Several books have had a major impact on me: books such as “The Naked Ape” by Desmond Morris, “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibrand, “I’m Okay. You’re Okay” by Thomas Harris and Gail Sheehy’s “Passages.” Her book explored the natural personality changes common to each stage of life, and she takes the reader through the passages of each decade of life, what to anticipate, and how to use each of these passages as an opportunity for growth.    Much of “Passages” content has remained embedded in my mind because of the way she described our twenties and all the things we tend to do wrong during that important beginning adult decade of our lives. I was in my early thirties when it came out, and, to my delight, she explained that those second decade mistakes we made can be cleared up and corrected during the next ten years of life. It worked.
By embracing that life lesson as we move through our personal passages, there are things that we can undo, things we might not repeat, and things we can fix to help us grow toward a higher consciousness and level of achievement, however we define that for ourselves. And it sometimes takes mistakes to get there, but that’s okay.
Not unlike that hackneyed Thomas Edison quote, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” And “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” We can try, fail, try, fail, try, fail and finally get it right if we just stick to it.  Persistence is frequently the only commitment that’s needed to move things forward in positive ways. The other thing, though, is knowing when to quit and move on when a lesson is learned and not to be repeated.
Personally, as a musician or artist, it was never good enough for me to have a Plan B. In fact, when teaching leadership classes, my recommendation to the participants is to have as many plans as it takes to get it done, even if it means having a Plan Z.
Much of life requires risk-taking, and if you’re completely risk-adverse, you will be stuck in place because of your own fears and insecurities. You don’t have to fight the ocean to ride the waves.  Even in the most horrendous situations, there are amazing life lessons that allow us to grow and make unbelievable progress during that next opportunity or challenge.
If at first you don’t succeed . . .  Remember, it’s how we learned to walk, and it applies to most other challenges that we face. I remember asking a genomics scientist what happens if we block the communication pathway between genes and proteins, which are the workers and foot soldiers of the human body, and he responded casually yet assertively, “They do the same thing we do as people. They find a different way and get it done.”
Watching very young children who are presented with a problem creatively work their way through obstacles is always fun because they aren’t encumbered with our give it up attitude. They just keep trying until they figure it out. That spirit of creativity, stick-to-it-iveness, and optimism is the child portion of our brain described in the book “I’m Okay. You’re Okay” that we need to continue to embrace throughout life.
We can’t let our amygdala talk us down or convince us to quit, or that we’re not good enough, not bright enough, not creative enough.  We just need to make the mistake, fix it, learn from it and move on.  Growth comes from challenge.
Winners never quit, and quitters never . . . you get the idea. You can make life work for you by being persistent, determined and tenacious.  Wait. Those are all synonyms.

Sent from my iPhone

Because I’ve recently been eagerly searching for my next chapter, it’s taken me down some very interesting, sometimes brilliantly lit, passages. Frequently, getting older feels challenging and emotionally wasteful to me, and because of that, I’ve begun to realize that there’s plenty of time, but sometimes not enough life.

Leonardo Da Vinci said, “Time stays long enough for those who use it.” But Albert Einstein had his own viewpoint when he said, “Time is an illusion.”

When I revisit all the negative experiences of my lifetime –the Korean War, Vietnam, the assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, the Chicago riots, Kent State, Nixon, Iraq, 9-11, Iraq and Afghanistan, Hurricanes Katrina, Maria, Sandy and Michael, mass shootings in schools, movie theaters, concerts and night clubs, and the Boston marathon bombing – a quote from J.R.R. Tolkein’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” comes to mind:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Instead of watching life passing by, my goal has been to enthusiastically work to create a legacy that helps others. I’m not striving for immortality through these actions, it just seems so much more productive than the alternatives.

As we begin to notice the sands in our own personal hour glasses rushing through like darting fireflies on a warm summer evening, we realize that the panic or unrest that we sometimes experience is not so much fear of death, but fear of not having the time left on this planet to get done whatever we think we were put here to do.

One of my favorite quotes about time and life is from Sarah Dessen.“There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you’d better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you’ll never understand what it’s saying.” Just listen.

If we embrace science’s theory that man and all of life simply evolved through billions of years of chemical interactions, there has to be some safety net, some handle to grasp onto tightly or we might free fall through infinite intellectual space.

Obviously, it could be much more fun to go through this fleeting journey with no guiding principles, no moral compass and no ethical boundaries because every day would be a random holiday of self-gratification without retribution and many days it feels as if we’re living in an era where positive values are being denigrated, ignored and vilified, but the emptiness of that type of narcissistic journey is well documented.

We now know definitively that we are connected at a molecular level with everything and everyone in the universe.

If we think positively, we can feel peace as in this quote by Rabindranath Tagore, “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

Possibly, just embracing goodness is the very best answer and a wonderful brass ring to grasp.

Think about the ethical implications of The Golden Rule. It exists in some form in every religion of the world. Maybe just doing the right thing will be enough.

If we acknowledge our complex web of connectivity, why not spend each day being good to others, and thus being good to ourselves?

It shouldn’t be about guilt. It should be about making clear, positive choices between things like giving vs. greed; or loving vs. hating; kindness vs. meanness; positive actions vs. negativity. Those positive choices are good choices.

What if we’re born, we live, and we die and that’s it?

My personal recommendation is to embrace the goodness.

The hospital environment in the United States is quickly changing nationally and exponentially more rapidly in Pennsylvania. According to Moody analysts from a Modern Healthcare article by Alex Kacik, hospitals are successfully lowering their operational expenses but not as quickly as their revenue is dropping. The implications of that statement are onerous. There are only so many ways to cut until you reach rock bottom as an organization and the point of no return. Shrinking to greatness is typically not considered a viable option to survival.

The statistics from 2017 are very telling as expense growth was cut by 5.7% but revenue has only grown by 4.6% and that was in spite of the numerous mergers and acquisitions that have taken place. In fact, with 13 M&A transactions, Pennsylvania was the most active merger and acquisition state nationally followed by Georgia and Texas at nine and eight each. In the year 2000, there were approximately 122 independent community hospitals in Pennsylvania and now there are just 36 with several of these hospitals hanging by a proverbial economic thread.

Without getting too deeply into the financial woods, Medicie and Medicaid payments as a percentage of gross hospital revenue increased slightly, but higher paying commercial insurances have gone down by 33.9%. In a financial structure where less than 3% of net patient revenue came from capitated and risk-based contracting in 2017 and 41% from DRG’s (Diagnostic Related Groups), 28% from fee schedules and 17% from the actual charge master or list price, based on a traditional operating model, there is no clear pathway for small and rural hospitals to remain viable.

Add to these economic challenges, the 2868 total number of retail clinics in the United States supported by Minute Clinic, Walgreens, The Little Clinic, Walmart, Target and dozens of other smaller corporations as well as an exponential growth in free-standing surgi-centers and independent physician-based clinics, and hospitals must take additional aggressive steps to change their business model.

In the Modern Healthcare article, Lyndean Bric, President of Advis Group, a healthcare consulting firm, states that hospitals must find ways to grow volumes, be creative, and do things differently than they have by looking to monetize assets and seek out non traditional revenue.

What if your hospital could afford to have its own Innovation Officer, and creativity could be added to your C-suite agenda at every meeting? With experience in the latest “Omics” research, expertise and connectivity in Integrative Medicine, and other cash income producing innovations, we can change the way a community utilizes their local hospital facilities while generating significant financial gains to their bottom line.

Although some of the areas that we may recommend may seem a little like “driving in front of your headlights” to the traditionally trained C-suite executive, each of them comes with a proven track record of success from multiple settings. Ultimately, the hospitals that work with us have experienced new levels of community acceptance and involvement that helps to reposition them as true partners with their patient base on a level that drives increased volumes and patient revenue.

Be it cash paying integrative treatments, pharmacogenomics testing, human longevity, federal and state grant opportunities, new technologies for treating depression, opioid testing labs, the creation of a 501©3 Foundation, mobile imaging, polypharmacy, or just creative supply chain payment methodologies, we hav experience, knowledge, and connectivity in all of these areas and because of that can bring the right people to the table to make “creative things” happen in an economically viable way for you and your organization.

Full disclosure. I was never physically molested by a person of the cloth. I’ve been verbally abused, but most of us have had that experience sometime from someone in power regardless of our faith.

When I was a pre-teen and wanted to be a priest, my Italian grandfather used to tell me regularly that I shouldn’t be so “impressed” by them. He used to say, “Nicky, the Pope is just an old man.” When he said that, I was worried that he’d be going straight to hell, but I’m pretty sure now that wouldn’t have been a problem.

When President Kennedy was killed, I was a complete wreck because I had read that he ate bacon for breakfast that Friday morning. At that time, that was also a “Hell” infraction. Of course that was before I had heard about his other extracurricular activities. Naivety can be a wonderful protector.

A decade after that, my dear Italian grandmother died. To say she was religious would literally be “the understatement of the year.” As a young woman, she had made a Pilgrimage to Assisi and even had a tattoo on her right arm that the participants received for making the last mile up the mountain to the Church of St. Francis on her knees.

Grandma died and the new priest pulled up to the funeral home in a white Mercedes. He came inside to talk to my dad about her funeral, and then this happened. “Mr. Jacobs, I don’t care if she came to church every day of the year, I won’t do this funeral mass unless you pay me $100 upfront.” (That’s $580.06 now.)

Two years later my dad died. He had been suffering from lung cancer and didn’t make it to church very often because of that. During that time, he received last rites from another new priest.

Except for that meeting, they were not well acquainted. During the sermon at my father’s funeral, the priest said, “Charlie, snuck into heaven through the back door” because he wasn’t attending church regularly. Then his entire sermon was a lecture about abortion. Nothing about my dad.

Later in my life I went to work for a Catholic Hospital. There I met several nuns who, when you looked into their eyes, you could literally see heaven. They used to say, “Don’t go to those priests for confession. Some of them are very bad people.” I should have listened.

As it turned out, several of those priests were exposed in the Altoona/Johnstown predator report. Some of those ladies must have known and had no where to go because even the DA’s of that era along with the monsignors, bishops, cardinals, and the Vatican have been implicated.

Many of my Catholic friends will point out to me that the church is not solely its leadership, but its members. It is also a human organization run by humans with human flaws. No human organization is perfect. They will say they are members based on their personal faith. So by lumping all members with these criminals I am basically accusing all of them who continue to remain faithful to the teachings of the church of the same crimes.

That is certainly not my intent. Just like I didn’t accuse my Penn State friends of being part of the Sandusky scandal. What I am saying, however, is that these heinous crimes should be punished to the full extent of the law. The statute of limitations should be lifted. Judges should not be able to take donations as potential hush money from those related to the church, and, for God and the kids’ sake, let priests get married, or at least screen out the pedophiles. Let women enter the priesthood. These were illicit sex rings run with the knowledge of church leadership.

As Blood Sweat and Tears used to sing… I pray there ain’t no hell. (Because it’s gonna be full of unholy men.)

Many of us are proud of our fathers, and with Father’s Day fast approaching, we’re definitely expecting to see posts praising our dads. OK, so, here you go.

My dad was relatively short in stature at about 5’6,” but incredibly tall in my eyes. Although Dad held jobs that usually preferred a college education, and he didn’t have one, he was one of the smartest men I’ve ever been around. Whenever something interested him, he attacked it with wild abandon. When it was iron furnaces and cannonballs, we traveled all around our area seeking cannon balls with bent coat hangers or twigs as dowsing rods. When he became enamored with electronics, we got to play with every type of electronic analytical machine that he could buy used. (We didn’t have much money.)

Dad dove into bees, not literally, and learned all about them. Then, as he reached his 40s, he turned to our community. First he decided that any peaceful little community should have gray squirrels so he drove back and forth to Jeannette, where a friend would live-catch squirrels for him. He populated our little town with these frisky bushy tailed devils. He loved to watch them, but, unfortunately, our neighbors loved to shoot and eat them.

After his squirrel adventures, dad turned to getting water and sewage into our little village, then a bridge, and finally, a Coal and Coke Museum. During his work days, he was able to convince an entire community along the Mon River to work together to bring in the Pittsburgh Wind Symphony for summer concerts.

To say that he didn’t teach me a lot would be a bona fide distortion. Every night he’d drill me in recitation of vocabulary words. We had a large box of vocabulary words that he practiced with me, words that won’t appear in this column because they are too obtuse. His charge to me was that I’d learn five new obscure words from the lexicon each and every day, use them in sentences until I was comfortable with them so I’d get a great score on my College Board exam. (That worked in English but not so much in math.)

Dad also taught me to spade a garden, control copperheads that were about to strike me with a two pronged snake stick, shoot rats at the local dump, identify all poisonous plants, recycle bottles, make compost piles, shovel coal into the coal bin, stoke a coal fired furnace and then empty the ashes from that furnace, solder, use a hand saw, pound nails, change the oil and do body work on a car, and most importantly, avoid physical harm by outsmarting my potential opponents. He taught me how to make money from a lemonade stand, from grass cutting, and running errands for retired people. He also taught me how to manage my paper route like a business. He would sit with me and go over my collections, explain how to approach the two deadbeats on my route and how to up-sale my customers into getting the Sunday paper.

Our grade school was only a few blocks away, but I always begged my parents to allow me to periodically take my lunch to school.

Dad wanted me to feel special, so he bought white lunch bags. I was the only kid in the school who ever had a white lunch bag. He also encouraged my imagination by buying me little tablets and making sure I always had lots of pens and pencils.

He bought me my first bike and car but then taught me how to save for the second of each. Above all he taught me how to be a good, loving, kind, resourceful, provider and Father.

Dad smoked until 1960, but he died in 1975 from lung cancer. It was an outrageous loss for my family and for the world. Love ya, Dad.

When asked what the most perplexing thing was about humanity, the Dali Lama replied, “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

There’s a famous scene from the 1991 movie “City Slickers” where the Jack Palance character, Curly, seated comfortably on the back of a beautiful horse, looks over at Mitch, played by Billy Crystal, and says, “Do you know what the secret of life is?” Then he holds up his gloved index finger and says, “One thing. Just one thing.” To which Mitch responds, “What, your finger?” Curly, with a cigarette hanging from his lips continues to stare at him and repeats, “One thing, just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean @#$%.” Mitch then replies,”That’s great, but what’s the one thing?” And Curly replies, “That’s what you gotta figure out.”

I spent some time honing in on what that was for me, and about 10 years ago, I heard someone describe a happy friend as a person who was living a purpose driven life, and it hit me. That’s where I’ve found happiness.

True happiness for me seems only to come from living a purpose driven life, but that’s not always easy, and plenty of things can get in the way.

Behavioral scientists have long known that our neurons are set by the age of 2 or 3. In my case, a friend once observed, “You always try to deliver the impossible on a platinum platter, and people just get used to it. So, you kind of make your life your own personal hell by always trying to exceed everyone’s expectations.”

The bad news is that, now that I’ve figured it out, I still have trouble trying not to focus on always making people happy all the time. It’s not easy, but its also not impossible. I always have to remind myself that it is not my circus and they are not my monkeys. We all have to figure out our personal vulnerabilities.

I’ve wanted to have bumper stickers made saying, “We’re all messed up,” because we are all messed up in our own way, and it’s up to us to either try to figure it out or get someone to help us figure things out. Otherwise, we just drive ourselves and everyone else bonkers. If we can recognize our personal flaws, we might be able to stop doing some of the destructive things we do to ourselves while we’re on this journey.

But the point of this article wasn’t to concentrate on either my story or Mitch’s. It was to get you to try to figure out your stories, your “one thing.” It’s just a matter of deciding what that one thing is that makes you tick, or purr, or sing. Sometimes, it’s simply about honing in on the beauty of that one thing, and that, my friends, takes focus. It also takes thought, honesty, and discipline.

OK, so 3-year-old Pete was sitting in his little “reward for pooping on the potty” electric car, and he thought the battery was dead because all he heard when he pushed on the ignition switch was click, click. Anyway, according to my daughter, he sat back, shook his head and said, “Son of a *%^#. This is messed up.” When his folks corrected him, he looked down and said it again under his breath. Fortunately, I wasn’t there because, as indicated above, I just want him to love me, but when she told me, I thought, “You got that right, kid. This is messed up!” So, let’s fix it.