A blow-up with my son led to some valuable life lessons about anger.

Are your goals in harmony with your faith, beliefs and values? If not, you may find yourself fighting an internal battle that can’t be won, a bit like arm wrestling yourself. No matter who wins, you lose. Learn to set sticky goals instead, that become reflections of the deepest part of you, making them near inevitabilities.

What separates you from the realization of your goals is nothing more than a series of decisions made consistently over time. 92% of those who set goals fail to achieve them. Become the 8% by doing what the 8% do!

We are what we think about over time. We are the accumulation of all our attitudes, beliefs, fears, hopes and dreams, all the thoughts that fill our minds on a regular basis. We are our own self-fulfilling prophesy. Our thoughts are the prisons we condemn ourselves to or they are the keys we use to unlock possibility and potential. There are ways to unleash that potential and live a life of deeply rewarding happiness.

Have you ever gotten just plain sick and tired of those repeating, annoying parts of yourself you wish would just pack up and leave town? It just may set the ball rolling in the right direction if you start with a break-up letter. To yourself. Read a sample break-up letter here.

Are you bored? Has life lost some of its excitement and interest? Boredom is a pernicious thief of happiness, stealing joy from the moments a life is made of. It is a symptom of something misaligned in our lives. Learn how to end boredom forever with just a few simple changes and begin to enjoy a happier, more rewarding life.

Boredom doesn’t “set in.” It doesn’t settle on us like dust in the attic or strike us like lightening or wash over us like so much rain in a thunder storm, soaking us in waves of ennui. Boredom is the natural state of the passively uncurious, the unadventurous and indecisive.

I have a confession to make. I don’t live a minimalist life of decluttered simplicity. I have too much unused stuff packed in too many boxes stacked on too many shelves. And while I could do better in this respect, there are other cluttered parts of our lives in need of some spring-cleaning as well. Too many of us suffer from our own cluttered emotional closets stuffed with messy habits of thought and crowded feelings we’ve clung to for far too long. Perhaps it’s time we practiced a little emotional minimalism as well.

We all have trash in our lives. We can let it pile up, rot and decay. Or we can turn it into something beautiful. There are parts of us that are not so pretty. Perhaps it’s a temper or an attitude. But we can change them. We can adapt them. They can become stepping stones by which we climb higher than ever before. They can inspire us to make something beautiful of them. They can inspire us to turn them into the music of our lives.

In celebration of the life of the man who most personified the 1960s US Civil Rights movement, whose name is almost synonymous with that era, who risked everything and consecrated the movement he helped start with his blood, I give you 5 life-changing quotes by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s perfectly fine to want more income or less weight, a higher degree or lower blood pressure, to overcome a habit or start a new one. But when we start stacking one accomplishment on top another on a foundation of sand, life becomes off-centered, unstable, and eventually comes tumbling down. All it takes is one good storm and we’re belly-up on the beach. This is when a firmer foundation is important.

Are you a goal-setting flunky? A New Years Resolution drop-out? Have you set goals time and time again only to summarily fail to reach them? All of them? Well, the good news is that you didn’t waist your time trying. You even likely improved your life, becoming a subtly better person, perhaps without even realizing it. The very act of setting and pursuing goals can actually make you a better human being. Click on in to see how!

Are you a Personal Development Junkie? Do you surf the web in search of your next high, the next blog with the newest twist or next fix to your personal development needs? There is a lot to choose from. Some are decent. Most fall somewhere below average. Some may be doing you more harm than good. Check out the 5 signs personal development blogs may be damaging your life.

Intolerance has a bad reputation. And with good reason too. Still, I’m not so sure it should be thrown out with the bathwater. The thing is I’m actually an advocate for having a good healthy dose of it. Surprised? Keep reading. I think you’ll agree with me. You see, the problem with intolerance is not so much the intolerance per se as much as what our intolerance is directed at.

Guest post by Tim Brownson of A Daring Adventure: Our self-talk can build and lift or it can trap, undermine and cripple. There are ways we can learn to change the very language we use to describe the obstacles we have to the life we dream of living. Try this simple change of language to experience a quantum change in your life. Self-talk matters. Come see why.

The Olympic Games are thrilling and compelling because they embody human excellence. They remind us of tha value of determination, dedication, will and stamina, refusing to allow life to get in the way of living it at its highest, pushing for what seems impossible, reaching amazing levels of human capacity. The passion and drive, hard work, sacrifice and blood sweat and tears in every step, every jump and even in every stumble, inspires us.

The reasons for change are endless: A new career. An old habit. A new one. Acquiring a skill. Overcoming a fear. Ending procrastination. Becoming happier. But no matter the reason or the kind, all change has a starting point. This post is a tribute to the late Dr. Stephen R. Covey. Change is made possible by understanding the principles undergirding change. Covey taught those principles.

Life is an incomplete design. And we are the designers. We choose the colors, the pattern, the shape and size of the final product, a glorious finished work of amazingness. Granted, God gave us the materials and even some basic instructions to guide us, but we weave the pieces together to make of our lives what we will.

Friendships are organic things. They live and grow and sometimes wilt and decay. They take something of us to maintain and nourish. Neglect can kill a relationship just as fast as it can a houseplant. At some level, we like to think there is nothing that could end a true friendship. But in the real world, there are many poisons that quickly sink deep into the bloodstream of even our most cherished relationships, infecting them with deadly toxins. Come in and see what those deadly toxins are!

There is so much emotional dust and negativity and other bits of self-defeating debris floating around in the atmosphere of our daily lives. Too many people are ill-equipped to recognize the dust and debris for what it is. They are therefore unable to remove it, block it or filter it from intake. While we have filters for just about everything: fish tanks, washing machines, cars, TVs, and cameras, do we have filters that effectively block our lower impulses and external influences that undermine potential, dignity and happiness?