There are, of course, two kinds of suffering, that which has a reward and that which doesn't.

Each of us seeks peace of mind, but we sometimes fear that it means giving up excitement and ecstasy. Peace sounds like contentment, which sounds like settling, letting the fire go out. Actually, peace of mind allows you to go more deeply into the world and consequently to experience more excitement and ecstasy. The fire burns brighter, fueled by awareness instead of anxiety.

You can speed up your life if you want to - that's easy. Winding down is what's hard.

If you had to choose only two qualities to get you through times of change, the first should be a sense of self-worth and the second a sense of humor.

The accumulation of small, optimistic acts produces quality in our culture and in your life. Our culture resonates in tense times to individual acts of grace.

We receive mixed messages about taking good care of ourselves. Love thy neighbor as thyself means to love thyself and thy neighbor. Yet, self-love often is confused with selfishness and conceit. We are selfish when we do not love and accept ourselves, and attempt to take from others to fill the emptiness. Conceit indicates low self-worth and an attempt to conceal it. It is difficult to extend to others what you have not been able to give yourself. Take good care of yourself so you can care about the rest of us.

The average person's short-term memory can hold only five to seven bits of data at any one moment. If you put more items in, others fall out. The older you are, the more you have crammed into those memory circuits. Twenty-five-year-olds can remember things because they still have empty space. Some of us take our children to the supermarket in the hope they will remember why we are there.