• No cancer, heart disease or any other life threatening illness, I’ll bet we’d take that.
• Don’t have a job that you hate.  Gratitude for working in an area that invigorates you.
• No longer have your parents?  You can replay memorable moments and live them all over again.
• Didn’t get what you really, really wanted?  Wait a little while because once the disappointment wears off something impossible to have foreseen may have swept down and landed in your path.

When Jimmy Carter announced to the world that he had cancer, he spent the news conference talking about the gratitude for living a full life with his wife beyond their expectations.

Although he was about to enter an experimental treatment program, he said he was content with the life that he lived.

Then what happened?

Carter’s experimental drug regime sent his brain cancer into remission at his ripe old age of 90 years.

Sometimes by focusing on what we have – not what we don’t have or have lost – miraculously brings us another gift.

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One of the most discouraging things that ever happened to me in radio was delivering an outstanding ratings book and then losing my job.

How could that be?

If life were rational, it would be easy to explain.

The audience was too young – a lot of listeners the station apparently did not want so they were prepared to go in a more adult direction.

That didn’t work out for the station which eventually had to be sold.

But for me, it was a critical career point.  Do I keep doing what I am doing and have to live by unfair metrics or do I do something else.

After a very long time on the beach, fate and a changing attitude made me realize that I was born to be an entrepreneur.  A risk taker.  I wanted to be my own boss.

I cannot image what my life would have been like if I just simply replaced the job I lost with another one like the other one.

Perhaps you’ve been in a situation similar to this?

Discouragement can lead to despair and despair to the inability to make a decision.

Or discouragement can be the precursor to encouragement.

Why am I discouraged?  Is it the work?  Or do I not want to be working in that industry?

Whether discouragement creeps into our career, marriage or family life, it can be a harbinger of good things to come when we see it for the gift that it often is.

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This is less complicated than it sounds and you’re hearing this from a guy who made his living in the communications business.

Talking is not listening.

Listening is the act of being 100% present with what another person is saying.

Not thinking about your next response.

Not necessarily sharing your parallel experience because most people want to be heard.

As a professor I learned quickly that no matter how expert I thought I was on the subject matter, it was easier to get students engaged by listening to them.

My best friend was such a good listener that when he was interrupted – say, by a waiter or waitress looking to top off our coffees – I would forget where I left off, but he never did.

And he proudly, said “When you speak, I listen”.

The art of active listening in real time begins not when we shut our mouths but when we open our minds to what is being shared.

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Relationships are everything in life.

Money and power cannot compare to meaningful, warm relationships between people.

They are also the most difficult thing we have to deal with in life.

• We are not communicating heart to heart and feeling-to-feeling because we are more distracted than ever.

• People are not sharing their lives on an emotional level.

• Distorted ideas about each other can be dealt with through attempting to understand what the other person is saying.

We live in an era that has more ways to communicate than ever and yet we arguably have less personal communication.

Here it is in a sentence:

When you can accurately repeat back what the other person is feeling – whether you agree with it or not – you have arrived at the threshold of healing wounded relationships.

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Inexplicably, civilization seems hell bent to ruin the lives of others by bullying them on social media.

Fat shaming by any name is hurtful and mean and it is possibly en masse because of social media.

Quick.

Think of how you were bullied in elementary, middle or high school and now imagine how it would feel if more than you and a small group of onlookers could hear the insults.

That is what all types of people – young children, teens and even adults are subjected to.

And a big area for trolls is insulting body types – especially for women.

And women are fighting back with full, natural photos of larger body types.

Anyone who has ever been subjected to this type of insult knows how deep it can cut.

• People should be judged not by how big they are, but by how big their heart is.

• Everyone is beautiful in their own way – over popular culture “in” looks have ranged from full-figures to Twiggy.

• It is not enough to simply avoid hurting others but by actively defending and pursuing in a safe manner those who are so cowardly as to publicly humiliate another while hiding behind social media.

The best way to deal with a bully is to fight back.

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On the way up to New York last week on New Jersey Transit I made fast friends with a nice lady, a psychologist, who was on her way to Sloan Kettering for her granddaughter’s surgery that day.

Six-year old Sophi was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor that was discovered quite by accident – she got a bug bite near her eye and doctors started their investigation that led to a fortunately early diagnosis from there.

Sophi has a legion of followers on Facebook’s Sophi Strong and, although her tumor has been reduced, she has a lifetime of medical surveillance ahead of her.

When bad things happen to little people who have barely begun living, it reminds us of our humanity.

What are WE complaining about?

How can we make life more meaningful for whatever number of years we have ahead?

We also come to terms with this.

There is no guarantee of anything – in terms of time or in happiness.

In their own simple way, children who face adversity show the rest of us how to live.

100% in the now.

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That’s humility – something we see a lot less of in our world of social engagement and self-absorption.

Recently I read an article in The New York Times in which the writer conveyed a story about her daughter who didn’t want to play the part of the pig that got eaten in a school play.

Even though she agreed to accept the ground rules before the parts were assigned.

When children are allowed to opt out of situations because they don’t like them, they risk not growing as humans.

When we get our way enough we sometimes realize that not getting our way can be life changing.

That’s where humility comes in.

In generations past, humility showed up in sports.

Teachers were humble but some college professors are too arrogant to learn from their students which, after all, is the goal because “the teacher and the taught together do the teaching”.

Humility is a modest view of our own self-importance.

It is the quality that endears us to others and makes us a better person.

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Some of the worst lifetime decisions I have made have been the ones where I am so emotionally involved that I cannot think straight.

And that’s a great way to put the problem – the inability to think straight.

Most of us have what it takes to make better decisions if we could only separate our hearts from our minds.

This is the advice that helps me.

Think with your head.  Feel with your heart.

There is a place for feeling in every important decision we make but doing what is best for us is often a matter of the head.

• You may be emotionally entangled with someone you love, but do they make a good life partner?  That decision is best made in the mind not the heart.

• You may love your children so much that you can feel how much you want them to succeed and will do everything you can to will it so.  But the mind tells us that making mistakes and learning from them is the real gift and we arrive at that through our mindful consideration.

What’s encouraging is to know that if we differentiate between feeling and thinking, we probably already have the ability to make better decisions for us and those who depend on us.

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In the wake of the Orlando shootings this past weekend in which over 50 people were killed and 53 injured in what is being called an act of terrorism, the political debate may be useful but it is not necessarily soothing.

Fred Rogers, Mister Rogers on PBS for generations of children said something I believe is so memorable and helpful not only for children but for those of us adults shaking our heads again at how hurtful this world can be.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”

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Stress is so rampant now that it is killing us.

Most stress is generated by things that we cannot control.

We’ve written about many different ways to look at these out of control outcomes that we fear but there is one giant move that can put stress in its place even before we get out of bed and begin what we anticipate will be a stressful day.

The author Dr. Amit Sood, interviewed on The Larry Meiller Show on Wisconsin Public Radio put it so eloquently, I’ll let Dr. Sood tell you in his own words:

“So let’s sit with eyes closed, and I’ll share with you how I try to wake up every morning.

Imagine you’re waking up this morning and you become aware of yourself and the world around you.

Now think about the first person in your life that you want to be grateful for, and bring that person’s face in front of your eyes. And then send your silent gratitude to that person.

Choose your second person, and go back to the first memory of when you saw this person. And then send your silent gratitude.

Think about someone who has passed away, whom you loved. Give that person a virtual hug, and then send your silent gratitude. 

Go back in time and look at yourself when you were eight years old. And then send silent gratitude to your eight-year old self.

And then you can open your eyes.”

We spend too much time stressing about the things we can never control instead of investing emotional gratitude in ourselves.

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