You will never be able to please everyone. You have the best chance for happiness if you take actions to please yourself and the God within you. It is futile to struggle to uphold the opinions of others. The more you try to live the life others dictate for you the more you cease to know your own heart’s desires. It is your own opinion that you need to live with since it is with you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and for as many years as you are alive.

I’ve started telling the truth more (in kind ways) over the last 20 years. Sometimes I'm better at it than at other times. It's easy for me to tell somebody that I want to have Chinese food rather than a burger. It's another thing to tell a friend that they disappointed me or that my feelings were hurt by what they said.

The truth is the most threatening dynamic you can introduce into a world of guarded illusion. The truth scares the hell out of a dysfunctional relationship or family, and the first one to tell it is usually ostracized. I have had my share of “poison darts” shot at me because I told my authentic truth. I once told a parent of one of my students that the child had learning disabilities. The father was a well-known physician and couldn’t endure the thought that his son was anything less than a genius. So at a PTA meeting the doctor publicly ridiculed me. I was devastated but there were other parents in attendance that jumped to my defense. Several parents even sent me flowers and told me how their children had blossomed because I was their teacher.

Fast forward several years. The child who needed some help to make learning easier for him was attending junior high school and his mother came to my classroom and asked me to document the fact that the child had learning disabilities. The physician and his wife finally saw or acknowledged what I realized years earlier. They just let their egos get into the way.

The boy’s mother even requested that her daughter have me for a teacher. That was a bit tough for me but I agreed. Happily the daughter did very well and the mother often volunteered to help in my classroom, to bake cookies or to help tutor other children. What was truly transformational was when the father, while attending open house at school for his daughter, actually came up to me, shook my hand and told me what a difference I made in the lives of both of his children. I’m surprised I didn’t faint since this was so out of character for him.

If I had it to do again, would I have told the truth as I saw it? Absolutely! Telling the truth is not a bad thing at all when you consider that the alternative to telling the truth is to be alienated from yourself. So you may get crucified temporarily, but you may also get healed permanently. Crucifixion of some kind is an initiation on the path of greatness. No one escapes this world without being crucified in some way at some time.

If you follow your heart, you will never fail and you will never be sorry. Your heart is the voice through which God (Goddess, Great Spirit, Sources or whatever other name you use) speaks to you of your worth and your strength. To believe in the goodness of your visions is to keep the channel open.

Each day practice trusting your goodness more. Deny any voices that tell you that you can't, you don't deserve, or you won't. You can, you do deserve, and you will. Prove by your life that God is real and lives through you. Change the world with your acts of confidence. Make liars out of fear and doubt. Demonstrate that life is the most powerful force in the universe and it finds expression through your belief in your life and yourself.