Sports stars get to negotiate contracts every few years with new benefits, conditions, incentives and pay.

There is something alluring to being able to refocus our wants and needs every few years.  And that’s what I recommend in my book – become a free agent.

At the same time each year, get away from your routine and take inventory of what you want next in life.  Too often, we just stay at the same job or with the same group of friends because it’s the easiest or safest thing.

Even if you want to do next year what you did last year, signing a mental contract with yourself gives more meaning and commitment to the time you are going to devote.


And if a change is brewing, thinking of yourself as a free agent instead of a person looking for another job can be transformative.

I recommend an off-season (to take inventory of your goals), pre-season (to acquire the skills you’ll need), “the” season (to ply those skills) and post season (to achieve new highs).

I sign a one-year free agent agreement with myself every year after carefully considering my goals, desires and dreams.  My off-season is a one-week vacation at the Jersey shore, which allows me to think more freely away from my regular routine.

“Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it” – Katharine Whitehorn

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One of the most amazing and destructive foibles of human kind is that we seem to have an innate knack of focusing on what’s wrong in our lives rather than what is right.

Life is a constant challenge and maybe that is why we learn inadvertently to give more weight to the things that plague us.

Some experts say that excessively focusing on what’s wrong is actually a biological instinct that makes it harder for us to live in the moment.

As long as we are alive, we will experience more right than wrong.


Focusing on what’s wrong tends to add stress to our lives.

Retrain the brain to focus on the good things that happen – it is our right.

“Why not accept the right that is right and savor it” – Amit Sood

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Ever shop for a greeting card only to find that the words of another are not suitable for what you want to say?

Some of us express love by saying the words “I love you” and that’s great.

But there is another way – one in which your actions speak louder than those three words.

An act of love.

The father who slipped a note into the glove box of the car he bought his daughter just in case she was ever involved in an accident – a note that said “I’m not angry about any accident, I’m just happy you are okay”.

Not asking your son or daughter who got 4 A’s and one B, what the B was for.  They’ll tell you on their own and will appreciate the fact that you waited.

Two acts of kindness from you for every one act you observe in another.

Some of us are shy about saying words like “I love you”.  Providing the evidence makes it all the more meaningful.


“Actions Speak Louder Than Words”

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Down And Out

When things go bad, they often get worse instead of better.


This is because we are confronted with the entire dilemma all at once often making it difficult to change with one decision or in a short period of time.

In sports, when a team gets down by a considerable score, it’s almost always over.


Several years ago, the Philadelphia Flyers hockey club faced elimination from the semi-final round in The Stanley Cup Playoffs.  The Boston Bruins won three games and all they had to do was win one more to advance to the finals.

The Flyers did what only a handful of professional sports teams have ever done – come back to win a best of seven series when they were down 0-3.   Their coach, Peter Laviolette simply asked his players to win just one game.

And when they did, one turned into two.  Two into three and miraculously, they won the fourth to win the series and advance to the finals.


And that’s the secret.

When we’re down and out at work, at home, financially, in our personal lives – chip away and try to fix one thing first.


Small steps without discouragement are the way back.

“The elevator to success is out of order.  You’ll have to use the stairs one step at a time” – Joe Girard

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Over the weekend a friend told me the story of a man who chased another man into a department store, pinned him to the ground and proceeded to bang his head against the floor mercilessly.

A do-gooder tried to get him to stop the beating but it continued.

He then warned the man that he had a firearm and that if he didn’t stop smashing this man’s head against the ground, that he was going to shoot him which he did and the man died.

But every picture doesn’t always tell the true story, as my friend pointed out.

Turns out the dead man was punishing the perpetrator he chased down who killed his wife and raped his young daughter.  In other words, the wrong man was shot.

We all alarmingly live our lives based on assumptions rather than fact.

A fact is something that can be observed and verified. 

Friendships are lost because of assumptions.

People are marginalized because of assumptions.

Even our own lives are lived based on what we assume we want to do for a living, who we want to be with and how we want to spend our time – not always the real reasons.

I share this story because it is fresh in my mind and hopefully will serve as a reminder of the great price we pay for acting on assumptions that we make instead of facts that we verify.

“To assume is to presume” – Jude Morgan

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Hall of Fame hockey goalie Bernie Parent is getting to be as good stopping worry as he was stopping pucks.

Here is Parent’s secret for living in the moment:

“I’d like to call myself a spontaneous person. When it feels right, I do it, at that very moment. Do you know what I don’t do? I don’t plan vacations a year ahead of time. The present moment enables you to enjoy what life is all about. Capture it, and let it captivate you. Slow down and enjoy your surroundings, nature, your family and friends, your health, and most importantly, yourself.

“If you start to worry about things that may happen 15, 20 years down the road, then your thinking shifts. You’ll constantly be worrying about your investments, health, etc. You’ll be living in fear. And the only way to walk away from this is to remove yourself from your own imagination and the uncertainties that you’ve created, and focus on this very moment”.

We prepare for the future with forethought.

We start worrying when it becomes fear thought.

We work to pay off our college loans and then a mortgage with car payments along the way.  It’s always something in the future.

We try to control as much as we can in life until, if we’re lucky, we discover that we can control virtually nothing.  The secret is letting go.

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”
 ― Eckhart Tolle
 

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Sounds like a big promise – too big to keep – but there is a valuable way to have confidence on demand when you need it most.

Here’s the secret.

Often times we forget about what we have done well or accomplished, but have very little trouble remembering that which we have done wrong, our failures.

So when we need to be at our confident best, what do we do?  Recall those vivid failures that keep haunting us.  The disappointments that are so vivid we can bring them back alive in a nanosecond.

Try this instead.

I keep mental IOU’s for little successes I have had that could boost my confidence when I need it most.  They are in my head or on my iPhone.

Example:  I had never published a paid website, but I had succeeded at programming a radio station.  So when I decided to invest in Internet publishing, I called in an IOU from a past success to give me a shot of confidence on demand.

Better yet, small IOUs are as good as big ones.  Really.

Helping to plan your best friend’s wedding is an IOU that comes in handy when you’re thrown a new challenge at work. 

Confidence is confidence.  File it and use it later.

In the end, this is our new mantra for gaining confidence on demand. 

Repeat after me:

“I’ve done it before so I can do it again”.

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When I was a radio disc jockey in Philadelphia, my boss called the phone in the studio every time I made a mistake.   I made a lot of them to be sure.

And the phone couldn’t ring out loud because I was on the air so it was hooked up to a 150-watt floodlight that flashed in my eyes for each ring.

Talk about stress.

It took the fun out of playing the music and having a great job.

Now we have stressors that we could have never dreamed of even if we work virtually.  Insensitive managers who bully through email and texting.  Inhuman workloads dumped on us with the presumption that “you will get it done” even if it has to be done on our own time.

Then there’s expectations insinuated that are unrealistic.  Add to that family life, personal health and other responsibilities like continuing our education and is there any wonder why we are always stressed out?

Here are a couple of tools to combat stress at the workplace.  Try as many as you like and cross them off when you think you’re making progress.

1. Work in the present.  Immediately put aside past successes, failures or future success and failures to concentrate on the project at hand.
2. Pat your own back – don’t expect others to do it or you’ll always be disappointed.
3. Don’t worry about being fired – that’s what some bosses count on, the fear employees have of losing their job.  Always remember, 99% of the time, you’re not going to be fired for what you think will get you fired.  In today’s investor’s economy, we’re more likely to be laid off for economic reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with our work performance at all.
4. Work for pride.  Athletes who have missed the post-season get a quick and often painful introduction to themselves when they are left to play for pride.  Pride is, in my opinion, the best motivator of human beings – better than money, status or power.
5. Separate money from performance.  If you’re not receiving adequate pay, that’s a discussion worth having for sure.  Where the topic doesn’t belong is in your everyday performance.  Always give a million dollars worth of effort in spite of the pay received in return.
6. Do away with multitasking.  It’s overrated and is stressful.  Focus on 20% of the things you need to do that deliver 80% of your productivity. 

“Disconnect from the Uncontrollable” – Geoffrey James

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Nothing is more in demand than enthusiasm.

The enthusiastic person gets the promotion, the raise, the benefits and the respect of others and all the friends.  Employers and associates love to be around enthusiastic people.

It would be great if employers were bounding with enthusiasm to inspire others. Consider yourself fortunate if you work for or with enthusiastic people.

So how can we get more of it?

Surprisingly, we can’t simply make a well-meaning vow to be enthusiastic and expect it to work.

Before I give a talk, I physically become animated.  I try to talk with audience members before I speak and to warm them up because it serves a dual function of also stoking my enthusiasm.

We can’t think ourselves more enthusiastic; we have to physically and mentally act it out to get the end result.  That’s the secret.

Try this little experiment:  find an area of life or target a person you know where they could benefit from an injection of your enthusiasm.  Then in your own way, physically and mentally warm them up in an effort to inspire them.

This is a life changer.

“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm” – Henry David Thoreau

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When an act of thoughtfulness or kindness is rebuffed, it can lead to hurt feelings.

An invitation to a party or dinner that is presumed to be accepted ends with the invitee texting at the last moment that they’re not attending. 

Or worse yet, a no show.

We’re more connected than ever so you would think that we would be communicating better.

When we outsource our feelings to other people, we are asking for trouble. 

Be the fine person you want to be.  Reach out to others fearlessly.

And here’s the key, expect nothing in return.

Dale Carnegie, the father of human relations always said, expect ingratitude.  Should you be dealing with a grateful person, consider yourself lucky.  But most people are not used to being grateful even when you are doing them a favor or showing them an act of kindness.

Lowering your expectations but keeping yourself motivated to be the person you want to be is the reward.

Anyone else’s response is simply an additional validation.

Don’t let the ignorance of others change your kind nature or force you to build walls that will alienate you from others.

“Most people return small favors, acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones – with ingratitude” – Benjamin Franklin.

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