I believe everyone is born with what it takes to live a happy life and be successful in spite of the pitfalls that may get in the way.

No need to become someone else or be reshaped by another because it’s all inside waiting to be awakened.

The trick is to stretch yourself into feeling what’s already within.

If you’re overly cautious, taking prudent risks.

If you’re your own worst critic, becoming your best cheerleader.

If you expect trouble, expect that you have the ability to deal with it.

During exams when the tension is high, I like to tell my classes to remind themselves how fortunate they are to be alive.

Times of great disruption also bring a multitude of opportunity.

You’re good enough as is.

Full stop.

Turns out humans were engineered to focus on threats to our well-being – the cave dwellers had to worry about staying alive not their smartphones.

But, smartphones work the same way an animal threatening our life does by awakening our fight or flight instincts – causing anxiety, depression and fatigue.

So, the author Amit Sood says “there were unique compromises our ancestors had to make when evolving.”

Today we are less worried about animals killing us in our cave but still concerned about crime – concern and being faced with having to act are two different things.

Over the millennia, expecting the worst (the “negativity bias”) causes our brains to wander and discount the good things in our lives.

That tires us out and makes us walk around with a fatigued brain.

Time to get off our own cases and understand that we’re simply fighting the way we were programmed to survive in the beginning.

Today we can show gratitude, live in the present and choose the things that make us happy to counterbalance the “negativity bias”.

It’s not just young folks and college students whose eyes are glued to their phones missing many opportunities to connect with others live and in person.

Picture a classroom where students assemble and before they turn their phones off and stow them for two hours, they are texting away.

Meanwhile it is not uncommon for them to never meet even five or ten of their fellow students in an entire semester.

At the end of class, they pull their phones out and resume where they left off – texting.

Yet, they say publicly how much they appreciate the mandatory silencing of their phones saying it really helps them to focus.

What to do?

Certainly, giving up a mobile device in this age is out of the question.

But taking control of their digital life would lead to – in the case of this example – the outcome they say they want, to meet more people.

We are becoming so obsessed with being happy that we’re making ourselves more anxious.

That’s why our “happiness” course at NYU’s Music Business Program is one about building resilience.

After all, it was Harold Kushner author of When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough said:

Happiness is a butterfly–the more you chase it, the more it flies away from you and hides. But stop chasing it, put away your net and busy yourself with other, more productive things than the pursuit of personal happiness, and it will sneak up on you from behind and perch on your shoulder.

And there’s a question of what happiness actually is.

I think my students would like less pressure, more confidence and the ability to meet adversity and then move on.

The Finn’s may have another definition:  when you know what is enough, then you’re happy.

Contentment may be the road to happiness.

I thought I was the only one not getting enough sleep these days, but my NYU students are just like their professor.

Their digital devices keep them awake.

They sleep with their phones, answer texts if they hear it in light sleep.

And it makes them sleepy which is why it’s hard to find a college campus without a Starbucks nearby to get some caffeine.

But it’s not perfect sleep or maybe not even the lack of it that is the real problem.

It’s fatigue from worry, frustration, anxiety, pressure.

One student recently ran a half marathon in the rain and recovered within hours because running is a way to let off steam not let it build up.

Sleep has to be a $100 billion business or the lack of it could be a reminder to let go of worry since 99% of what we worry about will never happen.

For the last 18 months, experts have been predicting a recession.

The end of the world as we know it is waiting, if you believe it.

Here’s what I told my graduating students in this semester’s last class:

I would give up everything I have accomplished, all that I have earned and whatever reputation I may have attained to be you right now no matter how negative the news.

Why?

Because good things come from disruption – in industry, in society and just about everywhere else.

Disruption spawns new opportunity.

Think of it as a wonderful time to be living when there are so many problems to solve, traditions to be revised, businesses to be disrupted.

The negative news may be true, but it’s the beginning not the end and all of us, not just recent graduates need to hear it.

I thought by assigning my students to work in small groups that they would break out of the post-covid malady of being estranged from each other.

So I assigned their final video projects in small groups.

What they didn’t do was meet in person – not one of the groups held in-person work sessions.  Instead they collaborated virtually.

We know it works but the assignment was designed to foster face-to-face interaction and socializing something they freely admit they want more of.

So, the professor learns the biggest lesson of all which is as much as I’ve talked about, been affected by and suffered its consequences we are still underestimating the lingering effects of covid.

People are willing, but the easy way on Zoom is still looming large.

It may take some time for to find the benefits of in-person socialization that we lost to the lockdown.

I’ve heard students say that they want to spend less time using their phones citing all sorts of problems from lack of concentration to depression but I’ve seen little evidence of significant change.

And now this.

Dumb phones, the ones that make a call are coming back in the U.S. but not globally – why, we don’t quite know.

It’s driven by Gen Z that is tired of screens not just older people who can’t handle an iPhone.  Tens of thousands of flip phones are sold every month.

The hottest thing right now are phones from Punkt and Light for people who want to reduce their time on their phones and social media.

But Tristan Harris, a former Google code writer who has defected to the mental health side has a cheaper idea.

Create folders for apps that usurp your time and put them in a folder called Dark Hole (I have done this) so when you want to view TikTok as I do to keep up with music industry trends, I know before I go into the file and open the app that I am in a dark hole where I could stay for one to four hours a day as many Gen Zers do.  This is the warning and it works.

Phones get smarter when consumers get smarter which is to control the time on your phones not the phones controlling your life.

Young people especially are focused on fitting in, gaining the respect of others and appearing to be friendly – I see this all the time in classrooms.

The way to get there is not so much changing yourself or adapting to peer groups as much as it is something we rarely think about.

People judge you by the way you make them feel.

Not by how we feel or what we say or do to fit in.

Ironically Dale Carnegie who is now must reading in my college courses always said that the best conversationalist is the person who asks the most questions and does the least talking.

The human condition is that it is hard not to like someone who makes us feel good about who we are.

One of my music business students recently appeared on Good Day New York after a TikTok video she did blew up and attracted the attention of the New York Post.

In her TV interview, Mariel Darling was asked to give women advice about men after she took on the subject of being “zombied” (like being ghosted) as they went in and out of her life.

Here’s her advice which applies to lots of different relationships:

If someone cannot be passionate about what they want to do with their lives, they then cannot be passionate about people in their lives.

Pursue passion.

Here’s Mariel’s TV video and link to the New York Post article.