The NHL hockey player Bobby Ryan lost his mother this past July.

The pain of his loss was only soothed by the level of his appreciation for everything she did for him.

In a post funeral letter, Ryan wrote “I lost you just a few days ago, and I already miss you a lot.  Even though I had a chance to say goodbye, there are still a few things I’d like to tell you”.

Among the many appreciations was how his mom sacrificed to make it possible for him to play hockey, her fight against an abusive husband and the warmth of their relationship together.

There is hardly a week that goes by that I don’t think of my mother and father and how I want to tell them thanks again and again.

Thanks, dad, for being the most honest person I ever knew.  A straight arrow who set a high bar for me.

And thanks mom, for giving me the spunk in my personality and the belief that I could do virtually anything.

When a loved one is gone, it is still not too late to write the letters or visit the grave site for a one-on-one conversation.

I want it to be as if my loved ones will never be gone from my life even if they are not present in the flesh today.

If you have the time, here is Bobby Ryan’s letter to mom that will touch your heart and inspire you to write your own letter.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

Not by controlling them.

That never works.

The hardest thing is to let go of all the issues that are making us unhappy.  Humans don’t want to give up control without a fight.  We would rather get our way or try to convince another person that it is in their best interests to change.

Except it never works.

A sure way to be unhappy is to try and change someone.

So the secret is to learn to cultivate an outlook that lets you throw off the things that you feel as if you would like to control.

Your partner is not listening to you and you feel ignored.  Try as you may, you will probably never change this.  All you will do is make yourself unhappy.  Spend money on therapy.  The answer:  change the way you look at this and see if you can find another way he or she exhibits another way for you to be recognized and validated.

Your boss always has to be right.  Good luck taking on this project because your boss is likely to go right on assuming they are right and everyone else is wrong which will make you very unhappy.  Your time and focus would be better spent not looking to your boss for this type of approval.  Give it to yourself for a job well done.

The best way to gain control is to give up control.

The alternative is to be forever unhappy.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

Visiting the past is a good thing.

It helps us understand the present.

But looking back is like looking in your rearview mirror too much while you’re driving – we’re more likely to make bad decisions when we don’t keep our eyes on the road ahead.

Accepting what has happened in the past is the most important reason to revisit it.

Learn from what has taken place.

Deal with the appropriate issues and move on.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

I once met the famous U2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers whose jet was shot down during the cold war by the Soviet Union.

He was working for the same company I was working for – the great Buckley Broadcasting.

At a cocktail party at the Buckley rep firm in New York, I will never forget what he told me.

In short, it was to never fly in anything but a fixed wing aircraft because unlike a helicopter, you could always have a chance to bring it down and land safely.

Powers was a traffic reporter for Buckley’s LA area station at the time.

So you can imagine my reaction when I heard that Francis Gary Powers subsequently took a job with flying a helicopter for an LA TV news operation.

And how shocked I was to eventually hear he died in a helicopter crash – the very thing he feared and warned me to avoid.

Our instincts are usually always right.

What’s wrong is that we are often out of touch with them.

As Agatha Christie put it, “Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.”

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

The author Viktor Frankl who was incarcerated in a prison camp during World War II was a psychiatrist who concluded that suffering is pain that has no meaning.

Frankl said at the moment suffering finds meaning, it ceases to be suffering.

If we are suffering, we need to search for meaning in that suffering.

Child birth is suffering without the meaning that it brings a beautiful new life into the world. 

Chemotherapy is often suffering for cancer patients until they discover that this therapy may extend their lives or at the very least give them hope that a cure can be found.

A painful divorce or breakup of a relationship is unbearable unless and until the aggrieved parties can accept the loss and see a better future someday with someone else. 

Suffering is a part of life but what makes it bearable is hope.

The hope that this suffering will bring us something better.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore? Unsubscribe below.

There are 86 million Millennials between the ages of 18-35 and they our co-workers and even our bosses.

As a college professor, I watched how Millennials interacted with each other to observe the maximum results.

These interactions give clues as to how to relate to this wonderful, kind generation that has grown up on instant gratification and social justice.

Do not confront.  Look for consensus.

Teams, the popular management trend at the moment, are not such a good fit for Millennial workers unless they get to choose the teams and make up the rules. 

It’s about them, not you.  This may be hard to swallow but Millennials are as self-absorbed as Baby Boomers can be authoritative.

They are the same as every other generation when it comes to praise, giving and receiving appreciation, fair play, equal opportunity.  If you have these same characteristics, be yourself.

Be authentic.  Millennials don’t care about age; they care about whether the people they work with are real.  Remember, they fell in love with Bernie Sanders, a 74-year old self-proclaimed socialist because they perceived him as being authentic.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

Never in the history of civilization have there been more anti-depressant pills prescribed for dealing with depression.

Still, depression keeps increasing as a modern day malady of life.

Sometimes medication and therapy work, then meds are changed or therapy refocused.  It can be a life commitment to battle the blues.

No matter what the approach, one thing seems to work when applied frequently.

That is conjuring up and expressing gratitude not only for the big obvious things in life but more importantly, the little things.

When we are focused on gratitude, we are less focused on what makes us unhappy.

Today, we can choose to find the good in people, in our situation and in ourselves as a non-medicinal form of banishing the blues.

And the extra benefit is that once these patterns of found gratitude are repeated over and over, they change the brainwaves that affect our moods.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

Talk about them – not you.

Their interests.

Their input.

It’s not necessary to weigh in with your own reaction to something they are saying as much as it is important to draw them out and let your ears do the work.

Over the ages and continuing today in our connected technological generation, the number one way to get others to like you, is to not talk about “you”.

Talk about them.

And then a miraculous thing almost always happens.

At some point, the other person leans forward and asks about you.

Proving again that you had them at “you”.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

Let’s be honest.

The world is real and although there are a lot of genuinely nice people in it, we also run into backstabbers, the worst and most hurtful kind of person in our lives.

We best a backstabber by …

Building good relationships with those around you.  A backstabber cannot succeed when you have an army of supporters who like and respect you. 

Avoid sentences with “you” which can put backstabbers on the defensive or worse yet the offensive.  Instead start with, “I’m hearing false rumors about me”.

Document the backstabbing.  If trying to talk to the backstabber fails, take it to your supervisor rather than let it threaten your career.

Backstabbing is a form of bullying.  Even if it hurts you, stand up to it.  A bully doesn’t like to be pushed back and they often pick a new victim based on how vulnerable they are. 

Be careful of the person you share weaknesses with because some people can’t wait to use them against you.

“Don’t worry about backstabbers, they’re the people who tried their hardest finding faults in your life instead of fixing the faults in theirs”.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

• People who sap our confidence often don’t have the accomplishments we have so focus on your existing strengths when others make you feel weak.

• Repeat often today “There is only one of me in the world” and be proud of it.

• Steve Jobs was forced out of his own company but later returned to Apple to gain fame and fortune. Starting today, see every so-called “failure” as a step toward success. This is the single most important thing to me in gaining and maintaining self-confidence.

• Anyone can be confident when things go their way but people who can learn from misfortune can be confident in good times and bad.

• Ted Williams was the greatest hitter in baseball, hitting just over .400 one season – a remarkable feat. I think about this often. Not the over .400 part. The 60% percent of the time that the greatest hitter ever failed.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore? Unsubscribe below.

Think of trust like this.

Studies of 100 ship sinking’s that killed 100 or more people over the last 100 years shows who gets off the sinking ship first.

The crew.

The captain.

The men.

The women.

And believe it or not the children are left to fend for themselves.

When we book a cruise, how often do we ask if there are enough lifeboats to save everyone?  We trust that there are just as we trust that others will help us off a sinking ship.

The human condition is such that we save ourselves first and while there are a few exceptions, it is only a few.

We have no right depending on others for trust if we don’t first trust ourselves.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

At my mom’s nursing home they had a habit of playing XM 40’s channel before it merged with Sirius.

Many of the residents had cognitive problems they were living with so at lunch and dinner they enjoyed the music of their lives until the news came on.

Back then the 40’s channel would recreate news from the 40’s so when they heard the newscaster say “Adolph Hitler has invaded Russia” they got upset.

The past was not a pleasant memory in this case.

Remembering family events to the best of their ability was a case of the past enhancing the present.

The past and the future are not the “now” where we need to live focused 100% present.

Looking to the future helps us plan.

Looking to the past helps us learn.

Being in the now is the only place we can be happy.

Use the past and future like you would a file.  Open it when needed but be sure to close it and return to what you’re doing in the present.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

One thing an on-air radio and TV personality soon learns if they plan to have a long career in broadcasting is to sound happy.

Imagine if they went on the air after being served a divorce lawsuit and let the audience hear their angst and concern.

The author Harold Kushner always said that happiness is like a butterfly.  The more you chase it, the more it eludes you.  Let it land and enjoy it.

Being happy is about being proactive.

There are two things that help.

1. Assume the virtue of happiness (smile, engage others) even when you have to reach for it.

2. Increase your gratitude.

The little known secret about happiness is that the human brain cannot be unhappy when we are in the act of being grateful for that which we have no matter how small or insignificant. 

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

There are two ways to handle hurtful people.

One, try to hurt them as much as they’ve hurt you.

Two, feel sorry for them.

Why turn yourself into the very thing you hate about hurtful people and why not pity them instead?

Think thoughts such as these:

It must be awful to have to ramble on in such a hateful way.

Hurting others makes it harder for them to love and accept you.

If you said what you just said to me into a mirror, you wouldn’t like the way you look.

What happen in your life to make you this mean?

Just the few seconds it takes to show some kind of compassion to people who don’t deserve it, allows you to separate their venom from your heart and mind.

Having compassion for people who hurt us is the first step toward letting it go and enjoying your life.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

As soon as we utter the word “can’t” it’s game over.

No one ever overcomes “can’t”.

Think about it.

“Can” is a better word.

But the best word is “will”.

Will is a statement of intention.

I can’t do the presentation the boss wants goes to I can do it or best yet I WILL do it.

I WILL get that raise or I’ll find a job where I am appreciated.

I WILL be the best parent I can even though my spouse and I are now separated.

I WILL find the person who I have been looking for in life as soon as I find that person in myself. 

“Will” is the weapon to defeat “can’t” which is why we often say “she willed her way to success”.

Today, count the number of times you can replace “can’t with “will” and feel the difference.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

The system is rigged against job seekers.

They are often forced to bid against themselves for work because companies are unwilling to pay fair compensation.

In an answer to wage discrimination against women in Massachusetts, a new law will make it forbidden for applicants to be asked their previous salaries.  This should help in the battle against bidding down hiring salaries.

But how do you know what salary to ask for?

When sports stars go to arbitration, arbitrators generally compare the salaries of other players on other teams with similar skills and production.

This works for the rest of us as well.

Isolate three people who essentially do what you do on the same level of production if you are privy to that information.

Your salary sweet spot is likely to be right in the middle.

It’s not an exact science but one thing is for sure, you will stop undervaluing your salary level when you compare it to others like you.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

There are two kinds of problems.

The first is thing problems which involve salaries, locations, tangible things and circumstances.

The storm blew the roof off our house and now we have to foot the expense of fixing it.

The second is people problems in which feelings and relationships are exposed or hurt.

My wife has breast cancer and is going to have surgery, chemo and radiation treatment. 

If it is possible to be thankful for problems, be thankful for thing problems.

When dealing with people problems things are trickier because there is not necessarily a tangible solution and they drain our emotions.

Knowing the difference between thing problems and people problems helps us deal more effectively with the ups and downs in life.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

There is only one person like me on this planet.

I’ve done it before; I can do it again.

I have no right asking another person to believe in me until I am prepared to believe in myself. 

Even when things don’t work out as planned, I care.

I am proud of my successes (which I have listed one by one in order most recent first on my cellphone that I review every day).

The road to success is paved with examples of failures from which I have learned.

I am the person you want to turn to if you want to succeed. 

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Unsubscribe below.

People hate change yet politicians campaign on the promise of change all the time.

Maybe that’s why people hate politicians.

Change is scary.

What every human wants and is willing to support is better.

A better country.

A better product or service.

A better relationship.

We spend so much time trying unsuccessfully to become something that we are not that we might want to try just being a better version of what we are.

A better listener.

A better spouse who is 100% focused on my mate.

A better employee who puts petty politics aside for serving customers.

A better friend who remembers to stay in touch – in person as much as possible.

We can all do better and the difference is noticeable.

But change often requires us to be someone else and that never has a good outcome.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore? Unsubscribe below.

If this is something you’ve talked about but have given up on because it’s just too impossible, here are two ways that make it possible to cut cellphone usage and return to interacting with others and living 100% in the present.

1)  Download an app called Checky on your mobile device so that it can track how many times a day you checked your phone.   Then, see the average.  Set goals to cut it down.  Let the app be your report card.

2) The app Moment tracks how much you use your phone everyday.  It allows you to set limits.

3)  Check out these apps that prevent you from checking your text messages while driving – AT&T Drive Mode; CellControl.

It’s one thing to complain about living a distracted life, but when it really starts to get to you and you want to make a change, there are tools.

Subscribe to these Day Starters for free here.

Share them with friends and family by forwarding this email or posting to social media.

Don’t want to get these emails anymore?  Choose the link below to unsubscribe.