Dolly Parton was so beloved because she made people feel good about themselves – that’s different from being nice.

She put it like this:  “We’re just people. And we need to be better to one another — and to ourselves.”

Dolly could laugh at herself without the need to demonstrate that she was smarter, richer, more important or morally superior to others. “This dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool.” “Hopefully people can see beneath the hair to know there’s a brain, beneath the boobs to know there’s a heart, and behind all the other stuff to know there’s some talent.”

Earlier this year, a UMass/YouGov survey found 70% of Americans viewed Dolly favorably and only 5% unfavorably. In an age when practically every famous person becomes somebody’s enemy, Dolly somehow didn’t.

Her fame never went to her head. Her Imagination Library, a program that mails free books to children from birth to age five grew from her father’s inability to read. When Tennessee families lost their homes to wildfires, she helped them directly. When Vanderbilt needed money for COVID research, she gave $1 million.

Her explanation was wonderfully uncomplicated:

“I just see a need and if I can fill it, then I will.”

That’s the part of Dolly worth stealing.  Make someone else feel more important.

She once said “I never quite understood why we have to let religion and politics and things like that stand in the way of just being good human beings”.

Like Dolly and in our own way, we just need to leave people feeling a little better than we found them.

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One way to feel better is to make someone else feel better.

In a randomized study of 777 people, those assigned to do acts of kindness for others for two weeks ended up not only less depressed but less anxious and lonely. Researchers found increased human connection helped explain the benefit.  Self-kindness generated more positive feelings, while kindness toward others increased people’s sense of connection. That increased social connection helped explain the improvements in depression, anxiety and loneliness.

Not that kindness is the cure for mental health or that we should ignore our own needs.  Helping someone else can interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves while reminding us that we’re connected to other people. And the act of kindness does not have to be earth shattering.  It could be an encouraging text or email, a compliment, helping someone you don’t know, a cup of coffee, touching base with someone who is lonely.

“There isn’t anyone who doesn’t appreciate kindness and compassion. It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives.” — Dalai Lama

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Nine out of ten worries we have will never happen.

A Penn State study published in Behavior Therapy had people with generalized anxiety disorder record their specific worries and then track what actually happened. 91% of their worry predictions did not come true. The median participant had 93.5% of worries fail to materialize, and for seven participants, 100% of their worries didn’t happen.

Better yet when the bad thing does happen, we handle it much better than we thought we would.  A new 2026 randomized controlled trial found participants tracked their worries using a smartphone app; 89% of feared outcomes didn’t happen. And when something they feared did happen, participants reported that they coped better than expected 84.% of the time.

Worry asks us to suffer today over a future that, most of the time, never arrives — and research suggests that even when it does, we’re better at handling it than we predict.

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Over the past week that I was off, I had the chance to work on my NYU classes that start after Labor Day.  One hovering issue is the use of artificial intelligence.  I like to encourage my students to use AI for research and ideas but to submit their own original work that reflects their point of view.  Some of my music business students are concerned that fake AI-generated music will replace live performers.  There’s reason for concern as fake music has made it to the top of Spotify charts faster than Spotify can shut it down.

I always see AI can do a lot of things but not everything – for example, it can predict what you’re going to do next but not know it until you actually do it.  AI is a tool, perhaps an overblown threat in some ways, but I found it fascinating that Fred Rogers (yes, that Mister Rogers) came up with these comforting thoughts long before iPhones and AI.

He said “No matter what the machine may be, it was people who thought it up and made it.”

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Progress not perfection is the goal.  I call it PPP – purposeful positive progression.

No need to wait until you have every answer. Instead, gather the best information available, accept that some uncertainty will always remain, make a thoughtful decision and adjust as you learn. In practical terms, it means asking: “What’s one meaningful step I can take today that moves me forward?”

Making progress in meaningful work is one of the strongest drivers of motivation and having a sense of purpose is associated with better psychological and physical health. Behavioral science shows that small, consistent improvements are more sustainable than waiting for dramatic breakthroughs.

Purposeful positive progression is the practice of taking intentional, meaningful steps that steadily improve your life, work, or relationships—focusing on forward momentum instead of perfection.

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VACATION NOTE:  Cheryl and I are going to take a few days off to recharge our batteries before NYU resumes Fall classes in a few weeks.  This seems like a good time.  Thanks for reading and sharing DayStarters.  See you Monday August 24.

Your brain doesn’t know it’s tired.  People who are sleep-deprived often don’t realize how impaired they are. Research has repeatedly shown that after even modest sleep loss, performance, judgment, attention and reaction time decline while people continue to believe they’re functioning normally.

One major study found participants restricted to 6 hours of sleep a night for two weeks performed cognitively about as poorly as those who had gone 48 hours without sleep, yet they consistently underestimated how impaired they had become. Fatigue quietly erodes judgment, creativity, memory and emotional control while convincing you you’re doing fine. That’s why exhausted leaders, executives, physicians and pilots can make confident decisions that are objectively worse.

Don’t trust how alert you are. If you’ve been sleeping six hours or less for several nights assume your judgment, attention and reaction time are worse than they feel. The recommended number of sleep hours per day is 7 and better yet, on a consistent sleep schedule.

Don’t let a tired brain evaluate itself.  Harvard Medical School’s Sleep Medicine Division says “Just one sleepless night can impair performance as much as a blood-alcohol level 0.10 percent.”

“The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.”  — W. C. Fields

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As the author and physician Amit Sood reminds us, everyone is resilient in a unique way.  Rather than ask whether you are resilient, upgrade that to “how resilient am I”.  Put the ways on a note app or paper as a reminder because we have a habit of emphasizing the need for more resilience without first recognizing that all of us are resilient.

You’ve survived 100% of your hardest days.  If you have to measure your resilience, do it on a scale not on a label.  Recognizing that your resilience makes you more resilient.  Psychologists have long found that beliefs about our abilities influence future performance.

Resilience is less about toughness than flexibility. The strongest people aren’t those who never struggle—they’re the ones who adjust, learn and move forward after setbacks.

You’ve already survived every difficult day you’ve ever faced. That’s not proof that you’ll never struggle again — it’s proof that resilience is already part of who you are. The question isn’t whether you have it. It’s how much more you can build.

Elton John had it right. “I’m Still Standing” isn’t just a hit song—it’s evidence. If you’re still standing after everything life has thrown at you, you’ve already proven you possess resilience. The challenge isn’t finding it. It’s recognizing it and building on it.

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Many people spend years searching for the perfect career, believing that one ideal job will eventually reveal itself.  People who don’t have all the answers and are willing to accept uncertainty remain open to learning and acknowledging personal vulnerability during career decisions.

A six-month study of 995 full-time U.S. workers found that people who demonstrated what researchers called “career wisdom” were more likely to experience their work as meaningful – not having all the answers. Workers with higher levels of career wisdom reported greater meaning in their work over time over the six months in which it was measured.

But they did not conclude that accepting uncertainty alone causes people to become happier at work; rather, the study identified statistically significant associations among these factors over time.

Successful careers do not depend on discovering the perfect fit.

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My NYU students are not going to like this because in general so many young people prefer texting over talking on the phone, so forgive me in advance. BUT, the best arguments are spoken and not typed. There’s a study for just about anything but this one is really fascinating.

The study in Nature Communications examined how the medium of communication influences disagreements concluding that voice or face-to-face rather than through written exchanges consistently reported better outcomes. Participants felt more understood, perceived less conflict, formed more favorable impressions of one another and were more likely to move toward common ground. These benefits were observed whether the conversation occurred in person, by telephone or by video, compared with text-based communication.

Most people expected the opposite — 84%  said they would rather handle a disagreement in writing, believing it would be easier and less confrontational. The actual conversations showed otherwise: spoken discussions produced more constructive interactions than written ones.

Every disagreement should not happen in person but when the goal is understanding rather than documentation, the medium itself can influence the outcome.

According to a UC Berkeley Haas summary of Juliana Schroeder’s research, “when the stakes are high, your voice—not your words alone—makes all the difference.”

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We’re not stuck with one personality all our lives.

For generations, personality was often viewed as something largely established early in life and relatively fixed thereafter.  Measurable trait changes continue well into later life. In practical terms, someone who has always been quieter than most of their peers may remain relatively introverted while still becoming more outgoing than they were a decade earlier.

A preregistered 2024 meta-analysis examining 44 studies, 89 independent samples and 121,187 participants found that events such as graduation, a first job, marriage, divorce and retirement were associated with personality change, but the average effects were generally small and inconsistent. Work-related transitions produced somewhat stronger and more consistent changes than relationship-related events. Research suggests that. Even intentional personality change is possible.

The best evidence suggests that experience, new roles and deliberate effort can gradually influence how you think, respond and relate to others, even though most changes are incremental rather than dramatic.

Carl Rogers in On Becoming a Person observes that “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.”

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