Only 43% of remote workers say they have close friends vs. 69% who go into the office according to an ezCater study designed to get more people to return to the office.

80% say having friends makes them more engaged and collaborative.

44% would like food perks, 86% would be tempted with daily or weekly meals.

Many employers don’t consider the expense of childcare that becomes an increasing post-COVID burden if they are forced to return to an office and lose family flexibility.

95% in one survey said more money would be the ticket for them.

“Having a best friend at work boosts employee engagement by 50%.” (Gallup)

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Here’s how Mayo Clinic would like you to reframe the way you talk to accent the positive and eliminate the negative.

We live in a world of negativity so some of our unhelpful self-talk is adopted by osmosis but this list attacks some main issues.  The brain is designed to keep us safe – an alert system to beware of danger.  What it is not is a happiness organ or even a data bank of positivity.

Author Louise Hay who wrote:  “You have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”

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Turns out one in four Americans would pay an average of $290 for a good night’s sleep.

That survey surprised me for a second before I looked for where I could sign up.

Seventy million suffer from a sleep disorder, so you do the math.

The most popular position to fall asleep was on your side (37%), yet most people agreed the best quality of sleep occurred when they slept on their backs.  About a third of those surveyed (32%) needed the TV on to fall asleep and most lull themselves to bed with 15-minutes on the phone before going nite nite (and we wonder why we can’t sleep?).

Here’s a free tip underwritten by no mattress company:  keep a consistent sleep schedule. Maybe a good laugh:  Hemmingway’s advice, “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake …”

There’s an anonymous quote widely-referenced in Arianna Huffington’s The Sleep Revolution — There are two types of people in this world: those who can fall asleep instantly, and those who hate them.”

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The urge to quit is strongest right before a breakthrough – that’s the best reason to keep going, something good and better is getting ready to happen.

Napoleon Hill says “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”

Thomas Edison who failed thousands of times inventing the light bulb said “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

The idea of failing again can feel worse than stopping and never knowing.  People quit when they are tired and are no longer able to see their own goals but cultivating the ability to see them vividly in your mind’s eye can help reframe failure as “learning” not a final judgement.

You didn’t come this far to only come this far or as Nelson Mandela famously said: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

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Have you seen the stats on how the high cost of education these days does not produce an actual financial return on investment?  A Georgetown study from 30% of America’s colleges shows that half the students earn less in ten years after graduating than someone with a high school diploma.  I guess when colleges like Harvard ($80,000 a year) and Vanderbilt ($100,000) are driving tuitions up, ROI is suffering.

But there is another side.  How happy are graduates?  What kind of a life do they lead?  Suddenly the cost is outweighing potential non-financial benefits.  I didn’t want to go to college. I just wanted to be on the radio.  I told my father, djs don’t need college.  He said you will be the smartest dj on radio.  Thank God I listened.  My best friend Bob Donze had me talk to his Italian father and convince him that mine was actually going to allow me to take radio and television in college – one they could afford.  We went to Temple together.

In a world pressed with anxiety, unhappiness, stress and addictions, you would think that being happy would be the first prerequisite in choosing a career.  Then make the most prudent financial position your situation allows.

A Nobel prize winner Angus Deaton nailed it:  “There is surprisingly little relationship between how much education you have and how happy you are.”

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Maybe you’re like me and have some people very much in your life who have passed on.  I can think of two people I think about almost every day.

Jim Weinraub is a friend from my days at Dale Carnegie – in addition to good humor and friendship he gave me the concept of seeing what I aspire to so vividly in my mind’s eye that it drives me to succeed.  He often said money is not one of those pictures.

Wynn Etter was the sponsor of Dale Carnegie Courses in Cherry Hill, NJ and he was always joyful, cheerful, motivational and inspirational – always.  Even in his last days suffering from cancer when I asked him how he was doing, he somehow said “fine” and changed the topic to me.  Try changing it back to him and he wouldn’t let you.  He brought positive energy into the room and today I think of him every week before I teach that these students deserve some positive uplifting discourse.

The Tuesdays with Morrie author Mitch Albom says “Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship.”

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Almost two-thirds of Fortune 100 companies use Net Promoter Score (NPS) to poll customer satisfaction and maybe you’re like me – I have had enough surveys.  Apple founder Steve Jobs hated them.  He believed that customers couldn’t envision something new until they experienced it.  But Apple does satisfaction surveys after the point of sale.

When you’re really pleased with something you can’t help but say it.  If not, there’s Yelp.  Making people feel good whether it’s about a product or a service or even a relationship is the ultimate survey.  We like to feel good about things – smart, intrigued, valued.

Back in 1925 Harry Overstreet, author of Influencing Human Behavior may have hit the nail on the head proving we’re overthinking again:  “People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them feel important.”

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81% lie on their resume to help them get a job according to AI Resume Builder.

Gen Z admits to lying 5x more than Boomers.  Men 2 times more than women.  Things like when they were employed in previous jobs (39%) and experience (36%). Only 21% say they have regrets.  When it comes to lying, it is a preferred technique for getting a leg up on employment.

Some companies have zero tolerance – a fireable offensive if caught or as global staffing firm Robert Half’s Paul McDonald says “A resume lie is like a bad tattoo—sooner or later, you’ll regret it, and it’s a lot harder to remove than it was to get.”

Ok to forward this to someone.

After living in my neighborhood for 13 years, my wife and I finally got to meet one neighbor we hadn’t met.  The conversation was pleasant, genuinely enjoyable and accidental as it happened by chance outside.

But at the end our neighbor who was a real estate agent said “if you ever want to sell your house, call me”.  Maybe I’m over sensitive and I am sure they did not mean anything by it but a verbal calling card about leaving the neighborhood was at the very least bad timing.

It reminds me how important it is to make people feel welcome, to generate positive vibes.  I’m not selling my house and I haven’t seen my new acquaintance since, but I’m ready to roll out the welcome mat.  Making people feel like you are excited to see them is a gift that we are all capable of giving.

The lasting power of kindness, warmth, and making someone feel truly welcome is summed up so well by Maya Angelou:  “… people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

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 Fred Smith died last week.  He conceived of and founded the overnight delivery concept that turned the shipping company into a huge success worth $5 billion to him at the time of his death.

Smith came up with the idea for FedEx in a college paper at Yale anticipating that an automate economy would need fast, reliable door-to-door package delivery services.  What an idea that now employs a half million workers and ships more than 17 million packages on average each day.

But his Yale professor was not impressed in 1965.  He only got a C for his paper.  And that’s the thing that good professors come to learn – their students know better than they do. And that’s the reason for education.  If Smith had been deterred by his middling grade, this groundbreaking idea would have died in class which is why you never let someone else grade your vision or tell you what will work or won’t work.

Grades are merely academic tools to measure learning.  David Epstein in Range said “The greatest ideas often look like failures at first — even to the smartest people in the room.”

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