Harvard Business Review published an article titled “How To Fake It When You’re Not Feeling Confident”.

This is a common theme of late at companies, from motivational speakers and even psychologists who counsel troubled foster children.

Should you “trick yourself out of the state of self-doubt”?

But it isn’t necessary to fake anything.

Remembering an I.O.U. for anything that you succeed at for use when more confidence is called for will be more effective.

Every success you have – big or tiny – add to a list on your smartphone which, as you know, is always with you.

Scroll through that list at least once a day – preferably more. 

Some examples:  I spoke up at a meeting without being asked to; I broke the ice and started a conversation with someone I didn’t really know;  I made it through a tough day without saying the word “can’t”;  I got a raise (you’ll be surprised how quickly we forget raises and promotions which are testimonials to our success shortly after we get them;  I was bullied today and I pushed back.

If you start looking for little successes, you’ll change the way you think.

Imagine hundreds of these accomplishments starting with most recent first on a scrollable list.

Then bolding the ones that you are particularly proud of.

No more is needed than to organize a way to easily view all the things that we tend to forget about that can become powerful I.O.U.s for future success.

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It’s not an iPhone or money or some other nicety.

It’s the thought of their favorite gift that can transform your relationship with your spouse, partner and/or family members.

Think of the way most people come in contact with loved ones after being away for some hours, the day, or for work.

Right back to business as usual and often with the burden of haunting problems on your shoulder.

Now imagine your first contact with them as if you are going to hand them something they really, really want.

Say, a new digital device or whatever.

When we have a gift in our hands, we almost can’t hide the anticipated joy in giving it.

Except, don’t bring that gift.

Walk in as if you have it with you – happy, bright-eyed, anxious to please.

Believe it or not most people would rather have you 100% in the moment and not thinking about work, how tired you are or what else you have to do that day.

You are the gift they wanted all along.

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Even the most self-assured person has lapses of self-doubt.

And many others have more self-doubt than confidence.

For that occasional bout of self-doubt, insert work ethic for ability.

When we get a pang of self-doubt it has very little to do with our ability and everything to do with fear of failure.

Replace that fear with a vow to outwork everyone to assure your success.

Replacing fear thoughts with promises to outwork all replaces negative thinking with positive thinking.

Doubt kills more dreams than failure.

“Make sure your worst enemy is not living between your own ears”

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Everyone wants it all, but few attain it.

Whatever ALL really is.

So handling a career and family at the same time can be challenging.

Balance is important but employers often have a way of bending those boundaries and families have ways of increasing the time you are needed.

• Smartphones are beautiful things at work but toxic when children and spouses need you in person.  Phones off.  No exceptions.

• The time you spend 100% present with family members and children is more valuable than the gross number of hours.  Lean in.

• Children need boundaries and many career-oriented men and women blur the lines out of guilt or convenience.

• Eat dinner together – always.  Phones off – yours.

• Prepare and clean up dinner together.

• Become a better listener.  This occurs when you can hear what someone else says and say it back to them.

When I got divorced I saw a child counselor who gave me the best advice in our first session together.

She said, “Your job is not to put on a show for your children, just make them part of your life even if it is mundane and boring”.

Redefine having it all from being able to be fully actualized in your work and in your family and personal life to being happy with a life that you consciously work to keep in balance.

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On the first day as program director of a Philadelphia radio station, I faced this crisis.

The person whose job was to prepare and type the commercial logs required by the FCC under the station’s license was fired at the end of the day – not by me, but by the general manager without asking me (a bad radio management practice that unfortunately continues to this day).

She was fuming.

I was taken aback and very apologetic.  I told her the weekend logs looked perfect to me but she was so hurt and so shocked that she ripped them up.  Keep in mind that they were not computerized at the time which means they had to be retyped.

That left me with the huge task of having to retype these legal documents for the rest of the night Friday and all-day Saturday and Sunday which meant that I spent my first weekend as the station’s program director doing a sales job all weekend long.

On Monday, I dragged my tired body into the station ready to beg this person to come back if the station would only let me rehire her and of course they wouldn’t.

The hard work tired me but didn’t kill me.

What did bother me was that no one – not the manager or anyone at the station thanked me for spending the weekend cleaning up this mess.

Being appreciated means being acknowledged.

I vowed to remember that in the years to come by doing what my employers forgot to do – I thanked myself – and it felt so good.

Never let your job well done go unappreciated by the most important person in your life – YOU!

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Back then I never gave a second’s thought to what made the best friend I ever had, Jimmy Weinraub, such a good friend.

Now that he is gone much too early, I have figured it out.

It was like we both had a clock inside of us and knew when to reach out to each other.

Too much time never went by no matter where we were – we were always connected.

And we didn’t just text or email – he would never have liked that – we spent face time together.

One of us always knew when we needed to contact the other.

It was automatic. You could set your Apple Watch by it.

We didn’t just huff and puff about how busy we were and how work and family was so stressful, we always made time to eat together and look each other in the eye.

Jimmy always – and I mean always – followed up with a note of gratitude for as long as we knew each other to thank me for my time and enclose something inspirational or motivational (we were both Dale Carnegie instructors so that was like crack to us).

Our friendship was not just another entry in Outlook or iCal, it was celebrated in spirit and in person on a very regular basis.

I may never know another friend like this in my life, but it has taught me this much.

The litmus test for a good friendship is not how long you spend planning to be together but how many moments you actually spend together.

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The Washington Post did an interesting piece on how baby boomers are losing their battle against ageism.

But Millennials roughly 18-34 years old are also fighting ageism from the other direction.  They were born into an economy that left many of them unemployed or under-employed.

Today Millennials are still facing age discrimination in that they find it hard to get full-time jobs with benefits.  So ageism either has nothing to do with age or something to do with age for everyone.

The best gauges for hiring are …

1. Does this person have the passion and skills for the job.
2. Do they get along with others easily.
3. Can they motivate others to bring out their best.
4. Do they have impeccable integrity.

Therefore, in planning to seek or change employment, concentrating on these four things makes you more attractive.

Emphasize your passion for the job and the skills that you possess to be successful.

Show confirmable results of how you get along well with others.

Likewise show specific examples corroborated by others that you are a motivator of people.

And let your integrity show through with meaningful examples in the words of others not you.

It is harder to discriminate against anyone offering a proposition as impressive as this.

“Ageism works in both directions” – Alanis Morissette

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Failure feels worse than almost anything a human can experience.  I hate it.  You hate it.  No one wants it.

But if you study successful people, they almost always have a path through failure before they arrive at success.

In other words, we don’t have to like it, but failure is an important component.

It tells us how badly we want something to go back again and again to confront it.

Failure introduces us to ourselves and our friends and makes us stronger.

If we try once or twice and give up, then maybe we don’t want what we’re pursuing.  But if we never give up then we are almost willing a positive outcome.

Failure teaches us patience because no successful person ever got what they wanted without some cuts and scrapes first.

Stop becoming discouraged and begin being encouraged by studying the successful people you admire who had to fail their way to success.

“Failure is a rehearsal for success”

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My best friend in high school stole the girl I liked and eventually went on to marry her.

I owe him thanks because I couldn’t have had my children or married my wife.

Once in college, another friend and I in communications school planned to pitch a two-person radio show to a small suburban radio station.

The call was made from a phone booth (what’s that?).

He did the talking because two of us couldn’t be talking into a pay phone to the program director who was hiring.

When he pitched our idea, the PD said, “I don’t have any need for a two-man show but I need a weekend jock”.

And yes, my friend took it right on the spot.

For himself.

I got continued unemployment.

A few weeks later, I got a job in Philadelphia radio, a major market on a major station.  I had no choice but to keep dialing for dollars.

In the end, again, I got the better end of the deal.

Sometimes things work out better when we don’t get our way.

That sounds horrible to say but it’s true.

We often don’t know what we really want or what is best for us.

So I have learned that when I feel a knife in my back, I tend to the wound and go on to an adventure I never saw coming.

 “Being betrayed is one of the most valuable lessons life can teach” – Shania Twain

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People born after 9/11 have lived every day of their lives with the insecurities of terrorism.

And each year, the outrages get worse as it seems hatred has replaced love and once again we’re fighting over religion as humans have done since the beginning of time.

A local doctor and his wife took their children to London for what sounded like a nice vacation.  She was worried about terrorism but pushed her worries aside.

Unfortunately, innocent victims were killed in the street during her stay.

Penn Station in New York is more than just a rundown train terminal.  It is a fortress for military personnel with automatic weapons at the ready.

We live in a world of insecurity, fear and uncertainty by understanding that fear is the desired outcome for terrorists.

And remembering the helpers – the people who respond first and show their humanity to others – is a way for us to focus on love and not hate.

“If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world” – Deepak Chopra

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