Ideas are powerful things that can take on a life of their own, digging like roots deep into our hearts and souls and branching out into the circumstances of our lives as we nourish and tend to the germinating seed of thought. Come see my top 10 favorite ideas captured in picture quotes, ready for bite-sized consumption!

“Who you want to be is irrelevant to who you are if who you daily choose to be is different than who you wish you were.” Who we are and who we believe we should be are not always one and the same. Your Ideal You is likely somewhat higher than your Actual You. And so we read posts like this one looking for inspiration to nudge us down that path. Come see three areas we can improve on to become better people.

True spirituality cannot be developed in a vacuum. It cannot be exercised in isolation. To me, spirituality is connecting with the divine and letting that connection change us inside, so that we become something different than we were before the connection.

The questions we never ask can never produce the answers they would have led to. The questions we never ask fail to open paths or illuminate lives or introduce possibilities or redirect courses. The questions we never ask keep lights dim, insight shallow and lives floating, drifting and sometimes sinking. Drift and sink no more. Asked yourself these transformational questions?

I challenge you to do something you’ve always wanted to do. Or learn something you’ve wanted to learn. Or go somewhere you yearn to go. A talent you wish you had. A skill you want to develop. A hobby you want to pursue. But don’t wait. Start today. Not next year or next week or in a couple days. Tomorrow. At the latest.

When you hold on to resentment or anger or hatred, letting it eat you up from the inside out, your mind gets stuck in a continuous loop. You replay the offense over and over again, unable to free yourself from the person you most want to get away from. Well, it’s time that ends. Learning to forgive your offender will finally free yourself of that mental loop and open yourself to a life filled with more love and more happiness.

Honesty, they say, is the best policy. It’s time we put it to the test. Have you ever gotten tangled up in your own web of lies? Are you in the habit of bending the truth? Do you fib and tell little white lies to get out of trouble or avoid drama or skirt confrontation or annoyances? Come take the honesty challenge and see how it affects your relationships, self-respect and life.

Some people go through life complaining about the weather, complaining about the economy, complaining about the neighborhood, even complaining when there’s isn’t enough to complain about! They moan and groan about anything and everything and nothing at all. Their complaints quickly become the sound of nails on chalk boards, their voices shrill with the whine of helplessness. It can be raining gold coins in their backyard and they’ll complain about the flowers crushed by the falling wealth. Stop it!

Happiness is not about trying to make you feel good all the time. It doesn’t always feel good to climb mountains over rugged terrain. Legs burn. Arms ache. Shins bloody. Feet blister. Toes bruise. Shoulders knot and backs grow weary. But that’s how you get to mountaintops. Happiness is not always in the valley. Quite often, it’s at the summit after a long climb. This is a post meant to get you climbing again.

Who determines the vision that guides you, the goals that take you there, the standards that govern the goals you set, the tone and tenor of your brand, the personal culture of integrity and character you’re known by, the way you spend your time, energy and resources? The answer to this question may not be as obvious as you think. See if you can identify who most often operates as your chief decision-maker …

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!

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.

Guest post by Vlad Dolezal: Lately, I’ve seen an unusually high amount of posts in the blogosphere extolling “being happy with what you have”. They’ve been springing up like mushrooms after a mushroom soup factory explosion. Unfortunately, most authors leave out crucial details. Like the fact that being fully content with your current situation for an extended period of time is utterly nonsense.

So often, we look down the road of our lives through the prism of the past, projecting that past onto the unknown and unknowable future, somehow dirtying it. For some of us, all we need to empower the decision to take our foot off the brake of life is the inspiration of a powerful example, proof that it can be done, that someone as regular and normal as me with all my limitations, baggage, insecurities and emotional problems has done it before.

Pledging to live up to a set of standards, to something higher and larger and more eternal than self-serving and immediately-gratifying impulses may be considered an insignificant step in the process of actually doing the work of building character. But it’s in the small steps that miles are covered and continents crossed … and a character is fashioned.

Not all Presidents of the United States are equally worthy of being quoted. Some have even been downright dreadful for the country. And yet we can confuse the issue with what historians call presentism, judging historical figures by contemporary standards. With this caution in mind, while our first three Presidents were certainly imperfect and products of their times, their words continue to inspire us today.

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.

Happiness is the byproduct of other things. It is the natural effect of the way we live, the way we think, the way we act and believe. Come take the Happiness Pledge as a commitment to those characteristics that add to happiness and start the process of living with more joy than ever before.

Are you an emotional bully? Perhaps you suspect you may be, but are not quite sure. We often go through life with blinders on, very aware of what others are doing, seeing “clearly” what motivates their behavior, while not clearly seeing our own. Instead, we justify and excuse in ourselves the very same behavior we would never tolerate in others. That being the all-too-frequent case, the following characteristics should provide insight into what may have largely been ignored until now.