Inspiration

Empowering stories and advice from our friends to keep you on the pathway to success.

  • What Happens When the Strong Friend Finally Asks...

    “We don’t build trust by offering help. We build trust by asking for it.” ~Simon Sinek I have always been the strong sister, partner, and friend. I didn’t make a conscious decision one day to be the strong one and stuck to it. It became who it was from a very young age, being the firstborn […]

  • What Happened to My Body When I Suppressed My...

    “Our bodies communicate to us clearly and specifically, if we are willing to listen.” ~Shakti Gawain As a child, I was never taught to regulate my emotions. I learned instead to override them—pushing through stress, swallowing tears, and even hiding a cast at dinner, afraid that showing what […]

  • Anxiety Sucks, But It Taught Me These 7 Important...

    “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” ~Soren Kierkegaard Let’s be clear: This isn’t an article about positive thinking. This isn’t an article about how silver linings make everything okay. This isn’t an article about how your perspective on anxiety is all wrong. The kids call those […]

  • Why I Let My Kids See My Sadness Now (After...

    “I will not teach or love or show you anything perfectly, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of seeing you—truly, deeply, seeing you.” ~Brené Brown The first time my kids saw me truly cry was Christmas of 2021. My oldest was sixteen, and my youngest was […]

  • All the Important Things a Scale Can’t Measure

    “She remembered who she was, and the game changed.” ~Lalah Delia The scale. Those dreaded words and those dreaded numbers. It can strike fear in the heart of any generally happy human. We look at guidelines and BMI charts and always think, “It should be lower.” Have you ever been having a […]

  • From People-Pleasing to Self-Trust: How to Come...

    “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” ~Carl Jung Where did I want to go out to eat? The question was straightforward, and the answer should have been easy. But as my mind flipped through the options, my thoughts weren’t focused on what I wanted. Instead, I was […]

  • Phone Down, Eyes Up: How to Really See the People...

    “The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh Judy was three the first time I missed it. She had spent a solid ten minutes stacking every couch cushion on our living room floor in Vancouver, building what she clearly considered an Olympic-grade landing pad. She […]

  • What My Body Taught Me: 13 Surgeries, One Coma,...

    “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” ~Khalil Gibran I was born with spina bifida. When I was ten years old, doctors told me I might not walk again after a surgery that would change my life. I don’t remember every word they […]

  • What’s Really Happening When Your Thoughts...

    “The anxiety is not the enemy. It is the messenger. The mistake is killing the messenger instead of reading the letter.” ~Unknown It’s 3 a.m. I’m lying in the dark, planning my own funeral. Not because anything is wrong. My family is safe. There is no emergency. But my brain has decided, […]

  • 5 Quotes for Hard Times (and a Free Ebook)

    Sometimes everything feels like too much, and it’s hard to use all the valuable lessons you’ve learned when life requires you to use them all at once. It’s also easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of what you’re facing and alone with all your struggles. I’ve felt this way on and off […]

  • 6 Effective Daily Habits That’ll Change the...

    “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard Are you willing to spend a little time every day like most people won’t, so you can spend the better part of your life like most people can’t? Think about that question for a moment. Let it sink in.

  • 40 Quotes for Letting Go and Coping with Things...

    The goal each and every day of your life is to gradually grow stronger on the inside, so that less and less on the outside can affect your inner wellness without your conscious permission. Truth be told, how you cope with unexpected problems and frustrations can easily be the difference between […]

  • 10 Life Choices You Will Regret in 10 Years (and...

    In the end, more than anything else, we regret the little things we wish we’d done differently. “If only…” Those two words paired together create one of the saddest phrases in the English language. Here are ten life choices that ultimately lead to that phrase of regret, and how to avoid […]

  • 10 Things We All Wait Way Too Long to Do for...

    Opportunities are like sunrises, if we wait too long we miss them. Too often we waste our time waiting for the ideal path to appear. But it never does of course. Because we forget that paths are made by walking, not waiting. Let this be your wake-up call today! If you always sit around until

  • 12 Notes to Self We Should All Memorize Today...

    As we all look forward to the next step in our lives, I know many of us are yearning for a simpler and selective range of life experiences — the happy days, the normal times, the settings and experiences that make us feel more comfortable. And yet, the full range of our reality often brings

  • 7 Little Things You Should Insist on Doing for...

    You can’t lift a thousand pounds all at once, yet you can easily lift one pound a thousand times. Little repeated efforts will get you there. I have witnessed people reinventing themselves at all ages — 48-year-olds starting families, 57-year-olds graduating from college for the first time, […]

  • 5 Habits of Happiness 90 Years of Wisdom Taught Me

    “You only live once, but if you do it right once is enough.” — Mae West Twenty years ago, I was lucky enough to witness the humble, elegant, peaceful passing of my 89-year-old grandfather. As I sat quietly in his hospice room alongside my grandma and other family members, his nurse smiled […]

  • 12 Sticky Notes We Should Read Every Morning for...

    It’s not what you say to everyone else that determines your life; it’s what you whisper to yourself that has the greatest power and influence. The best lessons we learn in life are the lessons we learn over and over again. The human mind needs lots of reminders — lots of practice — to […]

  • 10 Hard Things that Are Always Worth Doing for...

    Even when the struggle is real, remind yourself that it almost always feels better to be exhausted from taking tiny steps forward, than it does to be tired of doing absolutely nothing. In 1911 two explorers, Amundsen and Scott, embarked on a race against each other to become the first known human […]

  • 10 Painfully Obvious Truths About Life Everyone...

    The truth does not disappear when it is forgotten or ignored. You know how you can hear something a hundred times in a bunch of different ways before it finally gets through to you? The ten truths discussed here fall firmly into that category — timeless lessons most of us likely learned years […]

  • 3 Thinking Habits that Often Drain 97 Percent of...

    The goal is to change your response to what you can’t control — to gradually grow stronger on the inside, so less on the outside affects your inner peace and joy without your conscious permission. The mind is the biggest battleground. It’s the place where the greatest conflict resides. It’s […]

  • 7 Mindful Quotes for Those Times When You’re...

    You can’t calm the storm. What you can do is calm yourself, and the storm will gradually pass. So do your best to breathe when negativity surrounds you today. Let calmness be your superpower. The ability to not overreact or take things too personally keeps your mind clear and your heart at peace, […]

  • 10 Essential Reasons to Let Go of Things Sooner...

    The most powerful changes happen when we decide to take control of what we do have power over, instead of craving control over what we do not. Holding on is hard. Holding on contributes to stress, unhappiness, relationship issues, and so much more. Yet, as human beings, we cling desperately to […]

  • 7 Notes to Self We Should All Memorize Before...

    Earlier today, I was sitting on a neighborhood park bench eating a sandwich when an elderly couple pulled their car up under a nearby oak tree. They rolled down the windows and turned up some jazz music on the radio. Then the man got out of the car, walked around to the passenger side, and

  • 9 Rules for Turning Endings into New Beginnings...

    Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. When you can no longer think of a reason to continue, you must think of a reason to start over. There’s a big difference between giving up and starting over in the right direction. And there are three little words that can release you […]

  • 8 Wake-Up Calls We All Need to Receive Today...

    You have come a long way, and you’re still learning and growing. Be thankful for the lessons. Take them and make the best of things today. For my 18th birthday, many moons ago, my grandfather on my mom’s side gave me four lightly-used flannel shirts that he no longer needed. The shirts were […]

  • 11 Old-Fashioned Relationship Habits We Should...

    Love is great when spoken, but greatest when shown. Do little things daily to show your loved ones you care. Yesterday afternoon I was sitting on a park bench in the early afternoon when an elderly couple pulled their car up under a nearby oak tree. They rolled down the windows and turned up some

  • 4 Ways to Start Letting Go Before Life Gets Any...

    On the average day happiness is letting go of what you assume life is supposed to be like, and sincerely appreciating it for everything it is. Over the past 15 years, as Angel and I have gradually worked with hundreds of our course students, coaching clients, and live event attendees, we’ve come […]

  • 40 Meaningful Questions to Calm the Mind and...

    Asking the right questions is the answer. In a recent email newsletter I wrote, “Calm your mind today. Don’t think outside the box; think like there is no box.” And to my surprise, 77 people quoted that line and responded with the same general question: “How?” I’ve spent some time […]

  • 6 Good Reasons to Stop Proving Yourself to...

    You won’t find your worth entirely in someone else — you’ll find it in yourself, and then you will attract those who are worthy of your energy. Sometimes we try to show the world we’re flawless in hopes that we will be liked and accepted by everyone. But we can’t please everyone and we […]

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