The one thing about successful people is that they are seemingly allergic to the word “no”.

When they hear it, they immediately get to work.

Some people become discouraged when they first hear “no”.

Dale Carnegie always said to get the other person to say yes, yes. That’s two yeses. And then you’re on your way.

Here’s how I see it:

1. Eliminate “no” from your vocabulary. When you hear it, start working to get to yes.       You may be surprised how good you can be at this.
2. When you are prevented from getting that which you want, welcome it. Really!       Because the more you hear “no” and the more you get working to accomplish your mission the more you really want it.
3. Nothing worth happening landed in the lap of anyone who didn’t fight naysayers along the way.
4. “No” is temporary. Yes is permanent.

If you don’t get the job you want, let the rejection propel you into doing what you must to get in on the next try.

If you’re not chosen, fight harder.

Lose the election? Try again.

The irony of a life well lived is that the things we value most are often out of reach until we step it up and prove to ourselves first how much we want it.

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You can never seem to do anything right.

They are the ones who take the credit.

They treat you like you are subhuman but expect that to motivate you.

They make you uncomfortable.

They are jealous.

It seems they want you to fail – it makes little sense.

Here’s the rule of thumb.

If you love your job but hate your boss, dig in and outlast that person because even the most powerful abuser of human spirit gets it in the end.

But if you can find fulfillment in a similar or different job elsewhere, leave with dignity and be more diligent about the type of person who will become your next employer.

In the radio industry over the past decade, good and loyal employees have been treated like slaves.  A bad economy and their love of radio have kept these fine people in harm’s way.

Millennials would rather quit a job where they are mistreated then continue working for someone they don’t respect.

This is forcing companies that want to succeed to change the way they talk to and work with employees.  After all, there are 95 million Millennials and it does matter what they think.

In the end, our careers are in our own hands.

Never let anyone get into your head and tamper with your dreams, your desires or self-esteem.

When that happens, it’s time to stop them.

No job is worth holding if you pay for it with the way you feel about yourself.

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There is almost no hurt greater than to lose a friend.

Friends are hard to come by.

We have many, many acquaintances in life but real friends can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

And yet, what was once so close can also inflict great hurt when a trusted friend turns on you.

I don’t know many people who have not experienced this pain – including young college students not just limited to adults who have lived a great deal of their lives.

There are no easy ways to nurture the hurt but there are ways to get back on track after the loss of a friend.

• There are many reasons for breaches in relationships – among the most likely is jealousy.  Plainly put, jealousy kills friendships.
• Leave the door open to reconciliation and forgiveness down the road if and when the offending friend also realizes the hole in their life that was created when they stopped being a friend.
• It is helpful to remember that your other friends need you and that they should not be subjected to undo ruminating over someone else’s loss.

Concentrating on being a friend is a better use of time than ruminating over the friend someone else wants you to be.

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I read a most encouraging article in The New York Times recently called “A Natural Fix for A.D.H.D”.

It reminded me of a music industry student who sought me out the day before he attended my first class.

As I recall, he said, “Professor Del Colliano, I have four different types of attention deficit diagnosed”.

To which I replied, “Well don’t you worry, we’ll work with them”.

But I’ll never forget his response which was “Oh, it’s not a disadvantage.  It’s an advantage”.

And the Times article went on to suggest that people with attention deficit – an estimated 11% between the ages of 4 and 17 may simply be craving more excitement, more stimulation.

Plainly put, they may be bored.

That’s why a smart professor will lose those PowerPoint slides and do interactive teaching.

And why we shouldn’t define our children as being damaged when they actually may be more suited for a different age – the hunter/gatherer era of history in which they would have been best suited to the dangers of life before our agrarian society was born 1,000 years ago.

Take the limits off.

Rest the preconceived notions.

We’re treating people who are good and smart and loving and kind as if they had a disease when it may well be that their minds are restless and looking for new challenges.

Every “disadvantage” has an “advantage” – that is the main lesson of life.

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Yesterday I found myself quoting word for word two friends of mine that are no longer on this earth.

“Never outgrow your zest for enthusiasm”.

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

Wynn Etter, the Dale Carnegie sponsor for whom I worked for many years, lived by his pledge of enthusiasm.

And Jim Weinraub, also a Dale Carnegie associate and friend, was wise in ways I thought I knew then, but really know now especially when it came to observing the human condition.

How I would love to hear them again.

Or hear my mother remind me that “every dog has its day” when I faced disappointment.

It is true that special people cannot be replaced, but the best way to keep them alive – to keep a clear memory of them advancing in the future – is to quote them, talk about how special they are, share the gift of their joy or wisdom with others who have never met them.

Life is a continuum and we don’t get to decide when we must say goodbye to special people, but we can keep them alive in our minds and hearts every day by not forgetting the specific things that made them special.

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Change is difficult.

Sometimes it even seems impossible and we grow frustrated and give up.

Change is a scary word.

Politicians use it as if people really want it when what they really want is for things to get better.

Let’s replace change with getting better.

Here are the secrets to effectively make changes.

1. See vividly in your mind’s eye that which will make you better, happier, more fulfilled, more loving or more loved.
2. Make a road map. Just wanting to be better is a prescription for failure.  We have to know how to move toward that which we want.
3. Change that matters usually comes from turmoil so if you are expecting to flip a switch and emerge as someone else or someone better, that’s not going to happen.
4. Change comes to those who refuse to give up pursuing it. In other words, after making a plan, your ability to doggedly stick to that plan almost always guarantees success.
5. When it feels like change is coming too slowly, remember that good things come to those who want it the most.

That’s why New Year’s resolutions never seem to make it past the first week in January.

Even failing to change is valuable.

It tells us that we didn’t want it enough to work for it.

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Ali:  “So everything the God made, the cows, horses, the moon, stars, ants, everything has a purpose … Now what’s your purpose? You’re a human being. If God made the sun have a purpose, humans have a purpose too. You haven’t found your life purpose yet have you?”

Maryum Ali:  “To make people feel better … To fix people up.”

Ali:  “That’s good, Maryum”.

This is what we learn from a documentary about the amazing boxer Muhammad Ali as he spoke to one of his daughters.

It makes me take pause and ask some questions of myself.

What is your purpose on this earth?

Am I proceeding in the right direction?

Am I using my God-given gifts – all of them?

We wouldn’t travel from New York to New Haven without a roadmap or certainly Google Maps.

Why do we live our lives without knowing where we are going.

It’s never too late to change course to match what our purpose is on this earth.

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That’s the conclusion of Shawn Achor who speaks of the happy secret to better work.

That means that thinking we’ll be happy when we make a certain amount of money (or win the lottery) is not correct.

If we meet another person, it will make us happy (not always true).

If we lose weight, we’ll feel happier (healthier but not always happier).

What Achor is isolating which I find empowering is that we would be wise to put our expectations second to our happiness.

Be happy, then don’t worry.

Not don’t worry, be happy.

Intelligence and technical skills only predict 25% of success.

“75% of long term job success is predicted not by intelligence and technical skills, which is normally how we hire, educate and train, but it’s predicted by three other umbrella categories. It’s optimism (which is the belief that your behavior matters in the midst of challenge), your social connection (whether or not you have depth and breadth in your social relationships), and the way that you perceive stress”.

As a college professor I preached optimism over everything to my students.  Now there is research to back it.

Our homework then is to work at being happy.

The other benefits will follow and not the other way around.

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It seems like there are so many school shootings these days.

I’ve heard people say, “Back in my day that never happened”.

Here is how I choose to look at it.

99.99% of our school children are educated in safe environments.

But to make every young person safe we have to put politics aside and focus on the stressful world in which we live.

Most people are stressed beyond belief and to make things worse, they are tied to their stress through digital communication and social media.

Bullying is not the exception but the rule at all schools, in all grades and in every part of the country.

There are things we can do about school safety and things that educators must do – such as become more skilled looking for early warning signs because it seems every time we have a tragedy like the recent one in Washington, officials have to admit that they didn’t see this behavior coming.

Bullying is not acceptable – and I am speaking of the workplace and in personal relationships as well.

Bullying is ten times worse in the digital age because it can be conducted publicly.

So rather than shake our heads and mourn another sad day, let’s roll up our sleeves and do what we can do – become a vocal advocate against bullying all people.

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The secret is not looking back and determining that all those bad breaks you overcame actually led to a better outcome.

The secret is remembering that good comes from bad.

I hate to even admit it but we don’t usually know what we really want.

We think we do.

Sometimes we are convinced we do.

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

And so often things could only have happened because we didn’t get what we wanted.

The mate you would have never met if you hadn’t experienced the pain of a broken relationship – this is true for me.

The career you could have never thought of until some employer terminated your position, made you feel pain and launched you into a new career.

All the unexpected good things that seem to happen when we take the death grip off our lives and look forward to that which we have never sought.

To make this powerful message a strong part of your life, make a list of great outcomes in your life and the lives of those around you that we unanticipated and unasked for.

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