Many workplaces are toxic, and yet we need a job.

We are intertwined with friends and associates who we might ordinarily not pick out of a lineup to be real friends.

And we can’t choose our own family which means we deal with what we have inherited for better or worse.

So what’s a person to do?

Discovering and articulating the negativity we see and hear around us helps insulate us from being those people.

Saying it to ourselves – “this guy is really depressing, so negative about the future”.

Or, again to ourselves — “what a sad view of life she has”.

Once we get used to articulating the negativity around us, we automatically distance ourselves from the destructive attitudes that bring us down.

Humans become like our environment – we adapt to circumstances as well as prevalent attitudes.

For the rest of today, see if you can make a mental note every time you see or hear a negative situation developing.  And see if it doesn’t make you feel instantly better.

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

Two Harvard psychologists, Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth, created a smartphone app to get to the bottom of how frequently people’s minds wander.

They then contacted 2,250 adult volunteers at random intervals to ask how they were feeling, what they were thinking about and what they were doing.

They found that their volunteers spent approximately half their time thinking about what was not going on around them instead thinking or even ruminating about the past, the future or things that may never happen at all.

They were happiest when they focused their minds on what they were doing in the moment.  Research backs the advice of many who insist that happiness and fulfillment can only be found in the present moment.  Thinking about other things is a prescription for unhappiness.

This is not to say we cannot plan for the future.  We just can’t live there before it’s time.

Nor is it saying we cannot learn from the past.  Just life today does not exist in the past.

Our brains can be retrained to live in the moment by becoming conscious of even mundane things that we do.  The more we try to reside in the moment, the easier it is to unconsciously live in the now and reap more of the happiness benefits.

There is no pill, no therapy greater than focusing on the here and on.

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

No matter how anxious two people are to solve the problem existing between them, there is a greater urge that they almost always give in to.

The need to be right.

Most people can only listen to each other for only so long – and that’s usually not very long at all.  As David Burns says, “One attitude that gets in the way of good communication is the need to solve problems. I often tell troubled couples that they must refuse to solve the problems in their relationship if they hope to experience greater love and closeness”.

Being upset, arguing, bickering is not communicating.  And if anger is not shared openly – and it almost always is not – then game over.

The awesome power of listening is the tool that makes salespeople richer, careers more rewarding, relationships closer and it requires no skill other than keeping our mouths shut for a moment while simultaneously opening our ears.

Resisting a good argument even if you are “right” or if it is absolutely about “the truth” is the direct path to problem solving.

A friend of mine who brokers hundreds of millions of dollars of radio stations used to tell me that the terms of the deals often took a backseat to the dynamics between the dealmakers.   And that even when they wanted to do business together, they couldn’t get out of their own way.

When in doubt listen. 

Overcome the need to be right.

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

Some of the best coaches are teachers.

No, all of the best coaches are teachers.  And teachers know that everyone learns at their own pace. 

As a professor at USC I soon learned that students don’t care whether the next class is about the history of whatever.  They care when you engage them.

I had a professor in college, John Roberts, who used to do an opening monologue and made the class laugh.  By the end of the semester the class thought it had hijacked the professor, he made radio and television that much fun. 

But he later shared his secret in which he kept stimulating the discussion until students started asking questions about what he had already planned to teach.

At work, we give orders.

At home, we give commands.

The best way to get someone to win cooperation and get results is to change your mission and create in others the burning desire to learn.

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

There is one sure way to get what you want.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen used to say, “will what God wills” and you’ll always get what you want.

For the less religious, the same principle applies – accept more things and be happier.

This is not to say don’t have goals, ambitions and drive.  Perhaps you know people who never relent until they get what they want only to find out that what they wanted didn’t make them happy for very long.

The secret is to have many victories of time – not just one.  The Olympian who works a lifetime for a medal they may not win can leave them feeling worthless for the rest of their lives if they haven’t learned to savor smaller successes along the way.

And here’s the great revelation.

Getting what you want feels the same no matter whether the accomplishment is major or minor.

To cultivate that feeling of pride and self-satisfaction that we all seek, learn to savor many small accomplishments over time rather than withholding satisfaction until or unless you accomplish your goal.

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

A natural depressant is being sedentary. 

We’re designed to be active. 

Over the weekend I met a woman at a funeral who is well into her eighties.  She mall walks two miles a day leaving her “girlfriends” winded at the closest Starbucks kiosk.  She told me she jumped from a cliff using a glider ten years ago when she was “only” in her late seventies.

I was so impressed with her enthusiasm level – and remember, this was at a funeral imagine what she is like on a happier occasion – that I went looking for evidence that exercise was the bromide we have all be searching for.

In a 2007 study in Psychosomatic Medicine, some 202 people with major depression – not just the blues – were divided into three groups.

One group was randomly given the antidepressant Zoloft, another received supervised home exercise programs and the rest got a placebo.

After four months, the exercisers were just as likely to enter a remission as the group taking medication.

We know exercise improves our mood so to not take full advantage of increased daily activity is like turning down a free gift.

As Ellen DeGeneres says “My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the heck she is.”

But wherever she is, she’s healthy and happy.

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

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie may have dealt a serious blow to his presidential ambitions because of revenge – that is assuming, of course, that he was aware of the actions of his staff to disrupt traffic on the George Washington Bridge that spans New York City.

Putting politics aside because both political parties are usually always guilty of the same transgressions, seeking revenge kills careers, families and interpersonal relationships.

Confucius said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves”.

Don’t get mad get even is bad advice.

If forgiveness doesn’t work, try channeling your creative juices.

There is much psychological evidence that creativity heals the urge to seek revenge and it helps folks deal with the painful circumstances revenge creates.

Politicians will never learn, but they are not alone.

Until we deal with the feelings that prompt us to use whatever powers we have to seek revenge on another, our lives will not only be filled with anger but careers and families will be broken as well.

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

There is a reason no one would ever give up a smartphone after using one.

It’s your life in your hands.

Here’s another.

Capture a picture of a loved one you have lost and put it on your smartphone in a photo file where you can keep photo memories of the ones you wish to remember.

Then, during the day, find a moment to scroll through the picture and think about the one trait you admire most about that person.  Should you decide to make that trait live on in you, digital memories of this kind help you to stay focused and remember someone special.

Making a loved one’s picture as smartphone wallpaper is also a great way to never forget the ones you love.

Better yet, make an additional second file for people who are special and still with you.  Just a moment of appreciation guarantees a positive, happy remembrance of the special people who value the most.

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

Ke$ha told TMZ, “I’m a crusader for being yourself and loving yourself, but I’ve found it hard to practice.  I’ll be unavailable for the next 30 days, seeking treatment for my eating disorder … to learn to love myself again, exactly as I am.”

And then there’s the ongoing controversy about photoshopping stars and models on magazine covers to make them look like something they are not.  Vogue and Jezebel are having that fight right now.  Lady Gaga said a recent photo-shoot was not how she looks when she gets out of bed.

And then there is Girls, the breakthrough HBO series where star Lena Dunham appears just as God built her even in intimate nude scenes.

Not being happy with how we look is not new.  But there is hope that a new generation will make some needed advances.

• Retrain the way our brains work to accept ourselves the way we are.  Is the runner up in a beauty pageant really a loser?  Technically they lost to number one.  Aren’t there more important things than trying to be what we are not?
• You would never call anyone else fat or scrawny so do as Leslie Goldman, body image expert and author of Locker Room Diaries suggests:  “Treat yourself as you would treat others, and you’ll find negative thoughts will lessen over time”.
• Compare yourself to you – always a good policy.  Are you more fit, healthier, happier today than you were?  Now that’s a comparison you can live with.

One size doesn’t fit all in personality, passion, intelligence, compassion and, yes, body image.

And I love this from Tom Stoppard, “I am not my body. My body is nothing without me.”

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

Savor.

When I asked my USC students if they would like to know a surefire way to avoid having to multitask, none of them raised their hands until, of course, I stood there in a long uncomfortable silence waiting for someone, anyone, to be curious.

What don’t we do along with something else?  Game of Thrones is watched while our “second screens” (phones, tablets, laptops) are in use nearby.  We shop at Safeway on the phone.  We text, we drive. 

No one is arguing that multitasking cannot be done simply that multitasking cannot be done pleasurably.

1. Doing 20% of our tasks gets us 80% productivity and yet we try to do everything at once.
2. We run on the beach, but don’t listen to the surf.  But there’s an app for ocean sounds.
3. We converse in between texting.
4. Email is like junk mail so why do we spend so much time with it while doing other things?

If life for you is a marathon to see how much you can do simultaneously then multitask away.

For more pleasure, watch Breaking Bad and do nothing else.  Pick the handful of things you must do today and focus on only doing them well.

Run without an ear bud in your ear.  You can listen to music after you’ve soaked up the high of great exercise.

Text away but not while you are conversing with another person.  Choose one.

Eliminate things that don’t need to be done at all (like most email) and simplify life.

Interesting that Millennials have discovered another gift – binge watching TV and movies.  I’m thinking this find was a necessary antidote for too much multitasking.

“Savoring is placing your attention on pleasure as it occurs” – Harvard’s “Positive Psychology”.

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