No bookkeeping necessary.

When friends and trusted individuals are involved, the best policy is not to keep tabs on what one party or another does to be helpful or kind.

Being in the radio business, I came close to losing my house early in my programming career. A friend offered to give me $5,000 that would help me make the payment for a few months. But I refused. Said I had no guarantee that I could repay him and in fact didn’t even have a job prospect. I shook hands and left.

The next day he called me back to his office and took out the envelope again (it felt like a funeral scene from the Sopranos – you know, an envelope with money in it).

This time he looked me in the eye and said, “You are going to be somebody and I want to bet on you. I do not care if you ever pay the money back. It comes without strings”.

I reluctantly took the money and shortly thereafter got a great programming job. One of the first things I did was recommend my friend to be the station’s local attorney and I returned the favor.

How did he get me to take the money when I didn’t know if I could ever repay it?

He leaned forward and said, among friends “you owe everybody and everybody owes you”.

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Has this happened to you?

Recently I made the acquaintance of an interesting man who shortly after he introduced himself to me, proceeded to talk for more than an hour – about himself.

Most emails are self-centered – about the sender and what he or she wants.  Often – but thankfully not always – they totally disregard the receiver’s interests, well-being or state of mind.

Go back and review your text messages and see how many of them actually are person centered – to you?

The realization is that we live in a world of self-absorption.  Even retailers and advertisers pander to that.

Dale Carnegie also cautioned to make people like you, talk in terms of the other persons interests, but does that work today when people are already talking about themselves.

The answer is – double down.

Even a self-absorbed person cannot help but like to hear us say, “Tell me more about this”.  And surprisingly, you may get an inquiry about you.

Just because the world is getting more self-absorbed and egotistical does not mean that we have to be that way.

Fighting for attention from a self-absorbed person is always a losing battle.

But doubling down and talking in terms of that person’s interests still works almost every time.

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The author Scott Addington writes:  “My purpose became clearly evident after I stopped looking for it”.

In Addington’s case the birth of his daughter.

“Beginning with that moment , there has never been the slightest doubt regarding the purpose and source of meaning in my life”.

Sometimes it is the loss of a job or loss of a relationship that is unexpected.

Often, the very thing we think is our main reason for being turns out not to be.

Doctors who sour on their profession, lawyers who want to do something else and not use their law degree.

This fascinates me in my own journey.

Maybe we don’t have just one true purpose in life.  Maybe there are several reasons for us being the person we are.

And as a professor I can also add, maybe the reason is to help others discover the wonder of their skills and abilities.

Never get discouraged that you cannot discover your real meaning of your life.  Instead be brave and stop looking.

The answer will make itself evident shortly thereafter.

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(David Brooks did a thoughtful piece in The New York Times recently on searching for purpose.  I thought you might like to read it here).

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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• 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.

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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.

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