Here’s a great way to find out.

If you were to suddenly come into money – say $100,000, who would be happiest for you?

Who would not want anything from you?

Who would not be at all jealous?

Which person would share your joy?

That is likely the best friend you have.

In spite of social media misleading us to think that we have hundreds or thousands of “friends”, the only real friends are the ones who always put your interests before theirs.  Who takes pleasure in your good fortune.

By these standards, we should consider ourselves fortunate if we have but one friend like this.  And if there are more, these folks are your prized possession – the people who deserve the same consideration in return.

Acquaintances are many.

True friends are rare.

Value the small circle of people who mean the most to you.

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I am such a fan of Lena Dunham, actor, writer and producer of the HBO series “Girls”.  She artfully portrays the self-absorption of her Millennial generation.  Great characters.  Most of whom seem unhappy or unfulfilled in some way.

But wait!  It’s not just Millennials – everyone seems to be self-absorbed. 

We want what we want when we want it. 

We are always right. 

I want you to listen to me.  I don’t want to listen to you.

Trying to get others to focus on your happiness is a losing strategy.

Spend your time and resources making other people happy.

It is the only way to achieve personal happiness.

It’s about them.

Not you.

And never the other way around.

Last person to figure this out and take corrective measures gets to be miserable longest.

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Finding fault with others can consume much of our lives preventing us from happy moments.

There are two choices.

Accept others the way they are.

Or try to change them.

It is a zero-sum game that almost everyone plays.

Acceptance is the only answer because to change another person is impossible even if they appear to be altering what they think.

Thought of another way – for every person we try to change, we are committing ourselves to a life of unhappiness. 

Even trying to change a person for her or his own good or because we want to be a good teacher is not a good use of our time.

By accepting others the way they are.

By showing compassion for the way they want to be.

Then and only then can you offer up a point of view that may be valuable to them later. 

Or maybe not.

If there is any doubt about this, just consider the last time someone changed your mind about anything before and if you were ready to do so.

You cannot enjoy someone you are trying to make over.

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We all have some form of attention deficit whether diagnosed or not.

Our world is full of distractions as life has amped up to a faster pace driven by the immediate gratification of having the world (and our digital devices) in our hands.

When we phone life in by being partially present, we are giving away valuable time we can never get back.

One way to become more focused in this immediate climate is to put a finite number on the value of our time.

For instance, if your son or daughter is 15, they have fewer than 150 weeks before they go to college.  Remembering that will change the way you spend your time together.

If you see your parents once a year, keep focused that if they live to be 83 and they are 75 today, you may have only 8 more years to be in each other’s company.  Thinking about this helps you make the right decision about how to spend that time together.

I heard the story of a man who because of an accident was in traction in the hospital and rehab for six weeks.  That’s six weeks of agonizing confinement for an active person.  By figuring out how much 6 weeks was out of his expected lifetime, it put the inconvenience into perspective and made the experience more bearable.

We will never regret sending more text messages.

Why regret letting the happy moments that can be ours slip away if we will only just put in perspective how precious they are.

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Everything seems to be effortless in the beginning of a new relationship.

With the passage of time things tend to change but it does not necessarily mean you don’t love your partner as much as you once did. 

To fall in love all over again may be as simple as doing new things.

Routines can be good.  They help us get through our busy days, but when relationships suffer because they are routine, it’s time to shake it up.

• When returning home at day’s end, think of it as you returning after being apart a week or so.  Greet him or her with genuine anticipation that usually comes naturally after a long absence.
• Every time you do something routine (make dinner, watch TV, drive to Granny’s house, for example), add one new element in.  Make a new salad together one day.  Make popcorn with flavored seasoning on the popcorn while watching your favorite program.  Each person bring a mix of music that you think your spouse will like and play it on the way over.
• Come up with what you are grateful for while having coffee together at the beginning of the day and celebrate each other’s victories (large and small) together at the end of the day.

Couples usually get this right in the early stages.  This is how to rekindle it when the necessary routine of life dampens the spirit.

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Digital devices are not going away.

But friends are going to be harder to keep and family harder to keep close if those close to us do not get the same focused attention that a cellphone gets.

This is easier to see on someone else.

Watch how we stare with fixed focus at our cellphone screens – even if we have attention deficit.  Note how difficult it is to get a cellphone user who is texting to look up while they are in the process of pounding out the message.

In Philadelphia a few weeks ago, a teenager was hit by a train while walking along the tracks as he was texting on his phone. 

Even with the engineer blowing the whistle constantly and the screech of jamming on the breaks. 

True story.

Your cellphone has just taught you the secret to unlocking more productive relationships with others.

Focus attention on people the same way you stay riveted to a text message, email or an app.

Digital devices are tools – not a way of life. 

But they are altering relationships – and not necessarily for the better.  To fix the problem, you won’t have to look very far.

Don’t give up using your digital devices.

Just give people the same focus you give your cellphone.

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This one thing makes you more powerful than money, status or even luck.

When I was studying communication in college, there were the “obvious” choices for “most likely to succeed” and then some who you could never imagine ever becoming successful.

Wrong.

The “most likely to” had no lock on future success but no one was able to know the depth of desire that would drive the least apparent candidates to ultimately succeed.

As a professor at The University of Southern California I warned students to be the voice of encouragement. 

Make that belief palpable.  They would feel great about themselves and make the best investment in their futures by being a force for change.  And it’s the ultimate networking.

Start today.

Show endless encouragement in words and actions.

Bet on others not against them.

The payoffs are immediate.

And yes, start with yourself.

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On a typical day a person visits 40 different websites.

Shares 77 instant messages.

Focusing on each average website page for only about 20 seconds.

The new computer you will buy will have more memory and a faster chip than your present one.

You expect your high-speed Internet service to be faster.

You probably text in the car and maybe even while driving.

The average teenager sends 4,000 text messages a month and that figure grows by 300 each subsequent year.

Increasingly we are skimming through life with no time to stop and smell the coffee.

One way to make a dent in stress that is either caused by us or by the fast-paced world we live in is to prioritize.

1. Stop multitasking – why add more stress.  Choose what is important then focus 100% of your attention on it.  Don’t do everything.
2. When a person is important to us, they deserve 100% of our attention when we are talking to them (this applies to children as well).
3. Try sending fewer text messages that are better.  Fewer tweets that are more meaningful or creative. 
4. Designate screen time and face time.  Some schools recommend this to help children cope with the stresses of digital life.  Too bad their parents often set a poor example.
5. A thermometer takes our temperature.  Take a reading of your stress levels often during the day.  If it feels high, do less – feel more, focus attention and prioritize.

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Once we make important decisions about relationships, careers and how we want to live our lives, we tend to remain stuck to these decisions even if they are not working out for us.

That’s why we are almost always so surprised to see that getting fired in the career we chose can frequently lead to a more rewarding career in some other pursuit.

In other words, we become glued to our positions.

Our egos are on the line.  We don’t want to reevaluate important decisions we have made because in effect doing so is a rejection of our own ego.

It’s actually the other way around.

Attack your decisions – rethink and reevaluate them based on changes in circumstance or growth within yourself.

Because when you can break the chain of being bound to what you may have previously decided that no longer applies, you either chart a new path or reaffirm the one you are on.

There is no benefit to blindly live by life’s decisions that may have been made under different circumstances.

What matters is what decision do you want to make now.

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Anger is so destructive.

The person who has the anger melts down and becomes a person that he or she may not really want to be while the person this anger is directed at is hurt by it.

To let go of anger see it as a gift to yourself.

Why let another person hold you hostage and stimulate your anger in return?  Because that is what is going to happen as you react, defend and sometimes even strike back.

As difficult as this can be, there is a way to begin.

Try to see the anger spewing from another in a more compassionate way.  For example:  “She must really be at war within herself to alienate me and those she loves in this hurtful way”.

That one act of compassion – if you can muster it – allows you to step back and see the pain the angry person is inflicting on themselves not just you.

Forgiveness also works and keep in mind that forgiving does not mean forgetting.  It means moving on with your life even if the other person is stuck on their anger.

For me nothing helps dealing with the misappropriated anger of another better than reminding myself that I will not let my life be hijacked by the unresolved issues of another person.

I feel sorry for them and feel grateful that I can immediately move on with life.

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