Suffering hurts.

No one wants to suffer.

We hate to see our loved ones suffer.

Yet suffering is transformational.

It brings us from pain to pleasure.

From bad to good.

From despair to hope.

I’m not about to sign a list that makes me available to further suffering but when painful issues affect our lives, it helps to keep in mind that suffering transforms us to someone better.

Viktor Frankl, the psychologist who was incarcerated in a World War II concentration camp and documented his journey in Man’s Search for Meaning said:

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

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Almost everyone knows how to thank another person for a favor or a nicety.

But if you’re hardcore and want to be even more responsive about showing your thanks, here are a few more ways.

• Tell someone else who knows the person you want to thank about how you feel about them.  Watch how fast that gets back to them in a positive way.

• The next time you want to reward an employee or fellow worker for doing something outstanding, give a gift to their spouse and say something like “to the husband of our company’s best salesperson in May”.

• Pay the compliment in front of as many people as possible in person, through social media or by email.

• Privately look them in the eye and show them your humanity as you express your gratitude – no distractions, phones or screens.

• Put a note or a card in a place where they’ll find it and bring a smile to their face.

“Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have”.

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It is no secret that almost every survey conducted about fear puts the fear of speaking at the top of the list.

Loss of a job, a divorce – all fall under that.

People surveyed even fear speaking in public more than death.

Well, it doesn’t have to be that way.

A couple of thoughts can help change the way you look at public speaking and help deal with the fear.

• If you have confidence in yourself as a person, you have mastered the number one attribute to speaking successfully in front of groups.

• Speak on the right topic.  Everyone is eloquent on what they know.

• As TED founder Chris Anderson reminds us (from TED Talks) find something worth saying that a listener would receive as a gift.

• Narrow the topic – speakers almost always try to cover too much.  You can always make details available on online platforms such as Google Drive but you don’t have to cover everything.

• Keep it short.

• Never fear being nervous.  Get the butterflies to fly in formation.

• Practice your talk or presentation three times and then forget it.  Once you know that you can deliver the talk, it doesn’t have to come out the same way every time.  This is the fun of speaking.

The goal is to get a person to challenge their belief system not to get them to change their minds or think your way.

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I never thought I would use joy and cancer in the same phrase.

A few weeks ago while waiting my annual stress test, I sat next to a delightful woman with a British accent.  Her granddaughter, 32 years old, was by her side agitated and in tears.

She was upset because the nurse asked her to fill out a form that among other things wanted to know whether she was pregnant.  Her grandmother later told me her granddaughter couldn’t have children.

She had terminal cancer with anywhere from six months to five years to live and her ovaries were removed because the cancer was spreading.

While she was having her tests, her grandmother spoke in such a loving and caring way that it was inspirational.

Her granddaughter married five years ago when the cancer was first discovered, and her husband was still by her side as supportive as ever.

She wanted to be a writer someday so that instead of dallying any longer, she started a blog to document the feelings she was having as she faced her own mortality.

Sick and taking a course of chemotherapy, the young girl flew to Europe with her grandmother to attend a wedding in London.  On the way home she got so sick an ambulance had to meet the plane at the gate in Atlanta where she spent another week in a hospital.

You get the point.

This poor girl was happier than most people that surrounded her because she valued and lived her life, overcame her difficulties and lived in the present one day at a time because she had no other option.

I have always wondered how people with significant and/or terminal illnesses can be so happy when those of us blessed to be otherwise healthy could struggle with happiness.

Now I know the answer.

This girl with pancreatic cancer is living one day at a time and it is working out better for her than for those of us who live like tomorrow is guaranteed.

What a gift I received that afternoon.

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Today show someone that you care.

Show them your humanity.

Get the focus off of you and project it on the needs of others.

Our world is so self-absorbed for many reasons but unfortunately getting what we want does not bring us happiness.

It’s actually the other way around.

Helping others get what they want always brings us happiness.

Help someone pay a bill.

Help someone get what they want while you temporarily pass up an opportunity to have it your way.

Give the gift of your time to someone else even if you’re stressed and have little time to give.

Lift someone else out of depression or a bad mood by being positive and do it by not mentioning the word “I” once.

Listen to someone else’s story without having to then tell one of your own.

Let someone have your way (after all, that’s my definition of diplomacy).

Because when we give away our power even when we don’t feel like it, we are almost always happy we did it.

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Some of us just cannot concentrate on the positive long enough to leave toxic negative thoughts behind.

Ask anyone about their job and you are likely to hear more of what is wrong than what is right.

But here is a very effective way to deal with your faults – real and perceived.

Consider your three biggest faults and make a note of them.

Then, work to eliminate them as many times as you can in a day.

For example, say you want to stop interrupting people, want to be a better friend and not criticize others too much.

Being mindful of these faults, count the number of times in a day that you interrupted someone.  If it is three today and one tomorrow, you can feel the progress.

Want to be a better friend?  Count the number of times in a day that you did things a friend would do – reach out, listen, care.  If at the end of the day that number is zero, then progress has not been made.  But if you texted a friend, spent time listening to their problems, initiated getting together face to face, then you have three successes.

If you hate that you’re so critical of others, count how many times you have been critical of someone else in a given day.  If it was five yesterday and three today, you’re making progress.

People don’t automatically change, or improve or re-invent themselves.

But we do make choices that matter every minute of the day.

To count the progress in a tangible way like this, encourages you to stick to a plan that helps you battle your faults.

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New statistics indicate that the average time spent on Facebook, Instagram and/or Facebook Messenger each day is almost an hour (50 minutes).

That’s almost as much as we spend eating.

Far more than the average person exercising.

Competitive with TV time (over two hours), which skews higher for older people and less for 28-34 year olds.

And Facebook is trying to come up ways to increase the average time people spend on Facebook.

As we become more buried in our screens, something has to be done.

And here it is.

For every minute you spend on Facebook products described above, make sure you spend at least that amount of time being present in real conversations with others.

It’s easy for us to increase our obsessive addiction to social media but it is not fruitful.

So use social media all you like, but balance it off with face-to-face contact with people where you are there in the present and without a mobile device nearby.

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The political pundits were wrong about Donald Trump.

Prognosticator Nate Silver gave him odds that were “higher than 0 but (considerably) less than 20 percent.”

Even Las Vegas bookmakers can’t call the winner of a sporting event all the time.

And I sat on a New Jersey beach last year with a weather radar app on my phone  as a wicked thunderstorm headed right toward me.  By the time I packed my things up, the storm passed to the north although the app showed it hitting us square on.

My point – Never rely on anyone else to tell you the outcome of your life’s story.

When anyone says you can’t – your response should be “watch me”.

In a world fixated on metrics, even Billy Bean can’t win the World Series studying statistics.

Let today be the day when you replace “can’t” with “can” because no one knows it for sure but you.

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“Whether you think you can or you can’t – either way, you’re right” – Henry Ford.

That’s why Napoleon Hill said you can achieve what the mind can conceive and believe.

On the other hand, you can fail because you don’t believe in yourself or your ideas.

It’s not on someone else – it’s on us.

Do we instill in our children the default setting that if you think you can, you most likely can?

Do we practice this ourselves?

When working in toxic workplaces (and many people do in the current economy), are you a sponge soaking up the negativity of those around you or do you believe that once you set your mind to something, you will achieve it – even for bosses who are incompetent on workplaces that are negative.

Back to Henry Ford’s quote.

I have it on my desk where I can see it every day.

Why tie your own hands behind your back when you can free yourself to achieve that which you want to accomplish.

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If you’re like most of us, you’ve tried many things to combat letting fear take ahold of your life.

Here’s an approach you may like because it demystifies fear and worry.

Say you have the fear of being fired or getting a disease that other families members had or fear a broken relationship – think of all the ways these things can happen attacking one issue at a time and what the likely downside would be.

Fear of being fired –  could be out of work a while, financial problems, tighten your belt.

Fear of getting a hereditary disease — it could adversely affect your health temporarily or permanently.

Broken relationship?  Loneliness, embarrassment, discouragement.

There it is – right out there.  No mysterious things lurking in your mind.

Now think of all the things that could happen that may be fortunate or unexpectedly welcomed on the same issue(s).

You could change careers, find a better job, earn more money, be happier.

That family condition might be a temporary challenge that launches you into seeking fitness and even better health.

And for every broken relationship there is an eventual next chance to be the person you want to be and find the best fit for you.

The trick is to confront both the worst-case scenarios and the best-case scenarios not just let them lurk in the shadows of your mind.

Because fear is an unpleasant emotion, it is not an accurate predictor of your future and knowing that can make all the difference.

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