Catherine Steiner-Adair, a Harvard psychologist, interviewed 1,000 children from 4 to 18 years of age and hundreds of teachers and parents for her book about protecting childhood and family relationships in the digital era.

One red flag was children’s ire, sadness and frustration in trying to get their parents away from smartphones, tablets and computers.

You might have thought it would be the other way around – parents complaining about their kids being too digital.

Parents often parcel out screen time to their kid, but they often violate the boundaries that separate work from family.

Put the phone away at dinner – do not answer calls, emails or texts.

Separate from the phone (as hard as that is to do) on a regular basis. 

Charge your phone way off the beaten track to give you and those around you some face time.

Take a one-day holiday from digital activity and give that time to someone you care for.

Your children and loved ones deserve the same addictive focus that your cellphone gets.

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Schedule 10 minutes of worry time every day.

It limits your worry and frees your time for living.

When you feel the urge to worry, hold that thought for your next 10-minute daily worry session.  When that tine comes, worry away – have at it.  At the conclusion return to focusing on the present.  Any future worry thoughts are held for the next day.

Most things we worry about never actually happen.

And the ones that do, don’t happen the way we fear they will.

Why hold our lives hostage to worry when we can schedule 10 minutes of worry time every day to deal with whatever is eating at us.

Mark Twain said, “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened”.

Try 10 minute worry sessions and see if they don’t help break the unreasonable fear that ruins our happiness.

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If you have kids and watch their behavior, you’ll notice that they have an innate way to focus on what is right.

They don’t try to improve us.

That’s what we try to do to them.

When you are in the company of a loved one don’t try to improve them.  Accept them as they are.  This is the secret to real friendship.

My best friend never criticized me in any way.  And when he had a point to make, he did so by asking a question.

More families, more friendships and more workplace associations are ruined by our need to improve someone else.

If the need to improve is so great, we can start by looking in the mirror.

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Life is tough because it tends to interrupt our well-intentioned plans to be happier.

A few weeks back, my wife and I attended a one-day Mayo Clinic Stress-Free Living seminar in Scottsdale, AZ.

The author and physician Amit Sood dazzled with so many ways to get to a more meaningful, stress-free life that it left one wondering where to begin.

But here is what Dr. Sood said.

If you do only two things to change your life, do these two:

1. Don’t postpone joy.  Our little and big victories, our happy moments are often squandered because we tend to move on to what’s next before we celebrate what has just happened.
2. Live a life of kindness even if others around you are not kind to you.  There are many benefits to the person who is being kind to others.  Most — not all – of the recipients will show kindness in return.

There is time to become an expert at relieving stress and living the life you really want to live, but to begin take these two steps that make all the difference in the world.

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The undisputable fact is that genetics and circumstances have the most to do with our happiness.

Thanks, mom and dad.  And thanks to your boss who is making life miserable.

The good news is that about 40% of happiness is due to intentional activities.

We can fight back or stack the deck in our favor by taking action.

And the number one way to take action and reap the happiness benefit is to increase our practice of being grateful every day.

Research studies also show that gratitude-based happiness also tends to increase the happiness of those around us as well.

There are so many ways to be more grateful.

Start each day by identifying three people for whom you are grateful even before you get up out of bed.

Or just writing a big “thank you” on the receipt for breakfast, lunch or dinner whether the service is great or not.  I like to include the server’s name with that “thank you”.

We take a lot of pills to improve our mood, but small and deliberate acts of gratitude are accountable for 40% of how we feel.

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When we don’t have the time, we lack priorities.

We always have time for the people who are important or the things that must be done.

It’s just a matter of putting our priorities in order and being constantly aware of this process.

The father at dinner with his children who glances at his cellphone even one time is telling his children that hearing them is not a strong priority.

Put the phone away and listen – that sends a positive message.

Lack of time to enjoy your success is failure.

Enjoying the fruits of your labor is a priority you can choose to make.

For people who wonder, “When am I going to have the time to do everything?”, they are guaranteed a stressful life unless they prioritize what is important.

The good news is we don’t need more hours in the day.

Years ago I read a great book that I can recommend to you by Alan Lakein called How To Get Control of Your Time and Your Life.  It was written before the digital age even though it is almost hard to believe that life could have been stressful back then.

In it, he emphasizes constantly asking ourselves if what we’re doing now is a good use of our time.  It’s not just about being efficient.  It’s about being happy.

Because in the end there is nothing worse than doing something well that doesn’t need to be done at all.

And there is nothing more disappointing than wasting a precious day on that which in the end is not going to increase our happiness.

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Modern life is fast moving and egocentric.

TV commercials tell us that companies wishing to do business with us are letting us have it our way. 

Social media by its very nature is egocentric.  We take “selfies” and post them and “like” the pictures posted by our social media “friends”.

Our lives are narrated on Twitter where our next thought becomes part of the thread of our lives.  Following others sometimes gets us caught up in their limited world.

Dale Carnegie used to say to make another person truly like you “talk in terms of the other person’s interests” yet now we find that the “other person” is already talking in terms of their own interests.  The world has changed that much.

Social media is perhaps the greatest invention of the Internet age but it has more potential to be a real tool for friendship.

Parties, events and special occasions are just plain fun and social media makes them even more fun by extension.

To live among the self-absorbed, make a conscious effort to remove yourself from self-absorption.

Spend some of your time talking in terms of the other person’s interests and make sure you’re not monopolizing the conversation whether it is in-person or through social media.

For those willing to deflect attention from themselves will come the reward of being sincerely liked if not loved by others.

In other words, the other person’s self-absorption stops and starts with us.

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Bronnie Ware who is a nurse to the dying in Australia wrote a book about dying that is actually very much for the living.

In The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed By the Dearly Departed, Ware gives us a second chance to avoid the regrets that so often come at the end of life.

They are:

1. I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.  To me, this regret hits home and is a timely reminder to be the person you want to be.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.  I’m sure you can relate.  Life has a way of interrupting our master plan.  No one ever regrets more time outs spent with family and friends.
3. I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.  There is a nice, pleasant way to say how you feel.  What is left unsaid at the end of life is more painful.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.  Friendship takes work that pays a dividend all during life.  It is not an accident.
5. I wish I had let myself be happier.  People from mid-life on often say that they consider their personal happiness more than when they were younger, a practice that will leave few regrets.

Just writing these five things that I have shared previously makes me hope that I won’t have these regrets someday.  How about you?

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There is appropriate anger, which is good and inappropriate anger, which is self-destructive.

1. Are you sure you are angry with the right person?  Often we take our frustrations out on the wrong people or even people who are close to us who have our best interests at heart.
2. Is it the right place and time?  Tempers tend to flare when we can’t deal with things that irk us.  But just as important as our response is asking ourselves the question “Is this the right place or time to express my anger?”.
3. Is the anger we’re feeling directly related to the issue we are responding to?  You don’t have to think too far back to the last time you witnessed an unfortunate display of anger that started dragging in the past.  Couples do this all the time at the expense of their relationship. 
4. Is my anger intended to vent in a constructive way or retaliate for being hurt?  Inappropriate anger is that which is directed at a person who may have hurt you through something they said.  Only respond if your goal is to express your feelings to the issue at hand.

Believe it or not, two tools that can help are deep breathing as you are getting amped up and postponing your response – even a second or two – to fully hear what is angering you.

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Every son should be a champion of empowering women because their mothers are women who deserve to be treated no less than a man.

Every father should be willing to fight for equal opportunity and advancement because their daughters need a strong advocate.

Every husband who is married to a woman should be anxious to see that their partner is treated with the same respect and gravity as any man.

Every friend who has a dear female friend should advance their cause because that’s what real friends are for.

My sister once told me that equal rights and treatment liberates men not just women.

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