The Philadelphia Eagles (and former Patriots) defensive end is giving away his entire base salary of $1 million this year to educational charities and causes.

Long is an outstanding football player but even a better person because he is one of the rare few who acts on the premise that money can’t buy happiness.

As I used to tell my aspiring USC students understandably anxious to get going and get rich – all of Los Angeles is filled with psychologists and psychiatrists trying to help people be happy in spite of all the money they have.

This reminds me of a special friend of mine who used to say that you don’t have to be rich to give of yourself.

The most important gift of all is the gift of your time that is certainly worth something and of great value to others.

GoFundMe accounts prove every day how willing people are to give of themselves to help others with their problems, needs and even dreams.

It has been shown that our brains are patterned by the way we think.

The gift of generosity can start today with or without money and it changes at least two lives – yours and someone else’s – if not others.

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Gallup says 79% Americans in a recent survey said they experienced stress frequently (44%) or sometimes (35%) in their daily lives.

Just 17% said they were stressed rarely and a lucky 3% who said never.

59% say they lack the time to do what they want.

That’s in a world with more tools, more devices, more apps designed to make life easier.

Children and work are the reasons.

Women feeling more stressed than men because they still carry disproportionate childrearing workloads although men and women equally think they don’t have enough time to do what they want.

Older people (above 50) feel less stress from childrearing.

Stress is also impacting Millennials in a bigger way than previous generations.  They have high expectations, want to do more, have had fewer employment opportunities and even though they are connected through social media, they are suffering from being too connected and unable or unwilling to separate from their devices.

Balance trumps stress.

There is no such thing as good multi-tasking.

Reclaiming life by disconnecting more from phones and mobile devices is a good start.

And Millennials are beginning to have the conversation about being less connected even as older generations are staying more connected.

Phones are tools not a way of life.

Children are the responsibility of all parents in their lives not predominantly one. 

Saying no is the gift that busy, well-intentioned people should give themselves to reduce stress.

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Angry men from 20-40 in a recent University of Iowa survey were one and a half times more likely to be dead 35 years later than those who are calmer.

But, there is good anger and bad anger.

The bad anger is hurtful to others, striking out at them in frustration and keeps the turmoil boiling to the advantage of no one.

Channeling anger in a positive way to deal with it and to move on is also important because if there is one thing we are learning in our society it is that stress kills and harboring angry feelings is stress.

Loud screaming and yelling is not appropriate.

Saying what bothers you in a clear and honest way is therapeutic.

It is not an invitation for continued abuse but more of a declaration of independence from the kind of stress that eats us alive.

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A picture is worth a thousand words.

Below, is Austin Ardman who died two years ago December 8^th by a texting driver.  His father gave me permission to remind everyone that no message, no call, no fear of missing something is more important than the safety of our most precious assets.

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When bad things happen for some reason they seem far worse than when good things happen often hijacking the way we feel about our lives.

One way to put it all in perspective is to grade your day from 1 to 10 with a happiness score just before you turn in at night.

You may have a lot of 5s but you may have also posted a few high scores and some dreadful low scores.

The point is by looking at your month on a calendar to inspect the scores, you may find that you had two or three awful days and a lot of pretty good ones.

By seeing it this way, it prevents a calamity from making you feel like things are worse than they feel in the scope of a month.

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One absolutely effective way to get along with a difficult person is to find something you have in common and ask the other person about it.

It may be sports, a hobby, interest or a goal.

Difficult people are not just hard on us.  They are hard on themselves and often their own worst enemies.

Step in and start fishing for the one thing you have in common.  They’re not likely going to tell you without you searching.

Keep asking questions until you find something of mutual interest.

Then start asking questions rather than making personal statements.

It’s harder to be difficult when you find something in common.

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Watch a sports team when the wheels come off their game.

They bear down, try too hard (yes, too hard) and they start repeating negative thoughts.

Ironically in sports, losing streaks often follow winning streaks because teams get cocky and winning streaks follow losing streaks because they get down on themselves and eventually get off their own backs.

The thing is to keep motivation high and expectations reasonable.

No one can avoid ups and downs in life.

The ups seem like they speed by and the downs seem like they will never end.

But they always do.

The way to handle a prolonged losing streak is to commit your mind to believing that no matter what, things will not be bad forever.

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Sports teams break down the entire season’s schedule into smaller pieces to gain higher performance.

That way, it’s easier to focus on the task ahead instead of everything you have to do.

A losing streak doesn’t get to be so much pressure because there is a chance to hit the reset button every 30 days.

For us, seeing things on an incremental basis – say, 30 days or less – helps us keep our eyes on the goal.

It is very forgiving when we hit a rough patch and very stabilizing when everything seems to be going our way.

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Self-absorbed people are not new.

They just have many more tools now to get into our face and ears.

One person’s obsessive behavior rambling on about themselves can easily become a stress causing response in the person who suffers such one-sided relationships. 

• Ask what would you lose if you step away from them – Be specific.  Often the addiction to people who care only about themselves and their lives is made easier by asking exactly what you would lose if you ended the conversation.
• Cut contact – The more you let them know you are not available to listen to them talk incessantly about themselves, the sooner they will take it elsewhere.
• Find someone interested in you, too – Turn the previously wasted time of suffering from one-sided friendship and invest it in a person truly capable of being interested in your life.

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If you want to end unhappiness this morning, repeat these words:

EVEN THE BAD TIMES ARE GOOD

It’s easy to say, but difficult to accept.

But if you could, whatever is troubling you now automatically gets put in its proper place – a problem, a concern, a recurring worry – but not the end of the world.

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