There are studies that show most people spend half the day thinking about something other than what they are presently doing.

And there is the iPhone mind-wandering study that concludes that people are not as happy when they are not thinking about what they are doing.

The wandering mind is not going to ever make us happy.

Focusing on the present is almost a magic pill because it starts working immediately.

When our mind wanders, we allow negative thoughts to get in – obsessing and ruminating.

To measure how often your mind wanders you can download an app at trackyourhappiness.org.

A few times a day you’ll receive a notice to answer some questions about your experience at that moment.  Over time, you come away with an accurate picture of your life and what prevents you from being happy.

Or, the short course:  focus on the present, discourage mind-wandering and feel happier.

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Studies show that the mere thought of a stressful situation or event is as severe as the actual event itself.

We fear stressful situations even if they never happen to us.

1. Obsessing is a warning sign of stress.  The problem may never happen but obsessing about it is getting too far ahead of solving it.

2. People – especially people close to us or with whom we come in contact daily can easily transfer their anxieties to us.  Stand back if you can and look from afar on who is infecting us with their stress.

3. Focusing on the present is the ultimate stress buster so when you get that anxious feeling be 100% present in the now and it will aid in warding off anticipated stress.

Take control of stress by putting it in its proper place.

Looking ahead is forethought.

Anxiety about the future is fear thought.

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The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Friendships that mean something are not casual hit-and-run relationships.

When we vow to stay in touch, do we?

Is it purely social or is this friendship also emotional?

Are you a part of each other’s lives or an accident of scheduling?

The Chopra Center offers this advice:

1. Practice active listening to truly hear your friends.  Take turns being active listeners.  Being an active listener means that we don’t play “can you top this”.

2. Call your friends to stay connected. Texting and social media is a sanitized way to connect with people you care about.  If a person isn’t worth a call, then perhaps they are not worth having as a friend.

3. Go out of your way to make your friends feel special.  My best friend always – and I mean, always– jotted me a note after we got together even at Denny’s.

Without friends our life is relegated to Outlook, iCal, texting, social media and whatever time we can grab because life can easily get in the way but true friendships are the gifts of life.

Start spreading the love in your own authentic way.

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Can you recommend that your best friend come to work at your company?

If no, what is it about your employer that gives you pause?

Do you know how much you are worth on the market with your skills?

If not, do some research to find out what others with your approximate skills are earning.

If it’s less than you are presently making, ask yourself are you staying put because of the benefits?

If yes, it may be a bad reason considering your personal happiness.

Google has arguably among the best and most over the top benefits for employees and people still leave because benefits are not a good enough reason to postpone being fulfilled.

Have you been given new challenges in the past year?

If not, that will get old real fast.

Are you not looking around because you don’t have the time or because you are afraid?

If you’re afraid, welcome to the club.  We’re all in it.

One of the most compelling thoughts I ran across in the past year was the total uselessness of a company that talks a person into staying after they’ve been given another job offer.

Most of them who opt to pass on that job offer stay for no longer than a year and leave anyway no matter what concessions were offered by their employer.

The same is true with staying in a place that you’ve outgrown.

If you stay for whatever reasons, you’ll eventually go if questions like these are not answered in the affirmative.

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Allowing and accepting negative thoughts can go a long way toward conquering negativity.

Worry and repeated worry intensifies when we try to control negative thoughts.

More helpful …

1. Accept negative thoughts.

2. Standup to them.  Imagine what you would say to someone with your exact same situation.  Whatever you would tell them is what you should do.

3. Nothing is gained by focusing on negative thoughts.  In fact, negativity becomes built into the brain.  It actually changes pathways as documented by MRI’s.

Negative thinking is a part of the human condition.

When it gets out of control and becomes an obsession we cannot seem to break, constantly remind yourself how worrying about your negative thoughts are helping you achieve your goals.

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I’m reading The Power of Off by Nancy Colier who has a lot of good ideas on how to become less dependent on our smartphones (thanks to an article by Jane Brody in The New York Times).

46% of smartphone users say that their devices are something they can’t live without.

Most people now check their smartphones 150 times a day or every six minutes.  I am sure we would deny it.

Colier’s book has a digital detox program which is very timely for parents because we are not helping our children by making them more anti-social and removed from interaction.

1. Differentiate between phone use that is needed such as for work, navigation or letting family members know you are okay vs. what is a habit of responding such as posting and other forms of distraction.

2. New rule:  don’t reach for your phone while eating or spending time with family or friends.

3. Add one thing a day that’s done without the phone.

4. Become very conscious of what is important to you and devote more time and attention to it.

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It was Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling who said:

“And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

This was first uttered when Rowling was working on Harry Potter, out of money, out of work and recently divorced.

Rowling reiterated this message in a 2008 speech at Harvard.

Rock bottom sure doesn’t feel good, but it IS good.

It means there is nowhere left to fall and all this wonderful space in which to rebound.

In doing research for my book, it amazed me how many people were this close to giving up when they felt they hit rock bottom, but they persisted and endured.

There is nowhere left to go but up.

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Here is a photo of the earth taken from the moon.

When we fly in an airplane even as high as 40,000 feet, we barely see the curvature of the earth let alone the entire earth.

When we are stymied by a problem in life, the closer we are to it, the harder it is to grasp the enormity of it and where it begins and ends.

People used to think the earth was flat essentially because that is all they could see of it.  There were no satellites or explorations that would indicate otherwise.

I find this helpful in dealing with problems.

When you know you have a problem, pull back and take a wider view – the wider yet, the more helpful.  I use this imagery because it helps me focus.

The closer we observe our problems, the more limited our ability is to solve them.

A bitter divorce is a battle of money, lawyers, court, custody and other things from close in, but from further back it is the inability of two people – sometimes because of their families of origin and no fault of their own – to work well together as a unit.

Pull back, observe, recalibrate thinking to take in the bigger picture.

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Psychiatrist, neurologist and author Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is one of my top 5 favorite books of all time.

It’s deep, about his depressing and abusive incarceration in a World War II concentration camp and yet when I read it on the beach, I came away feeling uplifted.

What did Frankl make of the suffering he went through, how did he survive it and what it all meant when he was freed by Allied troops only to find his new bride had been killed in another concentration camp.

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

That Frankl could find meaning in sacrifice in a cruel world is uplifting to the rest of us wrestling with the ups and downs of our daily lives.

When all else has been taken away and we are in pain, Frankl is saying the freedom to “choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” is the thing that can allow people to overcome their challenges.

Today, can we take what is causing us pain and choose an attitude to give it meaning?

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It’s all here in one sentence:

“The secret to living well and longer is: eat half, walk double, laugh triple and love without measure.”  — Tibetan Proverb

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