One of artificial intelligence’s goals is to replace people with machines.

Covid put a damper on young people socializing and now we get this:

Teens spend a quarter of their days in school on their smartphones based on

A Seattle Children’s Research Institute study.  They spent an average of an hour and a half  on their phones during an approximate 6-hour school day.  And what were they doing instead of learning:   messaging, Instagram, video streaming, audio, and email.

But my experience with college students is that they love to do things in person.  In our classes, we devote time at the start of class to getting to know others they may not have met.  It gets loud and happy and one graduate reminded me that he met his “best friend in college” in class.

Phones are good for some things.  Face-to-face engagement still rules.

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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”.

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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.

Fear of failure is the enemy of resilience.

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The author Melody Beattie says:

“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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.