Anxiety results when too many problems mount.

I broke into broadcasting in radio news – in a newsroom with all hell breaking loose most of the day and sometimes into the night.

I never felt overwhelmed.

More overwhelmed today because you’re always on, always connected, and seemingly in over your head – at least in a newsroom you gather, write and air your work over and over with breaks in between to catch your breath.

The secret to feeling less overwhelmed is to slow down not speed up.

Deliberately slow the pace and do one thing at a time before moving on to the next – the key word being deliberately.

Multi-tasking is the enemy to feeling less overwhelmed.

Traditional wisdom has this all wrong.

It’s not what you can do, it is how you can get others to make you more effective.

The key tool is to be skilled at being a good listener.

Few people are good listeners in this age of self-promotion and social media.

Think about it – we want to help people who listen to us sincerely, we want to help them because they make us feel good and worthwhile.

Thousands of books have been written about the more effective this and the more effective that but the simple solution is to hone your listening skills and apply them without an agenda.

Fascinating new study from the University of California, Irvine.

Forty office workers were hooked up to wireless heart rate monitors for approximately 12 days.

“The longer one spends on email in [a given] hour the higher is one’s stress for that hour,” the authors noted.

Another study shows batching emails, a common thought to be a helpful workaround is not so helpful making email users more stressed.

There have been other studies on email and unhappiness – it causes depression and anxiety.

Thrive Global tried an experiment where vacationing employees who received emails while vacationing didn’t just get a message that their colleague was away but that their email would automatically be deleted.

Coming back to no emails waiting in the in-box – now that’s a real vacation.

Getting email under control is in your hands not someone else’s.

“We shouldn’t banish e-mail, but we can no longer allow it to be used in such a way that guarantees our misery.”

It’s one thing when others attack us but it is unforgiveable to do it to ourselves.

Would you give a job to someone who doubted themselves?

Would you trust someone who didn’t believe they are made up of great intentions and positivity?

Why let someone else hijack our inner minds and plant seeds of doubt.

If you won’t make the conscious decision to always believe in yourself, how can you ask someone else to do it?

Most people can name more things that are wrong with them than things that are right.

Repeating these negatives makes us the enemy within doing damage inflicted by others.

Since we have no problem spewing off a list of our faults, why not spend our time capturing and repeating the things that we do well.

Imagine focusing on the good.

Our children bring home their grades and say “4 A’s and a B” and guess what the first question will be?

All of us do enough things right daily to deserve remembering and repeating them instead of tearing ourselves down with negatives that don’t paint the full picture.

I’m not a big reunion buff, but the one I attended made me freak out.

Not because I didn’t want to see people many of whom I lost touch with but because I wanted to remember them the way we were when we were in school together.

Would you believe me when I say I can still hear the voice of my best friend who left us too early in life – I can see him in my mind and hear him as if he was sitting right in front of me.

In radio, program directors like I was play the hits over and over again but what makes them special beyond the sound and the words is where we heard the songs first, what they mean to us and how they make us feel now.

In life, the vivid images in our minds and the strong voices in our ears is a reunion of the soul – we play it once and then, like radio, replay it again and again.

Let’s be honest – kids are being weaponized to skip their childhood and adolescent years to fast forward into adulthood.

Along the way, we take Instagram pictures of them.

If Fred Rogers was alive, he’d be crashing his Trolley in the Neighborhood of Make Believe.

We need our childhood and we must channel our inner kid – that’s what’s so delightful about watching a toddler (pre-iPad) do silly things.

In radio and TV, we are virtually all children even when we grow up which leads me to what’s on my mind today.

In some ways don’t ever grow up – slow down, observe, interact, pursue fascination.

Take a different route to work or working from home, totally upend your routine.

Take time to talk to someone you have neglected that doesn’t have to do with work.

Find someone who needs you and make them laugh.

Make someone feel good about themselves for no reason other than you’d like someone to do the same thing to you.

Inner joy comes from interaction – let go and be yourself.

But becoming excellent is the secret to success.

Every “become rich” plan pales in comparison to those who vow to “become more skilled” at what they do.

Ironically, people think it’s the other way around.

If you get rich by accident or good fortune without developing superior skills, you’ll likely not be happy very long.

If you become the best at what you do, you win twice.

Once, because you’re putting yourself in a position to succeed financially as well.

But also, you get rich on happiness which is not for sale at any price.

It is just as important to make a life as it is to make a living.

Pursuing financial and career success isn’t likely to work without a passion for mastering the skills it takes first to be excellent.

This is on the rise – we simply have less confidence than we once did.

Fearing failure is being afraid to play the game.

The one sure way to fail is to think about it.

A tennis pro who thinks about losing is going to lose.

A team that expects to get beaten will.

A person who doubts themselves for even a nanosecond is betting against themselves even before they begin.

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure” – Paulo Coelho

Dealing with problems is not a feeling, you choose to do it.

Smokers quit not because they have a feeling that they should, but because they choose to resist the unhealthy pleasure.

Confidence in yourself is never a feeling – you don’t feel confidence first, you choose to believe in yourself and confidence follows.

An alcoholic doesn’t wait to feel like recovering, they choose to pay the price to stop drinking rather than pay the price for continued drinking.

Faith is a choice not a feeling – and faith is something that matters to you and is the only antidote for fear.

Faith over fear.

You don’t wait for the feeling to come over you before you choose the better path.

The choice comes first.

Feelings are a residue.

We choose with our heads and feel with our hearts.

And if you make the right choices and stick to them, good feelings result.

It used to be Coca-Cola – one of the most memorable slogans of all time but today “the pause that refreshes” would be just as meaningful focused on mental health.

Tennis star Naomi Osaka, still struggling with anxiety, made a memorable description of the state of her mental health:

“I feel like for me recently, when I win, I don’t feel happy; I feel more like a relief,” she said. “And then when I lose, I feel very sad.”

Time out is needed to recover, rest and heal as tennis great Billie Jean King puts it.

We listen to our body when it is hurt.

Now we must also listen to our mind.

Procrastination is mood avoidance not task avoidance – avoid the task, avoid the bad mood.

But even that catches up with us – college students who chill out during their first semester, pay for it with increased anxiety in the second according to research.

The future is nice but it isn’t a powerful motivator to take on the business at hand in a timely way.

The answer:

• Make what you’re putting off feel more comfortable.
• See the future as a road map to making things better than the present.

I like to look at life like sports.

You don’t show up not to play.

You never start the game thinking you will lose or you absolutely will.

You can’t win ‘em all so you try to win as many as you can.

Sometimes one thing helps you win not everything.

Even in losing, you can get better.

No matter how much you’re down, you play until the end.

This is what we do in sports but we can also do it in life.

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Why are we always so optimistic about winning the lottery and so pessimistic about solving our health, relationship, personal and work problems?

It makes no sense.

You have virtually no chance of hitting it big in the lottery – but you already know that – and yet you have so much hope that you’re even willing to bet money on that slight chance.

It’s hope against the odds.

How would our lives change for the better if we could channel the type of blind and automatic optimism we have that we will win the lottery and bet on ourselves in the same hopeful way.

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Ever wonder why anxiety builds up as the day goes on?

We are human sponges soaking up the fears and worries of those we are connected to and making it ours.

The relief from being a sponge soaking up anxiety of others is to EXPUNGE these stressors.

Erase.

Remove.

It’s difficult enough to deal with our own negativity let alone taking on those of others.

Ban the negativity that brings you down by putting a stop/loss on the anxieties of those we are connected to.

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Loud people are more commanding, more assertive, more successful.

Wrong.

A recent Wall Street Journal piece says “Research shows that we are overconfident in our beliefs but underconfident about being heard.  So, we compensate by being loud.”

Soft spoken people are among the most riveting public speakers.

Yet loud people and shouters feel they have an abundance of confidence while the quiet and often shy see their soft-spokenness as a distinct disadvantage.

Especially true in social situations.

The trick is not to be loud or quiet but to be yourself – the real measure of inner-confidence.

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In jealousy there is more self-love than love (Francois VI, 1665)

Unfortunately, it is always destructive.

If we can go on a low carb diet, we can go on a jealousy diet.

In my book, Out of Bad Comes Good – The Advantages of Disadvantages – 5 steps can make a difference.

#1  Let go of the fear that you don’t have value

#2  Repeat often:  “jealousy hurts me more than it hurts them”

#3  Count jealousies like calories – make a list of people of whom you are jealous

#4  Focus on your accomplishments

#5  Make amends for jealous behavior

Our success is not assured by someone else’s failure.

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It seems like every time I go to Costco, someone makes me feel better.

Costco workers largely love their jobs, benefits and how they are treated by management.

They feel fortunate to have their jobs which is why few of them are quitting even though so many people are using the pandemic to look for something else.

I needed help putting nitrogen in the tires of my SUV and not only did I get it but learned a few things I didn’t know.

As is store policy, the employee wouldn’t take a tip because I wanted to pay him for making my day brighter.

Even in tough times, one happy person can make a difference.

The morning host on the radio or the supervisor for whom you work.

No matter how bad things get, positive people who are happy with where they are in life can lift others up.

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When you are hell bent to accomplish the most important goal of your life, be careful.

It’s easy to see that goal so much that you miss current opportunities to climb the ladder to success.

It’s the challenge that presents itself now that is the most important goal.

Conquer that and the next one comes along.

Passionately chasing future goals is ambition.

Pursuing the chances you have right now – these are the steps toward the big one.

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“But enough about me, let’s talk about you… what do you think of me?” – Bette Midler in Beaches: The Movie

How many people have asked about you today and, if they did, actually listened?

I thought of this in the last few days when I was asked a question and when I went to answer, the questioner answered it for me – not uncommon for our over-connected world.

The awesome power of listening is available to us as soon as this very day to unlock the humanity in others – to show you care, to make them addicted to being with you.

Talking in terms of the other person’s interest is what makes you a leader, a compelling figure and even a good conversationalist.

Dale Carnegie pointed out in How to Win Friends that ironically you have a better chance of being perceived as a good conversationalist by not talking so much and instead asking questions.

Close this email, and try it – let me know.