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When we face challenges in our lives, it can really throw us off track and destabilize us. Once we start getting some perspective, we can learn and grow from the challenges and use the challenges as catalysts to propel us onto a path of learning, healing and growth.

Here is how Louise Hay thinks about it:

If we can use our problems and illnesses as opportunities to think about how we can change our lives, we have power.

When there is a problem, there is not something to do, there is something to know.

Louise Hay is the one who popularized positive affirmations as tools for transformation and growth. Used wisely, affirmations can be helpful in changing thought patterns and beliefs that no longer serve us. Here are two powerful affirmations from Louise:

When we want to change a condition, we need to say so. "I am willing to release the pattern within me that is creating this condition." You can say this to yourself over and over every time you think of your illness or problem. The...

When we are going through challenges, it is easy to get stuck in the past.

Here is what Maya says about moving forward:

If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you will look forward, do so prayerfully. But the wisest course would be to be present in the present gratefully.
Maya Angelou

We cannot change the past, but we can change our attitude toward it. Uproot guilt and plant forgiveness. Tear out arrogance and seed humility. Exchange love for hate - thereby, making the present comfortable and the future promising.

Maya Angelou

Given that Maya was a civil rights activist, her words did not mean that we do not learn from the past, take the easy way out and/or not hold ourselves and others accountable for ours and their actions.

She said:
I not only have the right to stand up for myself, but I have the responsibility. I can't ask somebody else to stand up for me if I won't stand up for myself. And once you stand up for yourself, you'd be surprised that people say, "Can I be of...

We are exploring wisdom from Maya Angelou this week.

Today's quote is about doing the right thing.

Just do right. Right may not be expedient, it may not be profitable, but it will satisfy your soul. It brings you the kind of protection that bodyguards can't give you. So try to live your life in a way that you will not regret years of useless virtue and inertia and timidity. Take up the battle. Take it up. It's yours. This is your life. This is your world.
Maya Angelou

She also said:
We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yay, or nay – and rise!

Activists such as MLK have said similar words:

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

Doing though difficult, is the...

Continuing with our series on Quotes to Live By, let us explore some quotes on the passage of time.

Does't thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin

How often do we say that "we don't have time" to do the things that really matter?

Here is a quote to reflect on our excuses:

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
H. Jackson Brown Junior

Ever wonder about how the busy-ness of daily tasks did not distract them from their life's work?

Today's is about fulfilling your potential

You sit here for days saying, "This is strange business."
You're the strange business.
You have the energy of the sun in you, but you keep knotting it up at the base of your spine. You're some weird kind of gold that wants to stay melted in the furnace, so you won't have to become coins.

Are you ready to get out of the furnace??

Here is a great introduction to Rumi's timeless verses:
The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks

Today's is about the value in acknowledging and feeling our emotions – a very modern concept expressed some centuries ago!

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning is a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...
Welcome and entertain them all.
Treat each guest honorably.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Here is a great introduction to Rumi's timeless verses:
The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks

This week we are sharing some favourite excerpts from Rumi.

Today's is about the necessity of hardship and difficulty to polish and unearth the diamond within.

Rumi says:
If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?

He also talks about welcoming rather than escaping from sorrow:

Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place. (<3)

There is a beautiful passage about the potential of spiritual growth in adversity in Elizabeth's Lesser's delicious book Broken Open. (HIGHLY recommended reading!)

She writes:
May you listen to the voice within the beat even when you are tired.
When you feel yourself breaking down, may you...

This week we will be sharing some favourite excerpts from Rumi.

Here is today's excerpt about yearning and connecting with the Divine:

There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?

Rumi

And another favourite about finding the spiritual amongst the mundane:

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Rumi

Here is a great introduction to Rumi's timeless verses:
The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks

Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.
Stephen Covey

If you could have solved certain issues in your relationship, you would have done it by now. If your spouse is requesting (begging) for you or the two of you to seek professional help, it is likely because the both of you are stuck in an unhealthy relationship pattern which you have been unable to move beyond. Or you have gone through something that is tearing your relationship apart.

In order to destroy your relationship, Pat Love suggests that you say a version of the following to your spouse when they request you to accompany them to therapy:

"I know more about me than any therapist"
"Those guys are crazier than their patients"
"I don't need some jerk poking around in my private life"
"It's pouring money down the drain"
"You're the one who needs a shrink"
"I just don't believe in it"

Saying things like the above will ensure that your spouse feels not only frustrated and helpless but also loses hope in the future of your relationship together.

If you want to turn your relationship...