My own nature hovers between neurotic and paranoid. I've developed the habit of mentally listing things that make me optimistic about the future. I do it every day.

Caring for your inner child has a powerful and surprisingly quick result: Do it and the child heals.

Children who assume adult responsibilities feel old when they're young.

Do whatever it takes to convey your essential self.

People are so afraid of authority figures and doctors are authority figures.

Polite strangers often tell soothing lies about our physical appearance that prevent many of us from facing, discussing and solving our real problems.

Hopeful thinking can get you out of your fear zone and into your appreciation zone.

I really do think that any deep crisis is an opportunity to make your life extraordinary in some way.

At times in my life, I have been utterly lonely. At other times, I've had disgusting infectious diseases. Try admitting these things in our culture.

The position that I take partly as a result of living in Asia is where you stop living according to your expectations and you become available to experience things as they are.

Only since the Industrial Revolution have most people worked in places away from their homes or been left to raise small children without the help of multiple adults, making for an unsupported life.

Loneliness is proof that your innate search for connection is intact.

In one century, we've added 28 years to our average life span - a change so rapid that our brains couldn't possibly have evolved to accommodate it.

I always felt that it was my job to try to help other people get it and deal with it.

Absolutely lonely people have few personal interactions of any kind.

When you meet people, show real appreciation, then genuine curiosity.

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.

Basic human contact - the meeting of eyes, the exchanging of words - is to the psyche what oxygen is to the brain. If you're feeling abandoned by the world, interact with anyone you can.

Almost all my middle-aged and elderly acquaintances, including me, feel about 25, unless we haven't had our coffee, in which case we feel 107.

Most of my clients don't realize that the way they look and the way they think about their looks are two separate issues.

The average adult laughs 15 times a day; the average child, more than 400 times.

Use anything you can think of to understand and be understood, and you'll discover the creativity that connects you with others.

Allowing children to show their guilt, show their grief, show their anger, takes the sting out of the situation.

My own nature hovers between neurotic and paranoid. I've developed the habit of mentally listing things that make me optimistic about the future. I do it every day.

We virtually never feel our age, but thinking that we should can lead to disaster.

I have come to believe that there are infinite passageways out of the shadows, infinite vehicles to transport us into the light.

Whoever said love is blind is dead wrong. Love is the only thing that lets us see each other with the remotest accuracy.

If you're living completely on your own, break out of solitary confinement. Seek to understand others, and help them understand you.

Although beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, the feeling of being beautiful exists solely in the mind of the beheld.

Given the eclectic and constantly shifting nature of my metaphysical inclinations, I will probably never feel certain exactly what an angel is.

I majored in Chinese. I was never really good at Chinese but I really, really benefited from having been exposed to Asian philosophy early in my life.

Seek art from every time and place, in any form, to connect with those who really move you.

If you're religious, it gives you a perspective.

No one else can take risks for us, or face our losses on our behalf, or give us self-esteem. No one can spare us from life's slings and arrows, and when death comes, we meet it alone.

Good-looking individuals are treated better than homely ones in virtually every social situation, from dating to trial by jury.

What laughter is to childhood, sex is to adolescence.

As much horror as we have always created, we are a species that keeps moving forward, seeing new sights in new ways, and enjoying the journey.

If you want to end your isolation, you must be honest about what you want at a core level and decide to go after it.

Every day brings new choices.

Standards of beauty are arbitrary. Body shame exists only to the extent that our physiques don't match our own beliefs about how we should look.

I don't believe that there are no spiritual beings around us. I don't know what to call them, I don't know how they work. But I know they're there.

Adults under threat feel like children.

A designated patient 'carries' the group's dysfunction. A designated issue performs the same service for an individual, dominating our psyches so that other troubles can go unnoticed.

All mental hygiene is based on the core practice of doing nothing. Most of us are good at wasting time, staring at the wall while telling ourselves we should be working. We call this doing nothing, but our brains are furiously active. We think constantly, and our thinking is often rife with distress.

All religious leaders and spiritual teachers emphasize finding a place within us that is true. People who obsessively follow these leaders instead of their own purpose attach to the spiritual leader and become fanatical and controlling. That's why Jesus tried to tell his followers not to get attached to outward form.

Anger elicits anger, fear elicits fear, no matter how well meaning we may be.

Anything you're trying to will is focused on the future; it's always associated with some sort of anxiety that makes the present moment somewhat uncomfortable.

As I obsess about my ancient problems, I feel more like I'm sinking in quicksand than lighting a torch. I'm creating neither heat nor light, just the icky, perversely pleasurable squish of self-pity between my toes. My only defense is that I'm not the only one down here in the muck - our whole culture is doting on tales of personal tragedy.

As a life coach, I love makeovers, from new clothes to surgery, pedicures to highlights. But redoing makes you feel better only if approached with the right attitude.