When we’re disappointed, we often get mad at ourselves or angry at others.

This hurts us emotionally and actually physically weakens our immune system which is why when we’ve experience a great letdown we get often then get sick.

Here are some ways of dealing with disappointment in a positive way that is kinder to ourselves and others:

1. Remember that no one gets what they want all the time.  It’s like a batting average.  If you bat .300 you’re still going to out 70% of the time.  Adjust expectations to fit reality.
2. Replace anger with gratitude.  Gratitude is like aspirin.  It cures many things. Taking out anger on others often forces them to rebel.
3. When you disappoint, a simple heartfelt apology is very effective.  When you’ve disappointed yourself, forgive yourself and move on.
4. Beware of denial.  When we deny our disappointment, it will get worse and those around us will keep their distance.
5. Disappointment is temporary.  It can have a positive effect by making us appreciate 100 times over when things meet our expectations.

Alexander Pope said, “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”

Keep expectations low but keep motivation high.

At the most stressful time of the year, Thanksgiving occurs. 

It’s the busiest air travel holiday and millions of people return to family gatherings in the hope that a Norman Rockwell holiday will result.

I know people who spend months trying to come up with “excuses” to avoid a family disaster at Thanksgiving.

Others accept the invitation but make themselves miserable up to and including turkey day.

Next week, I will share with you the one thing that will guarantee gratitude and love even in the toughest situations.  It works like a charm.

But one week out, it is helpful to remember that great expectations are not always possible with dysfunctional families, petty jealousies, marital problems, missing children spending the holiday with the other parent, sibling rivalries and even darker issues that sometimes affect families.

Yet gratitude is always possible once we grieve for the family we do not have.

I think this advice from Dr. Ana Nogales is very positive and uplifting at holiday time:

“After acknowledging what may be missing in our family relationships, each of us can then focus on the positive. Perhaps you had a good relationship with one of your relatives in the past, and you are working things out so that things may get better in the future. Maybe there is one family member with whom you have a special connection, with whom you feel free to be yourself. Or perhaps you have created a “family” with trusted and beloved friends, a group you feel more “related to” than the family into which you were born”.

Focus on being thankful to avoid unpleasantness. 

Feel free to forward this email and share with your friends.

I had a friend who lost his son at 18 due to suicide.

Yesterday I met a woman whose boyfriend died two years ago from lung cancer while she continues to mourn.

You don’t have to lose a loved one in the prime of their years to feel genuine loss.  My mother passed away at 96 and I miss her every day. 

There are many stages of grief.

I once asked a well-known counselor how long grief should last and he replied, as long as it lasts.

How long is that?

Whenever the grieving is complete as long as you can continue to function in your everyday life.  If not, it’s time to seek counseling to better cope.

The way to add meaning to the loss of someone dear to you is to isolate the one characteristic that he or she had that you most admired.

Then devote your life attempting to make that trait a part of you.

In that way, the deceased lives on through you.

And in some small way, their death is a just a bit easier to accept.

Gandhi said it eloquently:

“There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart”.

We all know control freaks.

They are at work, in our families and, yes, even staring back at us in the mirror.

Being around controlling people tends to rub off on us even if we are inclined not to be all that controlling.

This topic fascinates me in our fast moving competitive world where there is more self-absorption than ever before in a 24/7 race to have it our own way.

Yet the answer to living with controlling people is not to become like them.

It’s a disease that they’ve inherited, acquired or otherwise cobbled together to stay competitive.

Elizabeth Brenner in Winning by Letting Go offered these keys to ridding ourselves of the control that kills our spirit and hurts our relationships:

1. Accept things as they really are.  Let go of our wishes, fantasies and fears and deal with what can be changed.
2. Get to know yourself better.  You cannot give away what you do not have.
3. “Any lingering attachments to having things our way hook us back into barter and control”. 

Therefore the irony in life is that we gain control by giving up control.

No control freak is really in control – they just make other people and themselves miserable.

When you’ve had it up to here with control freaks or even your controlling tendencies, try surrendering by giving up control.

And feel the freedom and power that comes with. 

I found this wonderfully inspiring list of reasons to never, ever give up when adversity strikes.

Sometimes we need reassurance that staying the course will eventually reward us.

Here are a few reasons to never give up:

1. As long as you are alive, anything is possible.
2. You are stronger than you think.  A little setback is not enough to stop you from achieving your goals.
3. If someone else can do it, so can you.
4. Another reason:  Your family and friends.  Let the people you love and who mean the world to you inspire you. 
5. You are so close.  At any given time you are only a heartbeat from success.

Baseball great Babe Ruth said, “You just can’t beat the person who won’t give up.”

See the entire list of 22 here.

Some claim that they cannot stay motivated unless they have high expectations of succeeding.

Yet, this approach is almost a guarantee of failure.

Alfred Korzybski posited that since our knowledge of anything is always limited and the future is uncertain, keeping our expectations low is a more productive use of our time and efforts.

Having no expectations is cynical and encourages us to not even try.

Harry Weinberg, the Temple University Professor and general semanticist reminds us that when we keep our expectations low, we “have a map that fits the territory”.

So life becomes a series of successes no matter how small they are making us happier than we would be with high risk, high expectations.

According to Weinberg:

“There is a big difference between high hopes and high expectations. In the former, we are prepared for failure and for success, in the latter only for success.  The ideal is embodied in the old chestnut ‘Expect the worst and hope for the best’”.

Working harder and expecting less is the formula to increased happiness.

The best selling author Harold Kushner (When Bad Things Happen to Good People) wrote another book, not as well known but powerful beyond imagination.

In When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough Kushner reminds us that the happiest people in the world are not the richest and most famous.

Not the ones that work hardest at being happy.

That may explain why being happy doesn’t appear on many to-do lists.

The happiest people are the ones who are kind, helpful and reliable.  Isn’t that fascinating? 

And then happiness just happens while they are busy doing these things – a byproduct not a primary goal.

Kushner says,

“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 that the pursuit of personal happiness, and it will sneak up on you from behind and perch on your shoulder.”  

Today is a great day to try just being the fine person you are and letting happiness land on your shoulder.

The devastation from Hurricane Sandy has challenged millions of people in its wake forcing them to count their blessings and believe in their ability to begin anew.

Henry Kavett, a long time friend of mine dating back to his ABC Radio days has been without electricity, low on food and running on empty and yet his recent email could be an inspiration to all of us because it takes a hurricane to cause this kind of widespread damage but only a moment of gratitude to put things in perspective.

 “Things will get back to some kind of normal…because…” Out of bad…comes  good”, right? You said that…and I believe it… 

Things that we learned this week:

1. Gas is gas– brand name or XXX off brand, doesn’t matter
2. Life is precious and fragile
3. Live wisely
4. Things can be replaced
5. You will find out who truly cares about you in a crisis”

Adversity introduces a person to him or her self and to those around them.

Oprah Winfrey said:

“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”

Go on a jealousy diet and relieve yourself of the deadweight that kills relationships. 

I think the two worst human conditions are the fear of intimacy and jealousy.

Jealousy is a complicated and involved malady but to the extent that it hurts us from being our best and bringing the best out of others, we need a plan to eliminate or greatly reduce it from our lives, our families, relationships and workplaces.

We go on low-fat and low carb diets.  Why not a Jealousy Diet as I outline in my book.

1. Let go of the fear that you don’t have any value.  Take the eye off of others and turn the attention to within.
2. Repeat often:  “Jealousy hurts me more than it hurts them”.  William Penn wrote that “the jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves”.
3. Count jealousies like calories – make a list of the people of whom you are jealous.
4. Focus on your accomplishments.  Harold Coffin said, “Envy is the art of counting the other person’s blessings instead of your own.”
5. Make amends for jealous behavior.

“In jealousy there is more self-love than love” – Francois VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes (1665)

We need to forgive ourselves and others.

Sometimes simply repeating the decision to forgive ourselves helps us to absorb painful feelings.

When we forgive those who have offended us, it is also an act of self-love

Martin Padovani, in his book “Healing Wounded Relationships” says letting go means moving on with our lives and relationships. 

Padovani says:

“It is futile to refuse to forgive another in order to punish him.  In the long run we are only self-destructively punishing ourselves, because we are immobilizing ourselves emotionally and spiritually.  We need to forgive others first for our own sake in order to heal”.

And forgiveness doesn’t mean that reconciliation with others is always possible.

Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting.

Forgiveness can start here and now, but it may take a lifetime if ever to forget.

And for those who continually hurt us, remembering is protection from future offenses.

If the offender refuses our forgiveness, let them go.

We have done what we can and we can move on with life.

If this touches you, please feel free to forward it to friends and family. 

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We live in an age of collecting “friends” on Facebook and in our heart of hearts most of us know that we would be lucky to have a small handful of true friends in our lifetime.

It has been said that “Making a million friends is not an achievement, the achievement is to make a friend who stands with you when millions are against you”.

When a trusted and dear friend hurts us for whatever reason, it is a mind-jarring experience with repercussions to our future happiness.

After all the suffering and pain, this one thought is most important.

Never let anyone who hurts you make you doubt your ability to be a good friend to others or make you doubt that someone else will be a good friend to you.

If you do, your loss doubles.

“Everyone suffers at least one bad betrayal in their lifetime. It’s what unites us. The trick is not to let it destroy your trust in others when that happens. Don’t let them take that from you.” – Sherrilyn Kenyon, Invincible.

Our confidence tends to ebb and flow naturally based on how things are going in our lives.

When all is going our way, it’s hard not to be confident.

When times get tough, we often get tentative and second guess the very instincts that have previously made us successful.

So I thought I would pass along some instant confidence builders – things I have found to be effective just giving them a try.   I hope you like them and pass them on to others:

1. Repeat, “I have done it before, I can do it again”. 
2. Use an IOU from your past.  Borrow from something unexpected that you had to handle and did very well.  Then apply it to your current challenge.
3. Before opening the door to a meeting or interview where you need an extra dose of confidence say, “There is an important reason why I have been called to this meeting”.
4. Remind yourself, “I have earned the right” to do that which you are setting out to accomplish.
5. Preparation breeds self-confidence.  Instead of worrying, prepare more.

As William Jennings Bryan said:

“The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you”.

The year Ted Williams became the first and only baseball player to hit for an over .400 batting average, he had the opportunity to sit out the final game of the season and guarantee that he would capture the record.

On September 28^th 1941, Williams went into the two final games (a doubleheader) batting .3996 that would have rounded off to .400 assuring that he would be the first player to ever hit .400 in a season.

His manager, Joe Cronin, suggested Williams sit out the last two games just to play it safe.

But Williams, the cocky 23-year old slugger in his third year with the Boston Red Sox said, “If I can’t hit .400 all the way, I don’t deserve it”.

Williams went six-for-eight including a homerun and a double to end with his record .406 batting average.

He didn’t even win the Most Valuable Player Award that year.  Joe DiMaggio won the MVP for hitting safely in 56 straight games.  Even Williams said, “Hell, I’d have even voted for DiMaggio”.

If you’re a golfer or like to watch golf on Sunday, going into the final day of competition on top of the other players is arguably not where you want to be.

More golfers – even the professional — lose the edge on the back nine of the final round by playing it safe.

People who invest in “blue chip” stocks for their future aren’t always guaranteed immediate protection from a prolonged economic downturn the nature of which we are seeing now.   And while safe stocks are an oxymoron, there are some that you can build a future on – just maybe not today.

It’s human nature to protect that which we have or have earned.

But playing it safe is a loser’s strategy.

So next chance you get, think of Ted Williams.

If you can’t do it, you don’t deserve it.

And more often than not you’ll achieve your goal but 100% of the time you’ll be living like an achiever.

A friend of mine would go to his desk, take out a piece of paper and write a letter to the person who angered him.

I realize that this is the digital era and paper is so – well, slow.

But he poured out his angry thoughts each and every time, signed the letter and put it in his top drawer where it remained until the next morning at which time he reread it and threw it in the trash can – unsent.

In fact, he never mailed even one angry letter this way.

All he needed was time – time to calm down, think things over and respond rather than react.

He saved a lot of friends and much unhappiness as a result.

Even with smartphones and instant access to each other, there are ways to do the same thing today.  

Pour out your thoughts and feelings and then save the draft to be reviewed the next day.   I’ll wager you will promptly drag that draft into your digital trashcan.

The cure for anger is the perspective that comes with time – even a little time — something that is very difficult to find in our Twitterific world.

Ambrose Bierce put it best:

“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret”.

We have the power to put anger on “pause”.

Lance Armstrong has now lost his 7 Tour de France titles and most of his major endorsements. 

And while advertisers argue about getting their money back, Armstrong has not yet publicly admitted that he was using illegal drugs that would have disqualified him from winning.

Armstrong is a cancer survivor and a leader in the commendable Livestrong movement that has positively inspired many others.

Making a huge mistake, or for that matter a little one, in private or in public comes down to this:  you can’t heal and return to a good place until you own the mistake.

Step 1 – Admit the mistake. 

Step 2 – Make up for it in some way.  That’s where the magic happens.

Shame often prevents owning up to life’s mistakes.  And hanging onto to them only postpones the healing.

As Alexander Pope put it:

“No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday.”

Former South Dakota Senator George McGovern who died last week at 90, was a failed presidential candidate losing in the Nixon landslide of 1972 not even carrying his own state – one of the biggest repudiations of a presidential candidate in history.

Later, McGovern lost his senate seat in 1980. 

But George McGovern picked up the pieces and created a post-political, non-partisan alliance with Senator Bob Dole to combat hunger.

McGovern, the polarizing anti-Vietnam war candidate found a new purpose in life by working for the common good with someone who held polar opposite views.

McGovern, the liberal.

Dole, the conservative.

But both shared growing up in the plains during the Depression and they knew the ravages of hunger.

McGovern, before his death said,

“To be honest that was a very productive time of my life.  Sometimes life works that way; you accomplish more in defeat than you do in victory”.

We fail every day in lots of ways, but the key is to remember that failure is a rehearsal for success and to welcome it as such.

Change the way you look at life’s failures – small and large – and it can make a meaningful difference.

Robin Williams says “Ah, yes, divorce … From the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet”.

The multi-married Zsa Zsa Gabor counters, “I’m an excellent housekeeper.  Every time I get a divorce I keep the house”.

But Nirvana’s Curt Cobain nailed it, “Mom hates dad, dad hates mom, it all makes you feel so sad”.

I always thought that divorce was when two people could not get along with each other.

But I was wrong.

It is actually the other way around.  Divorce is when two people cannot get along with themselves and that’s when all the trouble begins for them, their partner and the unsuspecting children of their union. 

I wrote this, as a person who has experienced divorce, in my book.

Here are 5 revelations about divorce:

1. In divorce, you are actually divorcing yourself.
2. A lack of self-love and self-esteem paves the way for divorce.
3. Two complete people make one complete marriage.
4. Most good marriages are made or broken well before they occur in their families of origin.
5. Counseling often saves individuals and not marriages.

Helen Rowland put it a powerful way: 

“When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn’t a sign that they ‘don’t understand’ one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to”.

Out of bad marriages come good people who, when they commit to dealing with their family of origin issues, can then enter into healthy relationships.

Clint Eastwood has been back in the news lately with his most famous line:  “Make my day”.

Did you ever try to make someone’s day – but not at gunpoint?

There is a gentleman in South Jersey named Wynn Etter who from time to time when he crossed the bridges to nearby Philadelphia made someone’s day by doing random acts of kindness.

Wynn would drive up to a tollbooth, pay his toll and the toll of the unsuspecting person behind him.  As he drove away, you can imagine the shock and delight on the face of the commuter he waved to from his rearview mirror.

Often the driver behind would try to catch up and wave out of gratitude from the adjacent lane. 

Imagine how this one act made the day of two people?

The 14^th Dalai Lama said:

“When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.”

So go ahead, find a way to make your day – and someone else’s, too.  It may become habit forming.

It doesn’t have to be paying their bridge toll – especially at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey where it can be as high $12 per car.

There are lots of other ways – most of which do not cost a dime.

Add your stories of random acts of kindness below.

Please share this thought with your friends and family.

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You’re stuck on an elevator.

Guess who 63% of the men surveyed by Nielsen Entertainment Television would like to be stuck in that elevator with?

Not a Victoria’s Secret model.

Not even an athlete (only 15% said Eli Manning or some other athlete).

It was Jon Stewart.

And that’s because the next generation values humor above other qualities.

Not even music is as attractive to the next generation as humor.

88% said sense of humor was important to their self-esteem.

58% sent out funny videos to impress someone.

Humor has always been appreciated as a personality asset but if this research is to be believed, now more than ever, humor is a major component of our daily lives.

Maya Angelou said:

“Laugh as much as possible, always laugh. It’s the sweetest thing one can do for oneself & one’s fellow human beings.”

Please share this with your friends and family.

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In 1990 Steve Jobs skipped an Apple business meeting to take the person who would soon be his wife on their first date.

They met when Jobs spoke at a class at Stanford’s business school where Laurene Powell worked.

They exchanged phone numbers and Jobs was headed back to Cupertino for an important business dinner.

As Jobs is quoted as saying:

“I was in the parking lot, with the key in the car, and I thought to myself, if this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman? I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she’d have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town and we’ve been together ever since”.

Most of us are actually pretty good about setting priorities – that is, if we remind ourselves what is important.

And that’s the problem.  Life gets in the way.

So to take the litmus test for what is most important when almost everything seems important by remembering the words of Harry Lloyd:

“Success is only another form of failure if we forget what our priorities should be”.

Please share this with your friends and family.

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