Emotions are incredibly powerful forces. They are able to propel you to achieve your destiny and overcome the most traumatic events, or they can cause you to become immobilized by small setbacks. Life will always present you with surprises, and you can only exert so much control over the world outside you. However, you always – always – have the choice to manage and balance your emotions.

It may not seem this way when your strong emotions get the better of you, but you don�t have to be at their mercy. You also needn�t remain in unhappy situations, unable to move forward because you�re convinced that you don�t have enough enthusiasm, courage, or determination to get out of your rut and onto the path of your destiny.

There’s a life-size check for $35,574 in the Bear home of Debbie Gill that gives her a good reason to feel that changing your thinking can change the world. For the last seven years, she’s been working on becoming a more positive person. That includes an affirmation that money flows abundantly to her. And it’s been one of her goals to overcome a $26,000 debt left over from her divorce. In July, just eight days after beginning the money affirmation, she took her mother to an Atlantic City casino for an outing.

And while the 48-year-old Gill says that she does not gamble with her money, when given $100 from her mother as a thank-you for the trip, she played the nickel slots and won the Super Prize Jackpot at the Borgata Hotel and Casino.

For decades, recovering alcoholics and those who treat them have incorporated spirituality into the recovery process – whether or not it�s religious in nature. But few research studies have documented if and how spirituality changes during recovery, nor how those changes might influence a person�s chance of succeeding in the quest for sobriety.

Now, a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Addiction Research Center sheds light on this phenomenon. In the March issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, they show that many measures of spirituality tend to increase during alcohol recovery. They also demonstrate that those who experience increases in day-to-day spiritual experiences and their sense of purpose in life are most likely to be free of heavy drinking episodes six months later.

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.

- J.M. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-1937)

How many people really do plan their lives, lay out the objectives and goals they hope to achieve? That would have to be in a meaningful and realistic way, as some people plan to make their first million by age 30 but few make it. Most of those people are divorced by age 30 instead.