This semester I asked my new NYU students how they are feeling about things and what I heard took me by surprise.

They are tired – tired of beating their heads against the wall and if this is surprising to you, Gen Z suffers higher anxiety than any other generation.  Living on their phones, in social media with high expectations in a world that seems harsh to them is starting to have an effect.

Jobs are getting scarce and they are feeling a bit beat up.

My response will be to overcome and take advantage of the good aspects of disruption that is affecting their lives.  Disruption leads to new opportunities.  Coping with stress at a youthful age helps later.  Learning to get up when you fail and be grateful for what you have is the other side of feeling psychologically burdened.

So, I remind them of Dale Carnegie who says “Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”

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I love teaching – more than I could have ever imagined and yet I didn’t like it when I first started as a Dale Carnegie instructor.  After some pretty rigorous training, I got my first class – 44 adults.  Before the first break, one student said (in front of the class) “You’re going to teach us to speak, but you always talk with your hands.”  Yikes, I’m dead!

I went to the sponsor, Wynn Etter and shared my concern – it just didn’t feel comfortable and his advice changed me forever – he said, “just be yourself, you know what to do”.

So, I enjoyed teaching that great course for 11 years and went on to become a professor at USC and NYU following his excellent advice.

As the new semester starts, I share this because I’m refreshing Wynn’s comments for the school year ahead and paying it forward in a way to remind my learners and anyone who will listen to just be yourself – you know what to do.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

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The past is a file on your desktop that you view to learn or retrieve information.

The future is a blueprint — a collection of hopes and dreams.

The present is the only currency that we can spend now – it’s all we are guaranteed.

Living too much in the past or future deprives us of the only meaningful life we have in real time.

There is an apropos burst of wisdom attributed to ancient philosopher Lao Tzu: “If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.”

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Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter got tossed from the season’s first game for spitting at Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott – there’s also video of Prescott spitting prior to the incident and it feels like we’re letting our kids down.

The NFL is trying to limit the animosity players are showing each other on the field – our sports heroes are reacting rather than responding to emotional confrontations and taunting.  Trash talk has become a part of some sports and in the end we’re beginning to go down a rabbit hole that undermines the beauty of sports competition.

But showdowns on the field occur after players have been raised and their values clearly established.

Former NBA star Charles Barkley hit it on the head:  “I am not a role model. I am not paid to be a role model. I am paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court. Parents should be role models. Just because I dunk a basketball, doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.”

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My NYU music business department had a faculty meeting in the city last week – I really look forward to them.  Yes, look forward to a meeting.

I’ve figured out that what I like is the feeling of faculty being supported in their jobs – trusted to do the right things and to do everything we can to support our students in their academic life.  Isn’t that what we all want?

This year’s freshmen will have been born one year after YouTube was founded.  They have never attended school without practicing for active shooter drills.  They have never been without screens, computers, phones, TikTok.  And it will be interesting to see how much they rely on artificial intelligence to do their homework.

Many lectures, tests and books are forgotten but teachers who become mentors are not – I’ll bet you can name a few who made a real difference in your life.  And teachers are not just limited to school classrooms.

Muppets founder Jim Henson gets it:  “[Kids] don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.”  And we’re all kids at heart.

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I can’t

I won’t

If only

Someday

Don’t

I hate

Impossible 

Dirty words like these shape the reality you end up trapped in or as the Persian poet Hafiz who blended love, spirituality and wit in his writing put it “The words you speak become the house you live in.”

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Whenever we fall short, we vow to try harder but trying harder also makes us less natural, less free to be ourselves.  I’d love to have a dollar for every time I said I’ll try harder.  Now the author Tim Gallwey says flat out and in ALL CAPS – “WHATEVER YOU’RE TRYING TO DO, DON’T”.

No one taught me to read a TelePrompTer when I started in television, I just learned.  No one taught me how to be a professor, I just started.  I never learned to be on the radio — I just did it when I got the chance.  I am sure you share some of these realities as well.  It’s about freedom to be you and me.

“Whatever you’re trying to do, don’t. Don’t try to do it and don’t try not to do it. Simply don’t try at all and see what happens.”

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I’m reading The Inner Game of Golf and came across something so non-golfy that I had to share it.

“The first step is to acknowledge that we are not born in self-doubt. It’s hard to find a very young child who doesn’t believe in himself. Children may trip and fall when learning to walk, or the castle that they are building may topple with a misplaced block, but such occurrences are not yet occasions for questioning oneself. In fact, observations of children before school age show they have an unquestioning faith in their abilities”.

Yikes!  Could we start doubting ourselves when we grow up and allow others to gain undue influence about how they feel about how we feel?

We aren’t born with self-doubt:  “You weren’t born doubting. You weren’t born discouraged. You weren’t born thinking negative things about yourself. Over time, the criticism … slowly convinced you otherwise.”

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A new analysis based on the Understanding America Study shows that smartphone use is rapidly eroding core personality traits in young adults, particularly conscientiousness — the quality tied to responsibility and self-control. In less than a decade, Americans aged 16 to 39 have dropped to the 30th percentile for this trait, while older adults remain largely unchanged.

This shift rivals the printing press in scope but is happening far faster, rewiring human cognition in just 15 years without the cultural adaptation that past revolutions allowed.

Smartphones are rapidly degrading young people’s ability to focus, follow through, and engage in real-world commitments and it’s happening so fast that society hasn’t had time to adapt, making the damage hard, if not impossible, to reverse.

Quick fixes like app timers or “digital detox” days won’t solve the problem — the starting point is acknowledging that the attention economy is built to exploit focus, then deliberately creating guardrails in daily life, like limiting phone access during key tasks, replacing screen time with in-person interaction, and treating attention like a finite resource to be conserved. 

While digital communication itself isn’t inherently bad, over-reliance on it erodes the deeper, real-world conversations and social engagement that build empathy, focus, and follow-through which is why MIT’s Sherry Turkle says “I’m not anti-technology. I’m pro-conversation.”

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I’ve got bad news for politicians if my young college students are indicative of a change – they just want to get along.  They want to compromise – these are seemingly dirty words in the world we live in.

They seek consensus not total victory and even though some (by no means all) are passionate about their views, most want what we used to have – cooperation.

When students disagree in class (at least my classes), they apologize if they interrupt and almost always let the other person have their say first.  This is not the world that is making headlines.

Some lean right, some lean left but it makes me optimistic that the shouting, insulting and bragging that takes place in politics, sports and even entertainment will give way to a friendlier discourse.

Mattie Stepanek was not a politician – he was a peace advocate who said “We don’t have to agree on anything to be kind to one another.”

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