A friend of mine in the radio industry wrote me the most beautiful email about the ups and downs he has experienced in his life.

As he puts it:  “My goal in life was to become a good father, husband, employee, now there is no employer, the kids have left the house and I am divorced”.

I wrote back:  I wish I could take back all MY bad decisions and actions in life. The only problem is, these very irritations are what transforms us.  We keep living by learning.  No one’s life is right out of the box and ready to roll for an entire lifetime.

Pain is transformational.

Bumps in the road are building blocks.

We learn humility as a result of our arrogance.

Everything happens for a reason.  We are not always privy to what that reason is so patience, faith and good works are what keeps us going down the road to success and happiness.

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

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

One thing no one can take away from us is our integrity.

We have to throw it away in a conscious decision to lose it.

Take the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team.

They have been caught in the act of spying on the rival Houston Astros.  They allegedly hacked into the team’s database.

Even sports – or especially sports – is no longer immune to a lack of integrity and fair play.

It seems we all want to win no matter what.

There is no shortage of examples:  Lance Armstrong’s heroic victories to overcome prostate cancer turned out not so heroic.

The controversy over Deflategate and New England Patriot’s star quarterback Tom Brady for allegedly ordering the air be let out of game day footballs to make them easier to control.

Just because we can get away with something (or not) is not reason enough to giveaway what we stand for.

Being honest and having strong moral principles is the victory.

Everything else is just sport.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

This is what Nadine Collier, the daughter of one of the nine victims of Dylann Roof’s shooting spree in a Charleston, SC Church said just a few days after the murders:

“I forgive you … I will never talk to her ever again, never be able to hold her again. I forgive you and have mercy on your soul. You hurt me, you hurt a lot of people, but I forgive you.”

Another relative of one of the shooting victims said, “hate won’t win”.

What remarkable people these are and what a gift they give all of us even as they are grieving that in the many ways we could forgive others for lesser and sometimes petty offenses, they show by example that hate breeds hate.

It’s not easy to be like this, but it is the goal and after this latest example of continued racial violence, it gives us hope.

For me, if many of these relatives could forgive such a heinous crime, what would be my excuse for not forgiving the people who have hurt me in lesser ways?

As always, a reminder that we can never change another person – only ourselves.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Vice President Joe Biden addressed the students of Yale in May with a message on success and happiness.

Biden lost his wife and a daughter to a fatal accident at a railroad crossing in 1972 weeks before he was to be sworn in to his first elected position to the U.S. House of Representatives.  She was returning home from picking up the family Christmas tree.

Beau Biden said, “My brother and I, not the Senate, were all that he cared about … he said then Delaware can get another senator but my boys can’t get another father.”

And they said this about a powerful senator and today’s vice president.

Life can change in a heartbeat, as Biden all well knows.

His secret to success and happiness in light of such excruciating pain of losing part of his family:

“It’s about being engaged …It’s about being there for a friend or a colleague when they’re injured or in an accident, remembering the birthdays, congratulating them on their marriage, celebrating the birth of their child. It’s about being available to them when they’re going through personal loss. It’s about loving someone more than yourself.”

Who knew that when Biden shared these words it would be just two more weeks before he lost yet another child, Beau, to brain cancer.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

A friend of mine has terminal cancer – stage four. But to talk to him you’d think that he has had the burdens of the world lifted from his shoulders.

I have always been amazed how breast cancer patients can fight for life and succeed for many decades but they are a changed person.

They no longer fear death.

They fear not living life to its fullest.

And pain is transformational so running up against a disease, or a loss of a relationship, a job that defines your essence, or even loss of money putting you back to square one – it is not surprising that fighting for change often leads to the appreciation of acceptance.

We don’t have to like what we can’t change, but we can be liberated by it.

The next time you run up against something you weren’t expecting, make the best of it and find meaning in it.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

• Slow down.
• Take time off.
• Live and let live.
• Don’t attempt to convert someone from one religion to another.
• Work for peace.
• Work at a job that offers basic human dignity.
• Don’t hold on to negative feelings.
• Move calmly through life.
• Enjoy arts, books and playfulness.

After he was selected pope, he said smilingly “May God forgive you for what you’ve done”.

What are your top 9 secrets to happiness?

If you’ve never thought about it, start a list right now and feel free to borrow liberally from Pope Francis’ list above.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

It’s not brains.

It’s knowing the difference between fact and assumption.

When we make bad decisions, we are usually basing them on an assumption we have made.  Even the best thinking in the world doesn’t hold up if it’s based on something that is not true.

A fact is something that can be observed and verified.

An assumption is a thing that we accept as true without proof.

Many relationships have been damaged or broken because the parties were not dealing with reality – with is authentic.  Instead, things were said and decisions made based on a belief that could not be proven.

Focus on constantly discerning what is fact and what is assumption.

Most people are quite capable of making great decisions once they can tell the difference between what is real and what they think is real.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Focus 100% of your attention on the other person.

Most of us are always looking for ways to spend more time with those we love and care about. Often, that time spent is at the expense of other important things and the quality is rushed.

We may think that children want mom and dad to spend more time with them but what they really want is 100% of their parent’s attention.

It’s not surprising we teach our children the wrong things when we’re distracted by business, by phones and by our digital devices.

What prompted me to write this piece is a neighbor who was grilling dinner on the deck while his children were playing. The “chef” had one of those phones attached to his ear and you could hear his business conversation in the next yard.

By the time dinner was done, the steaks (that smelled great) were barbequed but he managed never to interact with his children once. Not a word.

Not pointing fingers. Just saying that whether it’s children, co-workers, spouses or friends, the winning recipe for more quality time is not measured in time spent but in time invested 100% in conversation.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

This is the poignant way Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg described the choice that she had 30 days after the sudden death of her husband Dave Goldberg.

When we lose a loved one, we struggle.

Sandberg’s article is so worth the few minutes it takes to read.

The struggle with loss is always with us – the loss of a loved one who is irreplaceable.  The loss of our careers, marriages, relationships, health and time concern all of us no matter what age.

Goldberg was 47 years old.

Sandberg shared a situation that occurred after her husband’s death that required a father-child activity that he will obviously not be able to make.

So her friend put his arm around her and said, “Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of option B.”

We will always mourn for the first option but expressing our eternal love for someone in real time is the new mission.

Sheryl Sandberg channels a song by Bono, “There is no end to grief . . . and there is no end to love.”

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Amit Sood says that the world is now so fast we find ourselves hurrying even when we’re not late.

Hurry has become a habit.

It’s easy to blame our digital devices but we remain the masters of our digital devices.

This is on us.

If living in the present is our goal – if that is what promises to bring us the most happiness – we are rushing right past the now to what’s next.

The past is a file that you call up, refer to and then click off of.

The future is for planning ahead but we cannot live in the future.

All we have is what’s happening now – good or bad.

To rush past the present is a lost opportunity.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.