Lessons for Living: What Only Adversity Can Teach You

Faith is a deeply held conviction that there is a higher meaning in life that cannot be proved by outer events.

To the ancients, time was a gift of the gods, to be treated with awe and reverence. Elders were respected precisely because they had aged in the stream of time. Time was something higher than the individual, something not to be controlled but to be appreciated. In the sacred view of time, all good things come as part of a rhythmic process, whether

This inner demon is absolutely determined to keep you from experiencing a fact of reality—everything is always moving.

You feel truly connected to the world and to a sense of home. New ideas come from being in this place. On the deepest level, this zone is a spiritual place. We meet the spiritual world most immediately through our relationships to others.

Inferiority is the basic spiritual condition of man. Even members of the most elite groups feel inferior. In Western culture, this is called the Fall of Man. In a mythological sense, it means we have fallen out of an immortal state, paradise, into the frail, temporary, messy condition of living in a physical body. We are living inside instruments t

Their existence doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you.

Speed Once you have determined to do something, the less time you allow to elapse until you act, the better. A failed action, done quickly, will improve your confidence more than one done after great procrastination, even if it

negative thinking represents a force in your consciousness that wants to displace anything healthy. It’s irrational—the thoughts seem real when you’re having them, but when you look back, they are almost always exaggerated or out of touch with reality.

If you want to get close to someone, you must enter what I call the zone of engagement. This is the space where people get close enough to each other to become vulnerable. Vulnerability causes fear and fear leads to conflict. But if the conflict is handled properly, a real bond is created. Conflict becomes a kind of sense organ through which you re