You don't want to try to protect yourself from the pain of a crisis. You want to learn everything you can from it.

If you want to end darkness you cannot beat it with a baseball bat, you have to turn on a light.

You can't remove that layer of pain by just saying, "Okay, I'm not going to wallow in it." The only way to remove that layer of pain is to face what it says and to recognize it as the look in the mirror that it is, reflecting the things you did that you wish you hadn't done and the things you didn't do that you wish you had done.

The reason we don't often confront the larger question of whether or not war is survivable is because of a failure of imagination. We honestly cannot imagine having reached a state in our own evolution in which we do not fight.

A failure remains a failure only if we refuse to learn from it. Any situation that teaches us greater humility, sobriety, wisdom about self and others, responsibility, forgiveness, depth of reflection, and better decision making -\-\teaching us what's truly important-\-\is not an ultimate failure. Sometimes what we deem a failure at the time it happens actually serves to foster a change within us that creates an even greater success down the road.

Take a good look at your life right now. If you don't like something about it, close your eyes and imagine the life you want. Now allow yourself to focus your inner eye on the person you would be if you were living this preferred life. Notice the differences in how you behave and present yourself; allow yourself to spend several seconds breathing in the new image, expanding your energy into this.

As we give, so shall we receive. Service does not mean self-sacrifice. It means giving the needs of another person the same priority as our own.