By using your heart as your compass, you can see more clearly which direction to go to stop self-defeating behavior. If you take just one mental or emotional habit that really bothers or drains you and apply heart intelligence to it, you'll see a noticeable difference in your life.

Managing our emotions increases intuition and clarity. It helps us self-regulate our brain chemicals and internal hormones. It gives us natural highs, the real fountain of youth we've been searching for. It enables us to drink from elixirs locked within our cells, just waiting for us to discover them.

Generally, appreciation means some blend of thankfulness, admiration, approval, and gratitude. In the financial world, something that "appreciates" grows in value. With the power tool of appreciation, you get the benefit of both perspectives: as you learn to be consistently thankful and approving, your life will grow in value.

With just a little education and practice on how to manage your emotions, you can move into a new experience of life so rewarding that you will be motivated to keep on managing your emotional nature in order to sustain it. The payoff is delicious in terms of improved quality of life.

Learning to "just say no" to emotional reactions isn't repression. Saying no means not engaging the frustration, anger, judgment, or blame. Without engagement, you won't have anything to repress.

Harmonizing heart and brain through love is what can establish a complete intelligence, a complete self, where a child can look at life and realize there are no dead ends, there are always possibilities. The greatest gift a parent can give a child during all the ups and downs of life is love.

Appreciation and gratitude are a must if you choose to become the architect of increased happiness and your own fulfillment.