Gratitude is like a flashlight. If you go out in your yard at night and turn on a flashlight, you suddenly can see what's there. It was always there, but you couldn't see it in the dark.

Through fear of knowing who we really are we sidestep our own destiny, which leaves us hungry in a famine of our own making...we end up living numb, passionless lives, disconnected from our soul's true purpose. But when you have the courage to shape your life from the essence of who you are, you ignite, becoming truly alive.

I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.

Kindness is twice blessed. It blesses the one who gives it with a sense of his or her own capacity to love, and the person who receives it with a sense of the beneficence of the universe.

From the time we begin school, if not sooner, we are taught to be blind to our assets and only see our deficits. We are carefully marked on how many we got wrong on a test and, rarely if ever, asked how we know how to spell the ones we got right. By the time we are adults, we are well versed in every one of our limitations, skilled in our incompetence. If we were fish in an aquarium, it would be as if we kept smashing against the glass, and forgot the fact that we were perfectly capable of turning ever so slightly and swimming gracefully in the water all around us.

As with any other great force of nature, there is both glory and danger in the stories we tell ourselves. Some are toxic and keep our problems festering. Others are tonic and bring us beyond the limitations of our previous history. To be in a life of our own definition, we must be able to discover which stories we are following and determine which ones help us grow the most interesting possibilities.

I will not die an unlived life...I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me...I choose to risk my significance.