When we notice a connection between our present fears and their origins in early life, we are finding out how much of our identity is designed by fear. Is fear the architect of me?

The most exciting part of finding out who we are is discovering our own uniqueness, who we are outside the box, beyond the categories in a Psychology 101 textbook. In our inimitable singularity, there is an infinite range of possibility that cannot be tied to any one description of what it means to be human or healthy.

Humility means accepting reality with no attempt to outsmart it.

True optimism is not the prospect of control over pain or elimination of it but survival through it.

Once we understand that what happens beyond our control may be just what we need, we see that acceptance of reality can be our way of participating in our own evolution.

Once we make our relationship choices in an adult way, a prospective partner who is unavailable, nonreciprocal, or not open to processing feelings and issues, becomes, by those very facts, unappealing. Once we love ourselves, people no longer look good to us unless they are good for us.

Most people think of love as a feeling, but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present.