Bill Taylor showed up unexpectedly at my recent media conference.

I was worried about the flu.

He had just had a session of chemotherapy for a hereditary cancer that was recently diagnosed.  

Earlier Bill apologized for having to skip this year’s event but he changed his mind and brightened my day and that of those who he encountered by showing up to participate as usual.

There’s a new book called Picture Your Life After Cancer, which deals with the process of living life after a cancer diagnosis.

No one wants this dreaded disease, but it is remarkable the number of people who turn cancer into a positive way to live life in the present – the way we all must.

But why wait?

• Focus on enjoying even the smallest things in life.
   
• Do what you have put off – take that trip, spend time with your family, set another goal.
   
• Being forced to live one day at a time is not a direct result of the disease, it is exactly how everyone else – healthy or not – must live their lives, too. They just may not know it yet. 
   
• Optimism is as important as medicine, which is why almost to a person cancer patients are so positive, so determined.

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things”  — Robert Brault 

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Did you see what a power failure did to the Super Bowl game?

Everything was going along great for the Baltimore Ravens when the lights went out.  That was 33 minutes for them to stand around and think about how close they were to winning the Super Bowl over the San Francisco 49ers.

And the 49ers who were losing by 28 to 6 when the power failed, had a lot of time to realize that they were running out of time to put some points on the board.

Golfers hate to wait because then they have too much time to think.  Their muscles react differently and their minds can lose focus when they have to wait for the group in front of them to move along.

Time is always an asset.

Momentum goes to the person or people who can use that time to stroke the fires of positivity and not let in the doubts of fear.

I used to take my kids to the Flyers hockey games in Philadelphia and sit them on my lap observing with them what often happens on the ice when a team rolls up a comfortable lead.

It gets too comfortable.

And the other team uses the lack of time to make something positive happen – anything.

In our lives, momentum changes constantly.  When we feel like we’re on a winning streak, nothing can seem to stop us.  And when everything is going badly, it seems things will never get better.

Time is on your side when you don’t think too much about failing.

Just trying harder.

Which is why there are so many upsets and near upsets in sports and why people confuse too much time for too many fear thoughts.

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The Super Bowl is a time for parties and social gatherings that are as big as the event itself.  It’s a great time to try out a few new skills: 

1. Try talking to one or more people about themselves and not you.  You’ll see that the fewer words you say, the more the other person will like you.
    
2. Text in private while at social events – the bathroom, the corner away from people, outside.  For a few hours, try to be all-in by focusing attention on the others you meet.  I like texting a lot, but it is ignorant to text at a social event.
    
3. If you’re not good at names, try this:  meet someone new?  Hear their name and repeat it frequently in conversation.  See how good it makes them feel and you.
    
4. Follow up with a note, a card, a text or a Facebook message to people you have enjoyed and don’t forget the person whose hospitality you relied upon for a good time.

I’ll have a lot of time to practice these skills again this year as The Eagles will be socializing like me instead of playing football.

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When I was a radio program director in Philadelphia, a listener visited the station to complain. 

Not about the programming, but the fact that because of a war injury that required a metal plate in his head he couldn’t turn the station off in his head.

You see, there was an array of broadcast towers next to our studios and unfortunately he lived next to them.

I never forgot that man because in many ways we are all like him when we let people into our heads 24 hours a day.

Sometimes it’s nice but too often the messages we carry around and repeat over and over are hurtful and unproductive.

Here’s what I do:

1. I picture a digital recorder like the one on my iPhone sticking out of my forehead.  It records everything that I hear in life.  But only I can record on it. No one else gets to push the button.
    
2. Even compliments are not allowed directly in – I appreciate them and record them in my own brain as validating good traits I know I have.
    
3. There are no messages in my brain that I have not recorded.
    
4. The only time a fault is worth pointing out is if you record it yourself otherwise it is unfiltered criticism.

If we reinvent the way we talk to ourselves, others will take their rightful places in in our lives and we will constantly feel good about who we are.

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He was one of the best hitters in baseball. 

Musial was so well respected that he had not one but two statues built in his honor outside the Cardinals Busch Stadium in St. Louis.

Musial won seven batting championships, hit 474 homeruns and got 3,630 hits in his career and a career in which he was never thrown out of a game in 22 seasons for arguing with an umpire.

He was such a great guy that 50’s era pitcher Johnny Antonelli reportedly said, “Stan was such a nice guy that I was probably happy for him when he homered off me.”

“Stan the Man” as he was known was a gentleman who had a quality all of us cannot get enough of – humility.

We live in a self-absorbed world. 

We collect Facebook friends just for clicking and document our lives in social media as if we won seven batting championships.

The quality that is so elusive is also so attractive – it’s the one we should all aspire to.

Humility.

“Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real” – Thomas Merton.

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See if you can guess who said this:

“I call, I cling, I want – and there is no One to answer – no One on whom I can cling – no, No One.  – Alone … where is my faith – even deep down right in there is nothing but emptiness and darkness – My God, how painful is thus unknown pain – I have no faith”.

In researching my book I was surprised to discover that these words were said by Mother Teresa who is now being considered for sainthood for her work with the poor lepers of Calcutta.

If that great woman could question her faith in a higher power, what are the rest of us to do?

Finding your higher power is not an exercise of religion.  It’s a necessary means for transforming into a life well lived.

It matters not whether we have an official religion or any religion at all.

But we must have faith.

And questioning it is a good thing.  It means we take faith seriously.

For as Sir William Osler said:  

“Without faith a man can do nothing, with it all things are possible.”

And Scott Peck said,

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled.  For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”

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A recent Wall Street Journal article on the power of concentration raises the issue of the importance of focused concentration.

The article says, “The world’s greatest fictional detective (Sherlock Holmes) is someone who knows the value of concentration of ‘throwing his brain out of action’ as Dr. Watson puts it.  He is the quintessential unitasker in a multitasking world.”

I had a freshmen student in one of my USC music class who visited my office one day and announced, “I have four different kinds of ADD”.   When I said, “Well, you’ll be able to overcome them, I’m sure”, he put me in my place by saying, “It’s not a disadvantage.  It’s an advantage.”

And so it was for that “A” student.

We’re becoming too obsessed with meditation, concentration and the ability to focus.  Not that these things are bad.  Meditation, for example, has many benefits.

My A.D.D. students were very bright.  They just approached things differently.

There is no one way to think, to decide, to learn.  I know that I became a better speaker when I learned new ways to teach students with attention deficit or what we should probably call Attention Positive.

After all, we all have it in some way in the digital age.

That’s why we advance our TiVos past commercials and click off of our iPods before the song has ended.

What really matters is to judge people by what they are, who they are and what they accomplish – not the method by which their minds work.

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Sometimes you don’t need meds, shrinks or even friends to jumpstart a better mood.

Life is full of ups and downs.

I know from my television and radio career that sometimes you don’t feel like being happy.  You just want to be left alone until you snap out of it.  That’s a luxury we don’t have in that business.

Before I speak, I try physical activity and nine times out of ten, my emotions rise to the occasion.

But I found these great ideas to get real happy, real fast.  I hope you like them and if you do pass them on to others:

1. Pump up your activity level.  Increase exercise or even take a walk.  It helps.
    
2. Contact someone who makes you happy to be in their company.  Even a text or an email will do.
    
3. Get rid of things that bother you in your space.  Set a timer and see how you feel after 10 minutes.
    
4. Do a good deed for another – even if you don’t know them.  Practice random acts of kindness (this always works for me).
    
5. Paste a smile on your face.  My friend Jay Cook was a disc jockey at WFIL, Philadelphia. Before he opened his mike to talk, he broke into a big smile.  Try it.  It works.
    
6. Do something new.  Anything.  Discovery leads to happiness.

We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t get down from time to time.

If you have a moment, click “comment on this post” and share your best methods for restoring a good mood.

And feel free to share mine with your friends and loved ones.

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I accept you the way you are.

Actually, psychologists say that try as we may, we can only change 10% of a person – if that!  Mister Rogers was right when he said, “I like you just the way you are.”

It’s all about you, not me.

Try that one in this era of self-absorption.  You’ll feel the love in return.

Forgive me.  I forgive you.

No words can be more powerful that these in a living relationship.

I’m focusing on just you. 

Whatever time can be devoted to giving undivided attention is time well spent.

I will make you laugh.

Laughter heals tears. 

Here’s a hug.

I know no one who doesn’t feel better after a hug.

I will listen.

Open your heart when you open your ears.

See hundreds of other ways on Tumblr.

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I’m really bad at this.

My entire life I have ascribed any success I might have had to the fact that I see the future.  In fact my music media website is all about the future.

But it’s a bad prescription for happiness.

It didn’t take a psychologist, just Ralph Waldo Emerson to remind me that “Life is a journey, not a destination.”

I discovered this great game plan in Psychology Today:

1. Loosen up – no one is watching you.  Be less self-conscious.
    
2. Avoid worrying about the future by savoring the present — Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes about a friend who, whenever she sees a beautiful place, exclaims in a near panic, “It’s so beautiful here! I want to come back here someday!” “It takes all my persuasive powers,” writes Gilbert, “to try to convince her that she is already here.”
    
3. If you want a future with your significant other, inhabit the present.
    
4. To make the most of time, lose track of it.
    
5. If something is bothering you, move toward it and not away from it (acceptance).
    
6. Know that you don’t know.  Harvard’s Ellen Langer says, “Develop the habit of always noticing new things in whatever situation you’re in. That process creates engagement with the present moment and releases a cascade of other benefits.”
    
7. Don’t just do something, sit there.  As the article points out, “If you’re aware of that feeling right now, as you’re reading this, you’re living in the moment. Nothing happens next.  It’s not a destination.  This is it.  You’re already there.”

Does this help you like it helps me?  Share this positive energy with your friends and loved ones. 

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