Life is tough because it tends to interrupt our well-intentioned plans to be happier.

A few weeks back, my wife and I attended a one-day Mayo Clinic Stress-Free Living seminar in Scottsdale, AZ.

The author and physician Amit Sood dazzled with so many ways to get to a more meaningful, stress-free life that it left one wondering where to begin.

But here is what Dr. Sood said.

If you do only two things to change your life, do these two:

1. Don’t postpone joy.  Our little and big victories, our happy moments are often squandered because we tend to move on to what’s next before we celebrate what has just happened.
2. Live a life of kindness even if others around you are not kind to you.  There are many benefits to the person who is being kind to others.  Most — not all – of the recipients will show kindness in return.

There is time to become an expert at relieving stress and living the life you really want to live, but to begin take these two steps that make all the difference in the world.

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The undisputable fact is that genetics and circumstances have the most to do with our happiness.

Thanks, mom and dad.  And thanks to your boss who is making life miserable.

The good news is that about 40% of happiness is due to intentional activities.

We can fight back or stack the deck in our favor by taking action.

And the number one way to take action and reap the happiness benefit is to increase our practice of being grateful every day.

Research studies also show that gratitude-based happiness also tends to increase the happiness of those around us as well.

There are so many ways to be more grateful.

Start each day by identifying three people for whom you are grateful even before you get up out of bed.

Or just writing a big “thank you” on the receipt for breakfast, lunch or dinner whether the service is great or not.  I like to include the server’s name with that “thank you”.

We take a lot of pills to improve our mood, but small and deliberate acts of gratitude are accountable for 40% of how we feel.

If today’s message touched your life, forward it to someone special.

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Read more at Jerry Del Colliano.com.

When we don’t have the time, we lack priorities.

We always have time for the people who are important or the things that must be done.

It’s just a matter of putting our priorities in order and being constantly aware of this process.

The father at dinner with his children who glances at his cellphone even one time is telling his children that hearing them is not a strong priority.

Put the phone away and listen – that sends a positive message.

Lack of time to enjoy your success is failure.

Enjoying the fruits of your labor is a priority you can choose to make.

For people who wonder, “When am I going to have the time to do everything?”, they are guaranteed a stressful life unless they prioritize what is important.

The good news is we don’t need more hours in the day.

Years ago I read a great book that I can recommend to you by Alan Lakein called How To Get Control of Your Time and Your Life.  It was written before the digital age even though it is almost hard to believe that life could have been stressful back then.

In it, he emphasizes constantly asking ourselves if what we’re doing now is a good use of our time.  It’s not just about being efficient.  It’s about being happy.

Because in the end there is nothing worse than doing something well that doesn’t need to be done at all.

And there is nothing more disappointing than wasting a precious day on that which in the end is not going to increase our happiness.

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Modern life is fast moving and egocentric.

TV commercials tell us that companies wishing to do business with us are letting us have it our way. 

Social media by its very nature is egocentric.  We take “selfies” and post them and “like” the pictures posted by our social media “friends”.

Our lives are narrated on Twitter where our next thought becomes part of the thread of our lives.  Following others sometimes gets us caught up in their limited world.

Dale Carnegie used to say to make another person truly like you “talk in terms of the other person’s interests” yet now we find that the “other person” is already talking in terms of their own interests.  The world has changed that much.

Social media is perhaps the greatest invention of the Internet age but it has more potential to be a real tool for friendship.

Parties, events and special occasions are just plain fun and social media makes them even more fun by extension.

To live among the self-absorbed, make a conscious effort to remove yourself from self-absorption.

Spend some of your time talking in terms of the other person’s interests and make sure you’re not monopolizing the conversation whether it is in-person or through social media.

For those willing to deflect attention from themselves will come the reward of being sincerely liked if not loved by others.

In other words, the other person’s self-absorption stops and starts with us.

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Bronnie Ware who is a nurse to the dying in Australia wrote a book about dying that is actually very much for the living.

In The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed By the Dearly Departed, Ware gives us a second chance to avoid the regrets that so often come at the end of life.

They are:

1. I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.  To me, this regret hits home and is a timely reminder to be the person you want to be.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.  I’m sure you can relate.  Life has a way of interrupting our master plan.  No one ever regrets more time outs spent with family and friends.
3. I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.  There is a nice, pleasant way to say how you feel.  What is left unsaid at the end of life is more painful.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.  Friendship takes work that pays a dividend all during life.  It is not an accident.
5. I wish I had let myself be happier.  People from mid-life on often say that they consider their personal happiness more than when they were younger, a practice that will leave few regrets.

Just writing these five things that I have shared previously makes me hope that I won’t have these regrets someday.  How about you?

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There is appropriate anger, which is good and inappropriate anger, which is self-destructive.

1. Are you sure you are angry with the right person?  Often we take our frustrations out on the wrong people or even people who are close to us who have our best interests at heart.
2. Is it the right place and time?  Tempers tend to flare when we can’t deal with things that irk us.  But just as important as our response is asking ourselves the question “Is this the right place or time to express my anger?”.
3. Is the anger we’re feeling directly related to the issue we are responding to?  You don’t have to think too far back to the last time you witnessed an unfortunate display of anger that started dragging in the past.  Couples do this all the time at the expense of their relationship. 
4. Is my anger intended to vent in a constructive way or retaliate for being hurt?  Inappropriate anger is that which is directed at a person who may have hurt you through something they said.  Only respond if your goal is to express your feelings to the issue at hand.

Believe it or not, two tools that can help are deep breathing as you are getting amped up and postponing your response – even a second or two – to fully hear what is angering you.

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Every son should be a champion of empowering women because their mothers are women who deserve to be treated no less than a man.

Every father should be willing to fight for equal opportunity and advancement because their daughters need a strong advocate.

Every husband who is married to a woman should be anxious to see that their partner is treated with the same respect and gravity as any man.

Every friend who has a dear female friend should advance their cause because that’s what real friends are for.

My sister once told me that equal rights and treatment liberates men not just women.

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A delightful school psychologist from Haddonfield, NJ – Libby Falk once shared with me an effective way to get people to butt out of your business.

On personal matters, people have the right to know only that which you want to tell them.

But some people push boundaries.

They pry.

They cajole. 

Some even bully to get access to information and feelings that we are uncomfortable to share with them.

You make the decision of what you want people to know.

Here is Libby’s advice when faced with intruders who want to get too personal:

• Fog the issue by changing the subject or making the request for information appear to be watered down.
• Use humor.  Humor is our friend once again.  If someone says, as one of my “friends” said to me – “How did YOU become a professor at USC?”, my answer was “They ran out of real professors so they called me”.  I never answered and never had to because the invasion of privacy was not his business.  He was probably jealous.

We give social media a lot of slack these days by revealing more information than our parents ever shared in their day.

There are big debates about government snooping into our cellphone calls.

We are routinely asked to trade some personal information when we sign up for something online that we want.

But in the end, what is ours is ours to share as we wish.

Now you have two more ways to push back those who invade your personal space.

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I love writing and I love texting.

Both.

Texting is just emerging as a powerful way to communicate.

Not just the trivial back and forth stuff we all do.  Texting can enhance relationships.

• Texting “thank you” is powerful.  Try to do it several times a day.
• Texting a short message of remembrance is warm and friendly.  “I’m with you on your job interview”.
• Statements of love.  Love u is good.  Love u because you always have my back is better.  Statement + evidence to back it up.
• Requests.  Can we talk?
• Discovery.  Guess where I am?  Guess what I am doing?
• Apologies.  I’m sorry.  Politicians have made apologies a national joke, but a sincere apology perhaps even with a few words to promise better is.

These six things make us better people.

Why not unlock your cellphone and make texting the powerful tool it is.

And pay attention to what’s around you while texting.  One of my readers wrote to tell me her son was on a school bus that hit and killed a person who was texting.  He’s still not able to fully process what happened.

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That’s what the old saying says, but the old saying is wrong.

Nice will soon be the new self-absorption.

We’re getting tired of things being all about me.

Study after study shows that happiness is derived from giving and not receiving.

Giving your time. 

Focusing your attention. 

Doing kind deeds. 

Ironically, no one is truly happy even if they get precisely what they want because often they don’t even know what they really want.

If I am reading this right – and I believe I am – having the courage to be nice, to be honest, to be authentic, to be compassionate – these are advantages that accomplish two important things.

One, you will be happier being the fine person you are instead of the person who you may not want to be for one reason or the other.

And two, you will be more successful because being focused on the other person’s interest is always the way to personal and career success.

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