The coach of the lowly Philadelphia Flyers hockey team that has little to celebrate during their losing season said a mouthful when one of his young and hopefully future stars began to know when confidence kicked in.

John Tortorella said he couldn’t explain just how great it feels for a coach to not only see a young player take the next step but to see when they really know deep down inside that they are the talented person they hoped to be.

So, it is off the ice and in our world where pressure driven culture makes us often doubt our own abilities even when we are performing at a high level.

Look for it, recognize it and accept it – the last step in building confidence is when you are your best believer.

The great guru of resilience and happiness, Dr. Amit Sood is an expert on the brain – as a physician at Mayo Clinic let’s say he knows a thing or two about how the brain can be retrained.

According to Dr. Sood:  Of the 100 events that typically surround us each day – only 4 are bad and 96 are good (you may want to re-read that line and yes, it is proofed for accuracy).

We need to zoom out and focus on what is right for life and not what is wrong.

The metrics favor what is right.

Social media, society, our digital world, covid – you name it – makes us obsess on what is wrong and what makes us unhappy.

So, try it today and see if it makes a difference:  go to the numbers, they don’t lie – only 4 bad things will typically happen today so retrain your brain to start appreciating the 96 that are good.

So, my NYU students returned from spring break and every class I teach, the same thing – sour pusses.

Some are returning to mid-term exams, others getting a taste of freedom and summer vacation only half a semester away – it’s hard to look joyous.

I was joking with my classes saying “pretend I’m not a robot and that I can actually see your faces – wouldn’t you rather see me smiling and energetic, that’s what I’d like to see from you”.

And believe it or not, the students were transformed – most put a smile on (and yes, I had to remind them a few times) but it taught all of us a great lesson that I would like to share with you this new day.

We’re all waiting around for something to happen to make us smile when the secret is take action and do it first, then something good usually happens at least with human interaction.

My friend the great radio programmer and DJ Jay Cook used to put the biggest grin on his face before opening the mic at WFIL in Philadelphia – no matter what he was thinking, or what he might be going through, the listener got the benefit of Jay’s smile even though they couldn’t see him.

And he walked around the station as one of the nicest guys I have ever met in radio.

Smile first – don’t wait for some outside event to make you happy.

Stop blaming yourself for procrastination, there is an often-overlooked cause of laziness and no, it doesn’t have anything to do with your shortcomings.

Hard work, focus and resilience comes from seeing what you want to accomplish so vividly in your mind’s eye that you can almost feel and touch it.

Then, how badly do you want it – “it would be nice” or is it “I’ve got to have it”.

And the rest takes care of itself.

What some call laziness is often the lack of a clear vision of what you have to have and won’t settle for anything else – the laziness is rarely ever an issue.

When managing others, keep stoking the vision.

When managing yourself – see it, feel it, taste it.

Education is the only thing where people want the least for their money.What do I mean?

An often-asked question of learners is “How many classes can I miss?”

To be sure, divide the number of classes into the total yearly tuition and you get a rough per class cost.

If the cost is $70,000 a school year and a student is taking 12 courses the monetary value of each class is about $5,833.

In our world, even when we pay less than that for something, the first thing we want to know is “what else do I get for it?” (Verizon offers “up to $1,000 off our best 5G phones”).

The mindset that makes a difference is to value things like education exactly the way you do for material things and then ask – what else can I get for my education.

Get your money’s worth when it comes to making you smarter.

It’s not about the most talented person on your team.

The real talent is the person who enables a team to work together.

One star doesn’t mean as much as all the other people working together – you see this all the time in sports, a superstar, everyone else and pressure to deliver.

There is so much anxiety caused by trying to be the best – to meet the moment and it almost never gets done unless there is a leader involved with the skills to integrate the talents of all the differing parts.

I thought you would be interested in a student of mine at NYU who will be participating in our summer music business program in LA.

She wants to work in a talent agency that caters to musicians and performing artists so after being introduced to a top talent agent, she was told to write a 5-page paper on the future of the music business.

No problem — she took a course about that with me last semester so on the transcontinental flight from New York to LA over spring break, she pounded out the report on her laptop.

The talent agent was a tough character but he sent her to a second interview and finally one with a third.

In preparation for that final interview my only advice was what I am going to share with you this morning – don’t allow yourself to become the person they want, stick steadfastly to being the person you want to be.

Turns out she was offered a virtual internship but the university requires it to be in-person for the summer program so she had to turn it down.

The interviewer said, no problem – you can start in the fall when you return to New York.

No matter how badly we want something, it is important to remain true to who you are so that should you get the job, the employer also gets the best of you.

I’ve added a new course this semester at NYU – Stress-free Living & Working in the Music Industry – a business that helps so many people relax by listening yet imposing 73% mental health issues on the artists and musicians.

From time to time I’m going to share what we’re all learning.

For starters, that happiness does not come from being happy or even trying but from gratitude – it’s a tough sell until we realize that gratitude is the building block of resilience and that it is resilience that makes us happier.

My students and I are working on awakening the power within us to make positive decisions that reject neglect of mental and physical health and promote curiosity in discovering how being grateful truly works.

At the end of one class in which a guest spoke, I asked the students to tell the speaker what they liked about their presentation and – this is just as important – and cite a specific thing as evidence.

I went first to show an example and give them a second to gather their thoughts.

A good number of students waved their hands high to go next and the speaker was on cloud nine.  The students were elated because they could express their gratitude in such a meaningful way – with real evidence, no empty flattery.

You may want to try this at home (at holiday time, for no special reason) or at work – the power of gratitude in building resilience.

In Ireland, France, Ontario have the Right to Disconnect laws.

Even at the Volkswagen offices in Germany workers are no longer penalized for not answering electronic communications after-hours.

The most stress occurs when staying connected after work.

When sleep time decreases attention spans also decrease.

Unlocking the power within all of us to live as we choose based on our health and happiness starts with placing limits on after-hours anxiety that is not necessary.

“We’ve kind of confused what it means to be a man, what it means to be masculine.  You’ve got this trope out there that you’ve got to be tough and angry and lash out to be strong. It’s just the opposite … Strength is how you show your love for people. Strength is how you are for people and how you have their back. And how you stick up for other people and [push back] against bullies.”  — Doug Emhoff

Catherine Price wrote a book about this – a 30-day plan to take your life back by breaking up with your phone.

One of the quick hits worth considering is to put a rubber band around your phone so that every time you pick it up you are reminded to ask yourself if there is a better use for your time at that moment – that’s what she does.

The mission is not to stop using phones or social media that has become an addictive dark hole but to not automatically turn the phone into a compulsive action that robs you of living focused on what is around you.

Leadership has to do with helping others succeed for themselves and for the team while you work in the background.

Leadership is a stealth operation that’s why people who look like leaders and sound like leaders are still primarily pushing themselves out front.

An effective leader today is a coach not a superstar player.

In radio, productive salespeople do not make the best managers when their work is “rewarded” by a promotion to boss.

Wayne Gretzky was truly hockey’s “Great One” but he failed as a coach – in other words he could play the game but not help others up their game.

Coaches have special skills – they are not always the ones who manage from a position of great accomplishment – more so, from a recognition of what it takes for others to be a winner.

Jimmy Kimmel takes the summer off and when he came back in the fall he was offered another three-year contract extension.

What’s this?  Work less, make more?  Not a new concept.

Johnny Carson cut back to working four days at peak popularity, then three and anyone performing at a high level in any profession either takes time off or faces burnout – even college professors take a sabbatical.

Working long and hard is a common element of success but working less so that you can continue to do more helps rewrite the expression to say “even less is more”.

No one thing changes any little thing.

But many little things can bring about one big change.

Incorporating micropractices into daily routines helps rehearse for success – for example, spending less time looking at screens starts with a little less time and endless multitasking eases when we prioritize a few things.

It’s kind of like a to-do list in a way.

The larger tasks sits there while the smaller and usually less significant ones get done because it takes less time or it’s easier.

But the revelation is chopping up big tasks into smaller parts gets the best results.

So it is with micropractices to change habits – nibble away, don’t try to gobble it all up at once.

Multitasking overstimulates the brain and stresses you out and stress feeds more anxiety.

It is a factor in higher levels of depression and anxiety among social media users.

Things are proven to not get done faster by multitasking – the brain is not wired to do any two cognitively demanding things at the same time in spite of how we may feel when we check more things off our task list.

There is an exception to the multitasking rule:  Choose any other thing that doesn’t stimulate the language part of the brain and it works simultaneously, no problem – listen to music, do the laundry.

I ran this past my NYU stress class recently and a few students said they liked how they felt when they multitasked until they considered the science – one thing at a time and then onto the next is the most efficient and mentally healthy way to handle a busy life.

The NFL awarded the New England Patriots multiple compensatory draft picks late in the 2000 draft due to the free agency defections.

One of those was pick No. 199 overall in the sixth round.

The six quarterbacks drafted before (combined) started only 191 games and threw 258 touchdowns.

The Patriots’ pick won 286 games in his career, including seven Super Bowls, and threw 737 touchdowns in the regular season and playoffs combined.

Tom Brady went from last to first.

I like to think about things like this because being underestimated has its advantages – we should use them.

A great deal of our stress comes from others – they feel it, express it and we soak it up like a sponge and carry it around until for our own sanity we have to squeeze it out.

In other words, if you could not absorb the stress that others feel (those close to us, related to us or in our path), we would reduce life’s stressor and have a better chance to deal with our own.

By prioritizing a reasonable number of things that make us anxious and deciding which ones to handle first.

And there are tools – scheduling all worries for one specific hour, one day a week keeping the rest of your life relatively stress-free.

Remembering that 99% of what we worry about never happens and the 1% that does usually doesn’t happen the way we fear.

But the big deal is resisting the stress in our lives generated by others.

“If you’re inclined to report that time is dragging, my life is vanishing, maybe the thing to do is simply try to inject more distinctive or unique experiences into it…then there’s more in your story to tell and it’s not slipping through your fingers.”  — Dr. Ian Phillips of Johns Hopkins

A new Ohio State study confirms acts of kindness toward others has a positive effect on anxiety and depression.

It gets our minds off negative thoughts and keeps us connected with other people.

Doing kind deeds and fixating on the needs of others turns out to be an effective non-medicinal approach compared to focusing on our problems or unhappiness.

An act of kindness is defined as “big or small acts that benefit others or make others happy, typically at some cost to you in terms of time or resources.”

Never, unless you are the head of a company asking others to do so.

Apple CEO Tim Cook who without a doubt makes a ton of money, just asked to have his salary slashed by $35 million – that’s not nothing.

Did I mentioned he asked for the pay cut?

In radio, for example not one CEO has asked for a pay cut even though they routinely conduct layoffs and firings in essence losing the goodwill of the remaining employees.

One CEO, Emmis Communications’ Jeff Smulyan did during extremely hard times and his employees love him for it.

The leader makes the most money so the ones who are willing to make the biggest sacrifice wins the enthusiastic cooperation of those working below them.