The current best thinking is to always provide references when applying for a new job.

The phrase “references available upon request” should be retired.

There is a better way.

At the end of your resume, include only the best references you have.  List their name, title, contact information AND …

A line quoted exactly as they summed your skills up.  In other words, ask them for it in a letter and include the quote after their name.  Most employers will not want to make more work and call all your references if they think the quotes are authentic.

And never fear a bad reference.

That’s right.  You may want to reread that line again.

Some people get pleasure or feel justified in hurting others from moving on from a bad situation for both of them.

I once applied for an on-air job at a big number one radio station in Philadelphia.  I had great references except for one difficult to work for employer but I had to list my employment at his station.

My prospective employer in fact called that mean person and sure enough got a not so nice reference.

Later when my prospective employer called me back for a second interview and an audition, he asked me point blank – I called this so and so and he didn’t have very nice things to say about you.

I was stunned.

But I said, “I am sorry about that, but I worked hard for him and I am grateful for the other mentors I’ve had”.

After what seemed like a verrrry long pause, he leaned over and said, “He’s an idiot anyway.  Never has a nice thing to say about anyone.  You’re hired”.

My willingness to be humble, authentic and honest overcame a glitch that could have ruined a breakthough career opportunity.

You’re never out if you’re never down.

I have a wristband called Lark that I can wear to bed that reports the quality of my sleep via Bluetooth and an iPad.

How many times did I wake up during the night even briefly.  How long did it take to fall asleep.  And I get a total grade from 1-10 on how well I slept – with suggestions on how to improve.

This kind of thing is likely to proliferate as Apple is rumored to be working on a wristband (iWatch maybe) that can report other vital heath and happiness signs to the wearer.

Some say it can even monitor blood sugar or tell you when your blood pressure goes up.

In other words, we’re about to enter the age of tracking exercise and social interaction, two of the main contributors to happiness.

But how do we get started?

1. Exercise – without that your health is compromised.
2. Make new friends, spend time with old friends because socializing is a main contributor to happiness.
3. Work for at least one accomplishment a day.  It can be anything but shoot for 365 accomplishments a year and they will soon dwarf the disappointments that rob us of happiness.
4. Be grateful not just for what you have but that which you don’t have.  Do we have to get cured of cancer to be thankful or can we train ourselves to say, thank goodness I am healthy and I appreciate it.
5. Questions to answer:  Have I gotten the most important things I want in life?  If I could start my life all over again, would I change anything?  In what do you find beauty?  In what kind of relationships do you find warmth?

If we start now, those wristbands are going to someday reflect the progress we are making toward a happier and more meaningful life.

Perhaps you have emojis activated on your phone’s text messaging.

For those who do not know what an emoji is think of a little smiley face that you’ve seen at the end of an email or text.  Except much more.

Emojis are replacing text.

What a long distance we have come – from Gutenberg’s first printing press, to books, newspapers, letters, emails, Twitter and text messaging and now a few icons and a few words.

The world evolves and we evolve with it.

Communication is the goal.

Whatever fosters better communication is what we should embrace.

No reason to fear the future because things are changing. Just don’t lose sight of our main purpose as a society – to communicate effectively to others.

Bring on the tools.

A Time Magazine and Real Simple poll of women released a few weeks ago indicates that women need to take more risks.

The poll illustrates that the fear of failure is keeping more women from top corporate jobs.

Everyone fails but according to the poll, women fear failure even more then men.

I like to take the gender away from this issue although the research speaks for itself.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained became an oft-used pearl of wisdom because it is true.

So what can we do about the fear of taking risks?

1. No one wins 100% of the time.  Substitute trying hard 100% of the time instead of concentrating on succeeding and the victories will come more readily.
2. Lack of confidence feeds the fear of taking risks.  You build confidence when you give yourself credit when you do succeed.  Most people skip this important step.
3. One person’s failure is another person’s next success.  Thomas Edison tried thousands of times to invent the light bulb but he never gave up.  That victory must have been sweet.
4. Here’s something you can do to prepare yourself for taking more risks.  Target a successful person you admire and see if she or he just walked into their success or learned from taking risks that could lead to failure.

Nothing succeeds like success, but success is built on the back of risks taken, lessons learned.

Incivility is increasingly fanned by social media.

Trolling – the mostly anonymous and often in mobs – upends decent social discussions.

Zelda Williams gave up.  With days of her late father, comedian Robin Williams’s death, she had to close her social media accounts rather than endure fake pictures of her father who committed suicide with marks around his neck.

Sadly, the more this practice of trolling comes to light, the more people do it.

What has happened to our world?

My theory is that we spend so much time interacting with our screens that we become insensitive to how people respond to us – both negatively and positively. And that emboldens some people who would never behave in this fashion if they had to look you in the eye face to face.

Most people are nice and considerate.

As rudeness proliferates in our digital world the best defense may be to do as Zelda Williams did and step back.

But rudeness occurs on airplanes, in hair salons where cell phones are pressed to the ears of heads being washed and many, many other situations.

Immediate contact via social media requires the same courtesy that we show to others in person.

It is not an excuse for bad behavior.

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Things may have changed since you were single – five years ago!

That’s right — things have really changed.

A new survey of 2,000 people from the dating website Singles247 is an eye opener.

According to the findings, single girls now wait until the fifth “date” (if you can call it that) before having sex.

But what makes up their mind has changed, too.

1. Two gifts or tokens of affection.
2. Five social media messages.
3. 12 text conversations.
4. Five phone calls.
5. Three DVDs watched (really?).
6. Seven passionate kisses.
7. Five heart-to-hearts or meaningful conversations.
8. Four meals together.
9. One bunch of flowers.

That’s it.

It takes women a lot less time than men to make up their mind if they like someone on a first date – one in ten know instantly according to this research.

Nearly half have made up their minds on a person only 10 minutes in to a date.

Wait!

This is insane.

I love social media like the next person and it’s a great addition to dating tools.  No matter how one arrives at a decision to have a relationship, it should be based on two things.

1. What 5 things do you value the most in another person.
2. Is the other person living the values that you crave.

And take all the time you like.

Your future together is riding on it.

Thanks for reading me every day.  Please tell your friends that they, too, can receive these positive day starters in their mail at no cost by signing up here.

Comedians are often unhappy people who need to make others laugh.

And that’s what the very talented Robin Williams did.

He, like all of us, also had demons to fight – drug addiction, alcoholism, depression – but he fought the good fight until he couldn’t face his problems any longer.  Williams’ wife shared the knowledge that Robin Williams was suffering from early onset Parkinson’s disease – something that probably added to his woes.

The thought of not being able to no longer act or perhaps do standup comedy may have been too much to deal with.  Michael J. Fox did all he could and more to overcome the disadvantages of Parkinson’s.

It certainly has made me think about what life would be like if I couldn’t make speeches, write and do videos or be the husband or father I want to be.

So I have arrived at a place that helps me to understand Williams’ plight without condoning his suicide.

We are on loan to this world.

Our gifts may be shared in a finite way for a limited number of years.

There is always an ending but the focus should be on the present.

Robin Williams has given us many gifts in his career but the one we don’t want to forget about is a reminder to appreciate every day that we get to do the things that bring us fulfillment and happiness.

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Author Melody Beattie put her finger on it:

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion to clarity…Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow”.

My music industry students at USC understandably wanted to graduate, get high paying jobs in the field that they loved and be happy.

But I warned them that Los Angeles (among other places) is loaded with rich, powerful, unhappy people.  Don’t become one of them.

Looking for ways to find gratitude is what I am talking about not just being thankful for a good job or a nice car.

Even the flu is a reason to be grateful because you will recover and be healthy again.

If there is one game changer for all of us, it is the power of looking for ways to be grateful.

The good stuff follows.

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This is the best definition of worry that I have ever seen.

It is so good that it prompts us to actually put a stop to it.

Think of it the way Dr. Amit Sood sees it:

“Worry is the interest you pay on a nonexistent threat – the principal.  Or, if a threat actually exists, then each time you pay an installment on this principal, worry is a proportion that is added to the original”.

We drive with the airbags already deployed according to Dr. Sood.

Think of it like that.

Before it happens, we expect the worst.

99% of the things we worry about never happen.

And for the 1% that does, what we feared wasn’t exactly what eventually happened.

In other words the negative thoughts we increasingly bring upon ourselves are worse than what we fear.

Or as Mark Twain put it: “I have suffered several terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened”.

Thanks for reading me every day.  Please tell your friends that they, too, can receive these positive day starters in their mail at no cost by signing up here.

You are old when you outgrow the zest for enthusiasm.

Young people are naturally enthusiastic.

They haven’t been fully indoctrinated by the workaday world that often muzzles enthusiasm and discourages happiness.

Yet I know college students who are older than a 60-year old in their attitude and I have known 60-year olds who have the enthusiasm and curiosity of a teenager.

Botox erases lines but doesn’t infuse enthusiasm.

Personal trainers can get our muscles optimized in all the right places but they cannot show us how to be forever curious.

The world is youth oriented with 95 million Millennials coming of age and as old as 32, but there are a few things that belie age.

1. Smiling more is the best surgery for your face – it makes others open to relating to you.
2. The good old days were never that good, just old.  The real “good old days” are the ones we haven’t lived yet – the ones that are ripe with promise.
3. Diversity in interests, friends and passion are the true age interrupters.
4. An open mind is an eternally youthful mind
5. Humor is the great elixir that heals life’s hurts.

Or as Katy Perry sings:  “We can dance until we die, you and I…we’ll be young forever”.