True freedom, peace, and self-compassion begins the moment you stop blaming others for how you feel. When you take ownership of your emotions and feelings, you reclaim the last human freedom to chose your response based on your signature strengths and highest values.

No one can make you feel unloved or worthless without your consent. By taking responsibility for your feelings, you transform pain into power, reaction into reflection, and every challenge into an opportunity to grow wiser and more compassionate.

• Exemplification is the embodiment of transformation with the power to change insight into influence. During the final “Elixir Shared” step of the “Return Phase” of the Hero’s Journey, your life, not your words becomes the message.

• When you live what you’ve discovered with courage, compassion, and authenticity - you create a spark to ignite and multiply other journey’s. Creating this spark requires living in harmony with the following five core truths.

  • You must wake up to your true nature and highest version of yourself.

  • Waking up is not enough. You must live in alignment with your true nature. This requires discovering your signature strengths, defining your highest values and life goals, and implementing a framework of atomic habits that exemplifies your highest values.

  • Peace comes from aligning your perspective with the three universal characteristics of human experience (uncertainty, imperfection, and impermanence).

  • We live in a universe of deeply interdependent opposites (suffering/Joy, love/hate, life/death, etc.). No mud, no lotus. No suffering, no joy. It’s not enough to learn how to be joyful. You must also learn how to suffer well and transform.

  • Five mind states will prevent you from living your best life (Sensual desire, ill will, sloth-torpor, restlessness-worry, & doubt.” Practicing the following five catalysts to awakening and exemplification will transform your life into a message with influence.

Gratitude is the spiritual compass required for the “Freedom to Live” portion of the “Return” phase of the Hero’s Journey. Gratitude creates inner peace connected with the present moment and eliminates the fear of death and failure. With gratitude, every hardship and emotional scar becomes sacred, part of the story that led to awakening.

Sharing insights motivated by gratitude, love, and service instead of ego are essential to healing and inspiration.