There are lots of ways to bully people but one of the most popular ones is to make fun of them because they are fat.

For decades thin-is-better has gotten out of hand.

Healthy is best and people of all sizes and shapes can be healthy.

Fat shaming is particularly odious on social media where it seems the worst elements of bullying have found a new and powerful way to hurt people.

Fat shaming or any other kind is a direct reflection on the person doing the bullying and it hurts the victim.

The beauty Marilyn Monroe would be considered too fat to be a model by today’s standards.

Here is how to support friends or children who are losing confidence because they are being held to social media ridicule for being too fat:

1. Fat shaming doesn’t lead to weight loss but it does lead to a serious loss of confidence.
2. Your body was given to you to love and protect.
3. Even skinny people can be “big hearted” – the size of your heart matters more than the size or shape of your body.
4. Even a doctor does not get to fat shame a patient for health reasons — allow no one to be the weight police.

Be proud of yourself and your body.

The only thing that matters is to be the fine person that you are.

Now we know.

A study done by Advisor Perspectives has nailed it down to the penny.

So how much household income is necessary to achieve happiness?

$75,000 a year.

More in some states.  Less in others.

New Jersey it takes $95,700 but in Missouri $70,271.

It takes only $65,800 to achieve happiness in Mississippi and $122,175 in Hawaii.

Making more will not increase your happiness significantly and yet almost all of us devote our lives to making more money even though we have no idea when enough is enough or not enough is preventing us from being happy.

What if we had a metric for happiness not related to income.

Happy moments together.

Friends in our lives.

Loved ones with whom to share our experiences and dream our dreams.

Wouldn’t that be a way to get the most for the money you earn and then some?

Place a real value on things that money can’t buy and you’ll discover the road to fulfillment.

I thought you might like to see what you need to earn in all 50 states so here it is.

My friend John Dowd, Jr (also known to SiriusXM “70’s on 7” listeners at Jaybeau Jones) writes:

“Many confuse self confidence with conceit and arrogance.  Self-confidence is something others can feel, while arrogance is an external reaction to a situation that others can see.

We can’t control how others react to our self-confidence.

Some will champion it; others may be threatened by it.

In those situations we must keep moving and send those who are threatened a silent blessing in hopes that they discover inner confidence on their journey.

Self-confidence originates in the heart from a place of love and a need to do well to help others. Arrogance and conceit are powered from fear.

Start today and every day centered in your heart with 100% self-confidence”.

I subscribe to his daily motivators and thought you might like to see John’s work here.

On my media website I wrote about a radio executive who was fired by his best friend since first grade – the godfather to his son and executor of his will.

And the firing was done in an unnecessarily cruel way.

In our quest to be successful and self-fulfilled, we are often making compromises that hurt the ones we love.

It has happened to me, perhaps to you as well.

The feeling of being betrayed by someone so close to you is more than an empty feeling, it is a raw rejection that seemingly never goes away.

I once heard a psychiatrist say that people who have had their heart broken should stop glorifying the person who broke their heart.  It just makes things worse and keeps the pain front and center.

She suggested instead of saying “no one will ever love me like that again” to substitute “he wasn’t that good looking anyway”.

Which prompts the thought that when we are betrayed by a friend, instead of obsessing over the ingratitude of it all, think constantly of someone else in your life who could be called a friend and for whom you are truly grateful.

If you liked this piece, subscribe and share it with your friends.  If you want more resources, go to Jerry Del Colliano.com.

Taylor Swift is one of the most important icons in the Millennial generation.

She is a role model for a lot of young and teenage girls and is a savvy businessperson in her own right.

She recently wrote in the stogy old Wall Street Journal to put selfies in their proper place.

Selfies are today’s autographs.

No one would dare ask someone for their signature when they could have a picture taken with them to distribute via social media.

My daughter, Daria, and her girlfriends at ASU Cronkite School were surprised to be approached by President Clinton and his Secret Service agents as he asked them if THEY would like to have a picture taken with HIM at a school event.

Taylor Swift says Instagram followers are currency because Instagram is the most important social networking tool for their age group.

She has 9.7 million Instagram followers, 41.7 million Twitter followers and 66.6 Facebook likes.

I can think of an almost endless number of people I wish I could have included in a selfie looking back on the past had only technology to do so been present.

The real revolution was not the computer, not even the Internet.

It is social media.

And anyone who says I don’t do social media is leaving one of life’s great new communication tools behind.

It’s called vamping and teens do it when they are supposed to be in bed and their parents think they are sleeping.

Snuggling under the covers, dimming the screen uploading music, watching videos, discovering whatever they seek online.

A recent New York Times article cited a recent National Sleep Foundation Poll that revealed more than half of 15 to 17 year olds sleep about 7 hours a night – 90 minutes less that the minimum recommendation.

As a professor at USC, my antidotal evidence was more like they’d be lucky to get four hours of sleep and they sleep with their phones in bed or nearby.

One explanation is that young people have so much structure in their lives installed by their parents that they cannot be free until their parents go to bed.

Texting is an amazing tool to help us communicate more seamlessly.

But it is not a lifestyle — jut a tool.

Without pointing fingers and including myself, parents are often poor role models when it comes to technology.

As our lives become more stressful, our goal should be to become more helpful.

And one last thought.

When a person is important enough to you, they deserve your focused attention in person with the exact same way we focus on our digital devices.

Psychologists and physicians tell us that another one of the human brain’s amazing abilities is to help us forget about painful things.

Not to say that we cannot remember hurt from years ago, but that we don’t remember it in exactly the same way.

The death of my mother and father is still sad to me but my visceral response is not the panic and disbelief I felt hours and days after they died.

A painful childhood has a way of sticking with us for a lifetime yet if we felt the pain exactly as it happened we might not be able to move on.

Denial is often the tool by which we deal with pain but even that tool betrays us if we also do not deal with our hurts and then also move on.

Same for pleasure.

If you remember the birth of your daughter, the promotion to partner, the first time you felt financially secure – it is still a great thought but not exactly as it was when it happened.

Fulton Sheen used to say when we get what we want, we no longer want it so it is often better to let go and experience life’s ups and downs with fewer preconceived demands.

Our mission then is to deal with life’s problems, not necessarily solve them and the human mind helps us along the way so we can stay focused on that goal.

The past is like a file cabinet, hard drive or cloud that holds our memories of the past.

The best way to deal with the past is to access it on-demand, get what we are after, then close the file and return to the present.

The future is unpredictable and unknowable.

The best way to visit the future is for planning purposes. But when we find that we are spending too much time in the future, immediately return to the present.

And what is the present?

It is not a place where we mindlessly disregard past memories or future dreams.  It is a place where we choose to focus our attention to drain every moment of happiness from what is happening now.

The past is a history book.

The future is a promissory note.

The present is cash in hand.

My wife and I are on vacation at an old haunt at Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island “down the Jersey shore” as you read this.

We love everything about the shore but what makes us anticipate this time together is revisiting and inventing new rituals.

Walking to the ice cream parlor near the lighthouse and waiting in a long line where we get to meet people from everywhere and around the corner.

Sitting on the beach after hours until the sun goes down.

Discovering a new walk.  Sitting by the dock of the bay would make Otis Redding happy.  (By the way, did you know Otis Redding never lived to see how big his version of “Dock of the Bay” eventually became).

Dinner with someone new.

Playing air hockey, golf and Scrabble together on our iPads.

Who knows what rituals we will conjure up this week.

A friend told me that successful relationships have one thing in common – they are embellished by seemingly little rituals that bring people closer.

A couple married 72 years recently revealed that doing things together and making decisions together makes for happier relationships.

Those decisions don’t always have to be major life decisions.

We can practice by making a late night run to Café Bacio in Beach Haven where they sell only desserts.

Followed, of course, by running on the beach to work off the calories the next day.

Bobby Ocean wrote to me recently to share this wisdom:

“I borrowed it from a Zen province in France where everyone yearly renews their spiritual guidelines and during that time, those wedded renew the decision they made when first living together – to treat one another as an “honored guest”.”

“Honored Guest” exceeds husband/wife or mother/father.

Often we find ourselves treating others as if they are furniture – they are there but they have no feelings.

Titles are titles but “honored guests” is a concept that changes the way we relate to those close to us whom we love.