A lot of people seem to be unaware of who they really are… they've never stopped to figure it out, just doing what they've learned that other people expect them to do, what they think they "should" do, rather than what is right for them. If you would prefer to find fulfillment, rather than just trudging through life, you need to break that mold.  You need to really figure out who you are, and what [...]

The conscious mind is a funny thing… it's essentially a filter for the world around you, allowing you to concentrate your resources on a much smaller piece of, well, everything.  In spite of this, your conscious mind fools itself into thinking that it IS the whole thing, all of you. In reality, there are at least three other major pieces of who you are:  your spirit (or subconscious, for the more scientifically minded), your body, [...]

How deeply inside is your true self, the way you really think and feel hiding?  Do you let others beneath the surface, or do you have carefully crafted walls to keep them out?  Do you let others form relationships with the real you, or just a persona? A persona is a person that you pretend to be that is not really you, much like a spy in the movies, except for most people the persona [...]

Everyone has their own dreams… mine is to be supported by my writing.  Yours may be something completely different… it may be to travel the world, be a professional chef, or something else.  You probably even have more than one dream… I wouldn't mind traveling the world, too. There are a lot of individual steps to making your dream come true, of course, but those will vary depending upon what your specific dream happens to [...]

Who we are, or at least who we think we are, rests in large part upon the walls that we have built inside ourselves.  These walls are our self-defined limits, constraints on our own potential put that we inflict on ourselves. We're not really aware of that when we build them, though… we build them for other reasons, not even recognizing how much we are limiting ourselves.  Eventually we even forget that there is a [...]

You have probably heard someone say before that you should give someone the benefit of the doubt, or as the title says, assume their good intentions.  Chances are pretty good that it was put in terms of helping them, giving them a second chance… just look at how the phrase starts:  "give someone". The truth is, however, that there are a lot of benefits to you when you assume the good intentions of others, too.  [...]

If you read many books or websites about self improvement in general, and success in particular, you will notice one theme, one concept, that appears more often than nearly any other:  setting goals.  I even recommend it myself, from time to time. Setting goals can help you to focus your energy and effort, making it far more likely that you will get something accomplished.  That, in general, is a good thing… I even set goals [...]

We all like to have things happen on our own schedule.  We want this now, the other thing tomorrow, and the thing after that next week. Unfortunately, life has its own pace, and it doesn't always match our own.  Sometimes things happen faster than you'd like, and sometimes you are forced to slow down. In the last two weeks or so, I've gotten a sample of the second type of scheduling conflict.  Life decided that [...]

Photography is, at its best, an art that captures a moment of life, preserving it for the ages.  A photograph, when framed and focused properly, can make something very ordinary into something of exquisite beauty. The primary key, in photography, to take something from being ordinary into something extraordinary is the framing.  Essentially, you set up the photograph so that it highlights the things you want it to highlight, rather than being in the context [...]

When people who do surveys for a living create the questions for a quality of life survey, they often ask about things such as your income, your relationship status, and your job satisfaction… but they almost never ask a question that has far more impact:  How is your self-worth? Let's step back for a moment… what is self-worth?  It is, quite simply, the value you place on yourself.  Do you think that you, as a [...]