It's hard to win, but for most people, it's harder to lose. I realized this truth applied to me as I settled into my seat flying from New York to Detroit.

The trouble with happiness, as I see it, has to do with happiness as a goal whose urgency of achievement can overwhelm shades of feeling that are necessary for growth.

Looking back at such experiences we often realize they weren't nearly as bad as they seemed. In fact, sometimes they even turned out to have a lot of benefits, yet at the time they seemed like disasters.

You can't always get what you want. The Rolling Stones called it. But these words are as much disregarded as they are immortal. How do we prevent unmet expectations from derailing us?

Once we can handle the peaks and valleys of life, we can reach a nice middle ground where we can hold it steady. That's the goal -- sipping on lemonade for life!

The more poorly someone handles disappointment and not getting their way, the more they are likely to react negatively and angrily and push back when they are told to have a "back-up" plan.

Disappointment, as uncomfortable and even painful as it can be for me and many of us, is essential and important on our journey of growth, self-discovery, authenticity and fulfillment.

This Valentine's Day, look into the eyes and heart of your partner. Look into their hopes and dreams, and see within them the desires and determination that you also hold dear. See too the very same hurts and fears that you have been dealing with.

Certainly, disappointment is not a pleasant emotion. But that doesn't mean it is a bad emotion to be avoided at all costs. To the contrary, disappointment is actually a healthy and positive emotion.

Think about it: when was the last time something happened in your life that seemed disappointing, even devastating in the moment, but turned out, at some point, to be a blessing in disguise?

Disappointments leave us with the unpleasant task of squashing, crushing, and pinching lemons to extract any and all juice. Here, then, are a few of my techniques to turn sour into sweet.

QUESTION Dear Irene, I am an only child and have a friend named Linda (who is also an only) whom I've known since first grade. She is due to give bi...

Here are some basic ideas that I have found to be useful when coaching people to 'be complete' with a sudden breakup and all the emotion and sense of loss accompanying it.

What with the economy and job situation, the housing market and the overall feel and texture of the nation right now, it's no wonder Americans are, by and large, a goddamn miserable bunch.

Your expectations are clues that can guide you to healing your deeper needs so that you can feel more balanced as a whole.

As we probe, we begin to find answers to Freud's age-old question: What do women want? It is not, as Freud suspected, exactly what men want. Beneath their achievement-oriented lives, most women crave passion, beauty, connection, and a sense of the sacred.