Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships.

What is common sense isn't common practice.

What difference would a clear vision of my principles, values, and ultimate objectives make in the way I spend my time?

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Inevitably, anytime we are too vulnerable we feel the need to protect ourselves from further wounds. So we resort to sarcasm, cutting humor, criticism - anything that will keep from exposing the tenderness within. Each partner tends to wait on the initiative of the other for love, only to be disappointed but also confirmed as to the rightness of the accusations made.

Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile.

In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment - independent will - that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.