My friend Beau Phillips writes a blog called Reverb in which he was recently positing on the wisdom of what the great innovator Steve Jobs would do 12 years after his passing.

Days before his death, Jobs who had accomplished much and earned plenty reminded us about what is even more important.

“In other people’s eyes, my life is a success. However, aside from work, I’ve had little joy. All the recognition and wealth I took so much pride in is meaningless now. Material things that are lost can be found again. But there is one thing that can never be found when it is lost: Life.”

Live like there is no tomorrow.

Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback Jalen Hurts says you have to believe in yourself and if you hear encouragement from just one person, it can make all the difference.

He’s been fighting the pressure of great expectations since he took over from franchise quarterback Carson Wentz and this year it is all coming together.

Be aware that even a word of encouragement to those around you is the most powerful gift you can give to motivate associates or help family members grow.

Messaging positivity builds confidence.

When a baseball player strikes out, they can’t wait to get another at-bat.

When we strike out at something, we often get disappointed, discouraged and disillusioned.

No matter how bad, or unfair or frustrating, let’s be just as eager as the hitter for the next chance to do better.

That’s a decade of the average person’s life following the same routines and rituals according to a study.

64% say their routines hardly change.

79% say they are stuck in a rut and it keeps them from achieving their goals.

The most common things they’d like to do:  learning a new skill, traveling and starting a new career.

Coming off autopilot means more focus and less boredom.

How?

Do one thing differently focused 100% in the present – the more we get used to trying, the better it works.

Every time I start a new semester, I try to do something different in every session – and it always brings joy just knowing I’m constantly doing something a different way.

And sometimes, it’s a revelation.

I’m writing this after sitting for several hours at my desk and on my laptop – bad professor!

Thus, my focus – healthy breaks.

From work during the day.

From routines even necessary ones (must we always walk the same route or take the same roads).

From our regular diet so as to try new things.

My parents were right, I should have been a doctor because what I’m about to say is that the glucose in our brain is affected by hyper-long concentration – for doing the same things over and over.

Breaks foster rest and rest restores the brain.

Now I’m closing my laptop and going outside – join me?

I think we all know this but don’t want to say it aloud – multitasking doesn’t work.

It feeds whatever happens in the brain that makes us more intense and anxious.

It rewards us for not focusing and leads us to look for even more ways to become distracted.

After letting our digital devices define how we live, there is an awakening coming not to throw them away – hey, they’re also great additions to life – but to recognize that even if we can multitask, are we willing to keep paying the psychological price for doing so.

My students surprised me this week when unprompted they complained about a world that is forcing them to lose focus – The popular app TikTok was mentioned – I had to be revived!

And there was great sentiment that they are being played by those who want their business in the attention economy.

It got worse (I mean better) – one student said she deleted her TikTok app a few months ago and has read three books since (the most in years, she says).  Others admitted downplaying their time on the addictive app.

Some thought that their younger siblings were in worse shape and called them “iPad faces” because of parents and schools rushing the use of digital devices.

I came away with the thought that perhaps we’re all being played for fools by people and companies accentuating increasingly short attention spans.

Look what I found – a modern-day, real-life definition of the ravages of stress:

“We get stressed out now by having somebody yell at us in the office or by making a mistake or by losing a bunch of money. These aren’t problems that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had. They’d get stressed if a lion came to them or a boulder was rolling towards their living quarters. That kind of stress provoked the fight or flight response”.                                                                                            – Daniel Levitin

Anxiety was good in pre-historic days to stay alive, but it is killing us when the same intense responses happen many times a day due to more frequent lesser threats because of the way we chose to live.

Most stress is unnecessary.

When I am verbally attacked, I really have the urge to fire back.

Each time I do, I lose.  Each time I resist, I set up an unexpected victory.

Some people don’t mean to be insulting (and some do).

Others are bullies, let’s face it, the world has bullies of all ages.

If you make it far enough not to get into an insult-match, start asking questions.  Insults are emotional and don’t stand up well to rational questions like “what makes you say that” and “give me some examples”.

An insulting person may not be a friend you want but sometimes you can’t get away from them so standing back and making them explain their emotional tirade even lets them know that it is time to change the subject.

Apple founder Steve Jobs famously said “customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them” when his planning team wanted to research customer needs.

Big companies like Proctor & Gamble spend millions testing consumers and fail more often than succeed – and remember when Coca Cola decided that it was time for New Coke after doing research that was clearly wrong when the product failed.

This is important because in our lives we chase things that we think we may want but cannot know for sure until we get it.

Curiosity, it turns out, may be a better roadmap to our future desires so every day we feed our curiosity, we learn more about what may be important to us.

That’s what many of my students say – I tell them I need their 100% attention during class and recognize that if they have to check for messages, they can do so by stepping out of the classroom.

Imagine being thanked for asking them to stow their phones (and by stow I mean out of sight because yes, there is research that shows even if a phone that is turned off sits within your sightlines, you will keep checking it no matter whether that it is off).

Learning to live with technology is where most of us are right now – asking for undivided attention is not a punishment — it can be a reward.

It doesn’t take long to discover that spending more time with people in our lives that we may be neglecting is not the short answer.

What people crave is more focus not necessarily more time – the world is busy, life is hectic, almost everyone has the same problem of needing more time.

Activities and conversations that are so focused not even a mobile device can interrupt it.

People feel guilty when they know they are struggling to spend more time with those who matter in their lives but less time and more focus is where the sweet spot is.

In one of my recent NYU Music Business classes we were discussing voice activated listening (Alexa) — a student discovered research about how senior citizens improved their loneliness by interacting with a smart speaker.

Keeping in mind that the number one use for smart speakers like Echo is to listen to music.

But the seniors in this study talked to their artificial “friends” and treated them as they would a human.  Even saying hello when they walked into the room with a smart speaker.

Imagine the power of humans listening and responding to each other if artificial intelligence is a potent but less adequate alternative.

My NYU music business students are always interested in discovering and unlocking the dormant powers they have and may not even realize.

Nothing can pick up your day today more than acknowledging all the hidden powers we all have that can help us get through the ups and downs of daily living.

The power to deal with adversity – no course necessary, everyone has a pretty place to start.

The power to get along well with others – a hint, make it about them.

The power to make others happy – which makes us happy in the process.

The power to care about others and get the negativity off of us.

The dormant power within is there ready to go – hit start.

Author, physician and resilience expert Amit Sood says pursuing happiness will make you miserable.

Better to focus on caring.

And the core building block of caring is resilience.

Therefore, chasing happiness through books, blogs, videos, courses and even psychologists is a useless task.

Patterning happiness in the brain begins with increasing our awareness of caring for others.

The popular singer known as Bad Bunny (real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) doubles down on being yourself:

“Maybe at the very beginning of my career, I tried to pretend I was someone that I’m not, but I learned that that’s the way artists lose themselves …It’s because they forgot about themselves – them as a person – and invented a fictitious personality.”

Courage to be you and not morph into someone you’re not.

Not just for a performer but anyone who loses themselves is playing to an audience they can no longer see.

In a recent survey a majority of young people crossing all races, classes and cultures value personal success (achievement and happiness) over caring for others.

Fairness doesn’t get a high grade, either, compared to other values.

And parents and teachers may be sending the message that achievement takes precedent over caring.

The Harvard Making Caring Common Project says “The power and frequency of parents’ daily messages about achievement and happiness are drowning out their messages about concern for others.”

Kids and adults still believe in caring and fairness but the messages being sent daily may have to change.

Here’s the study.

Once a radio program director always one so here I go.

Every format hour includes many elements among which are promos for contests and things to come and one-liners to promote and look forward to what’s ahead.

When my children were young and to their delight, I found myself promoting things that were upcoming even within the next hour or few hours.

The underlying truth is that all of us want something to look forward to.

Radio does it to keep listeners listening.

We should do it to keep the family engaged, our co-workers motivated and those we love optimistic.

When stations succeed, they get high ratings.

When individuals look up and promote good things ahead, they get high spirits to make life fun and rewarding.

I don’t know about you, but I was shocked to learn of a study where adults say they feel good only 47% of the time – about half their days, they feel bad.

Aches, anxiety, stress are some culprits – one in four experience anxiety at least once a week and what’s worse is that 61% say they have accepted all of this unhappiness.

As I tell my college students, we have hidden power.

To overcome, make others feel good, put the past behind and not waste the future.

To get along with difficult people, to pat ourselves on the back as needed and to turn crappy days into happy days.

I can prove it:  talk to anyone who has a close call with death or disability, amazing how they can reprioritize what’s important.

The hidden power within us is stronger than the challenges from outside that drag us down.

You are good enough – probably even misjudging your competence.

Trying new things is how we got to where we are – add something new and challenging in every day.

Fear of losing something makes us less willing to face challenges – you only lose when you let fear keep you from trying.

Waiting to feel more confident is a long wait – act first, feel second.