Author Amit Sood puts it like this: “Do not postpone joy waiting for a day when life will be perfect and all your stressors will be gone”.
Our minds tend to push away joy and keep you logged off from life.
“I have never had a day when my boat was fully secure in the harbor, the water was a deep blue, the winds were quiet, and the sun was bright and shining in the sky. Waiting for such a day would be a very long wait. So, I need to admit the reality and find fulfillment in the present moment accepting all its imperfections”.
British teacher James Nottingham’s concept of “The Learning Pit” was born after he observed that students like to play it safe in class raising their hands only when they are sure of the answers.
Journalist Jenny Anderson noted that “In Japan teachers spent 44% of their time giving students material they don’t know and challenging them to figure it out.” U.S. teachers tried this approach 1% of the time. Struggling to solve a problem was actually good. This does not mean that offering help is not good or intervening when panic sets in is not appropriate.
The same appears to be true for adults. The more we struggle, the more we learn. Sometimes failing has its advantages and helps us succeed later. I wrote a book about this topic that we use in my college stress classes – Out of Bad Comes Good – the Advantages of Disadvantages – how people as diverse as Steve Jobs to Mother Teresa turned failure into success.
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity … it turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Useful friends with whom we have transactional relations.
Amusing friends with whom we share pleasure and games.
Those rare friends that Roman statesman Cicero calls “another self” with whom we share soul secrets and deepest feelings.
The most important aspect of friendship is trust. Without trust, a friendship lacks the foundation needed for emotional support, honesty, and reliability. A true friend is someone you can count on, confide in, and be yourself without fear of judgment. Hold them close. Feel free to share
Why is it that people are so optimistic about winning the lottery yet pessimistic about other things in life — and they’re willing to bet money to have all that optimism by buying tickets to dreams that are likely never going to pay off on the scale they hope. On the other hand, you always win when you bet on yourself. Feel free to share
In a world of makeovers, start overs and resets the one thing that does not need changing is you. Maybe an awakening or discovering a quality you didn’t know you had. We are always so focused on improving but it is useless to devote so much emotional energy to improving until we can like what we already are. Feel free to share
Just setting 10-15 minutes a day to engage others in interaction can be life changing for all involved according to a group of new studies.
Becoming more focused does not require hours, but it does mean putting phones and digital devices away – it’s quality over quantity.
When a dad or mom puts the world on hold and directs it to their child it builds a sense of value greater than almost anything we can do.
Putting aside time for chats can promote a feeling of safety and it can also lessen depression in adolescents (as published in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology).
This focused one-on-one time works for adults, too – conveying positive feelings that the line of communication is more important than life’s distractions.
If you know someone who would like this, please share.
For years I have been driving 200 miles round trip to New York City to teach my NYU music business classes which I love.
I use CarPlay to access Waze to check traffic, estimate time of arrival and tell me where the Jersey state troopers are looking for speeders.
Somehow the drive has been more nerve wracking than it needed to be and I’m going to share what it is – the tone of voice of my Waze sidekick navigating my trip was not very relaxing for two hours each way.
So, from a long list of options I changed Waze’s robotic voice to a laid back, over-chilled Australian “voice” named Matilda and to my surprise just hearing a calm voice in heavy traffic made all the difference.
When she said “accident up ahead”, it was so soothing, not alarming.
Got me to thinking how important it is for us to sound reassuring and calming to those around us in our everyday life because the tone of our voice matters.
In the late 70’s Eastern Airlines introduced the slogan “We have to earn our wings every day” – the commercial worked, the company failed and was sold off.
The concept of earning what you want to accomplish every day may be generational but it is a way to never lose sight of your goals.
Good fortune doesn’t just happen, luck is a residue of design.
Staying focused on our strengths makes it easier to keep them strong.
The superpower of the shy is that they usually do more listening than talking.
Loudness is not confidence.
Fast talk is not good talk.
Assertiveness is not better than stick-to-itiveness.
Shy people often make unrealistic social comparisons, pitting themselves against the most vibrant or outgoing individuals. Believing that others are constantly evaluating them poorly, shy people abandon new social opportunities—which, in turn, prevents them from improving their social skills.
Better listeners, more thoughtful, intelligent and being more likely to think before speaking – real superpowers.
Know someone who would appreciate this, feel free to share.
The onetime Chair of the Mayo Clinic Mind Body Initiative, Dr. Amit Sood, has a novel way for us to look at ourselves – through our pet’s eyes.
“You are who your dog thinks you are – kind, caring, and compassionate.”
“Your pet does not care about your financial net worth, job, health, fame, etc. All it cares about is your love and your ability to express it. The loving you is the transcendental you that no one can rob”.
What a great way to build self-esteem on how loving we are instead of our material accomplishments.
We humans have trained ourselves to get what we want as part of our morning routine – coffee or beverage upon awakening, bagel, eggs – our preferred wake up routine.
From a happiness point of view, adding a few other things can supercharge a day ahead.
One, the first ten people you see say this to yourself (not to them): “I wish you well”.
It rewires our brain and over time helps us to be happier and more compassionate.
Young people who have been raised on digital screens will admit that one reason for not cutting the time they spend on social media is they fear it will make them lonelier.
More cutoff from people like themselves, less available.
Judging from my mental health class for the music industry at NYU there is little dispute that their phones are making them sicker.
Some workarounds: Balance screen time with in-person time.
See the phone, not as a tool (we train ourselves to think of phones and social media as a slot machine searching for something gratifying every time we pick it up).
And our mantra is: we are more than just a screen, an app or social media.
If you know someone who would appreciate this thought, feel free to pass it along.
Steve Jobs gave up control of Apple and got fired.
Bill Gates bundled Internet Explorer browser with Windows 95 but failed to see the importance of search engines. Google did.
Walt Disney’s first animation company went bankrupt. And the man who coined the term Imagineering at Disney was fired as a news editor because – believe it or not – he lacked imagination.
Vincent Van Gogh sold only one painting in his entire life. His most expensive painting now sells for around $150 million.
The Beatles were told by their record label that “guitar groups are on the way out” and that the Beatles had no future in show business.
Thomas Edison invented the light bulb but after thousands of failures. That’s right, thousands! Edison eventually said, “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward”.
Here’s basketball great Michael Jordan: “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
The proven formula for success is failure. Failure is not permanent until you stop trying.
You hear the terms “be you” and “your best self” a lot these days but the happiest revelation is that the person you are right now is good enough.
No makeovers necessary and I am aware I’m saying this just days after many New Year’s resolutions kicked in.
If you want to be better, focus on the good, avoid trying to reinvent yourself.
I remind my mental health in the music business class at NYU to feel the power within and use it – do not be party to tearing a perfectly good person like you apart.
Happy to be back after the holiday break – hope it was a great one for you. Feel free to share this item if you like.
I remember one Christmas eve I was working on-air in radio as a 24-inch blizzard covered the Philadelphia area.
I volunteered to work Christmas Eve and again Christmas Day because other air talent had families and wanted to be with their kids – I looked forward to that day.
But the storm was so bad the next shifts couldn’t make it to the station – or I should say stations since I worked for an AM-FM-TV company at the time.
And yes, it was before voice tracking – we were live on all three or I should say I was live as the TV booth announcer and news anchor for both radio stations.
Yet it is one of the most memorable and meaningful Christmas’ that I ever had — knowing my work friends were home with their families to see their kids open presents that Santa left.
Oh, and when relief arrived 24 full hours later, I was still awake and headed right for my car which I forgot I had to dig out of snow drifts.
Memorable indeed along with the time Marlin Taylor gave all announcers the day off to hear ourselves on his amazing and pioneering all-Christmas bonanza.
And working for the number one station in town knowing that a large audience had you on for more than just the latest “Cash Call” jackpot total.
We’ll be off until the new year, but Cheryl and I wish you every happiness for whatever your holiday plans are.
Thanks for reading DayStarters, for responding during the year to the various articles and for sharing with friends.
The revelation of the year as far as I am concerned is that looking to widen our scope to add new friends is not the best way to deal with the loneliness epidemic which has impacted our world – all of us, include me in that.
Instead of looking for someone else to help us solve the problem we need to look to ourselves.
As I tell my NYU students in our stress class for musicians, do away with self-rejection and yes, be kinder, compassionate, more open and forgiving to ourselves first – then to those around us.
The gift I am giving to myself this holiday season is to be enough – good things will follow.
