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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Kansas City Royals pitcher Gil Meche called his boss in 2011 to announce that he was retiring a year earlier – that he would walk away from the final year of his contract worth $12 million.

Meche was an All-Star in the first year and had other good years until a back injury began haunting him in 2009 – the team had a workaround, this starter would pitch from the bullpen in relief saving wear and tear on his body.

Here was his response as reported by The Athletic:  “You signed me as a starter, and I can’t fulfill that obligation.  I’m not going to take that money as a relief pitcher” according to the Royals GM at the time Dayton Moore.  Yes, he made about $50 million in his career but still, he’s walking away from an easy $12 million more?

In a world of greed, who does this?  Meche calls for a simplified life and he has enough money.

Principle and dignity over paycheck.  Chicago Bears legend Mike Ditka:  “There are some things more important than money. You can’t buy your self-respect.”

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Is it me or are people putting themselves down a lot more these days?  There has never been a shortage of other people willing to do it for you, but taking this matter into your own hands seems like needless self-sabotage.

Arthur Brooks writing in The Atlantic has a partial cure:  “Don’t talk to yourself like someone you hate.”  That kind of makes sense.  You wouldn’t talk to others like they are “an incompetent idiot”.  We’d be nicer than that.  Kinder self-talk is what we deserve even when we screw up or want to do much better.

So, change the inner dialogue as author Louise Hay suggests:  “You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”

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I started my first business during a bad recession, a weekly publication for the radio industry.  Then I took it daily in a recession.  I started the publication I currently own (Inside Music Media) in a – you guessed it – recession.

I’m not that smart, but I have smart friends one of whom reassured me that the best time to start a new business is when everyone else is retreating.  That took a lot more guts than I thought I had.  I mention this because the new CEO of Zillow said he started there in 2009 on the tail of the real estate inspired recession during the subprime crisis – this guy Jeremy Wacksman is different.  The wildest thing he’s ever seen for sale on Zillow is a missile silo.  Nonetheless.

Start that thing (whatever it is) in spite of downturns or bad timing not because of them or as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman puts it “If you’re going to start a company, you might as well do it when things are tough. That’s when everyone else is giving up.”

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Before class students come in, sit down and text.  When class starts, I ask them to power down and stow digital devices and they rapidly adapt to in-person.  We take five minutes or so to talk to each other – me too! Yes, they get up to use the bathroom (My two classes are each an hour and forty minutes) and yes, they check their phones (in the hall before returning).

When class ends, they pull out their phones as they exit the room often leaving behind their coats and water bottles and even expensive Stanley Cups!  We have great in-class discussions and students often thank me for asking them to turn their phones off (in front of other students most of whom agree).

What I learned:  you can’t ask someone to give up the phone if you are not willing to offer them something of equal value.  Something interesting.  Something social with others. Maybe something surprising.

I am thinking about this a lot as I prepare to return for the fall semester and as I digest the latest research which shows we humans spend 50% of our waking hours on digital devices – that’s not good, not healthy and requires ways to wean ourselves back to real life.

In a TED Talk in 2012 MIT Professor Sherry Turkle highlighted how devices change our social expectations—and why in-person conversation is the higher-value offer: “We expect more from technology and less from each other.”

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47% of Americans feel they are in a constant state of worry with the average person spending more than two hours a day worrying.  Younger Gen Z and millennials worry even more – 62% reporting perpetual worry.  Talker Research did the study for Avocado Green Mattress who believes worry affects sleep.

I was a Dale Carnegie Course instructor for 11 years and dealing with fear and worry is nothing new.  The remarkable thing is almost all worries never happen and the rare ones that do don’t happen the way we fear.  I’ve come to look at worry as something we add on to existing worries or absorb from those around us that activate fear.

Worry feels urgent, but it rarely reflects reality. It’s more a reaction to uncertainty than a useful response to actual danger.

Radio personality Earl Nightingale with that deep voice of his had it right:  “Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.”

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Alan Lakein, is the author of personal time management book How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life.

He’s big on planning (“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.Failing to plan is planning to fail.”)

He lists 61 ways he saves time – here’s a sampling:

• #7 — I remind myself:  “There is always enough time for the important things”.  If it’s important I will make the time to do it.
• #16 – I’ve given up forever all “wait time”.  If I have to wait, I consider it a “gift of time” to relax, plan or do something I would not otherwise have done.
• #27 – I do first things first.
• #31 – I ask myself, “Would anything terrible happen if I didn’t do this priority item”.  If the answer is no, I don’t do it.
• #61 – I’m continually asking myself:  “What is the best use of my time right now”

I love Lakein’s famous quote:

“Time = Life, Therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life”.

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Some of our young people today are pretty tough on themselves – they want to be better, because they don’t believe they are good enough.  I see it in academics, as friends – it’s a seemingly impossible task.

One of my music business students confessed that she needs to do better, that she is not performing at her capable level but the problem with thinking like this is you can’t get to better until you will admit you are good enough.  It’s an endless frustration process of always trying to be better – better than what?

You can’t truly grow until you believe you’re starting from a place of worth. You have to believe you are enough before you can become more. Otherwise, “better” becomes a moving target—always out of reach, always just a little farther away. And no matter how much progress you make, it never feels like enough. Growth is not about fixing something broken. It’s about building on something valuable.

As Tiny Buddha founder Lori Deschene puts it “We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.”

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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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