The problems presented by difficult individuals contribute to your growth and evolution—another reason for filling yourself with gratitude, appreciation, and love!

Life should not be an endurance event. No prestigious job, well-appointed house, or luxury vacation is worth your emotional, mental and, yes, physical health. In fact, the abrupt loss of all of these things through a cancer diagnosis can be the wake-up call that forces you to identify and begin correcting the things that aren’t working in your life.

In order to create a balanced life that excites you and that allows enough time for healthy habits to flourish, you must love yourself. Even then, it probably won’t be realistic to make one big, drastic sweeping change—especially since overcoming cancer will necessarily be occupying much of your energy. That’s fine; baby steps are a lot better than nothing. As long as you’re working toward a better life you’re on the right path.

It’s important to cultivate friendships. Whether you are an extrovert or an introvert, as a human you are a social being. For the sake of your mental and emotional health, it’s important to be honest about and honor your need for meaningful connections.

Every moment of this experience we call a physical life is determined by the choices you make in your thoughts, intentions, and actions. Thus, when you choose to experience a thought, image, or activity from a place of loving, joyful, and compassionate intentions for yourself and others, you have the power to weave a lovely fabric that heals your mind, body, and soul. When you choose differently, the fabric you weave may contribute to an experience of suffering and pain in the form of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual anguish. The choice is always yours.

Because you are an energetic being and your thoughts and feelings are energy, your journey may be compared to an intricately woven fabric. As the weaver of the fabric of your life, you alone decide whether your life will be beautifully intertwined with threads of gold and silver and blended with the colors of the rainbow, or made with strands of straw and cotton in shades of grays, browns, and other dark, heavy colors.

Many people make their way through life acting as though they are ‘alone.’ They never progress beyond the lower realms of vibrational energy—and thus experience more discord, fear, stress, and ill health—because they don’t allow intuition, higher wisdom, and unconditional (Divine) love to enter into their lives and guide their decisions.

You raise the level of universal well-being by choosing to focus with gratitude on your blessings.

Your health, your experiences, and your life do not have to be at the mercy of your negative emotions. When you consciously choose to focus on a thought or belief that is positive, comforting, or hopeful, you’re clearing out that emotional clutter that’s weighing you down. You’re energetically shifting yourself to a better place.

Your happiness—and your healing—are a function of how you choose to respond on the inside to that which is taking place on the outside.

You have the power to feel good—or not—just by being conscious of what you choose to think. Choose to focus on hope and healing.

When you choose self-love, you are reclaiming your awareness of your own power, which raises your vibrational energy and contributes to your healing.

Focusing on thoughts or images that make you feel good will enable you to be at a higher level energetically and, consequently, will draw to you a higher level of vibrational experience. In other words, positive thoughts will attract positive experiences. The reverse is also true. If you’ve fallen into the habit of negative obsessing and/or fear-based thinking, you need to know that you can shift to a healthier, happier mindset.

One of the best things about gratitude is that it serves both you and the one to whom you are giving thanks. When you share your feelings of being blessed and grateful, not only do you vibrate at higher level, but your expression contributes to an increase in the energy of those around you, and especially serves the individual to whom you have expressed your thanks. The result is that you raise the level of universal well-being by choosing to focus with gratitude on your blessings.

Each person’s journey is different. If something—anything—does not feel right to you, then you alone get to decide whether you will honor it or not. The choice of how to respond to your situation is yours—and will always be yours.

Healing is anything that restores your inner sense that all is well, and that returns you to a healthy state of empowerment.

Healing is about wholeness and harmony. I define healing as anything that contributes to you feeling greater balance, harmony, wholeness, and well-being. In other words, you experience healing when you feel good; and healing is what you need any time you feel that you are out of balance—be it tired, stressed, fearful, or worried—or when you sense a disconnection between your mind, body, and spirit.

Your life is shaped by the thoughts and experiences you choose—and make no mistake, the decision is always yours. I promise, when you learn to be conscious and in control of what you are focusing on, you can begin to create high vibrational experiences, which will transform and heal your life.

It is when you stop resisting and choose an attitude of acceptance and positivity that you are able to shift your energetic experience to a higher plane and thereby attract and allow in experiences that are more in alignment with your hopes and dreams.

Negative feelings weigh you down and can keep you from experiencing healing, as surely as stones might weigh you down if you were trying to swim.

Wellbeing is all about balance. Unfortunately, the normal modern lifestyle (which actually isn’t normal at all) often pushes us away from what’s healthy and manageable, and prompts us to make decisions that overload our bodies and minds. As a society, we are just too busy, too stressed, too consumed with so-called success, too worried about our looks and our image, and not plugged in at all to our spiritual and emotional roots.

It may seem paradoxical, but you really do experience greater happiness when you choose to stop trying to control everything. And on a spiritual level, you evolve by learning the power of surrender and of love.