A lot of things that trip us up is the action that we take upon the thought that there is competition among us.

What I mean by this is that we sometimes make hasty decisions out of fear that someone else will get to the finish line first– and we want to be that first person to complete and achieve that certain something.

When we feel that someone else is competing against us, it is easy to…

“You determine the effects that you will have upon others, and the nature of the experiences of your life.”
–Gary Zukav

This morning- for about an hour- I was in a deep conversation with a friend of mine. She was explaining to me how she is dealing with a certain issue that’s currently in her life.

While she was describing to me all of the details of this, I found myself relating to her. I realized…

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
–Lao-Tzu (Chinese Philosopher, 604 BC- 531 BC)

Any time you are starting something new – whether it’s a new relationship, a new job, a new family or a new hobby – it is always confusing where to begin.

Your head is spinning in a million directions; your mind is racing at top speed; you are completely out of control- and frantic, not knowing what to do…

Wouldn’t it just be nice to wake up today and shout out the window, “Hello world! Today I’m free!”

Wouldn’t that feel empowering?

Well, today is that day.

Today is your chance to show the self-confident, self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-contained and unconstrained you!

Today, you are now free from the influence and control of others.

Today, you are now free to stand on your own.

But why is today Miss Independent Day?

Well, why not today? Why wait?…

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Have you ever met someone and wanted to immediately befriend them? Especially on days when you are not feeling so good about life and don’t really have anyone to confide in?

But it’s hard to just step in and say to the other person, “Hey! I know we just met, but we should be friends.”

The reason it is hard to make friends is because we are so untrusting. We always want to believe that people have…

Forget just writing a chapter, I can write a whole book on all the people and things that annoy me. I can provide you with a list from here to Hong Kong of all the things that are nerve-racking in my life.

But I won’t. Instead I will appreciate the gifts that the annoyances bring me, and the many lessons I’ve learned because of them.

The power of the annoyances in your life is that they are…

Most of us define ourselves by our wounds. As a matter of fact, we wear them on our sleeves. We showcase them, marketing them to the whole world- or just to anyone that will listen. And, if we run across a person that doesn’t tread lightly around us, we feel that they are insensitive, incompassionate, uncaring and unsupportive.

Today we should tell ourselves that we have had enough support and need get on with the business of…

Many of us always look to others for approval or reassurance that what we are doing in our lives is right. We will ask our best friend’s opinion about which dress to wear, or our sister’s opinion about which guy to date, or our stylist’s opinion on the best hair cut.

We always give the other person’s opinion the best value without even first considering our own. We become so caught up in what someone else thinks…