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  It takes courage to show up for prosperity. What if you just showed up for yourself today? What if all it took to build the prosperity you crave was to be profoundly present in your own life, in your own body, in your own story? Do you have the courage to live with this depth of belief and authenticity, to be alive in the moment regardless of the risks? It is safer to live in the past, ruminating, remembering, re-writing, and grieving, than it is to live in the present. The past is familiar territory; we know what will h ..read more

What is the reason for being? The ultimate human question. The answer is, we don’t know. But I believe, as Steven Pinker said in his book ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, the goal of human effort is PROGRESS. He crafted his definition of progress, not from the words of great philosophers, not from religious text, rather from empirical facts. For it requires only the convictions that life is better than death, heath is better than sickness, abundance is better than want, freedom is better than coercion, happiness is better than suffering, and knowledge is better that superstition and ignorance. Any effort t ..read more

Love is the total giving of oneself without agenda; not asking for anything in return or holding anything back. Compassion, being one of the highest forms of love, is the understanding of lack of understanding in another being, as well as within ourselves. It allows for us to express loving kindness in the face of ignorance. It has been said that the only problem we only ever have is ignorance. This is true. None of the harmful deeds us humans perform are born out of malice or ill will. They merely arise from a small and ..read more

Steven Hawkins, the Cambridge Scholar, died today. He is a wonderful example of a man who made the right choices and made them work. His mind was strong but his body weak. He suffered from a debilitating illness yet he continued to work. You see, you have to believe in yourself with the same conviction you have to believe in God. If you could ask Jeff Bezos, (Amazon), the Oracle of Omaha, (Warren Buffet), Bill Gates (Microsoft), and the many others who are billionaires what is the one thing they believed in when the moment ..read more

Mindfulness involves an awareness of the here and now, and a mindset that is open and receptive to new ideas, information and experiences. In substance abuse treatment, mindfulness can be a way to cope with feelings, stress, triggers and urges and a way to manage stress and anxiety. Mindfulness can be the difference between responding effectively to the trauma symptoms that often co-occur with substance abuse, and a relapse to substance use to escape the unpleasant symptoms.  Mindfulness, if practiced regularly is a posit ..read more

A recent Wall Street Journal special report on health care included a revealing article titled “Where Are the Mental-Health Providers?” Reporter Louise Radnofsky presents convincing evidence and sounds the alarm about the increasing difficulty of finding much-needed mental health care in many regions of the United States.Radnofsky quotes statistics from a recent study by Mental Health America, a patient advocacy group. The study found that while 42.5 million adults in the United States have a mental illness (18% of the pop ..read more

It is natural and fundamental for living beings to want to be happy, healthy, and free from suffering. Life would not have persisted for nearly four billion years were living things not motivated to, and reasonably good at, seeking favorable circumstances and avoiding unfavorable ones. When you consider much of what people do in our day-to-day lives, it is mostly in service of meeting our needs for food, clothing, shelter, and a sense of safety, satisfaction, and happiness. We don’t necessarily awaken each morning and say ..read more

Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood was a television program that was on public television for 50 years. Which is a good example of leaving the world a better place. But the important thing Mr. Rogers said to the children was “This program is make believe. Make believe is fun but it is not real. It is important that you know the difference between realities and make believe.” Many people have not learned the difference. Take the message of the Christian God. It all starts with the Bible. Read Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus to se ..read more

If you're a regular consumer of social media, you've most likely seen this question pop up on your news feed: "What if you woke up tomorrow with only the things you were thankful for today".  It makes us all stop and think, in the moment at least, and offer up a few sentiments to the universe before going on with our previously-scheduled programming of stress, worry, and negativity. But what if you considered making gratitude part of your everyday life? Gratitude is a positive emotion. While some define it as "the state of ..read more