God, help me let go of my need to be afraid. I welcome peace, trust, acceptance, and safety into my life. I will make a point of listening to my healthy, rational fears, and will relinquish all the others.

Striving for excellence is a positive quality. Striving for perfection is self-defeating.

I know when to say no and when to say yes. I take responsibility for my choices. The victim? She went somewhere else. The only one who can truly victimize me is myself, and 99 percent of the time I choose to do that no more. But I need to continue to remember the key principles: boundaries, letting go, forgiveness after feeling my feelings—not before, self-expression, loving others but loving myself, too.

I used to spend so much time reacting and responding to everyone else that my life had no direction. Other people's lives, problems, and wants set the course for my life. Once I realized it was okay for me to think about and identify what I wanted, remarkable things began to take place in my life.

...Help me let go of my need to stay immersed in negativity. I can change the energy in myself and my environment from nega­tive to positive. I will affirm the good until it sinks in and feels real. I will also strive to find one quality that I like about someone else who's important to me, and I will take the risk of telling him or her that.

Letting go helps us to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress.

You don't blast a heart open," she said. "You coax and nurture it open, like the sun does to a rose.