If your neighbor has a completely different view on abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, all of those things, you still are both Americans. Neither one of you is necessarily more patriotic than the other. Neither loves their country any more than the other one does.

If you don't have a plan, days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, months turn into years, and before you know it you're looking back saying, I should've had a plan.

Like an enemy I knew as intimately as any friend, I came to know the nagging, constant emptiness of the incongruent life. I ignored myself and lived for people, purposes, and goals that weren't my own. I betrayed who I was and instead accepted a fictional substitute that was defined from the outside in.

There is power in forgiveness.

You have to figure out what that is, and you have to make a plan to get to it. And the plan has got to have a timeline. You have to choose something that you can afford to do and then lock it in and passionately do it.

You need to listen to your body because your body is listening to you.

Learn when's a good time to shut up