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.
What’s the first question most parents ask when their children come home with a report card that has 3 A’s and a B on it?
What did you get the B in?
A better question: If you want to package more motivation in one line than you could ever get from cracking a whip or lecturing about doing better, try this: Tell me all about those A’s.
Ask about the A’s – it works for motivating people on our teams and those who have excelled at something important: How did you accomplish that?
More often than not, they will voluntarily tell you about the “B” or about the aspects that didn’t go as well as they hoped. No need to ask.
