Often the possible is impossible and the impossible is possible.

A better thought is – how do you know without trying.

If two baseball teams showed up and decided not to play the game because one might lose, neither would get to experience what’s possible.

Leave a movie in the middle and you don’t get to know how it ends (unless a spoiler alert tells you in their words).

Always afraid to take your career to the next level?  You’ll guarantee never to know what you may have missed.

Fear in a new relationship because of a bad experience in a past one relegates you to an impossible situation that doesn’t need to be.

The answer to what’s possible and what’s impossible is channeling all your drive, determination and courage into finding out.

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Meetings are a waste of time.

One person usually enjoys talking while the others can’t wait for them to stop talking.

Yet meetings are helping salespeople lose money, content creators sit and idle away their best thoughts and managers prevented from doing their jobs.

The smart meeting is a meeting with purpose.

If you haven’t defined the reason for meeting, there is no reason to hold it.

If you’re running the meeting are you talking out loud to hear your best thinking or silencing yourself to hear the best thinking of the group?

Are you on the clock?  You should be because everyone has a job to do.

Get to an agreement on what has been discussed or decided.

Together come up with what steps will take place next (often even a good outcome at a meeting is lost to inaction).

Report back.

Implement.

Compliment those participating.

Does this sound like a meeting you would like to attend or one that you can run?

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The only thing worse than anxiety is to be obsessive about it which is what we all seem to do.

Take your worries and repeat them in your mind over and over again.

Put like that, it sounds pretty self-destructive.

No worry ever happens exactly as we fear it. 

When you can’t stop thinking about it, do something about it – even something small.

99% of the time what we fear never actually happens – what a waste of our time and emotional health.

Time shift worries as they come up to a specific day and time when you will do all your worrying.   That helps fight the obsession that makes anxiety worse. 

“You can’t always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.” ~Wayne Dyer

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Don’t dwell.

Don’t retaliate (it doesn’t make us better).

Focus on those who love you the way you are.

Be grateful for the people and the things in your life that see you positively and not elevate someone else’s rejection as the way you see yourself.

Life is not an election.

It is an empty canvas upon which we paint the life we want.

Just like Michelangelo, no one else gets to paint on your canvas.  Just admire it.

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According to social psychologist Dan Gilbert people who recently became paraplegics are as happy one year later as people who won the lottery.

The paraplegic adjusted expectations upward.

Lottery winners adjusted what they had anticipated it would be like to be rich downward.

We know by now that money doesn’t buy happiness and that we overestimate how getting what we want will feel.  Never mind that chasing success breeds anxiety that in itself causes unhappiness.

The solution is to not focus as much on getting what you want and instead develop the ability to see what comes your way as an adventure that leads you to places you never imagined.  These adventures never seem to disappoint when we open ourselves to them.

Accepting does not mean not caring.  It means being hyperaware that some new person, new opportunity, new thing or new adventure is about ready to visit us.

Will we be ready to see it and take it for a test drive?

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Joseph Lovett is a 72-year old filmmaker who produced a documentary about his journey into blindness from glaucoma.

New York Times opinion writer Frank Bruni, also facing potential blindness, wrote about Lovett and his inspiring way to deal with a worry that life changing and overwhelming.

Here is Lovett’s advice:

“…you cannot spend your life preparing for future losses”

It compromises the good that is occurring in the present and discounts the fact that everyone sooner or later is faced with adversity.

When obsessed with worry, become obsessed with the only sure thing you have – life here and now.

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The brain reacts more from negative thoughts than positive.

We learn faster from pain than pleasure.

When burned, we back off and avoid.

Painful experiences are more memorable than pleasurable ones.

We work harder at trying not to lose something than to gain the same things.

These are observations from Rick Hanson’s book Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time.

The message is we must work harder to enjoy the benefits of being positive but most often spend too much time reacting to the anxiety caused by negative thoughts and actions.

Retrain your brain to hear you say the positive things that happen to you.

You may have to think hard because we tend to easily remember what’s wrong and have a more difficult time recalling what is right.

Take these positive thoughts and dwell on them for just a few minutes – or many times during a day.

There is clinical evidence that we can reprogram how we think by actively recalling the positives in life and not just feeling overwhelmed by the negative.

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47% of parents say they are worried that their children are addicted to cell phones (source: Common Sense Media).

But only 32% say they are addicted.

Phone addiction is becoming such a problem that Apple, Google and Facebook are being pressured to come up with solutions to help young people become less addicted.

The fear of missing out on something is great with a cell phone in hand.

Being left out of social media conversations is a powerful motivation to stay connected.

Cell Phone New Rules:

1. Divide your apps into ones you check vs. the black hole apps of social media.
2. The first two screens have Uber, Lyft, Open Table – things that are useful and not time consuming.
3. Put time wasting social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat and Twitter in a social media folder on the third screen.  When you go there, be cognizant of the time you are using so that you don’t keep scrolling and clicking your way to addiction.
4. Make a call when multiple texts are required.
5. Spend as much time face to face with others as you do connected on the phone.

Balance is the only answer for cell phone addiction and courage.

The courage to change the way you use this tool now.

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Learn to love taking the blame.

That’s what entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk says.

 “…because once I do we can work toward coming up with solutions instead of talking endlessly about the problem”.

There is nothing wrong with being human.

No one is right all the time.

Embracing being human – subject to mistakes and bad decisions – is a liberating thing.  Holding on to being right about everything is stressful and not believable.

Turn the focus toward finding solutions not more ways to prove you are right.

There is nothing wrong with being human.  No one is right all the time.

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People don’t want advice.

They want someone to listen to them without passing judgment and – and this is the hard part – without offering any solutions.

Advice is a misnomer.

It should be to listen.

Do they really want help with their divorce or a sounding board to air their frustrations and concerns?

Do they really truly want career advice or do they want to vent about the job they hate because even if you share with them a gem of wisdom, they’re likely not going to hear it or act on it.

Does the person who lost a loved one want to hear “be strong”, “they lived a long happy life” or “they’re in a better place” when there are no words to convey loss.  Just being there is the elixir that makes a difference.

The ears are more powerful than the mouth when it comes to “advising” others – it is the little-known secret of human relations.

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