The most important thing is to know yourself, to know what’s right for you. When I’m true to myself, I feel good about it. When I’m not true to myself, I feel that something’s not aligned. There’s a voice constantly telling me if something isn’t right. I’m not perfect, so I don’t always listen to it. Unfortunately, without trauma we don’t grow. Everyone has to go through trauma in order to grow. It’s hard to see the good when we don’t see the bad.

It takes a lot for me to feel bad for someone else. I don’t feel bad for other people. I’ve been through it all and my attitude is that no matter what’s going on, you have a choice. It may not be an easy choice, but you have one.

Even with my kids, even through the tantrums, I never get too worked up. Sure, there are times when I’m tense, but I’m able to work it out. I talk things through with my kids. Maybe my choice is to leave them alone for a while. I tend to be in tune with people and able to work things out, to work on what’s best for them and what’s best for me.

A good friend of mine who’s an acupuncturist sent a patient to a big doctor that we both know well. That doctor did something that wasn’t right because she wasn’t paying attention. My friend told me, “I’m just not going to say anything.” I said, “But why?” She said, “Because she’s just going to lie.” I told my friend, “The bottom line is that if you do say something, she’s going to hear you. She may lie about it, but she’s going to hear you and in that way you’re going to make a difference. If you don’t say anything, nothing will ever change. I’m not saying it will change if you say something, but it has a better chance of changing than if you say nothing.”

- Todd Shemarya

When I see people really connecting with who they are and shining forth from there, when I see how that inspires others and how it inspires me, that bursts my heart open. It ripples out into more possibilities, more creativity, more connection between people, more value and freedom.

People seem to feel they have to be someone else in order to be successful or accepted. One of my mentors recently reminded me of a story: A student of the founder of aikido asked, “Sensei, how is it that you’re always in balance?” The sensei replied, “I am never in balance. I am always moving towards balance.” We are constantly moving, changing, and evolving. Knowing that gives me relief. It reminds the parts of me that want to beat me up for not being in a better place that I’m always evolving.

Because I’m always moving toward centeredness, I’m not always on top of the game and so I’m easier to relate to because I’m real. Sometimes I talk to myself out loud. I check in and ask myself how I’m feeling (What’s going on?) and allow myself to feel and experience what’s going on. Nine times out of ten, not long after that, it’s past, because I’ve responded to it. I don’t try to push it away. As soon as I allow it, it goes away.

One of the biggest things I’ve been learning in the past couple of months is that even though I’m a free-spirited, creative whirlwind, the more structure I have, the more freedom I have. Having a structured schedule helps me see the bigger picture of what’s important versus what’s not. It’s profound! It removes the feeling that I have to be more and do more. With structure, I gain free time for being creative, doing nothing, sleeping, and spending time with my family. All of a sudden, things manifest without effort.

To find meaning, I start with questions: What do I care about? What brings me joy? What am I afraid of? What pisses me off? Why? If I could change it, how would I? Sometimes it’s easier to describe what we’re afraid of. Asking why we’re afraid leads to what we’ve been hiding from, which turns out to be something we’d love to do or express.

- Tbird Luv

Most people are sleepwalking, unconsciously dreaming through life. We have somewhere between 50 and 100 years on Earth and, strangely, most people will not stop even for a minute to really explore the question of consciousness. If they did, they could get to a deep realization very quickly. Through careful observation, we can separate essence from all the things that obscure it. This is a skill that can be learned in various ways. The Buddha taught many different paths to enlightenment because he observed that different people had different tendencies, minds, and histories.

When we begin to understand and realize consciousness, its qualities start to reveal themselves. The nature of the mind becomes alive and awake. The illusion of self loses some of its whole and has less influence over how we act. We become less anxious about ego-related problems. We display more humility and gain a deeper appreciation for ourselves and others. A second layer of consciousness starts to unfold and we become better people. From this comes the compassion and kindness to do good things, help others, and try to make the world better.

We still live here in the challenges and conditions of this world, but when we realize the path, there’s a little voice inside that won’t let us give up. It’s like a flame has been lit. That flame was always there, it can never go out, but now we’re seeing it. We have a new level of faith. Even in the worst situations, when we just can’t take any more setbacks, we know our essence is that pure light. It becomes our permanent guide. Nothing, not even death, can extinguish it.

Our light gives us a new level of commitment and peace with regard to this whole affair of life and death. All of a sudden, a little crack has been made in our crystallized view of reality. We remember when we were kids and felt a sense of wonder that was lost as we became more cynical. We realize that we were wrong about being cynical. That sense of wonder is correct. The magic is real.

- Nova Spivack

If I wake up in the morning and don’t feel so great, I get over it. I decide to rise. I tell fear to take a hike, I overcome the fatigue, and I do what needs to be done, because that’s what wholeness means that day. There are days when I feel tired and overbusy, yet excited. Then there are days when I feel tired and overbusy, but I’m resentful. On the resentful days, I take a nap.

Ignorance is bliss, of course. The reason it’s hard to live a life of consciousness and awareness is because it’s risky. In my experience, the greater the joy I feel, the deeper the pain I feel. I actually have less pain in my life now, but when I feel it, I feel it so much more deeply. That’s the nature of openness.

If I’m in pain, I don’t criticize myself for being in pain. I don’t think I’m a loser for being in pain. I don’t think I’m less-than because I hurt. It took me a long time to figure that out. If I’m in pain, I’m compassionate with myself. I give myself a heaping dose of self-love and change the way I think. I make different choices. I make some happier choices in my thoughts, which could be as simple as telling myself, “This too will pass.”

If you don’t feel like your life has direction or purpose, if you feel like you want more meaning in your life, then do something. Do anything. Any decision is better than no decision. Even if you tank, even if that decision leads to what you think is a failure, you’ll still be further ahead. You’ll have made new connections. You’ll know more about yourself.

- Danielle LaPorte

My first six years were happily spent connecting to the dolls I inherited from my sister. In first grade I took my dolls to school for show-and-tell. It was my first experience in humiliation. I took the dolls home and put them in a box for the next 20 years. I spent the next two decades trying to be the kind of person I thought the world wanted, becoming depressed and suicidal in the process. At 26, I found those dolls and made a decision to spend the rest of my life learning how to be true to myself and helping others do the same.

Everyone I work with has their own version of a “doll story,” when they were vulnerable, when their authentic self was exposed and rejected. That authentic self is what connects us to the life we’re meant to live. For me, it’s a daily practice to come back to that self.

When I disconnect with my authentic self, I’m prevented from living the most meaningful life I can live. When that happens, I have several ways of reconnecting:

1. S-l-o-w   d-o-w-n. I make time for daily silence, for just being, and for connecting with my inner guides.
2. Spend time communing with nature.
3. Develop a community of people who support and guide me to my own truth.
4. Become known as someone who’s accountable, a person who can be counted on. Accountability without authenticity is drudgery, but authenticity without accountability is fantasy. Authenticity with accountability is destiny.
5. Allow time to face the darker side of my nature – my fears, doubts, and insecurities – and get support and guidance for working through those aspects of myself, turning them from sawdust to gold.
6. Make uncertainty and gratitude essential ingredients in my life.

My journey is to evolve and contribute, to make the world a better place than when I came into it.

- David Irvine

Learning how to keep a pond healthy was an education for me. I came to understand how different species acted together to keep the ecosystem of the pond in balance. More than a decade later, when I was a medical student in London, I came across this same principle applied on a vastly larger scale. Gaia Theory, a new idea from science, proposed that life on Earth, like life in a pond, could be seen to act together as a whole.

At that time, I’d become interested in the holistic approach to healthcare. Rather than focusing on individual cells or organs, “whole person” medicine involves recognizing how each element contributes to a larger whole that’s more than the sum of its parts. A heart is more than just a bunch of cells, a person more than just a collection of organs. My medical training had been teaching me a lot about cells and organs, but missed important aspects of dealing with people. The holistic approach filled in some of those gaps, particularly when it came to understanding how people can play a role in healing themselves.

If your skin gets bruised or cut, within a few weeks it’s likely to have repaired itself. If you get a cough or a cold, your body’s natural self-healing abilities act to bring you back to health. The ecosystem of a forest has a similar restorative capacity, bringing itself back from the brink after a fire, flood, or drought. Gaia Theory proposes that life as a whole acts with its environment to regulate itself. So does the living Earth have the ability to self-heal after trauma? If so, could that ability act through us, its parts?

The word Gaia tells a different story about who I am and what my purpose is. On one level I’m an individual with my own dramas and concerns. But on another, I’m rooted in something much larger than myself. There’s a bigger story going on, and I’m thrilled to be part of it.

- Chris Johnstone

I never thought of Jacob as someone with a disability or special needs. He wasn’t diagnosed until he was seven and he didn’t get the correct diagnosis until he was fifteen. He was just Jacob, quirky Jacob. We love all our wonderful sons and we have hopes and dreams for them. When we started getting calls from school teachers telling us how horrible he was, I became an advocate for him. It was not something I was necessarily comfortable with, but the lioness mother is there if someone attacks your kid. I started advocating and really paying attention to his education.

Once he was diagnosed, I was very angry. After I had a particularly bad blow-up one day with an assistant principal, I realized that I wasn’t helping Jacob at all by being angry. I could help Jacob learn to be an advocate himself by understanding my own responses to my different identity as a parent of a child with a disability. I had to reframe who I was. At that point, I started to believe in the power of relationships and collaboration. School was difficult because teachers weren’t willing to meet us halfway, so we moved on. We cut our losses. Jacob went to a different school in a different district, where he did so much better, where his Asperger’s Syndrome was finally acknowledged, and where we could be a team.

I meet people all the time who live with difficult situations in their lives and mostly they don’t have a choice. They have to adapt to what is. When Jacob was diagnosed, I remember thinking, I don’t know how I can ever make meaning of this. Sometimes we find meaning in the appreciation of having dealt with something, in having overcome our own feelings and put them in the suitcase called life. When something is there, it belongs to me, but I’ve done something with it. I’ve packed it up. I know I have it, but it doesn’t rule me.

- Shelly Christensen

Being involved with The Great Gatsby was a thrilling experience. I learned about the novel and its writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald. I learned about that time period in the United States, about Prohibition, and about what was happening on Wall Street. It’s reinforcing to see that we go through cycles in our history. It resonates with what’s going on in contemporary society. That makes a great story.

My family and my work are the most meaningful parts of my life because I enjoy being a part of them so very much. I always feel that I’m struggling to balance my time between the two. There’s a picture I’m hoping to get made about Bruce McLaren. He’s a guy from New Zealand who started the McLaren Racing Team, against all odds, in the early 1960s. He also struggled to balance spending time with his family and spending time with the work he loved. We all have things that pull us in different directions, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to accommodate the things that are most meaningful.

I make time for the people I love and the work I love. Sure, it can be hard at times, but we should always pursue our dreams. If we pursue our dreams, we find a way to create that balance.

- Barrie Osborne

The one solace I have is that when Rachel was alive, she was so full of life. Not a day went by that she didn’t have a good time. She never let the little things get in her way. At only 22, Rachel had lived a very full life and I’m so thankful for that.

It was obvious by the way Rachel lived that her family and friends were the most important part of her life. During her final weeks, Rachel probably had two hundred friends visit her. People were there around the clock. Her friends decorated her room with pictures of recent college days. Believe it or not, for three weeks, it was one big party.

Rachel taught me the true importance of friends and family. In the end, that’s all there is, really. 400 to 500 people attended Rachel’s funeral. Cars just kept coming and coming. It was standing room only. A friend of hers told me, “Rachel was an angel and she was put on this Earth to touch people’s lives and make them smile and make them happy.” If you listen to her friends talk about her and see the pictures, you know that’s exactly what she did.

As a result of this tragedy, I’ve reshaped the way I look at things. I accept people the way they are. I don’t sweat the small things any more. Rachel could be the most unorganized, sloppy person. There were four-year-old food wrappers in her car. I’d get mad and say, “We spent a ton of money on this thing. Keep it clean!” She’d reply, “But the car still runs great.” That was the big picture. She didn’t sweat little details. When I went to clean the car before I sold it and saw all the crap in there, instead of getting mad, I just laughed.

Rachel never did anything to disappoint me, by any stretch of the imagination. Still, I tried to change her. I’m an organized, black-and-white guy and I tried to make her more like me, but that just wasn’t her. We must love our kids for who they are. Don’t try to change them. I’ve learned this lesson, but it came at a big price.

- Scott Sandler

I strive to exceed the expectations of my peers and family members. It stems from my thankfulness to my grandmother, who migrated to the U.S. from Trinidad and Tobago. She risked everything and struggled a lot during her early years alone in this country. She did it for me.

I owe it to my grandmother and to the rest of my family to be the best I can be. I’ll never know my full potential unless I push myself past my comfort zone. I idolize people like Oprah, Beyonce, and the late Steve Jobs, people who weren’t afraid of taking risks and who persevered as a result.

Everyone loses their balance at certain points in their lives. I never give myself much time to feel bad about things or to negatively reflect on a situation. I always see the glass as being half full.

Negativity can stop us from leading meaningful lives. If we focus on things we don’t have, it prevents us from reaching our full potential. I surround myself with people who love me and believe wholeheartedly in whatever I’m doing.

I’m trying to let go of a lot of things I didn’t understand as a child. I don’t think there’s a point we reach when we stop growing. The more I continue to grow, the stronger I’ll become.

- Tahyira Savanna