I grew up living next door to an amazing neighbor who just turned 93 years young.

I say young because she is unlike a lot of people many decades younger.

She drove until she was 89.

Lives in a retirement community now but not assisted living and told me she never looks back to miss the past.  She is blessed with good health or maybe her good health was a byproduct of how she lived.

Her advice:

Go with change.

Live with no regrets.

I told her I wanted to be her best student until it gets into my thick head to never look back, only ahead.

And coming from a 93-year-old, she is reminding all us that she and we have a lot yet to look forward to.

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A recent study in the UK found that 35 is the age at which men feel loneliest.

9% of them said they have no friends at all.

Loneliness appears to be growing in all age groups and all countries.

A lack of face-to-face contact or voice contact is contributing to loneliness that many people don’t even fully realize they have.

It is hard to be lonely when we reach out to others.

Help someone else.

Break the ice, be first to converse.

Phone, don’t post or email.

Be a good friend to make a new friend.

Here is a low risk way to get started:  the first 20 people you see each day starting at home, with associates at work or even people you don’t know look them in the eye and say silently “have a good day”.  Non-verbal affirmations convey safety and friendliness.

Even if others don’t outwardly respond, you will feel better.

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Dr. Amit Sood reminds us the person who can share their success with you without envy is your friend.

You will only have a few of these special friends in a lifetime.

We tend to limit our compassion to only a few people who are meaningful to us and connected to us.  Often they are genetically connected.

But everybody is your family.

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The only way to gain control is to give up control.

This does not mean have no opinion or to agree with things you don’t believe in.

Let go of having to have your way even after you articulate it.

Practice giving up control by letting someone else pick the restaurant, get their way on a project or have their preference if possible with your calendar.

No one trait is shared by more people than the desire to have more control over their lives, their friendships and the way other people live their lives.

The epidemic of anxiety in people is directly tied to spending too much time trying to control outcomes.

If you consciously try not to be in control, you will live – probably be happier – and almost certainly shed anxiety that comes with having to spend so much time getting your way after you have your say.

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Social media is becoming a misnomer.

It is anti-social media when conducted in the presence of other people or instead of interacting with others.

This is an epidemic that is being at the very least allowed by parents who have succumbed to their children’s peer pressure by enabling the overuse of social media.

Facebook skews older.

Instagram is like a vanity plate for many users depicting a life of dreams or excesses rather than reality.  But it can also be fun and creative.

SnapChat is for the young who want to express themselves in a short audio or video clip and then have it disappear.

When social media interferes with living in the now 100% focused on the person you are with or activity you are involved in, then there is a worrisome component of social media addiction that exists.

Step 1 – Spend as much time focused on the here and now as you spend on social media.

Step 2 – Start new friendships outside of social media and conduct them predominantly face-to-face. 

Step 3 – Address the anxiety that is being generated by witnessing other people’s “better” lives on social media.

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1. Live in the now 100% focused on the person you are with face-to-face.
2. Know when to put away your phone.
3. Don’t chase the butterfly of happiness but be ready for it when it lands near you.
4. Changing people is the prescription for unhappiness – yours! 
5. The person who realizes that it is not about them will be blessed with an abundance of friends.

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“When you go out in the world, look for the job you would take if you didn’t need the money.”

Earning a living is important.  There are bills and loans to pay.

But using this as an excuse for spending your life in a job that doesn’t dazzle you is self-destructive.

Sometimes you do things to get by but never to avoid following your dreams.

Without hope, there are no dreams.

Without dreams, there is no hope.

It’s intriguing that the richest people on earth work to be the best not the richest.

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When we return home from a day at work, we often carry that day’s problems with us into the relationships we care about most.

Pause at the door or in the car before getting out.

Pretend that you have been away from your spouse and kids for 2 weeks.

Then go in and greet them as if you haven’t seen them in 2 weeks.

Repeat daily.

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Many times our first reaction to something new or something we don’t immediately like is fear thought.

This is bad.   I don’t like it.  I don’t want to do it.

Understandable but not optimal.

Thinking ahead is forethought where we are not committed to anything until we’re comfortable with it.

Nasty text from a friend – fear thought, we overreact.  Take time to understand that which makes you uncomfortable.

Rejection – fear thought, the response is often rejecting the person who rejected us.  Even hurtful feelings deserve time to understand the circumstances under which they were conveyed.

Fear and worry based on visceral emotions are fear thought.  99% of all that we humans worry about never happens and in the one percent of the cases where it does, it doesn’t happen the way we initially feared it would.  Worry about worry is deadlier than worrying about things that are not going to happen.

Fear of the unknown is easier to deal with when we turn that fear into curiosity.

Fear is useless.

Thinking ahead allows us to put a hold on worry – sometimes even a few seconds or minutes.

We don’t have to live by first reactions if we choose to live by second thoughts.

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In all my classes as a professor of music industry at the University of Southern California, I assigned this book that had absolutely nothing to do with music.

How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

To be sure, most students never read it for exactly that reason because it had nothing to do with their course work.

But many read it over the summer on their own and they would contact me with their gratitude for suggesting it.  Imagine a college student reaching out to a professor and thanking them for assigning a book that had nothing to do with their chosen field of interest.

Most of us already have plenty of talent although some people don’t have the confidence to believe in themselves.

The missing secret to success for people who are already talented is how to get along with others – inspire them, deal with their foibles, win cooperation.

And in spite of the fact that How to Win Friends was written before most of us existed, it is still the best template for gaining skills that will give you the edge over others.

Buy the paperback (or digital version).

Read it all the way through.

Then read it again one chapter at a time.

Rip it out and carry that one chapter around until you believe you have mastered it.

Then onto the next.

I know people who start the book over again because mastering human relations isn’t just reading a book, it’s about changing the way you think and act.

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