Once you've found your own voice, the choice to expand your influence, to increase your contribution, is the choice to inspire others to find their voice.

The 'Inside-Out' approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self, with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves recedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.

Only after we can learn to forgive ourselves can we accept others as they are because we don't feel threatened by anything about them which is better than us.

We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions.

Studies have identified a significant 'skills gap' between what students are currently being taught and the skills employers are seeking in today's global economy. Our children must be better prepared than they are now to meet the future challenges of our ever-changing world.

Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are - or as we are conditioned to see it.

If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control - myself.