It is in the ordinary events of every day that we develop the proactive capacity to handle the extraordinary pressures of life. It's how we make and keep commitments, how we handle a traffic jam, how we respond to an irate customer or a disobedient child. It's how we view our problems and where we focus our energies. It's the language we use.

Most people struggle with life balance simply because they haven't paid the price to decide what is really important to them.

Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people. But it takes time and patience.

In this knowledge-worker age, it's now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs - so the pressure to do well is really high.

The struggle comes when we sense a gap between the clock and the compass - when what we do doesn't contribute to what is most important in our lives.

I believe that a life of integrity I the most fundamental source of personal worth. I do not agree with the popular success literature that says that self-esteem is primarily a matter of mind set, of attitude-that you can psych yourself into peace of mind. Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with true principles and values and in no other way.

Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion or circumstance.