1. Guilt– Deal with negative feelings because you don’t need to be your own worst enemy.
2. The Past– Put it in a file cabinet or folder.  Refer back to learn from it.  There can be no happy future when we dwell in the past.
3. Social Media – It is the attention black hole that is now being recognized as an impediment to living life happily in real time.  Wean off social media by replacing time spent in the black hole with face time.
4. Jealousy – It kills relationships and hijacks our best qualities.
5. Running Yourself Down– For every negative that you hear or repeat about yourself, balance it with one (or more) positives.
6. Pleasing Others– It’s impossible to please everyone or even someone.  Become proficient at creating your own narrative without regard to how others interpret it.
7. Controlling– The sure way to unhappiness is to try to change another person.

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The life of physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking who died after years of slow progressing ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) is the ultimate study of how to beat situational depression.

Hawking was paralyzed.

Eventually could not speak.

Could not live without constant nursing care.

In his later years he was able to communicate only through a speech generating device at first a handheld switch and then by using a single cheek muscle to cue his voice synthesizer.

Hawking had three children, two wives and a life of distinction.

If ever anyone had a right to be depressed, it would be this man who had so many physical challenges.

Hawking’s inspiration to the rest of us is to overcome obstacles whatever it takes.

Realize your full potential even if it means accepting adversity and then devoting your life to overcoming it.

No matter what the many contributions Hawking has made to science, the obvious yet least likely to be recognized is that even as his body died, he lived a full productive life to compensate.

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No one likes adversity, but everyone becomes better for having experienced it.

The richest people in the world had to overcome adversity in varying degrees. And for some reason when money is handed down without being earned, the recipient does not enjoy the success and happiness of those who have to work for it.

The two advantages of tough times are they help us discover who we are.

How we overcome obstacles. How we plan to make it better.

But perhaps the biggest benefit in discovering who we are is to find out what we really want. After all, if you’re willing to pay any price to overcome what ails you, you know you really want it.

The other advantage of adversity is we find out who are friends are.

As trite as that sounds, there is no denying that a person who is really for you will shine while you are dealing with the pain and the challenges of adversity.

Adversity is the rehearsal for success and happiness by being the vehicle that introduces us to ourselves and to those around us.

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This is a term that is being used a lot right now – “We need to have a conversation”.

What they’re really saying is – I need to have you listen not necessarily talk.

Our world is fast and impersonal – we’re constantly in touch but it doesn’t mean that we are focused on listening.

99 times out of 100 if someone says we need to have a conversation, they are asking for you to hear them out and that doesn’t necessarily mean agree.

Ironically it has been proven again and again that the best conversationalist is the person who listens, asks questions and learns not the one who talks the most.

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The thing about intuition is that we all have it, but very few actually listen to it.

It’s when something feels to be true without having to use reasoning.

It may just be an instinct.

But when what we’re feeling is something we don’t like (“I’m not going to be with this person for life”, “I think I will lose my job”), it’s more comforting to not listen to ourselves.

When we’re feeling something more positive (“I’m going to get the promotion”, “This person I met feels like my soul mate”), we may not be able to prove it, but we want to let that feeling in.

Intuition is just another way to tune in to listening to our needs and wants.

No reason to keep score.

No reason to be afraid.

Listening to yourself is always the best reward.

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We will bet on the lottery knowing that our chance of winning is so remote that we are willing to pay for the tickets just to have that slim chance.

What if we bet on people the same way?

Or on ourselves.

When we know there is little chance of succeeding, our instinct is to give up not to double down and place a bet on ourselves.

We bet against all odds when it has to do with ourselves or others but willingly bet on a miniscule chance that we may someday win the lottery (which, by the way, often works out as a life wrecker instead of a dream come true).

Blind encouragement has its benefits.

Tell a cancer patient they will beat the disease not because you don’t want to discourage them but with the same hope and conviction we have when we see a good outcome in, say, a lottery.

Down on your luck?

Place a bet – buy a ticket on you to win big.  Your chances of succeeding are far greater than that of winning the lottery.

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Often the possible is impossible and the impossible is possible.

A better thought is – how do you know without trying.

If two baseball teams showed up and decided not to play the game because one might lose, neither would get to experience what’s possible.

Leave a movie in the middle and you don’t get to know how it ends (unless a spoiler alert tells you in their words).

Always afraid to take your career to the next level?  You’ll guarantee never to know what you may have missed.

Fear in a new relationship because of a bad experience in a past one relegates you to an impossible situation that doesn’t need to be.

The answer to what’s possible and what’s impossible is channeling all your drive, determination and courage into finding out.

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Meetings are a waste of time.

One person usually enjoys talking while the others can’t wait for them to stop talking.

Yet meetings are helping salespeople lose money, content creators sit and idle away their best thoughts and managers prevented from doing their jobs.

The smart meeting is a meeting with purpose.

If you haven’t defined the reason for meeting, there is no reason to hold it.

If you’re running the meeting are you talking out loud to hear your best thinking or silencing yourself to hear the best thinking of the group?

Are you on the clock?  You should be because everyone has a job to do.

Get to an agreement on what has been discussed or decided.

Together come up with what steps will take place next (often even a good outcome at a meeting is lost to inaction).

Report back.

Implement.

Compliment those participating.

Does this sound like a meeting you would like to attend or one that you can run?

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The only thing worse than anxiety is to be obsessive about it which is what we all seem to do.

Take your worries and repeat them in your mind over and over again.

Put like that, it sounds pretty self-destructive.

No worry ever happens exactly as we fear it. 

When you can’t stop thinking about it, do something about it – even something small.

99% of the time what we fear never actually happens – what a waste of our time and emotional health.

Time shift worries as they come up to a specific day and time when you will do all your worrying.   That helps fight the obsession that makes anxiety worse. 

“You can’t always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.” ~Wayne Dyer

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Don’t dwell.

Don’t retaliate (it doesn’t make us better).

Focus on those who love you the way you are.

Be grateful for the people and the things in your life that see you positively and not elevate someone else’s rejection as the way you see yourself.

Life is not an election.

It is an empty canvas upon which we paint the life we want.

Just like Michelangelo, no one else gets to paint on your canvas.  Just admire it.

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