Taylor Swift is one of the most important icons in the Millennial generation.

She is a role model for a lot of young and teenage girls and is a savvy businessperson in her own right.

She recently wrote in the stogy old Wall Street Journal to put selfies in their proper place.

Selfies are today’s autographs.

No one would dare ask someone for their signature when they could have a picture taken with them to distribute via social media.

My daughter, Daria, and her girlfriends at ASU Cronkite School were surprised to be approached by President Clinton and his Secret Service agents as he asked them if THEY would like to have a picture taken with HIM at a school event.

Taylor Swift says Instagram followers are currency because Instagram is the most important social networking tool for their age group.

She has 9.7 million Instagram followers, 41.7 million Twitter followers and 66.6 Facebook likes.

I can think of an almost endless number of people I wish I could have included in a selfie looking back on the past had only technology to do so been present.

The real revolution was not the computer, not even the Internet.

It is social media.

And anyone who says I don’t do social media is leaving one of life’s great new communication tools behind.

It’s called vamping and teens do it when they are supposed to be in bed and their parents think they are sleeping.

Snuggling under the covers, dimming the screen uploading music, watching videos, discovering whatever they seek online.

A recent New York Times article cited a recent National Sleep Foundation Poll that revealed more than half of 15 to 17 year olds sleep about 7 hours a night – 90 minutes less that the minimum recommendation.

As a professor at USC, my antidotal evidence was more like they’d be lucky to get four hours of sleep and they sleep with their phones in bed or nearby.

One explanation is that young people have so much structure in their lives installed by their parents that they cannot be free until their parents go to bed.

Texting is an amazing tool to help us communicate more seamlessly.

But it is not a lifestyle — jut a tool.

Without pointing fingers and including myself, parents are often poor role models when it comes to technology.

As our lives become more stressful, our goal should be to become more helpful.

And one last thought.

When a person is important enough to you, they deserve your focused attention in person with the exact same way we focus on our digital devices.

Psychologists and physicians tell us that another one of the human brain’s amazing abilities is to help us forget about painful things.

Not to say that we cannot remember hurt from years ago, but that we don’t remember it in exactly the same way.

The death of my mother and father is still sad to me but my visceral response is not the panic and disbelief I felt hours and days after they died.

A painful childhood has a way of sticking with us for a lifetime yet if we felt the pain exactly as it happened we might not be able to move on.

Denial is often the tool by which we deal with pain but even that tool betrays us if we also do not deal with our hurts and then also move on.

Same for pleasure.

If you remember the birth of your daughter, the promotion to partner, the first time you felt financially secure – it is still a great thought but not exactly as it was when it happened.

Fulton Sheen used to say when we get what we want, we no longer want it so it is often better to let go and experience life’s ups and downs with fewer preconceived demands.

Our mission then is to deal with life’s problems, not necessarily solve them and the human mind helps us along the way so we can stay focused on that goal.

The past is like a file cabinet, hard drive or cloud that holds our memories of the past.

The best way to deal with the past is to access it on-demand, get what we are after, then close the file and return to the present.

The future is unpredictable and unknowable.

The best way to visit the future is for planning purposes. But when we find that we are spending too much time in the future, immediately return to the present.

And what is the present?

It is not a place where we mindlessly disregard past memories or future dreams.  It is a place where we choose to focus our attention to drain every moment of happiness from what is happening now.

The past is a history book.

The future is a promissory note.

The present is cash in hand.

My wife and I are on vacation at an old haunt at Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island “down the Jersey shore” as you read this.

We love everything about the shore but what makes us anticipate this time together is revisiting and inventing new rituals.

Walking to the ice cream parlor near the lighthouse and waiting in a long line where we get to meet people from everywhere and around the corner.

Sitting on the beach after hours until the sun goes down.

Discovering a new walk.  Sitting by the dock of the bay would make Otis Redding happy.  (By the way, did you know Otis Redding never lived to see how big his version of “Dock of the Bay” eventually became).

Dinner with someone new.

Playing air hockey, golf and Scrabble together on our iPads.

Who knows what rituals we will conjure up this week.

A friend told me that successful relationships have one thing in common – they are embellished by seemingly little rituals that bring people closer.

A couple married 72 years recently revealed that doing things together and making decisions together makes for happier relationships.

Those decisions don’t always have to be major life decisions.

We can practice by making a late night run to Café Bacio in Beach Haven where they sell only desserts.

Followed, of course, by running on the beach to work off the calories the next day.

Bobby Ocean wrote to me recently to share this wisdom:

“I borrowed it from a Zen province in France where everyone yearly renews their spiritual guidelines and during that time, those wedded renew the decision they made when first living together – to treat one another as an “honored guest”.”

“Honored Guest” exceeds husband/wife or mother/father.

Often we find ourselves treating others as if they are furniture – they are there but they have no feelings.

Titles are titles but “honored guests” is a concept that changes the way we relate to those close to us whom we love.

Patrolman Kevin Briggs helped save many people from jumping to their death from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

What Briggs discovered worked best was to just listen.

He didn’t have any magic words that could save the lives of those bent on committing suicide.  In a powerful message to all of us, Briggs says listening can be the best advice.

His advice is also effective in helping people who are not yet on the brink – all of us respond positively when someone lends an ear.

Here are the three building blocks to the awesome power of listening to another person:

1. Listen to understand.
2. Don’t argue, blame or tell the person how they feel.
3. Being there for them may be the turning point they need.

Isn’t it ironic that no words can accomplish what no words can do?

Officer Briggs’ short inspirational talk on the power of listening is here.

The To-Do list that helps us accomplish the most is the one where the majority of items are never going to get done.

Many people are great at doing to-do lists, but fewer excel at getting things accomplished in spite of all the books that have been written on the subject.

Prioritize your tasks – All to-do’s are not created equally.

Only do 20% of them each day – 80% of all productivity comes from choosing the right 20% of your tasks to work on.  Make that decision wisely and you’ll have more time and accomplish more.

Don’t use your to-do list to park things you have no intention of doing – A task list should change constantly.  It must not be static.

Some things don’t need to be done at all – and some can be delegated to others.  Knowing the difference makes all the difference.

Finishing all your tasks means you failed – Happiness and success doesn’t come from getting all your work done because you’ll simply replace completed tasks with ones in an endless vicious cycle.

Assessing what is most important is the secret to productivity.

Young Millennials have been born into an age of great transition and uncertainty.

Over the past decade when they graduated from college, jobs were not readily available leaving many unemployed or underemployed.

Over 40% of Millennials live with their parents because of this and the high cost of repaying college loans.

Yet Millennials are an eternally optimistic generation.

They refuse to give up on their dreams as the oldest ones from their generation exceed 31 years of age.

Dreams are the sustenance of life.

When we stop dreaming, we stop living.

We settle for whatever we’ve got and don’t aim for more.

As long as we have air to breath, it is not only appropriate but essential that we never give up on our dreams.  Even if it is never attained, the person who dreams accomplishes more and is happier.

As Amy Tan said in The Hundred Secret Senses, “Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope”.

Dealing with anxiety is harder than it looks in our digital/connected world.

There are medications for some and then there are frustrations from trying to tame a fast-moving world.

I have found these anxiety fighters just as effective as medication and none of them require a co-pay:

1. At the first sign that anxiety is building, take ten deep breaths slowly breathing in for five seconds, holding it for five seconds and then gently letting it out for five seconds.  This works.  And you can do it longer if you like.
2. Remember this number – 99.9%.  That’s the percentage of times what we’re worried about that is making us anxious will never happen.  Focus on 99.9%.
3. The 0.1% when what we fear does happen, it rarely occurs exactly the way we feared it would happen.  Tuck this away in your head when fear and worry makes you anxious.
4. Key tool to keep handy:  IOUs for the many times in life when you have faced up to anxiety and succeeded.  Thinking, “I’ve done it before and I can do it again” can be preventative.
5. We have options to walk away from anxiety without telling anyone why.  It is our right to exit tense situations because we are being kind to ourselves.
6. When the same people tend to increase your anxiety, cut down or cut out the time you spend with them.
7. Fear of loss is normal and healthy.  In the end we all have to say goodbye to the ones we love and have to give up the things we’ve attained in life.  Another key thought:  loss is followed by something else gained.