Watch and listen to those closest to you. What's hurting over there? Face it, even if you have to admit that you are one of its causes. If appropriate, ask some questions, and talk about the answers.

Moving through your day, try considering your contributions as offerings -- particularly the little things that are easy to overlook, such as the laundry, courteous driving, or saying thanks. When you relate to everyday actions as offerings, you feel an intimacy with the world.

It's one thing to call yourself to task for a fault, try to understand what caused it, resolve to correct it, act accordingly, and move on. This is psychologically healthy and morally accountable.

You can get unstuck. It won't be easy, but the difficulty and trial of this process is the journey that separates the stuck from the unstuck in life.

Trusting in love does not mean assuming that someone will love you. It means confidence in the fundamentally loving nature of every person, and in the wholesome power of your own lovingness to protect you and touch the heart of others.

For many of us, perhaps the hardest thing of all is to believe that "I am a good person." We can climb mountains, work hard, acquire many skills, act ethically, but truly feel that one is good deep down? Nah!

We make a thousand choices a day, each one a bargain in which the brain weighs expected benefits against expected costs. Therefore, it's important to make good bargains, good choices, in which the real benefits are greater than the real costs.

If you say what's true for you, and say it clearly and kindly, you get one kind of result. But if you use a sharp tongue, speak falsely, exaggerate, or leave out the parts that are most important to you, you get different results.

Thinking unethical thoughts doesn't make you unethical. It makes you feel unethical -- no harm in that. Provided, that is, you get a solid grip on the principle that acting on unethical, or insecure, feelings won't ever make them go away. It makes them come back even stronger.

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.

We feed the wolf of love with heart and with hope. We feed this wolf by sustaining our sense of what's good in other people, what's good in ourselves, what's already good in our world, and what could be even better in a world we can build together.

You're about to consider something that perhaps you didn't know was possible: When you feel down or you're hurting, you do not have to gaze out on your life to find the reason. There is another, less demanding option available.

On the path of life, most of us are hauling way too much weight. What's in your own backpack? If you're like most of us, you've got too many items on each day's to-do list and too much stuff in the closet. Too many entanglements with other people. And too many worries, guilts, and regrets.

Now that I'm clear about where I want to go, I'm feeling both relieved and excited. I'm excited to start using my core desires as my compass to set my goals and decide what I say yes to -- in both my personal and professional life.

With time and a little practice, you will find yourself "speaking wisely" without consciously thinking about it. You might be amazed at the powerful, assertive ways you can communicate within the frame of these six guidelines.

It's very hard to stay "blue" 24 hours a day, seven days a week. People have to work hard to do that, which is good news. You have the power -- even if you're experiencing the blues -- to get relief if you want it.

Fundamentally, forgiveness frees you from the tangles of anger and retribution, and from preoccupations with the past or with the running case in your mind about the person with whom you're angry.

You can't possibly say thank you to everything you're given. No one can. So when you do say thanks, it's a token of your appreciation for the larger whole, joining you with that whole.

As odd as it may seem, sometimes emotions simply don't matter very much in the pursuit of happiness.

Sometimes we feel embarrassed about our yearnings to be cared about. But they are completely normal. Love has been the primary driver of the development of the brain over the last 80 million years.