What you focus on you create more of in your life. If you’re consciously or subconsciously focused on certain beliefs about who you are, or who you want to be or who you do not want to be, you will attract people who mirror those traits right back at you.

Bei Vergebung geht es darum, sich um sich selbst zu kümmern – und nicht etwa um denjenigen, dem man vergeben muss. Es geht darum, das Bedürfnis nach Wohlbefinden vor den Wunsch, recht zu haben, zu stellen. Es geht darum, Verantwortung für das eigene Leben zu übernehmen, statt vorzugeben, es liege in der Hand anderer. Es geht darum, die eigene Macht zu nutzen, indem man Wut, Ablehnung und Schmerz den Laufpass gibt.

When is the last time when you physically hurt yourself? What did you do to get the pain to stop? And how long did you wait to do something about it? When we're in physical pain, we're usually extremely proactive about figuring out how to make it go away immediately because, you know, it hurts. Even if we have to go through more pain from pouring a disinfectant that stings on an open wound or suffering through getting stitches, we do it, right away, because we're very focused on our ultimate goal: relief. When it comes to our emotional pain, however, we're apparently way more game for seeing how much torture we can endure, wallowing in our guilt, shame, resentment, and self-loathing, sometimes for entire lifetimes.

Birthing your dreams is like. . . . giving birth. Conceiving the idea is the fun part (hopefully), then you go through insane amounts of fear and excitement and dreaming and planning and vomiting and growing and thinking you’re crazy and thinking you’re awesome and stretching and shape shifting until you’re practically unrecognizable to everyone, even your own self. Along the way you clean up your puke and massage your aching back and apologize to all the people whose heads your ripped of in a hormonal killing spree, but you stay the course because you know this baby of yours is going to be the bomb. Then, finally, just when you can see a light at the end of the tunnel, labor starts. Your innards twist and strangle and force you to stumble around hunched over in the shape of the letter “C” while you breathe and pray and curse and just when you think it can’t get any more out-of-your-mind painful, a giant baby head squeezes out of a tiny hole in your body. Then. A full-blown miracle appears.

"Growth ain't for weenies, but it's nowhere near as painful as living the life you're living right now if you're not really going for it. If you want to take control of your life and turn it into something as spectacularly "you" as have the people I described above, stop at nothing. Have faith. Trust that your new life is already here and is far better than the old. Hang tight if the Big Snooze pitches a fit. Whatever happens, stay the course, because there's nothing cooler than watching your entire reality shift into one that is the perfect expression of you."