To build healthy individuality, we must undertake the task of understanding ourselves and our feelings. This involves self-disclosure. For us to truly understand ourselves, and to stop being concerned about others' opinions of us, we ought to be able to disclose what our true beliefs are.

When I was in third grade, our class had a writing assignment called "When I am 30." It was an assignment meant to allow our carefree 9-year-old minds to be as imaginative as possible, creating one ideal scene after another of what our lives would be like in 20 years.

I decided to dip my toe back into the water... and belly-flopped instead. I had set myself up to fail because I had set unreasonable expectations in place.

There are so many articles written every single day about health and nutrition. There is this diet and that diet and one philosophy after another about what to eat and when to eat it and how far apart to space meals and good fats and bad fats -- and the list goes on.

I have had an exceptionally powerful arrival into what a broken-less life can be, but it was only made possible by transforming the piece within me that needed to realize I was never truly broken in the first place.

I do believe there's someone for everyone, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized while love is not transactional, it sometimes can turn ugly and into hatred when you do not create the boundaries necessary for you to love yourself.

You are enough just as you are. Dare to be vulnerable, and laugh at the tender and amusing moments we all share in this undulating dance of our humanity.

Everyone lives with weaknesses and insecurities. Life is too rich with variety for this not to be the case. Our task is to accept ourselves in the vast sea of life's storms so that we anchor the truth of who we are amid the strong tide.

What are we afraid will happen if we stop "shoulding" all over ourselves? We have been taught, mistakenly, that if we don't "should" ourselves into action, we will become like those giant sloths that hang on trees -- inert. If not controlled, we would be unkind, ungrateful, un-generous, unproductive and every other "un" you can think of.

When I was a younger, I wanted the perfect nose -- one of those small, indistinctive noses that blend into the background of the model's face on a magazine cover. My Italian genetics, however, gave me another type of nose.

The more you learn to love and value your unique essence, the less you will find yourself comparing yourself to others. There is only one you. You are incomparable!

I may have a bit more apparent emotional bruises and visible laugh lines, but it means I've fully lived -- and fine by me that I'm working on being a super woman not Superwoman. There's a difference -- a big difference.

Spirituality is not about becoming the person that you are supposed to be, or about doing the "spiritual" thing. To be spiritual is to compassionately welcome your truth -- what you actually feel -- whether you like that truth or not.

Victories are all well and good, but victories don't hold the same meaning as triumphs do. Triumphs stand out as the times when you met challenges head on and won. They are the mental "gold medals" that represent what you did to overcome adversity.

It's easy to accept this about our parents when it comes to technology, but we have a much harder time accepting it when it comes to emotional issues. On some level, we still think of our parents like gods.

We don't need to strive to "accept" or do anything with a low feeling. We simply need to remember that these glitches of consciousness are designed to self-correct, with no effort on our part, at all.

When we try to be perfect, we become disconnected to people, and most importantly ourselves. I would love to see more celebrities and people, get more real. Be who you are. Live simply. Stop the obsessive planning and precautions.