Before starting each new semester at USC I always reminded my students that they are paying several thousand dollars for the class they enrolled in.

Their parents paid for it, a scholarship covered it or most likely, they would be paying for this course with interest in the form of a student loan for much of their adult lives.

And yet, education is the only thing I can think of that people want the least of for their money (i.e., “Professor, how many classes can we miss?” or “Can we work online and not come to class?”).  We don’t tell a car dealer, “Can I leave out the air conditioning I already paid for?”

Long after you’ve taken most classes, you really don’t remember much about them.

Unless you have discovered the one thing, the big thing, that will bring you success.

We want to succeed, but we’re not always willing to practice.

An Olympian can’t hope for gold, silver or bronze without rehearsing specifically that which can lead to success.

Great golfers say don’t just practice, practice with a purpose.  Hitting tons of balls doesn’t make anyone better at golf.

Focus on becoming skilled at things that really matter.

To be a better salesperson, focus on one thing that will make you better and rehearse it constantly like an Olympic athlete.

If you want to be a better parent, choose one major quality that you want to possess and practice it over and over again.

Most of us have it the wrong way.

We don’t need to be all that smarter.  We just need to practice the right stuff.

Practice with a purpose to rehearse for success.

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

Maybe you know someone with a handicap – a child, a friend or perhaps you have one yourself.

My father was a career military man, a major in The United States Army. 

His leg was amputated – not as a result of the war he fought in, but due to the ravages of coronary artery disease.

He lived a “normal” life for a handicapped person from then on doing almost everything he used to do and some things he never dreamed of. 

You heard of the one armed paperhanger?

Not too long after his rehabilitation this determined Italian man wallpapered an entire room on a stepladder without the aid of an assistant becoming a one legged paperhanger. 

There is an amazing TED video by Maysoon Zayid, the Palestinian immigrant who was born with Cerebral Palsy in my beloved home state of New Jersey.  It’s funny, touching and inspiring.  If you have the time you can see it here.

But at least forward to the end when Maysoon talks about being able to overcome just about anything from disease to discrimination – everything except the Internet later in her life.  In a world where some people with a bully mentality go to get mean, the Internet was Maysoon’s biggest concern as an adult.

We know too well that bullying in social media is killing young people these days.

The Internet is also a tool for good – to help others, encourage those needing a kind word, share information and experiences and to become a community.  We must never let the bullies take this great asset away or diminish it.

In golf, a handicap is an asset that allows everyone to play the game on an equal basis.

There is no greater handicap in life than to limit the potential of others because we cannot see their inner fire and determination.

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

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos used those words to describe – perhaps disingenuously – the plight of small book publishers who seemingly have no chance to compete against the giant Amazon.

That aside, complaining is not a strategy for anyone.

• Venting is good, obsessing about it not so useful or helpful.
• If you become less judgmental, you will likely complain less.
• Accept responsibility because it will either motivate you to fix your problem or let it go.
• The question to ask when you catch yourself getting ready to complain is would you like to complain or be happy.

I like what football coach Lou Holtz says:  “Never tell your problems to anyone…20% don’t care and the other 80% are glad you have them”.

But you may remember Randy Pausch who famously lectured about life and death during the final days of the disease that claimed his life.  Pausch said, “Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.”

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

When you say, “I’m stressed” you might just as well be saying, “I am the reason I am stressed”.   Blaming circumstances or others doesn’t help as we find out over and over again.

We cannot be stressed without our own expressed permission.

Prioritize rather than multitask.

Take control over digital devices because they are wonderful tools until we let them dictate the flow of daily living.

It’s up to you to clamp down on time wasters – they will never do it voluntarily.

Drama kings and drama queens have no place in our happy lives unless we like the stress they try to bring to us.

Even big problems and/or emergencies are not stress producers.  It is the way we respond.  I chose the word respond not react.  Reacting to circumstances is stressful.  Responding is transformational.

Hurt, disappointment and heartbreak are feelings that it is okay to have but not to dwell on.

A good night’s sleep after a tough day is a stress buster. 

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

Few resolutions last even through January.

Good intention, bad idea.

Here’s what agents of change do when they want a proven way to take a good intention and turn it into a life changing strategy.

Focus on only one person.

Maybe it’s you or your spouse, your boss, a child, a friend.  Think it through.  Who is the one person that if you improved your relationship would bring you more happiness and success?

A long list is useless but identifying the one person who could make a difference in your life allows you to strategize about the various ways to accomplish this.

You may not be surprised to find that many people who are successful at evolving focus on themselves.  Want to he happier?  Spend more family time?  Look for a more fulfilling job?  Want to be nicer to yourself?  More appreciative of what you have?  More resilient?  More confident?  More social?  

Change is difficult enough but without 100% focus it is likely to be unrealized.

This is an intriguing alternative.

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

Colin Powell has a great way of putting it.

“In prosperity our friends know us. In adversity we know our friends.”

As the year comes to an end and we reflect on our accomplishments – and sometimes it’s an accomplishment just making it to the end of the year in one piece – beware that some people do not want us to grow. 

They are human. We are all human.  But it is better to associate with people who can help us achieve that which we desire.  What a great time to think about this!

Powell’s suggestions:

• Never receive advice from unproductive people.
• Never discuss your problems with someone incapable of contributing to the solution because those who never succeed themselves are always the first to tell you.
• Don’t follow anyone who’s not going anywhere.

You become like those with whom you closely associate.

Are you even tougher on yourself than you should be?  We can all relate. 

Maybe we should heed Colin Powell’s advice and be tougher on who we choose as friends.

We elevate our game when we are around achievers.

Sometimes the smartest move you can make is to choose friends wisely and at the same time continue being the fine person you are.

Talk about self-gifting – that sounds like a pretty good one.

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

It’s hard at holiday time – and let me just say it — to go on when there is someone missing from our lives.  This may be the first holiday that they are gone or it may be many years.  The emotion is often as strong.

We can’t bring them back – or maybe we can in a very special way.

• Recite the names of departed loved ones who are in your head on a daily basis.  As long as we do not forget, they are alive.
• Pick a trait that the people who you miss the most have and make it your life’s mission to have that trait live on through you.
• Populate your house, desk and office with pictures of people who have died so that you can see them.  I will sometimes even talk to my best friend or my father when I see the picture.  A person’s positive energy never dies.
• Make a meal that reminds you of the person you miss.  I loved my mother’s Italian cooking and every attempt I make to duplicate her great meals becomes a joyous remembrance of her.

Perhaps you will share your ways to keep the memory of someone you miss alive.

Oscar Hammerstein in the musical Carousel wrote:  “As long as there is one person on earth who remembers you, it isn’t over.

The best theory I have ever heard about that negative self-talk that plagues all of us at sometime in our lives is to put a stop/loss on rumination.

Ever notice that a person tormented by negative thinking (perhaps even ourselves) helplessly goes on and on without the hope of breaking that pattern of negative thought.  It’s hard to listen to let alone articulate.

Give it ten minutes.

That’s it – no more, no less.

When you recognize the next bout of negative thinking coming on – go ahead, indulge yourself for ten minutes.  Then it ends.  You move on and hopefully start dealing with the circumstances that have caused all this upset.

Then get away from the problems and focus on you.

Self-care is not selfish.  It is an act of love that we all deserve.

If we took even half the time that we spend on physical fitness for our emotional well being, it would make all the difference in the world.

Researchers and physicians say about half of happiness depends on genetics and the other half comes from things that occur in our everyday life although it is a short duration.

That leaves 12% that is directly in our hands – enough to swing our moods up in the direction of a happier life.

1. Little goals work as well as big life changing goals.  In fact, an endless list of goals tends to make people more consistently happy.
2. Faith, family, community and work are now identified as the main areas of concentration that can help us to influence that 12% that is actually in our hands to use.
3. Money can buy relief from poverty but it can’t buy happiness.  As I’ve suggested before, researchers say that anything over $80,000 a year in compensation doesn’t make individuals happier.  And, of course, The Beatles were right that money can’t buy us love.
4. Satisfaction at work or career goes a long way toward fulfilling that extra 12% of happiness that is within our control.

And here is a little known secret that was shared with me that I now want to share with you.

When we get our minds off of ourselves – even for just a little time every day – and concentrate on others, we immediately become happier.  It’s anti-intuitive to most because it doesn’t directly lead to a resolution of our problem at hand.  But it works.

The first day I tried this I was desperate – everything had seemingly gone wrong.  Focus on others and it is the gift of enlightenment about the elusiveness of happiness.

Christmas is the Christian celebration of the birth of Christ and yet over the past few decades the holiday (some say, “holy” day) has become more secular.

The malls are open but the stores are not as decked out because many of the investment banks that own retail outlets have their bottom line to watch.

This year, financial experts say that the soft economy is impacting the amount of money that can be spent on giving Christmas gifts to others but ironically, at the same time, the practice of self-gifting is growing rapidly.

Presents for yourself.

And retailers are tapping into this (remember, I said this whole thing has become more secular).  Apple is going to be joining lots of other companies with post-Christmas promotions aimed at the giver.  In other words, the 12 days of Christmas has become the 12 days after the 25^th when we can spend the money we got or saved at Christmas.

This is how it is, but there is another type of self-gifting that costs nothing and delivers great rewards:

• Give yourself a break.  Promise yourself many days when you get off your own back.  Perhaps the greatest gift of all is self-forgiveness.  We are human.  We do our best.  We can do better.  But we have done all we can for now.
• Give yourself an IOU.  Every time you do something well, make a significant accomplishment or handle a difficult promise, issue an IOU to yourself to redeem the next time you need a boost of confidence.
• Give your love.  We live in a world focused on being loveable, getting love or having more of it.  Start with yourself.  Let me help.  Finish this sentence:  “I love this about myself”.   How many of these can you come up with?
• Give yourself the gift of dreaming.  Everything good started with a dream from someone whether it is a relationship, a movement, a cause or a business.
• Give yourself the gift of hope.  Life without hope is actually death.  As long as we’re here and we’re on this earth, all things are possible.

Self-gifting at stores before and after Christmas can be fun, but if we’re going to give ourselves a gift, make it one that lasts for a long time to come.