A bully hides his fears with fake bravado. That is the opposite of self-assertiveness.

Your life is important. Whether you achieve what you want in life matters. Whether you are happy matters. Honor and fight for your highest potential. Self-realizatio n-the realization of the best within you-is the noblest goal of your existence.

Whether your focus is on preserving and strengthening family ties in a world of increasingly unstable relationships, gaining access to a decent job, growing and evolving as a person, or guiding a company through the stormy seas of a fiercely competitive global marketplace-whether your goals are material, emotional, or spiritual-the price of success is the same: thinking, learning. To be asleep at the wheel-to rely only on the known, familiar, and automatized-is to invite disaster.

If you choose not to live self-responsibly, you count on others to make up your default. No one abjures self-responsibility on a desert island.

If you bring five percent more awareness to your work tomorrow, or to your most important relationship, what might you do differently? Are you willing to find out?

What is guilt? It is moral self-reproach-I did wrong when it was possible to have done otherwise.

Do not marry the enemy of your excitement.