Look what I found – a modern-day, real-life definition of the ravages of stress:

“We get stressed out now by having somebody yell at us in the office or by making a mistake or by losing a bunch of money. These aren’t problems that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had. They’d get stressed if a lion came to them or a boulder was rolling towards their living quarters. That kind of stress provoked the fight or flight response”.                                                                                            – Daniel Levitin

Anxiety was good in pre-historic days to stay alive, but it is killing us when the same intense responses happen many times a day due to more frequent lesser threats because of the way we chose to live.

Most stress is unnecessary.

When I am verbally attacked, I really have the urge to fire back.

Each time I do, I lose.  Each time I resist, I set up an unexpected victory.

Some people don’t mean to be insulting (and some do).

Others are bullies, let’s face it, the world has bullies of all ages.

If you make it far enough not to get into an insult-match, start asking questions.  Insults are emotional and don’t stand up well to rational questions like “what makes you say that” and “give me some examples”.

An insulting person may not be a friend you want but sometimes you can’t get away from them so standing back and making them explain their emotional tirade even lets them know that it is time to change the subject.

Apple founder Steve Jobs famously said “customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them” when his planning team wanted to research customer needs.

Big companies like Proctor & Gamble spend millions testing consumers and fail more often than succeed – and remember when Coca Cola decided that it was time for New Coke after doing research that was clearly wrong when the product failed.

This is important because in our lives we chase things that we think we may want but cannot know for sure until we get it.

Curiosity, it turns out, may be a better roadmap to our future desires so every day we feed our curiosity, we learn more about what may be important to us.

That’s what many of my students say – I tell them I need their 100% attention during class and recognize that if they have to check for messages, they can do so by stepping out of the classroom.

Imagine being thanked for asking them to stow their phones (and by stow I mean out of sight because yes, there is research that shows even if a phone that is turned off sits within your sightlines, you will keep checking it no matter whether that it is off).

Learning to live with technology is where most of us are right now – asking for undivided attention is not a punishment — it can be a reward.

It doesn’t take long to discover that spending more time with people in our lives that we may be neglecting is not the short answer.

What people crave is more focus not necessarily more time – the world is busy, life is hectic, almost everyone has the same problem of needing more time.

Activities and conversations that are so focused not even a mobile device can interrupt it.

People feel guilty when they know they are struggling to spend more time with those who matter in their lives but less time and more focus is where the sweet spot is.

In one of my recent NYU Music Business classes we were discussing voice activated listening (Alexa) — a student discovered research about how senior citizens improved their loneliness by interacting with a smart speaker.

Keeping in mind that the number one use for smart speakers like Echo is to listen to music.

But the seniors in this study talked to their artificial “friends” and treated them as they would a human.  Even saying hello when they walked into the room with a smart speaker.

Imagine the power of humans listening and responding to each other if artificial intelligence is a potent but less adequate alternative.

My NYU music business students are always interested in discovering and unlocking the dormant powers they have and may not even realize.

Nothing can pick up your day today more than acknowledging all the hidden powers we all have that can help us get through the ups and downs of daily living.

The power to deal with adversity – no course necessary, everyone has a pretty place to start.

The power to get along well with others – a hint, make it about them.

The power to make others happy – which makes us happy in the process.

The power to care about others and get the negativity off of us.

The dormant power within is there ready to go – hit start.

Author, physician and resilience expert Amit Sood says pursuing happiness will make you miserable.

Better to focus on caring.

And the core building block of caring is resilience.

Therefore, chasing happiness through books, blogs, videos, courses and even psychologists is a useless task.

Patterning happiness in the brain begins with increasing our awareness of caring for others.

The popular singer known as Bad Bunny (real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) doubles down on being yourself:

“Maybe at the very beginning of my career, I tried to pretend I was someone that I’m not, but I learned that that’s the way artists lose themselves …It’s because they forgot about themselves – them as a person – and invented a fictitious personality.”

Courage to be you and not morph into someone you’re not.

Not just for a performer but anyone who loses themselves is playing to an audience they can no longer see.

In a recent survey a majority of young people crossing all races, classes and cultures value personal success (achievement and happiness) over caring for others.

Fairness doesn’t get a high grade, either, compared to other values.

And parents and teachers may be sending the message that achievement takes precedent over caring.

The Harvard Making Caring Common Project says “The power and frequency of parents’ daily messages about achievement and happiness are drowning out their messages about concern for others.”

Kids and adults still believe in caring and fairness but the messages being sent daily may have to change.

Here’s the study.