Healing is a different type of pain. It’s the pain of becoming aware of the power of one’s strength and weakness, of one’s capacity to love or do damage to oneself and to others, and of how the most challenging person to control in life is ultimately yourself.

You know how we say things like "I just have to be true to myself"? What does that mean? Great people always say, "There's something I was meant to do." That knowingness is what the soul understands. You have fundamental agreements that you simply feel. You can't put your finger on them because they reveal themselves to you within the context of your life through coincidence, synchronicity, and obligations you can't get out of. Together, these things form the whole of your sacred contract.

My prayer today is to not be negative about anything for one day. It is so easy to be disappointed, critical, cynical. Nothing is easier than to be a negative person. It takes effort to be hopeful and positive. People will say that you have to have a reason to be positive - what reason do the poor or lonely have to be positive? If we all waited for perfect conditions in our life before we felt hopeful, we would have very few days in life to celebrate. Perfection is rare. Hope means no matter how bleak, all things can and do change in the blink of an eye.

Silence is a learned practice that requires far more than just not talking. Not talking is not silence; it's just not talking.

That which serves our spirits enhances our bodies. That which diminishes our spirits diminishes our bodies.

Through the years of my life, the older I've gotten, the more sensitive I've become to the suffering of people and to my inability to really fix that. I wish that proportion was different. I wish I could help more. Unfortunately, that's not how the equation is working out here.

Developing personal power includes learning not to negotiate your self-worth for the sake of someone else or sell yourself short for a job.