It probably sounds pretty obvious to say it, but many unhappy people desire to be happy. They want it, but they don’t always do the things that will make it happen.The potential for happiness walks by each and every day, and they don’t notice it, or they don’t take the steps to...

Your heart is an organ designed to have life flowing through it. Your mind is like that as well, as is your soul. They are not meant to be stagnant, with things buried in them, stuck there and not moving into the light of the outside world.

But to get to the outside visible world, those desires...

I have a question for you. In your opinion, what is the formula for destroying relationships?
If you are like most people, you can probably think of a few ways to make them worse:
Lie
Cheat
Don’t pay attention
Criticize
Those are all good suggestions, and they would probably be pretty effective,...

Something happens to the openness and intimacy of a relationship’s early seasons. The two people slowly stop communicating what they really think and feel, and they slowly get further and further away from each other emotionally. Their hearts either settle into a partial intimacy or a...

Here is a misconception that many people seem to hold. It stems from trying to solve an age-old math problem the wrong way. It looks like this:

½ person + ½ person = 1 whole person

Here is this wrong point of view stated another way: “I am incomplete as a person, and you are...

One of the biggest relationship killers around is comparing the person you love to a fantasy. The truth is, a real person can never match up to the fantasy. Even if the fantasized person is a real person, the fantasy of being with that person is far from what actually being with them would really...

Our best relationships still cannot rescue us. Instead, they hold us responsible for our performance. There are standards and there are consequences. Few things are worse for people than rewarding or overlooking poor performance and bad behavior. It clearly tells the underachiever, “What...

I would like for you to feel solidly in control of your life. You cannot control other people, but you can get in control of yourself. You have to be able to make the choices you need in order to make your life work, belong to you, and integrate around the things important to you. That may...

Sometimes rules get a bad rap. Please don’t get defensive about the idea of having rules in your life. I would like you to understand something. If you knew me well, you would know that I am not a very “rulesy” person. I know those kinds of people are usually not the ones I like...

Have you ever heard yourself say, “Whatever possessed me to say yes to this in the first place? Why didn’t I just say no?” Or, after making a deal, have you ever thought, “Why didn’t I ask for ______?” If you have, that is pretty normal or at least common....

What do you think of when you think of the word “structure”? For some people, it is their worst nightmare. “I do not want to be in an overly structured environment,” they instantly think–and probably for good reason. Everyone has had some experience where rules,...

Confronting a parent or guardian or whoever raised us is probably the most complex of all face-to-face boundaries. You are now an adult, but you have a long history of being your parent’s child. You have been under their care, authority, training, and nurturing. You have been corrected and...