Within the next few weeks I will make my annual pilgrimage to the Jersey shore for all the obvious reasons and one not so obvious.

That’s when I become a free agent every year and I use the beach time to think about what I want to do in the year ahead.

My career.  My personal life.  My yet unfulfilled dreams.

Sports figures are lucky.  They get to negotiate and renegotiate not only their salaries but where they want to play and how long.  But so many of us just keep going until something happens that makes us have to deal with it.

Like getting fired.  Or burned out.  Or discouraged.

Here’s my mission:

• Do I want to keep doing what I do for a living next year (and for me next year starts in September) or am I ready to make a change?  Add a challenge.  Drop something that is not rewarding.  I had a close call with death this year due to a familial aneurysm I didn’t know I had.  You can believe I am seeing things very differently now that I dodged that bullet so I can hardly wait to see what I decide.

• What am I worth?  Most of us accept what our employers decide we are worth and when they are taking bonuses while cutting our salaries, does that mean we are actually worth less?  In sports, arbitrators use similar situations, skills, accomplishments to determine a player’s worth.  That works for us, too.  How do we perform compared to others?  Not how does a company compensate us.

• What new skill sets do I need if in fact I want to begin to change how I work or spend my time?  Often we just hit up Monster and apply but acquiring new skills are critical to career growth and satisfaction.

• Remember, you are signing a one-year contract with yourself.  You may decide to do what you do for one more year but that’s it which tells you that you have 12 months to acquire the skills necessary to go on.

I love becoming a free agent.

I don’t know what I will decide to do because I’m going to think it through.

But one thing I am NOT going to do is miss the opportunity to become a free agent in a world with so much opportunity.

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•  I’ve done it before and I can do it again.
• Do the things you fear to do and the fear will go away from you.
• Never fear making a mistake because mistakes are always a rehearsal for future success.
• Talk to yourself in a way that you would talk to someone you really love.
• Self-confidence comes from what you think of you; not what others think of you.

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Ric Elias had a front row seat the day Captain Chesley B “Sully” Sullenberger glided his flight down on the Hudson River barely missing the George Washington Bridge in January, 2009.

Every passenger survived their close call with death for which Sullenberger’s cool, calm skills have been rightly acclaimed.

But Elias put into words a wake up call that I want to share with you.

How his close call with death changed his life.

1. Don’t postpone anything in life. Elias said, “I learned that it all changes in an instant … We have this bucket list, we have these things we want to do in life, and I thought about all the people I wanted to reach out to that I didn’t, all the fences I wanted to mend, all the experiences I wanted to have and I never did.”
2. Don’t waste time on things that don’t matter.  Elias said he hasn’t had a fight with his wife in years. Don’t be right. Be happy.
3. Find the most important thing in life.  Being a parent. A friend. Work can rob us of our ability to be friends and spend time on which becomes so important when we believe we are down to our last few seconds of life.

Does it take a near fatal plane crash to know what is really important or can we get to it by thinking about what our priorities would be if we had only a few seconds left and we got a second chance?

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This dangerous step up from regular cyber bullying involves humor and ganging up on someone in particular.  Dangerous because the humor part often masks the meanness of intent.

So as each year goes on adults and children both are being exposed to bullying from people who will not look them in the face to deliver their invectives.

Schools are investing a lot of time and effort into preventing bullying with minimal results.  Social media – a misnomer for sure – is the dangerous weapon.

Cyber bullying is not going away.

The best defense is a good offense from people who are comfortable being authentic.

To children, never let anyone else record on your hard drive (brain). 

To adults, bully’s go elsewhere when they see a person is truly comfortable in their own shoes.

And that’s where the answer is to be found.

No one is perfect.

No one is worthless.

And no one ever gets direct access to your brain without you first deciding whether you will let it in.

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Study confident people and you will see the one quality they all have is the ability to use past successes to access future success.

In other words, they remember the things that made them feel great, powerful, effective and happy and they use a technique to unleash what worked for them in the past once again.

Most people forget about their successes as impressive as some of them are and concentrate on the negative.

To get a boost of confidence, try this …

I’ve done it before and I can do it again.

If I don’t believe, why am I asking someone else to?

Confidence is a perishable item.

When things are going great, we tend to have a lot of it.

When things are challenging, we need a boost.

But the boost must come from within.

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Millennials are big dreamers but you don’t have to be 18-34 to follow the passion that drives you.

I had a student at USC ask me “when do you stop pursuing your dreams for something more stable?”

My answer surprised him.

Never.

This does not mean you don’t work and pay the rent but why would you do anything to stop your dreams from coming true?

Not everyone can be a recording artist, but I have plenty of friends whose lives are defined by the music they continue to make.

Entrepreneurs seem immune to the idea that there is anything they cannot do – as it should be.

A young man challenged me one time and said, “I want to work in the South Sea islands creating awesome vacations that travel agencies could never imagine”.

My answer was, sounds like a good business to me.

The essence of what we are is defined by our hopes and dreams.

Never voluntarily disconnect your life from them.

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Very few people are good listeners.

In fact, most of us talk too much about ourselves.

Self-absorption runs rampant.

But if you desire to be a better listener, here are some secrets …

• Tune in enough to be able to repeat the essence of what a person is saying to you when they stop talking.
• Resist the temptation to match every comment they make with a comment or story about you.
• Becoming a great listener is about consciously drawing out a narrative from someone else without judging it or trying to top it.
• Good listeners are curious people – by instinct they want to know more.
• Ask questions, don’t make statements.

One of the many advantages of being a better listener is that people are drawn to you.

How ironic?

The less we say and the more we listen, the more people feel connected to others.

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Rejection isn’t just not getting the job or promotion you wanted.

There is something more dangerous than that.

The fear of rejection that lurks in our minds.

Strong affirmations of confidence can disable this fear of rejection that can dog us in business, personal relationships and life.

I will never fear rejection because it is a small and temporary risk to take for betting on success. 

Almost everyone who has experienced rejection has lived to overcome it.

Sports teams don’t take the field fearing a loss — even the worst teams think they have a chance to win the game on any given day. The possibility of rejection is a small price to pay for a chance to win.

The fear of something that may never happen and if it does will probably make you stronger is a waste of energy.

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Talk to anyone who is successful in this world and you will see that they almost never rely on other people to build their self-confidence.

But for those struggling with self-esteem, it is not uncommon to see how much they are affected by the words and actions of others.

This alone is an important revelation because self-confidence comes from ourselves not from others.

Never outsource confidence.

Nurture it by being honest and authentic with yourself.

“It wasn’t easy to stand up for myself at that presentation because it was stacked against several employees, but I did it and felt good about it.”

“I’d love to meet my perfect mate, but I realize that I have to love myself in good times and bad before I ask another to do it.”

“No one succeeds 100% of the time.  Even the best baseball hitter ever, Ted Williams who batted .400, was out 60% more times than he was on base.  When I believe I will not quit, that is more important than the outcome.”

Stop looking to others for that which can and should come naturally from within.

Talk positively to yourself and you will react in kind.

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During a recent illness I discovered which friends and family members were there for me out of sincere concern.

This touched me very much and also got me to thinking.

How much of our lives do we spend with people who do not have this level of concern for us?

Among the surprises, people whom I saw as acquaintances but who acted more like friends with their outreach.

Amazed as people who one would expect a high level of concern actually showed less or none at all.

Nothing introduces you to yourself and your friends more than adversity and one of the blessings is to appreciate how nice and kind people can be even when you have not previously considered them your inner circle.

This prompts the question – should we spend our time with people who care about us the most?

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