“Haters gonna hate” as Taylor Swift sings in “Shake It Off”.

Taylor Swift is one of the most prolific voices of the Millennial generation admired for her honesty and authenticity.

Music is and always has been the soundtrack of our lives.

When I taught music industry at the University of Southern California, I could literally teach history through the words and music of each generation.

Taylor Swift knows that haters are running wild – she should know, they direct their vitriol at her and she shakes it off.

What’s not to like about Taylor Swift – she’s smart, talented, beautiful and nice.

Sound familiar?

If haters are hating on you, someone you love, a child, a friend – here are some ways to shake it off:

• “It’s gonna be alright” is a mantra worth repeating again and again.
• Understand the hater’s motivation because they are almost 100% of the time suffering from jealousy.
• Cut them off – they cannot enjoy hating on you when they get no reaction.  Respond and you just keep them going.
• The cure for hurt feelings is remembering that when you have to depend on others to make you feel good (or bad) about yourself, you are inviting haters to damage your life and your feelings and play with your emotions.

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1) Take the focus off yourself and think about others – little things, conversations, acts of kindness.  You might not feel like doing them when you’re down but you’re giving yourself the gift of a picker-upper.

2) Segue from what’s eating you to something you are grateful for.  It has been proven time and time again that no person can be down or even depressed if she or he is being grateful for something good in their lives.

3) Think about how important you are to those around you.  A bad mood by you quickly affects others you come in contact with.  A positive thought lifts those around you at the same time you help yourself.

4) Picture the person you love (or have loved, if they are no longer with you) in this world and for five seconds think of how you would feel if you could be with them now.

Bad moods and rough roads are normal – we wouldn’t be human without them.

Languishing in a bad frame of mind for too long begins to change the way we are.  Act, intervene and return to a good place as quickly as possible.

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Forget it, we just don’t have alone time anymore.

I lived in a small community growing up (Springfield, PA) where I had to walk two or more miles to get anywhere and everywhere I wanted to go. On that same walk now, I would probably have a smartphone in my hand and ear buds in my ears to listen to music.

Alone time on the beach has been breached because we can text, email and check the Internet, play games and do everything but look at the ocean, people watch or exercise.

Alone time is no longer a thing of the past — it is the remedy for the future.

In a digital world, we have to have time to think.

To converse with others undistracted.

To dream about how we want our lives to be today and tomorrow.

Take it one small step at a time.

Leave the phone home for an hour.

Choose one screen to watch TV and not two or more.

Eat dinner without a cellphone nearby every once in a while.

From there, expand out of touch hours – say, 7-11pm every once in a while.

When life runs together on one stream of connectivity, we leave out the most important person – ourselves.

Don’t blame the digital technology that enriches our lives.

Put it in its proper place and reintroduce yourself to you, those around you and your dreams and ambitions.

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Unfortunately the radio industry is an example of a perfectly good business that is not in a very good place right now.

Owners are cheap, greedy and insensitive to the needs of employees.

The industry is too male and excludes females and other minorities from top management positions.

I know literally hundreds of good radio people who are caught between either being out of work or selling their soul to the company.

What a tough position to be in.

I’ve worked for some difficult people but I can tell you that taking a check to work for people who are abusive and don’t care does not mean becoming one of them.

• Take time to be sensitive to people who work for and with you in companies where owners are brutally harsh.  Most fair-minded people will understand the position you’re in as long as you demonstrate that you understand the predicament they are in.
• When a bad company does bad things and you’re in charge, you won’t get fired for being human, checking on them, making a few calls to help them get interviews.  After all, we’ve all been there and we’re probably going to be back there again before our careers are over.
• A thought:  Pretend you are the one being fired and someday you will be asking your employee for a job.  Would they hire you based on the way you treated them?
• Being loyal to evil employers does not mean becoming one of them – think about this a lot.
• Nothing is more painful than being fired.  Compassion is the order of the day not being a robot for insensitive owners.
• In the end when you find you are being callous to the human condition, get a new job or risk losing your own humanity.
• Acid test:  If your son or daughter has to be fired, would you do it the same way?  If your spouse had to be disciplined, would you do it the way you’re presently doing it?

When in doubt, be human and you’ll save your life as well.

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Have you seen Monica Lewinsky’s TED talk about the hell she lived after having  an affair with a married man who just happened also to be the president of the United States?

How many people do you know have shamed themselves or made mistakes?  But with the Internet there is almost no path to redemption and no way to move on.

The Internet.

Cyberbullying.

Making fun of people because we will never look into their eyes face to face.

Monica’s excellent talk admits her wrongdoing but also describes the hell of our digital world where social media will drive people to depression and worse.

Until they find compassion for self.

As she puts it:  “Have compassion for yourself. We all deserve compassion, and to live both online and off in a more compassionate world”.

Here’s a link to Monica Lewinsky’s talk – she’s nervous, and 41-years old now and in a world where parents are helping children deal with haters and bullying, it’s about time we are having this conversation.

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We’ve got it all wrong.

Most of us think we fear death whether we’re 25 or 85 when it’s really life that scares the hell out of people.

We can’t do much about the fact that someday we must go, but we can do an awful lot about how we live in the time we have.

Amazing, isn’t it, that cancer patients with all the burden of treatments, side effects and worry of future outcomes can almost to a person cut through the garbage that prevents them from living the days that they have as if they are more precious.  And if they are fortunate enough to be granted more time, they are changed people.

So we have wars on everything in this world today, how about a war on fear?

• When you fear something, do it anyway.  Bet you’ll be glad and you’ll start making a habit of it.
• Banish the fear of failure this very morning. I can guarantee you are going to fail but not always.  Hockey great Wayne Gretzky’s famous line is “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  I think of that a lot.
• Laugh at failure, it’s temporary.  Ever notice how AFTER achieving a successful goal, people can laugh about their failures that got them to their happy day?  Disrupt the timeline and start laughing at failure BEFORE you ultimately succeed.  It’s less wear and tear on your psyche.
• Franklin Roosevelt was right when he told America during wartime that  “the only thing to fear is fear itself”.

When we fear living, we run the risk of losing life.

Fear has met its enemy when you make a decision to live dangerously and believe in yourself.

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Ever notice how when teams are winning almost everything they do keeps going their way.

Until, something doesn’t.

A homerun.

A last minute goal with ten seconds to go before the end of the first period – perfect for leaving an unfortunate outcome front and center in the players’ minds.

And a losing streak is even worse.

You don’t have to play sports to experience a losing streak.  Ordinary people do.  Broken marriages.  Can’t find a soul mate.  Health problems.  Work problems.  People problems.  (Add yours here).

I know there is a lot of motivational psychobabble out there to remind us to not give up.

Hockey players clutch their sticks harder – now that’s not going to help.

Baseball players swing and miss on strike three and walk dejected back to their dugouts.

A fired employee loses self-esteem on the way home from the office for the last time.

I’ve discovered a fascinating, easy and believe it or not fun way to stay motivated when your world is collapsing around you.

Do it for someone special.

Fight back for your grandmother who believed in you through thick and thin.

Play the dating game after the umpteenth Tinder disappointment shows up looking like someone else for your kids.

Work late and think about your spouse and how he or she will be so proud of you.

Change the people you do it for every day if you like.

Or let one person inspire you in your mind’s eye.

And add yourself in to the mix.

Adversity introduces a person to him or her self and to those around them.

Don’t go through adversity alone – plow ahead side by side with the thought of someone who would be as proud of you for trying.

It has the same effect as when mom or dad showed up at a school sports event you were in.  You played your heart out.

Capture that feeling and feel it when life gets tough.

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Brian Sutton-Smith died March 7^th.

If you don’t know him – and I didn’t until I read his fascinating New York Times obituary – he devoted his life to the importance of studying play – books, talks and teaching at various colleges including The University of Pennsylvania.

The question he was constantly asked was why spend an entire life studying play.

I’d like to share his response:

“We study play because life is crap.  Life is crap and it is full of pain and suffering and the only thing that makes it worth living  — the only thing that makes it possible to get up in the morning and go on living – is play.”

In spite of his harsh viewpoint, Sutton-Smith makes a good point.

Why are we killing ourselves at work?

Why are we taking on more play dates than we can handle?

Why do we not make regular play a priority – and I’m not talking about solitary games on mobile devices here.

And after six decades of studying play, Sutton-Smith couldn’t describe exactly what play is.

Is it golf?  Is it cards?  Is it fantasy?  Games?

I’m interested in this because all of us stand to lose the full potential for our lives because one of the greatest tools in the world – mobile Internet and social media – also threatens our ability to interact and lighten up.

The takeaway is balance is more important than productivity.

Variety is truly the spice of life.

Frisbee on the beach has more benefits than we imagined.

Play reminds us of our humanity and serves as a counter-balance to our digital tendencies to communicate but not feel emotion.

Play is what we’re killing ourselves for when we work.

Oh, by the way, Brian Sutton-Smith lived to be 90.

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It’s this simple.

Either we are our own best friend or we fast become our worst enemy.

When a parent asks a child with 4 A’s and a B on their report card, what did you get the B in – we’re teaching impressionable people to be negative.  Let them start with the A’s.  There is plenty of time for the B.

When another person criticizes us, we should reject that criticism.  After all, no less than Dale Carnegie himself said, “don’t criticize, condemn or complain”.  Who are we to judge another?

When we feel that everything we do isn’t good enough, then we are being ungrateful because we can only be what we are and that is good enough if we’re giving our best.

We can either try to make everyone else better one criticism at a time or enjoy the other person exactly the way they are.  We can’t have it both ways.

Some adults laughed at TV’s Mister Rogers who always told his audience of children “I like you just the way you are”.  But Fred Rogers was right. And hearing that phrase every day is something we need to say about ourselves.

You can spend a lifetime feeling badly about yourself.

Or choose to live a life accepting yourself as the fine person you are.

There is, of course, always room for improvement but what good is improving when being perfect is not the secret to happiness.

Most people are good enough the way they are.

Pogo’s great line “We have met the enemy and he is us” is so true.

What if we revised that a bit and made it “We have met my best friend and it is me”?

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We have seen victims of earthquakes hopelessly trapped in buildings survive for many days not on food, water or medicine but only hope.

Hope is that powerful – so important that when we rob other people of it or someone takes hope from us, life becomes more difficult to live.  More dark.  More depressing.

Hope is the burning desire that something positive will eventually happen.

We don’t need hope when things are going our way.  We need hope when things are bad.

Hope is a decision we make when we are not satisfied with the present.  It is not a feeling.  It is a choice.

Unfortunately, many people make the decision to give up hope because times get tough.  Isn’t it fortunate that those trapped in that earthquake rubble decided to focus on only the positive outcome.

Bad things happen in life – no two ways about it.

But starting today, we can vow not to contribute to adversity by giving up the one thing that over the ages always seems to overcome all things bad – hope.

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