Good pain is pain in the service of a purpose. Bad pain is pain endured because we are resisting a needed growth step.

When we begin to set boundaries with people we love, a really hard thing happens: they hurt. They may feel a hole where you used to plug up their aloneness, their disorganization, or their financial irresponsibility. Whatever it is, they will feel a loss. If you love them, this will be difficult for you to watch. But, when you are dealing with someone who is hurting, remember that your boundaries are both necessary for you and helpful for them. If you have been enabling them to be irresponsible, your limit setting may nudge them toward responsibility.

Leadership is not taken, it is given. People give leadership to those that they trust. They allow people that they trust to have influence over their lives.

Things don't change in a marriage until the spouse who is taking responsibility for a problem that is not hers decides to say or do something about it.

Dating is about finding out who you are and who others are. If you show up in a masquerade outfit, neither is going to happen.

If people are really narcissistic or have a need to be seen as more than they really are, or to be admired as having it all together, then they cannot be followed and trusted by others.

That is why success and fruitfulness depend as much upon focusing on the "who" you are as much as the "what" of the work you do. Invest in your character, and it will give you the returns that you are looking for by only investing in the work itself. You can't do the latter without the former.