Greet everyone you meet with a warm smile. No matter how busy you are, don't rush encounters with coworkers, family, and friends. Speak softly. Listen attentively. Act as if every conversation you have is the most important thing on your mind today. Look your children and your partner in the eyes when they talk to you. Stroke the cat, caress the dog. Lavish love on every living being you meet. See how different you feel at the end of the day.

Despite all the doom and gloom that constantly assaults our senses, there is a way for us to ransom our lives and reclaim our futures: it consists in turning away from the world to recognize what in life makes us truly happy. For each of us, what that is will be different. But once we obtain this inner knowledge, we will possess the ability to transform our outer world. "You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself," the pilot and writer Beryl Markham reminds us. We cannot let this continue to occur.

Make peace with the knowledge that you can't have everything you want. Why? Because it's more important for us to get everything we need.

We're not meant to fit in. We're meant to stand out.

One way of celebrating the Solstice is to consider it a sacred time of reflection, release, restoration, and renewal.

Many of us have unconsciously erected barriers to protect ourselves from failing or succeeding. We may think we're protecting ourselves by denying our creative impulses, but all we're doing is burying our authentic selves alive.

This I can report from the front lines: life never calms down long enough for us to wait until tomorrow to start living the lives we deserve.