In a tough world, everything still comes down to three things.  You can choose to hate, remain agnostic or non-committal or you can love.  Facing those choices, loving wins.

Pop music’s most durable anthems don’t just celebrate love — they frame it as a decision, often made when easier choices exist.

From U2’s With or Without You, where love is embraced despite its emotional cost, to Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You, which redefines love as the courage to let go, the message is consistent: love isn’t merely something that happens, it’s something you choose. Rihanna’s We Found Love places that choice in chaos, Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together anchors it in endurance, and Bob Marley’s One Love elevates it into a moral act.

These songs endure not because they promise perfection, but because they honor love as an act of agency — a decision made when walking away would be easier and that applies to people in our lives.

Al Green’s Let Stay Together captures the idea that love isn’t just something you feel — it’s something you decide to continue, regardless of circumstances.

“Whether times are good or bad, happy or sad…”

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Recently I wrote about a major study of 18 shipwrecks from 1852 to 2011 that challenges the myth of “women and children first”.   Many were interested in digging deeper to understand the meaning.

Last week I posed the question in the name of resilience-building to my spring NYU mental health for musician’s class.  Their answer to who is first off a sinking ship?  Women and children.  Let’s look at the research.

• Crew members have the highest survival – 18.7% more likely to survive than passengers overall (after all, they are trained to know how to jump off the ship).
• Next, adult men with a 34.6% survival rate – significantly higher than women in 10 of 16 wrecks.
• Adult women were next off the boat with a 17.9% survival rate.
• And what about children? They had the lowest survival rate 15.3%, the worst outcome of all groups studied.

The bottom line: Power, strength and access – not gallantry – determined who lived.

In life trusting yourself and building resilience matters.

Dr. Benjamin Spock reminds us “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”

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Do we have a right to expect happiness?  Should we be waking up each day demanding that our brain make us happy or is there something wrong if we are unhappy?

The brain is not designed for happiness.  It’s made for safety.  Think prehistoric days when cave-dwellers were on constant lookout for something to hurt them.  That same reflex is what is triggered by our mobile devices, by the way, but that’s for another day.

Waiting to be happy trains the brain to delay contentment and meaning comes from the present not someday.  We can retrain our brains.  How do you want to be happy and dictate it to your brain.  It’s a continuous process not a one-time finish line because progress starts immediately and continues over time.

That’s the feeling of Mayo Clinic physician Amit Sood who has written extensively about the power of retraining the brain:  “We get so caught up weeding the yard that we completely miss the tulips that nature gives us for a few precious weeks”.

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One of the most popular workarounds my music business students like – maybe even love – is don’t postpone joy.

We are constantly in search of victories personally and in our careers and when we get them, there is a tendency to move right on to the next challenge.  We forget to celebrate or even appreciate what we’ve done.

And the victories don’t have to be earthshattering because even the smallest thing that makes you happy retrains the brain to do more –yes the brain can be retrained.

As Mayo Clinic physician Amit Sood says joy is not a reward, it’s a daily practice and that waiting to be happy trains the brain to delay contentment.

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A recent Wired article says there is a real talent war for plumbers and electricians due to the AI boom in data center construction – skilled laborers are retiring and replacements are not on the way.

My NYU music students fear AI because robotically built songs are already finding their way onto music charts.  And record labels are not exactly slamming the door on AI-infused music, just looking for a way to license it.

AI is here – helpful in some ways, not so much in others and disruptive without a doubt.

I asked a chatbot who will prevail – humans or AI and here’s its answer:  “Real humans will prevail, because AI can scale ideas—but only people can build, fix, power, and sustain the physical world those ideas depend on.”

Artificial intelligence scrapes existing human thought without the ability to think. Humans are indispensable even if companies are trying to use it to eliminate some jobs.

Taking a less threatening view might be Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak “Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window.”

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Who makes it safely off a sinking ship first?  Women and Children?

In a 2011 Swedish study crew members of ships in trouble were very helpful – to themselves.  As the New York Times reported: “Compared with passengers, they were 18.7 percent more likely to survive, the researchers found. Children fared worst: Of 621 on the ships, only 95, or 15.3 percent, lived on.”

It gets worse, there’s no evidence that the captain goes down with the ship suggesting that even where trust is strong, in the end our lives are in our own hands.

This is the point of resilience – Resilience isn’t assuming the worst in people — it’s refusing to assume they’ll save you.

Oprah says “You are responsible for your own life. If you’re sitting around waiting on someone to save you, fix you, even heal you — you’re wasting your time.”

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Apple founder Steve Jobs was fond of saying don’t live someone else’s life.  Don’t let other people’s expectations, rules, or fears decide how you live.

In his 2005 Stanford commencement speech, Jobs said “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

Don’t chose to remain in a career or job because of someone else’s expectations.

Don’t follow a path just because it’s safe or approved.

Don’t measure your success by someone else’s scoreboard when the real secret is to measure success by comparing it to you.

Jobs was warning that it’s easy to wake up one day and realize you’ve been performing a role instead of living a life — checking boxes that belong to parents, bosses, society, or peers.  Life is too short to be a stand-in for someone else’s script.

Jobs’ exact words resonate loudly in a world where people are burdened to live in the fast lane.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

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New Jersey became the latest state to outlaw phones in the classroom from bell-to-bell. Mom, dads and schools have figured out a way to help their young ones focus on learning.

In my college classroom, we’ve been screen-free for many years – and I always say I don’t really know what attention deficit looks like because no matter what the condition, students can concentrate on being present (that is if I don’t throw a PowerPoint up on a screen).

Helping people separate from texting in the back of the classroom is not a punishment. I can’t tell you the number of students who, in front of classmates, thank the professor for asking them to turn their devices off.

In fact, I only have to say it once – in the first class.  No need to mention it again.

Phones aren’t just a student problem, they’re a human one choosing engagement over noise.

Author Jenny Odell says “In a world that profits from your distraction, paying attention is a radical act.”

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If you’re feeling foggy after the recent two-week holiday period, there are actually brain exercises to sharpen up.

• Do simple daily tasks with your “wrong” hand. Things like brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand forces your brain to actively solve the problem, waking it up from autopilot mode.
• Make small changes to your physical space.  Simply switching the side of the bed you sleep on or moving a few items on a shelf forces your brain’s internal “GPS” to create a new map and stop feeling stuck.
• Play a quick color or word mix-up game.  Look for a color word (like “Red”) printed in a different color ink, or name what an object is not. This creates a fun mental conflict that sharpens your focus.

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled” — Plutarch, biographer and essayist.

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I was painfully shy growing up in the suburbs of Pennsylvania so much so my teachers told my parents that they should put me into a theater group.  I hated it.

But I loved radio and loved music practicing being a dj in my room using a tape recorder I bought from mowing lawns.

Radio allowed me to overcome my overt shyness, but some of it remains and I’m appreciating that as well.

When my college students exhibit signs of shyness, this professor welcomes it.

What was thought to be an insurmountable obstacle turned out to be the stimulus to overcome a perceived disadvantage.

Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking notes “There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”

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