Okay, so you’re sitting face-to-face with someone who puts their phone up to their face and begins to multitask.

You are right in the middle of saying something to them and feel that you don’t have 100% of their attention – which you don’t.

Handle multitasking like this right in your face by simply stopping what you are saying.

Not another word is uttered until you have their attention.

I usually here something like “I’m listening” or “I can do more than one thing at a time”.

But if that’s not a tradeoff you are willing to make, simply remain silent until or unless the other person gives you the attention you deserve.

People who allow their narrative to be hijacked by someone else’s multitasking will never be effect communicators.

If they want to hear you, they must finish the task or stop it in midstream and be 100% present or else you’re wasting your breath.

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Did you ever notice that a person who has real confidence is rarely the one who tries to rob you of yours?

It’s usually the person who is not so comfortable in their own shoes who has the need to say and do things that erode the positive way you would like to feel about yourself.

And that point is the best defense against confidence thieves.

Here are a few others:

• Confidence thieves are usually passive aggressive meaning they look harmless but find ways to expose your perceived weak side.
• Make it your policy that no one gets to criticize you except you.  This doesn’t mean you’re perfect or immune from criticism, it means you will run an ID check on the person exposing weaknesses. Who are they? Why would they say that?
• Vet them first before considering anything they have to say.  Don’t let them into your head unless you open the door.
• Be on the lookout for things that don’t feel right.  Pointing out that “You don’t have much experience doing presentations, do you?” Or “This is a bad time to be looking for work” playing on everyone’s natural concern with being unemployed. “That looks good on people built like you” (who are people built like me?).

Confidence thieves are jealous.

They are often subtle using questions to make their point.

And can be family members, mates, good friends or associates.

The best way to rob a confidence thief is to always assume you are capable of dealing with life’s challenges. Believe in you at all times.

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The death of promising young Miami Marlin’s pitcher José Fernández is a wake up call that none of us have any guarantee how long we will be on this earth no matter what age.

Fernández died in a boating accident at 24. The exuberant Cuban-born star had his whole life ahead of him.

His girlfriend was pregnant with their child and ironically Fernández died in the Atlantic Ocean, the same body of water where he saved his mother from drowning while they along with his sister escaped Cuba.

Older people are usually more aware of the ticking clock than young people.

But even age doesn’t give anyone a free pass.

Life is to be lived in the moment 100% present.

It’s not necessary to think about death but how we can take better advantage of the life we now have.   Just ask a cancer survivor. They master the art of living as an unexpected benefit of their disease.

Jimmy Carter is in his nineties and is fighting cancer to gain as much time as he can because he has more things he wants to do.

The past is a file that we visit but always return to the present.

The future is where we look to plan and yet we must come back to the present where all life lives.

The sad ending for Jose Fernandez reminds us that the only thing any of us have for sure is the time we have right now – this instant. That’s where our happiness lives.

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The NHL hockey player Bobby Ryan lost his mother this past July.

The pain of his loss was only soothed by the level of his appreciation for everything she did for him.

In a post funeral letter, Ryan wrote “I lost you just a few days ago, and I already miss you a lot.  Even though I had a chance to say goodbye, there are still a few things I’d like to tell you”.

Among the many appreciations was how his mom sacrificed to make it possible for him to play hockey, her fight against an abusive husband and the warmth of their relationship together.

There is hardly a week that goes by that I don’t think of my mother and father and how I want to tell them thanks again and again.

Thanks, dad, for being the most honest person I ever knew.  A straight arrow who set a high bar for me.

And thanks mom, for giving me the spunk in my personality and the belief that I could do virtually anything.

When a loved one is gone, it is still not too late to write the letters or visit the grave site for a one-on-one conversation.

I want it to be as if my loved ones will never be gone from my life even if they are not present in the flesh today.

If you have the time, here is Bobby Ryan’s letter to mom that will touch your heart and inspire you to write your own letter.

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Not by controlling them.

That never works.

The hardest thing is to let go of all the issues that are making us unhappy.  Humans don’t want to give up control without a fight.  We would rather get our way or try to convince another person that it is in their best interests to change.

Except it never works.

A sure way to be unhappy is to try and change someone.

So the secret is to learn to cultivate an outlook that lets you throw off the things that you feel as if you would like to control.

Your partner is not listening to you and you feel ignored.  Try as you may, you will probably never change this.  All you will do is make yourself unhappy.  Spend money on therapy.  The answer:  change the way you look at this and see if you can find another way he or she exhibits another way for you to be recognized and validated.

Your boss always has to be right.  Good luck taking on this project because your boss is likely to go right on assuming they are right and everyone else is wrong which will make you very unhappy.  Your time and focus would be better spent not looking to your boss for this type of approval.  Give it to yourself for a job well done.

The best way to gain control is to give up control.

The alternative is to be forever unhappy.

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Visiting the past is a good thing.

It helps us understand the present.

But looking back is like looking in your rearview mirror too much while you’re driving – we’re more likely to make bad decisions when we don’t keep our eyes on the road ahead.

Accepting what has happened in the past is the most important reason to revisit it.

Learn from what has taken place.

Deal with the appropriate issues and move on.

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I once met the famous U2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers whose jet was shot down during the cold war by the Soviet Union.

He was working for the same company I was working for – the great Buckley Broadcasting.

At a cocktail party at the Buckley rep firm in New York, I will never forget what he told me.

In short, it was to never fly in anything but a fixed wing aircraft because unlike a helicopter, you could always have a chance to bring it down and land safely.

Powers was a traffic reporter for Buckley’s LA area station at the time.

So you can imagine my reaction when I heard that Francis Gary Powers subsequently took a job with flying a helicopter for an LA TV news operation.

And how shocked I was to eventually hear he died in a helicopter crash – the very thing he feared and warned me to avoid.

Our instincts are usually always right.

What’s wrong is that we are often out of touch with them.

As Agatha Christie put it, “Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.”

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The author Viktor Frankl who was incarcerated in a prison camp during World War II was a psychiatrist who concluded that suffering is pain that has no meaning.

Frankl said at the moment suffering finds meaning, it ceases to be suffering.

If we are suffering, we need to search for meaning in that suffering.

Child birth is suffering without the meaning that it brings a beautiful new life into the world. 

Chemotherapy is often suffering for cancer patients until they discover that this therapy may extend their lives or at the very least give them hope that a cure can be found.

A painful divorce or breakup of a relationship is unbearable unless and until the aggrieved parties can accept the loss and see a better future someday with someone else. 

Suffering is a part of life but what makes it bearable is hope.

The hope that this suffering will bring us something better.

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There are 86 million Millennials between the ages of 18-35 and they our co-workers and even our bosses.

As a college professor, I watched how Millennials interacted with each other to observe the maximum results.

These interactions give clues as to how to relate to this wonderful, kind generation that has grown up on instant gratification and social justice.

Do not confront.  Look for consensus.

Teams, the popular management trend at the moment, are not such a good fit for Millennial workers unless they get to choose the teams and make up the rules. 

It’s about them, not you.  This may be hard to swallow but Millennials are as self-absorbed as Baby Boomers can be authoritative.

They are the same as every other generation when it comes to praise, giving and receiving appreciation, fair play, equal opportunity.  If you have these same characteristics, be yourself.

Be authentic.  Millennials don’t care about age; they care about whether the people they work with are real.  Remember, they fell in love with Bernie Sanders, a 74-year old self-proclaimed socialist because they perceived him as being authentic.

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Never in the history of civilization have there been more anti-depressant pills prescribed for dealing with depression.

Still, depression keeps increasing as a modern day malady of life.

Sometimes medication and therapy work, then meds are changed or therapy refocused.  It can be a life commitment to battle the blues.

No matter what the approach, one thing seems to work when applied frequently.

That is conjuring up and expressing gratitude not only for the big obvious things in life but more importantly, the little things.

When we are focused on gratitude, we are less focused on what makes us unhappy.

Today, we can choose to find the good in people, in our situation and in ourselves as a non-medicinal form of banishing the blues.

And the extra benefit is that once these patterns of found gratitude are repeated over and over, they change the brainwaves that affect our moods.

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