If today were my last day on Earth and I could share 500 words of brilliance with the world, here are the important things I'd want to pass along to others...

What a joy to spend this time with you today. I hope what I have to share will inspire, motivate, and empower you to live a vibrantly healthy, balanced life-beginning today.

Each of us faces tremendous challenges every day. As we get up each morning, we may face myriad stressors-getting the kids off to school, driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic, presenting a career-making (or career-breaking) report to the boss, balancing the household budget, and so much more. It can seem like there is not enough time in the day to accomplish all you need to do. These are just some of the ways everyday life can get us down. If poorly managed, these challenges can lead to many forms of stress, depression, and anxiety.

Stress is a fact of life, but you can choose not to make it a way of life for you.

Living a stress-free life is not a reasonable goal. The real goal is to learn to deal with stress actively and effectively. Although that's easier for some people than others, studies suggest that anyone can learn to cope better. But I don't want you to just cope, I want you to thrive - to be vibrantly healthy, joyful, and balanced.

Have you ever stopped to think about how unique, special, and marvelous you are? No one else in the world, now or in the past or in the future, is exactly like you. Never, from amongst all the seventy-six billion humans who have walked this planet since the beginning of time, has there been anyone exactly like you. As I thought about this concept recently, I thought about the approximately six billion people living on our planet. Then I figured out how long it would take to count all these people if they passed by me single file, one every second.

Imagine this. A clock ticks out the seconds while you sit in a rocking chair on your front porch. Without taking time out to stretch your legs, eat your meals, or rest your eyes, count each person passing by. How many weeks or months do you think it would take to count the world's population, one per second? You would have to sit there continuously for about 200 years! By that time you would probably be off your rocker!

This calculation of the world's population is an amazing lesson in the miraculousness of life. Try to grasp the idea that for 200 years you would never find two people exactly alike. You would never find two whose experiences had been the same or whose fingerprints were alike, or who thought, believed, felt, or talked alike.

And then to that, add the fact that you are the one special being created from one egg and one out of more than 500 million sperm that traveled an immense distance, overcame tremendous obstacles, and won a fierce and challenging competition at the moment of your conception. You are already a winner. What's more, you are composed of a body, mind, and spirit, and you already have everything you need to live up to your highest potential-to become master of your life. I think that calls for a celebration. You are amazing in who you are and what you can do with your life.

On a universal level, the thing that people wrestle with most is low self-esteem. It was Eleanor Roosevelt, in all her sagacity, who said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." When you embrace high self-esteem and live from an empowered presence, you will be successful in all areas of your life. It's an inner change that needs to be made. Look at magazine ads, television commercials, or makeover reality shows either by innuendo or by outright declaration, they are almost all aimed at changing who we are, making us somehow better-smarter, more attractive, slimmer, richer, and more secure. You can spend millions of dollars changing your physical features, but that will do little good until you change your attitude about yourself and cultivate a relationship with yourself that incorporates your very own divinity. When you do that, chances are you'll be happy with the physical body that God provided for you, and you will establish a salutary health and fitness program to keep your body temple in peak functioning order.

We must choose to be kind and loving toward ourselves-all the time. Self-image is crucial here. Being vibrantly healthy, living fully, and celebrating life starts with celebrating ourselves. Whether we succeed or fail, enjoy our lives or struggle, depends largely on our self-image. In fact, numerous studies have concluded that the view we have of ourselves is the key to taking control of our lives. Develop a loving relationship, a warm friendship with yourself. Be your own best friend. Out of that friendship all your other relationships form. Stop being so critical, judgmental, and unforgiving of yourself. When you are not feeling good about yourself, you feel separated from others and God. When you see yourself as a failure, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy. You attract to yourself that which you believe you deserve. Your negative thoughts and attitudes about yourself, whether they originated within yourself or others, convince you of your inability to succeed. If you feel you don't deserve success, prosperity, an enjoyable life, happy relationships, or joy and peace, you will settle for less than that to which you are entitled. When you feel unworthy, you cut yourself off from the fullness of life and create more stress. Put simply, when you learn to love yourself and take loving care of yourself, love will come to you in the forms of happiness, health, success, prosperity, peace, joy, and balance.

Living in such a fast-paced world, constantly in a tizzy over one thing or another, conspires against inner peace. The intense pace and stress of our daily lives can very easily put our peace, joy, urbanity, and health-not to mention our spiritual lives-at risk. It's easy to get caught up in the whirl of today's hectic lifestyle-especially if we've forgotten the truth of our potential. This leaves us less time for self-fulfillment. Deteriorating standards and values lead to low self-esteem and rob many of us of our dignity.

When we feel an inner emptiness, we are less inclined to make the difficult decisions of life and may be tempted to seek "easy" solutions to problems. This "quick fix" approach to life is understandable, since learning to live fully takes time and patience. But the fact is, we can, and must, slow things down if we ever hope to face our own large and small challenges with aplomb and equanimity, on terms that are our own, guided by our purest hearts. We can choose to experience aliveness and become masters of our lives, keeping in mind that this awakening is always an "inside job."

Do you believe you have the power to master life? How committed and disciplined are you to follow your highest vision? Commitment-to a project, a relationship, a health and fitness program, a spiritual practice-can lend stability to the stressful, chaotic whirlwind of everyday life. Daily actions that reaffirm commitments bring a feeling of empowerment and increase self-esteem. It's through our everyday behavior that we know what really counts. Our commitment must be woven through everything-our thoughts, emotions, words, and actions.

Many people say they are committed to being healthy, yet they continually let excuses get in the way. They say they'll have to wait until next Monday to exercise because they're just too busy now they won't be able to eat nutritious food for the next two weeks because of birthdays, anniversaries, and the church's bake sale coming up or they're too stressed to make a major change right now. Commitment means that you get past your excuses and follow through on what you said you were going to do. Make your word count. How do you ever expect someone to make a commitment to you or think you will follow through on a commitment to them unless you first show a commitment to yourself and what you say?

I salute your great adventure and hope to meet you somewhere along the way.

Don't forget to celebrate yourself and life today!