The feelings of hopelessness can be devastating. They can make you do things you wouldn’t normally do and think things you wouldn’t normally think. The only way to create something different from what you have already experienced is to add new information, new tools and new resources to your life.

Change is all around us every day and every day our lives our changing. It CAN’T be avoided. We can’t bury our heads in the sand or a favored pillow and pretend it isn’t there. Change can be the great awakener. It can be the best thing that ever happened to you.

With the current interest in secrets about the power of thought, it might be useful to take a look at where the power really comes from. Certainly, thoughts are powerful as a locomotive. But emotions are the fuel to get the train out of the station and down the tracks.

Everything depends on our power of choice. We choose to be in the present, choose to observe ourselves, and choose to develop independence and self-reliance.

Some people have a good idea of how they treat others and how to act around others. Then there are those who mean well, but don’t like to be inconvenienced by what others think. This article is about an easy way to not only be happier, but is also about how leaving an impression can attract opportunities into our lives or push them away.

Friday Video: Learn how to accept rude people in this video with P.M. Forni, the founder of The Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins.

Without autonomy, we never think for ourselves, needing continual help from parental types like counselors, talk show hosts, ministers, peers, and experts all too willing to do our thinking for us. We need to decide who we are as individuals. Unique. Valued. Self motivated. Independent.

Are you in control of your reactions to your feelings? Are you tired of having anger, anxiety and jealousy a part of your life? You can change your reactions to your feelings and change what is a part of your life experience.

How the people we keep company with can make us or break us when trying to grow and move forward in life.

Friday Video: What does the law of attraction (karma) mean? Is the law of attraction, as taught by The Secret and Wayne Dyer, in effect just some of the time, or at all times without exception?