more power to be evil.

Haters cannot exist without an eager audience.

The 2016 presidential race is particularly full of vitriol that is hard to escape so it makes no sense to keep listening to repeat offenders.  Even one person makes a difference when that one person is you and your happiness.

Haters at work are always feeding on victims, but to walk away and leave them talking to themselves and not repeating their comments is certain victory over their harsh feelings.

Even comments such as – “that person is fat” doesn’t deserve a response if you are comfortable in your belief that we don’t judge people on their looks and their weight.

There is no disputing that if you take away a hater’s audience as often as possible, you win and they lose.

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108 years later, the Chicago Cubs finally ended their long drought and won the 2016 World Series.

Theo Epstein, the team’s architect, dealt with another drought when the Boston Red Sox broke their curse 12 years earlier, but since 2011 Epstein has been putting the right pieces in place for what happened last week.

When negative things get into the head, they have the effect of being predictive.

The foul ball incident in a playoff series a number of years ago.

The feeling that the Cubs were actually cursed and would never get it off their backs.

People like “cursed” baseball teams also allow their success narratives to be stolen.  In fact, by believing even for a minute that something bad will happen again, guarantees it.

The Cubs had the best record in baseball this year, but they had to go down to the last inning of game seven to win.

They could have lost the big game if they wanted to continue buying into the folly of a curse.

But when they were down in game seven, an 17-minute rain delay forced the team off the field and into the locker room where we have learned Cubs’ leaders became vocal about playing to overcome the odds.

People who feel bad things are going to happen to them could benefit from a similar strategy.

Take a time out.

Adjust the thinking to be all positive with no regard for what may have happened before or fears that persist in the present.

Curses are excuses that are institutionalized in the minds of people who are inclined to let doubts influence their chances of success.

There is no such thing as a curse.

Only people who allow negative thoughts to become more important than talent, chance, preparation, motivation and singularity of purpose are cursed.

For everyone else, a curse is called inspiration.

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The sure formula for an unhappy person is one who tries to change another.

Think about it – when most people talk about change, they want to change something or someone else.

Their boss, their spouse, their kids, their friends, the system, the world.

The best way to guarantee positive change is to not try to change anyone or everyone and focus on changing yourself.

The way you relate to your boss, how you treat your spouse, new ways to deal with your children, being a better friend before asking someone else to be one, not changing the system just your part in the system.

That’s how you change your world – starting at home with you.

Then, those around you can either adapt or run.

Before you know it, someone else has been motivated to change in a positive way because you went first.

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Don’t wait until your dream comes true to live them.

Waiting for dreams can be dangerous.

Obviously, dreamers can picture in their mind’s eye in palpable ways what it is they are after – a good thing.  The clearer the picture, the better the chance of attaining the goals.

But waiting for that exact right moment will guarantee that you miss many moments in between that could change what you’re after or at least alter it.

On the way to your ultimate dream are a lot of wonderful opportunities to be successful and happy.  You don’t want to pass them by.

Dreaming is often more rewarding than waiting – often in vain – for that one dream to come true.

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Everyone fails.

Some build on that failure and some let it get into their psyche.

Study any successful or happy person and you are likely to see a life of ups and downs – some hurtful and significant — that they have to overcome.

Much has been said about how to overcome obstacles, but nothing works faster or better then this technique used by those who shake it off.

Deal with failure and move on.

We let failure stick around like a bad cologne when the first thing to do is move on.

A sports team in a slump lets failure get into their psyche.  They bear down harder and still can’t turn it around.  Waiting for luck can be a long wait.

To quote the old R&B song “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show” means one setback should not prevent further progress.

If we’re going to let negative failure thoughts take valuable space up in our heads, we are not going to learn from our mistakes and are likely to get stuck in a bad place.

If we are willing to deal with our difficulties and then – and this is the important part – move on, then we have discovered the secret to overcoming failure faster.

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Picture this.

The past is a file that we can recall whenever we need it.

But, always remember to close that file and return to the present.

The future is about hopes and dreams.  We go there to plan our lives and next moves.

But, if we fail to return to today, those hopes and dreams rarely happen and if they do come to fruition then we’re not in the right place to enjoy them.

Open files and unfinished plans lead us to a life of distraction.

Waiting for a future event like paying off bills, meeting the right mate, or seeing your children off to college can cause us to miss out on all the joy that we experience in between.

Ever notice how anxious we get when we anticipate even wonderful things that could happen in the future.

It isn’t necessary to get everything out of your mind to live in the now.

Just the ability to focus on the one and only life we will ever have – the one that is happening in real time.

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I know a nurse who is the single mother of three children – a nice woman with a big heart and the brashness of being born and bred in New Jersey.

There was a teenage girl sitting in the waiting room of her office – with her feet up on a sofa, a sour puss and lots of whining going on while she was glued to her phone oblivious to those around her.

My friend said that when her kids abused their phones and used them for the wrong purposes or withdrew from social interaction, she would call Verizon and shut their phones off.

I was shocked.  I said, “You didn’t?”.  She said, “Yes I did”.

And the repercussions were crying and more crying until her teens decided that they were going to observe and keep their mother’s rules at which point their Verizon accounts were switched back on.  (Yes, this has happened on and off for many of their teen years).

It’s not kids alone who are abusing their phones but parents who refuse to parent and enforce some guidelines.

That’s great for kids, but what about adults who are far more abusive in digging their phones out of their pockets and handbags.

That’s when we must come up big.

Either give me the same 100% focus you give your cellphone or else, move on and leave them to the lonely world of their own devices.

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Email is not just a presidential election issue.  It is strangling all of us.

Even where we still make phone calls, we then waste time memorializing them in a follow-up email.

Email is killing us and not necessarily making our lives better, richer or more productive.  That’s why those who study sociological trends are already talking about the decline of email.

Because email is consuming lives, what’s the way out?

You can do the math, but I spend hours personally and in my businesses with email.  I easily get 1,000 emails for every one call I get at my office.  So, you can see 30-60 minutes is a fair estimation of time I could get back if only I would – well, take my iPhone and make a call.

The biggest problem is work.

Email is so engrained into the daily operations of businesses that you will have a heck of a time weaning others off.

Some ideas to try starting this morning:

• Write one line emails that say “I will call you” or “Call me” and we can discuss.  Emails do not allow us to read the mood, intention, or personality of others whereas in phone calls we can.

• Avoid leaving long phone messages.  That’s bad and time consuming.  Just, “hey, it’s Jerry – need to talk” and phone number.

• Try not to answer certain emails at all if it is really not necessary.

• Be careful of collaborative sites Iike Slack that allow messaging in teams.  This is very often a time waster.  Email multiplied by X times.

• And for family, spouse, kids – make the call even if your teenage daughter isn’t likely to return it (or listen to it).

Changing time wasting behavior starts with whether we’re willing to try.

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What if you take a gnawing problem – one that keeps coming up again and again – and turn it into the solution.

You do that by making every painful or irritating experience with this problem, a reminder to change the way you think about it by embracing a solution.

Therefore, by using every reoccurrence of a problem as a reminder to change the one thing you have control over – you – the solution actually becomes a product or the problem.

I know a person who has been suffering from muscular pain that no medication or painkiller can adequately control.  So when he feels the tightening, he uses each episode to conduct muscle relaxation exercises right then and there.  This retrains the pathways in the brain to do in real time something that doesn’t ameliorate the pain for now but reduces it over time by retraining his brain.

The problem does more than cause pain, it reminds him to do something about it.

And it is working!

So if you have a boss that is unreasonable, let every example of that behavior remind you to be more reasonable with others.  You’ll be giving yourself a gift not a curse.

If a friend or family member is being unfair to you, make every insult or demand an occasion for you to let go of the bad feelings that person is generating.

We’ve spent a lot of time in our lives learning how to stand up to life’s problems, but the one that gets the quickest results makes each occurrence of the problem a reminder to change your behavior every time it crops up.

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Whenever we question how much confidence we really have, we should ask ourselves one question:

If I don’t believe in me, how can I ask someone else to?

Often we have it the other way around.

We expect others to believe in us, support us, trust us before we actually do it first.

If you want to believe in yourself, you can’t outsource it to others.

It starts with us.

Shakespeare said, “Assume a virtue if you have it not”.

I find this quote very empowering and there is hardly a week that I don’t find myself repeating it.  Maybe it will work for you the same way.

You must believe in yourself first and always.

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It is more important to make a life than a living.

That’s why when a survey of people in hospice nearing death were asked what they regretted most, the one thing that wasn’t on their list was more time working.

They regretted not spending more time with friends and family.

In retrospect they wished they did the things they always dreamed of doing.

Is there a person you can contact — a friend, family member or associate – who needs to hear the words “It is more important to make a life than a living”?

I remind my children and myself.

This does not mean, don’t work, don’t succeed, don’t make money.

Just that there is more to life than making money.

Studies repeatedly show that after covering expenses and needs, most people do not get incrementally happier as their income goes up.

Believe it or not, the average income for a couple in the U.S. is about $70,000 a year.  When the survey tracked happiness and income, happiness did not go up appreciably with higher income.  In fact, it went down.

So work hard.

Make money.

But most importantly make a life.

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I live in two places and have a list of contractors and sources that make that possible. My list represents the best people I have met.

This got me to thinking – what would an “Angie’s List” of friends look like.

Who is the best person for advice?

Who is the best listener?

Best with money and financial?

Who is the most fun to be with?

Who is best at always being there for me?

Who is best to help in an emergency?

Things like that.

This could get interesting.

For the things that matter most, do we show enough appreciation for friends like these?

And what if you have friends – even spend lots of time with them – and they don’t fall in any meaningful category that you hold important?

Perhaps you might want to spend more time with the people you value most.

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