When I taught generational media at the University of Southern California, I used to share thoughts about life to my students in the final minutes of class.

Last week, one of my students posted it on Facebook for all her friends to see.  It was an inspirational passage about the freeing benefits of taking risks and I’d like to share it with you today:

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.

To reach for another is to risk involvement.

To expose your feelings is to risk exposing your true self.

To place your ideas, your dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.

To love is to risk not being loved in return.

To live is to risk dying.

To believe is to risk despair.

To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live. Chained by their attitudes they are slaves; they have forfeited their freedom.

Only a person who risks is free.”

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The more a salesperson sells me, the more I don’t want to buy. 

The more someone tries to win me to their way of thinking, the more resistant I become.

And we’re being sold something constantly through advertising, popup ads, search, billboards and those around us.

So here is the secret to getting someone to listen to you.

Listen to them.

The sales guru Tom Hopkins is known for teaching a technique where a “champion” salesperson gathers information and looks for validation before asking for the sale.

“Would you like it in red?”

“Yes”

“I’ll make a note of it”

Listening and not talking is the key to getting people to opt in on what you have to say, or what you think.

Listening is so hard.  It seems to be against everything we’re taught in life.  To pursue what we want and do it vigorously.

Ironically, the secret to influencing others is to be skilled at sincerely listening to them.

Here are 6 ways to persuade and influence others from Steve Bressert, PhD:

1. People are more willing to comply with requests (for favors, services, information, and concessions) from those who have provided such things first.

2. People are more willing to be moved in a particular direction if they see it as consistent with an existing or recently-made commitment which is why when shopping for a car you are asked “What qualities are you looking for?” in a car.

3. People are more willing to follow the directions or recommendations of someone they view as an authority.

4. People are more willing to take a recommended step if they see evidence that many others, especially similar others are taking or buying or using it.

5. People find objects and opportunities more attractive to the degree that they are scarce, rare, or dwindling in availability.

6. People prefer to say yes to those they know and like.

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.” – Dale Carnegie

Millennials – the 80 million or so people who are coming of age in Gen Y – have many admirable characteristics not the least of which is pursuing their dreams.

We’re never too young or too old to chase our passions in life.

There is no total number of dreams we are allowed.  Everything counts – home, work, relationships, friends, causes.  We can have more than one at a time.

Dreaming is not easily outsourced to another, it must come from within.  No one can have your dream of the future exactly the way you want it and no one other than ourselves should be asked to be responsible for it.

People who discourage should be avoided because the guaranteed best way to dash your dreams is to allow someone else to tell you what isn’t possible.

Is there a dream that you want to pursue?  If so, it will not find you.  You will have to find it.

Try this.

Name 5 dreams you have for yourself.  Think big – the bigger the better but they don’t have to be earthshattering.

Think “can” instead of “can’t”.

Start today and never look back until you fulfill your dreams.

“All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them” – Walt Disney.

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How long is it normal to mourn a loss?

As long as we are able to go on with our day-to-day activities there is no timetable on mourning.

Television’s “Mister Rogers” in an interview with Karen Herman once had the ultimate challenge.  I’ll let Fred Rogers tell it in his own powerful words.

“My greatest challenge?  I suppose to walk through the door and sing ‘It’s A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood’ when I have had a real sadness in my life. I had to go to Miami one hour after my father’s funeral because they were having a Mister Rogers Day there that could not be cancelled. We had 23 fifteen-minute performances in one day. I had to sing ‘It’s A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood’ for each one of them.”

Gratitude is the elixir for sadness.

The more grateful we remain, the more we can live life with all its up and downs.

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Organizational psychologist Adam Grant never turns down an opportunity to help others.

Grant is the youngest-tenured and highest rated professor at Penn’s Wharton School. He has published more papers in his field’s top journals than those who have spent a lifetime trying.

This guy is the opposite of the four-hour workweek.

A full inbox is an opportunity to help, not just tantamount to answering emails.

When you look to helping others succeed, you succeed.  No one ever failed who also helped another.

Grant says there are givers, takers and matchers:

“The takers are people who, when they walk into an interaction with another person, are trying to get as much as possible from that person and contribute as little as they can in return, thinking that’s the shortest and most direct path to achieving their own goals”.

“At the other end of the spectrum, we have this strange breed of people that I call “givers.” It’s not about donating money or volunteering necessarily, but looking to help others by making an introduction, giving advice, providing mentoring or sharing knowledge, without any strings attached”.

“A matcher is somebody who tries to maintain an even balance of give and take. If I help you, I expect you to help me in return. [They] keep score of exchanges, so that everything is fair and really just”.

If this intrigues you as it does me, try what Adam Grant does.  He hardly ever says no to the “five-minute favor”. 

Here is an interview with Adam Grant, author of Givers and Takers that describes the benefits and research that backs up the concept that helping others helps us.

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I’ve come across a powerful paragraph that jumps starts our ability to transcend living in the past or future so we can fully enjoy and concentrate on the now. 

I thought I would share this with you from Gina Lake’s “Living In the Now:  How To Live As The Spiritual Being That You Are”:

“The ego is always trying to improve on the present moment, but instead, it ruins it with its dissatisfaction. It tells us the present moment would be better if: “if I had more money,” “if I were in a relationship,” “if I were thinner,” “if I were better looking,” “if I lived somewhere else,” “if that hadn’t happened,” “if I hadn’t…,” “if I had…,” and on and on.  Those are all lies. None of those things change your experience of the moment unless you believe they do. If you believe you need anything else to be happy, you won’t enjoy the moment. You won’t really let yourself fully experience it. If you don’t believe you need anything more to be happy than what’s here right now, you discover you have everything you need”.

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The professional golf instructor Sandy LaBauve has a great way of balancing happiness with productivity.

Think of what is important to you as the four tires on a car.

It may be faith, exercise, family and work.  Substitute your own priorities.

What drives you?

Then – and this is the part that will help keep life in balance when one of these “tires” needs inflating —  you devote attention to the one that is going flat and pump it up.

That way you’re literally always in the driver’s seat in achieving all four of the things that make you happy and productive.

“Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals and values are in balance” – Brian Tracy

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The author Pico Iyer wrote a piece in The New York Times over a year ago that I have not been able to get out of my mind.

It was called The Joy of Quiet.

But joy is not the only benefit – it is increase productivity and a happier life.

Iyer wrote, “The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug”.

In 2007 Intel mandated 4 hours of quiet time every Tuesday morning for 300 engineers and managers.  No phone.  No email.  Most of those participating recommended that it be extended to others.

The average office worker, by the way, gets only three minutes of uninterrupted time according to researchers.

The average American teen sends 75 text messages a day.

And the average American spends at least eight and a half hours in front of some type of screen each day.

We’ve got no time to think, enjoy, interact or recharge.

Iyer suggests an “Internet Sabbath” every weekend – no online connections from Friday night until Sunday morning.  Okay, that’s not going to work for me.

There’s yoga, meditation and tai chi.

Long walks on weekends without a cell phone.

Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows about how much time we spend online, suggests that people who spend time in rural settings “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition.  Their brains become calmer and sharper”.

Even simply becoming aware that a lack of quiet is a problem empowers us to find a workable personal solution.

“When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself” – Marshall McLuhan

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When new drugs are tested, placebos are used to ferret out whether the drug actually works or whether people just think the drug works.

Depressed people can have a 30 to 50% chance of feeling better whether they take an actual anti-depressant pill or a sugar pill.

Hotel room attendants who were told that they were getting a good workout from their job showed a significant decrease in weight, blood pressure and body fat – all this in just 4 weeks. (Published in Psychological Science, 2007)

Four weeks of simply thinking they were getting a real workout.

Patients with an irritable bowel condition were given inert pills and told that these pills worked by a mind/body process.  The patients started feeling better.  In other words, the medicine worked even after patients were told it was a placebo.

Asthma patients who were treated with placebos said they felt just as good as if they inhaled the medicine albuterol.

The mind is more powerful than the body.

We can harness the power of positive expectations today and every day.

If you expect good to happen, chances are they will.

We already know that when we expect bad, it never disappoints.

So, cop an attitude – a positive attitude about something you expect will happen and see if it doesn’t work for you, a friend or a loved one.

“Human beings are not made to take shortcuts … You’re to live your life, moment by moment. Your life isn’t here to entertain you – it’s to be lived.” – David Rotenberg, The Placebo Effect

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Sports stars get to negotiate contracts every few years with new benefits, conditions, incentives and pay.

There is something alluring to being able to refocus our wants and needs every few years.  And that’s what I recommend in my book – become a free agent.

At the same time each year, get away from your routine and take inventory of what you want next in life.  Too often, we just stay at the same job or with the same group of friends because it’s the easiest or safest thing.

Even if you want to do next year what you did last year, signing a mental contract with yourself gives more meaning and commitment to the time you are going to devote.


And if a change is brewing, thinking of yourself as a free agent instead of a person looking for another job can be transformative.

I recommend an off-season (to take inventory of your goals), pre-season (to acquire the skills you’ll need), “the” season (to ply those skills) and post season (to achieve new highs).

I sign a one-year free agent agreement with myself every year after carefully considering my goals, desires and dreams.  My off-season is a one-week vacation at the Jersey shore, which allows me to think more freely away from my regular routine.

“Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it” – Katharine Whitehorn

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