I need a spiritual connection - I can make changes, but I can't make miracles - and I need people around me who'll support me and believe in me and tell me the truth and not let me deceive myself into avoiding the what's scary and hard and necessary.

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Your mission isn't a project to check off your list. It's a commitment to which to dedicate your life.

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The idea that everything is purposeful really changes the way you live. To think that everything that you do has a ripple effect, that every word that you speak, every action that you make affects other people and the planet.

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Growing into your future ... requires a dedication to caring for yourself as if you were rare and precious, which you are, and regarding all life around you as equally so, which it is.

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We do children an enormous disservice when we assume that they cannot appreciate anything beyond drive through fare and nutritionally marginal, kid-targeted convenience foods. Our children are capable of consuming something that grew in a garden or on a tree and never saw a deep fryer. They are capable of making it through diner at a sit-down restaurant with tablecloths and no climbing equipment. Children deserve quality nourishment.

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A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by with-that's poverty-but how efficiently we can put first things first. . . . When you're clear about your purpose and your priorities, you can painlessly discard whatever does not support these, whether it's clutter in your cabinets or commitments on your calendar. (148)

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Self-esteem is the result of recognizing our personal power; awe and wonder come from recognizing our lack of it. Both are true, and in an exceptional life there is no conflict between them.

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If you celebrate your differentness, the world will, too. It believes exactly what you tell it.

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Beauty at 70 years old isn't the same as beauty at 20 years old, but it is stunning nonetheless.

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Let other people do it their way. What other people do is irrelevant.

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