Wishing you had what someone else has is second best.

Wanting to be more like them is useless no matter how admirable they might be.

Even the most enviable person is not worth imitating for many reasons including one basic indisputable one.

Try to be like someone else and you will always be an imitation of something that is not you.

When they innovate, you will have to copy.

When they surprise, you will have to somehow surprise.

When they change their goals, your goals will always be a hostage to theirs.

Enact your dreams without regard to anyone else.

Embrace the personality that you have developed no matter how unique.

Accept the gifts that you have been given not the ones you wish you had.

The human condition seems to be that we always want what we don’t have but the winning formula is to not only want it but accept our traits and quirks as the gifts that they really are.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media with my permission.

Read some sample chapters of my book Out of Bad Comes Good, The Advantages of Disadvantages here.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

Toxic workplaces are inhabited by toxic people.

Often but not limited to the boss.

Here’s how to handle toxic co-workers and their defeating habits:

1. Unattainable goals – When they get caught up in unrealistic goals, you concentrate on realistic goals both short and long-term.Break them down into weekly, daily or hourly.
2. Perfectionism – If goals are set too high as many managers do, insist on sticking to realistic goals or else you will be on your way to shooting yourself in the foot.
3. Fear of failure – Perfectionists often fear failure, which is why they hesitate and often delay action.Never fear failure.  Learn from it.  Failure is essential to success.  It is the rehearsal for success.
4. Judging others – Constantly criticizing others is the road to failure. If you work for someone or with people who do that, make sure you don’t criticize them when encouragement is the better choice.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media with my permission.

Read some sample chapters of my book Out of Bad Comes Good, The Advantages of Disadvantageshere.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

Don’t overthink it.

Lots of remedies are out there – maybe too many – some of which promote more anxious thinking.

Focus on one thought.

99% of what we fear will never happen.

And that 1% will very likely not be as we feared or imagined.

That means we are worrying about things that can never hurt us.

Our thoughts about fear are hurting us more.

We can talk ourselves into more anxiety even as we spend time being aware of it and trying to fight it.

For every fear thought, a reminder.

99% of what I fear will never happen.

Why spend so much of my life waiting for it?

Our fear thoughts program our brains.  Putting fears into perspective retrains our brains and makes us more able to deal with anxiety in a world obsessed with fear.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media with my permission.

Read some sample chapters of my book Out of Bad Comes Good, The Advantages of Disadvantages here.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

Failure is a rehearsal for future success.

Get beyond the pain to see the benefit.

You’ve learned something, now use it the next time.

Your ego is bruised but ego is vanity and vanity has little to do with success.

You’re discouraged – but if you really want it that discouragement will be temporary and will show you how badly you want to pursue your goal.

But I worked so hard – take a rest and appreciate your hidden advantage, your work ethic.

Sometimes the first plan is the worst plan – failure helps us hone it to make the next one a better idea.

Perseverance is the key to success.

Failure can help us see if we have it.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media with my permission.

Read some sample chapters of my book Out of Bad Comes Good, The Advantages of Disadvantages here.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

To guarantee that you’ll be unhappy, try to change someone.

In spite of the desire to help people, save them, make them better or just offer your way of doing things, there is zero chance they will make permanent change.

I first heard this wisdom at a seminar with Dr. Amit Sood, the Mayo Clinic doctor, author and lecturer who has written extensively on relieving stress.

Not trying to change someone is as hard to do as another person changing because you want them to.

No real change can take place unless or until we want to make that change.

Alcoholics know this the hard way when things have to get so bad or they lose their family or their health.  And yet, some won’t even change then.

It will surely drive people away the more you try to change the way they do things or look at things.

Even when others ask for advice, they don’t want it.  What they want is for us to listen.

With zero chance to change another person – even for their own good in our opinion – the winning alternative is to accept them precisely the way they are.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media with my permission.

Read some sample chapters of my book Out of Bad Comes Good, The Advantages of Disadvantages here.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

You can’t win against a control freak whether it is an associate or the boss.

If they have more power, they prevail.

You can make yourself miserable by trying to fight for some input but control freaks have to be in full charge or they are not happy.

One seemingly counterintuitive yet potent way to combat the control freak ruining the workplace is to do what they don’t expect.

Give them more control.

Ask them in detail how they want things done.

Pepper them with endless questions.

You may find that they will actually cede the details to you as long as they feel they are in charge.

This is a short-term workaround.

If you love your job, wait them out and hope they leave.

If it’s untenable, find a new job with less drama but there is no shortage of control freaks – there’s a good chance you will find more elsewhere.

To best a control freak, give them more control and they may call it a victory and cut you a break.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media with my permission.

Read some sample chapters of my book Out of Bad Comes Good, The Advantages of Disadvantages here.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

You just can’t teach people to be happy.

They have to discover what delivers joy and it is usually not some big, expensive rich thing that many expect.

We often don’t know what makes us happy because we spend so much time dealing with that which doesn’t fulfill us.

Time off, meditation, a gratitude journal, getting in touch with those around us who are important – these are ways to avoid short-circuiting what really matters in our life.

Then, on to rewirement.

The changes that are required to set a new course.

We have to change our life’s circumstances.

Discover the things that deliver joy (have we even used the word “joy” lately?) 

Teach ourselves to be thankful.

To motivate ourselves to make some changes.

To know what those changes are and be dogged in pursuing them.

Re-wirement is the personal process of changing how we think about happiness.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media with my permission.

Read some sample chapters of my book Out of Bad Comes Good, The Advantages of Disadvantageshere.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

Everything we do wrong is in the front of our minds.

We churn it up, regurgitate it and even invite others to remind us of our failings by being first in to insult ourselves.

We think of what we have done wrong more than what we have done right.

There is research to prove that when we think like this we are actually programming parts of our brain to continue making us think this way.

But MRIs have observed the changes in the brain when people attempt to shortcut negative thoughts and replace them with more positive ones.

Not pep talks but step talks that elevate thinking to the next level of possibilities instead of shortcomings.

Every failure is a rehearsal for future success.

Even on a bad day, think of the things you have done right and replay them as often as you obsess about the negative.

Small successes work as well as big ones to help train our brains.

To boost confidence, stop the band aids and think of recording positive thoughts in your brain because after a month or two, research shows your brain will help you to do this more automatically.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media with my permission.

Read some sample chapters of my book Out of Bad Comes Good, The Advantages of Disadvantages here.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

The Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr has won two world championships with his talented team that has changed the way basketball is played.

When Kerr senses the team is tired of hearing from him, he buttons it up often handing play-creating power over to a leader on the team that everyone respects.

This is not always the team’s superstar.

Work teams off the court could also learn from this.

Sometimes team members stop listening.

In fact, research shows some of the best coaches of all-time know when to do nothing.  Incessantly cramming more directions and continuing endless teaching is counterproductive.

As Kerr says:  “It’s their team …I think that’s one of the first things you have to consider as a coach.…Our job is to nudge them in the right direction, guide them, but we don’t control them. They determine their own fate.”

Read Steve Kerr, the Golden State Warriors and the Art of Sharing Power here.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media with my permission.

Read some sample chapters of my book Out of Bad Comes Good, The Advantages of Disadvantages here.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

Whether keeping a task list or not, there is a shortage of things that need to be done.

Sometimes we make lists or use our phones to remind us.

There is evidence that we are trying to do too much which is too bad because even when accomplishing numerous things, we get the feeling that we didn’t have that productive a day.

The max number for peak productivity is seven.

Better yet, five tasks as a goal someday.

How to choose the seven priorities for today?

Which things are going to provide the most success, productivity, happiness and/or revenue.

Then focus on those 7 things.

This means a lot of other things will be sidelined, but according to time experts, doing less with more focus delivers the better result.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media with my permission.

Read some sample chapters of my book Out of Bad Comes Good, The Advantages of Disadvantages here.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.