There is no shortcut to success and happiness.

Look at all those “poor” lottery winners who wind up broke and friendless after thinking they got “lucky”.

The new lucky is adversity.

From adversity, we test how deeply we really want something – how hard we are willing to work for it.  If there is a point where we give up, then we didn’t want it that badly after all.

That’s as valuable as knowing what we want and what we don’t want.

By having to spend years or even a lifetime in pursuit of what we want, we guarantee that we will eventually make our own good luck.

Often what we want is not really what we want.

All I ever wanted to be was a radio program director and spent many years enjoying that career.  But adversity called me to a broader canvas where I could have an even greater impact and reward.

Who knew?

Time allows us to know ourselves.

Test ourselves.

And discover the biggest lesson of success:

Adversity introduces a person to him or herself and to those around them

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We’re developing a fear of the phone.

We resent voicemail messages.

Answer calls with a text or email instead of a return call.

Pour our hearts out to Apple Mail or Outlook, but can’t look into the eyes of the person our feelings are intended for.

Phone calls eat valuable time – or so that is the excuse.

Entire lives are being conducted on social media, chat and email without the benefit of hearing a human response.

If you were to die tomorrow, would the people who care about you wish they could have just one more email from you or would they long for the sound of your voice?

Social media is not a substitution for calls and in person contact.

Fear of confronting others, revealing our thoughts and feelings and replacing them with emoji’s and incomplete phrases can be treated.

The phone is a tool.  Texting is an aid.  Social media is the dessert, not the meal.

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Most relationships are and have been broken at some point.  It’s the way we deal with them that makes the difference.

When a relationship has been breached, work to objectively find out the specific reason.

Spending time and effort to fix something that is not the problem breeds further resentment.

Families go through ups and downs but they have a magic staying power that keeps members together even in difficult times.

The magic formula for fixing broken relationships:

1. Be certain you know the “problem” and be able to articulate it with the other person.
2. Spend all efforts on the recognized problem with great focus and hard work.  

Fixing broken relationships can actually strengthen them and you, as an individual.

What’s worth having may be worth the price to focus on it for the rest of your life.

But that decision is a personal one.

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Acknowledging others takes so little effort and requires no special skills and yet it is a powerful way to win friends and inspire interaction.

So why don’t we do it?

We’re turned inward looking down at phones and navigating the black hole of social media where it is easy to get lost and miss the world around us.

Ways to acknowledge people:

• Smile without doing anything else
• Pay a compliment
• Show a courtesy (“please, go first”, “you’ve been waiting, step ahead of me”)
• Put your phone away and start a conversation
• Offer to help

People want no more than to be acknowledged.

And if you thought I was referring only to strangers (above), go through the bulleted points again and see how they can apply to friends, family members and associates.

To be a powerful person, engage in the skill of recognizing them in real time.

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The average white-collar worker spends a whopping 6 hours a day on email according to an Adobe workplace survey.

And that’s without counting other distractions – just straight email time.

Focus is the skill you want to excel in the workplace and outperform others.  The person who can eliminate attention leaks is likely to be the most employable.

Ways to cut off attention leaks:

• Turn off notifications – You’ll just keep going with distractions if you see them pop up all the time on devices.
• Too much information hurts – We become overcome with too much information and anything additional tends to slip away from our brains – a good reason not to keep bombarding yourself with information of all kinds while trying to work.
• Multitasking is an attention leak – More useful is to prioritize the 20% of what you have to do which will bring you 80% of your productivity.  Do less to accomplish more and plug the attention leaks.
• Limit focused time – Pick a time period – say an hour – when you can focus on your work, plug attention leaks and minimize the flow of too much information.  Then take a break.
• Don’t think – When I face a problem, I try to erase everything and keep the mind blank and sure enough the answer rises to the top effortlessly.

Attention can be cultivated but without exercise, it becomes inefficient and non-productive.

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They talk endlessly about themselves almost as if you don’t exist.

When you do talk, they lose focus.

They emphasize with themselves not others.

1. Cut off the oxygen.  Your attention is their oxygen.
2. If they don’t ask about you, why continue to feed their self-absorption.
3. They get no pass even if they are family members.  Even being in the same room or same chat with a person who makes it all about them is you encouraging them to continue.
4. Reward people who focus on you by asking them questions about them or as it used to be called “a conversation”.

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If you win all the time, you are likely to head for a losing streak.

And that’s okay because winners are people who take their failures and turn them into the art of succeeding.

You’ve seen a sports team that gets so far ahead in the score that they become lax allowing their competitor to catch up – scare them or beat them.

People who seem to be born with all the breaks who when finally hit with adversity don’t know how to handle it.

Winning is more fun but losing is the rehearsal for another victory.

It helps introduce you to the people around you and to the adversity you’re facing.

Hope for the best.

But when faced with the worst know that out of bad always come good.

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1. “Best” List — Make a list of the things that you are the best at.   Only your top traits.
2. Work in Progress — Compile a list of things that erode your confidence because they are things you are not feeling good about.
3. Review success constantly — Create a “notes” file on your phone to record daily accomplishments and victories that you have.  Scroll through that list often.  Latest accomplishment on top.
4. Permanent accomplishments — The things no one can ever take away from you – getting into the college of your choice, winning a promotion (even if you wind up leaving the job later), things that other people can never know because they are so personal like overcoming an addiction (even if you regress at a later date).  Permanent accomplishments should never be forgotten because you earned them and they count towards your self-esteem.

People who lack confidence have no shortage of successes.  They just focus on failure too much.

Getting your confidence from the words of others is transient.

Recognizing the things you do well and the improvements you make on the things you could do better is permanent.

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The best use of social media is to limit your involvement with it.

Tristan Harris, the former Google code writer and now advocate for people to reign in the “black hole” of social media, says it’s a time waster that draws you further and further away from focusing on the present.

• Relegate social media to the 2^nd page of your phone screen – And store it in a folder.  That way the next time you use Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat or other networks, you have to specifically go open it up.  Having it on the first screen and easily available is too much temptation.
• Set a timer – Five minutes can easily become 25 minutes because of the addicting nature of following, liking and spying.  Set an alarm for social media time.
• Match social media time with real time – If you spend 20 minutes on Facebook, spend a comparable 20 minutes face-to-face or talking on the phone to a real breathing human being.
• Invest the “saved” time in friends – Controlling social media use will result in extra time that can be spent with family, friends or loved ones who are all around you.

Harris, the code writer, reminds us that Google and other purveyors of social networking have one goal — getting users to spend more time on social media so they can serve more ads.

A good reminder when looking for the courage to cut back and return to the present.

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Thanksgiving is such a simple holiday that is often packed with emotional upheaval from families that come together and are forced to confront hard feelings and raw pent up emotions.

Retailers are beginning to rename Thanksgiving “Thanksgifting” and encouraging customers to start early and “thank yourself”.

The gift that is most appropriate for that one day is gratitude.

Some recipes for success:

• Keep the focus on gratitude and when someone uncovers sore points in the family dynamic, just be thankful that you have a family.  Many people do not.
• Thank the host.  Fewer people each year prepare a feast and if you’re fortunate enough to be invited to one, start dinner with a toast to the preparer.
• Remember those who are no longer present.  Say their names, say a line or two about why you miss them.
• Family doesn’t have to be perfect — few are.  Even if you cannot get along with a family member, keep returning to gratitude.  The homeless do not have the luxury of enjoying the warmth of a meal with family no matter if someone in the family tries to ruin it.

The gift to give yourself is gratitude and there are many ways to remind yourself of it on Thanksgiving Day.

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