OK. You’ve finally let the bitter truth seep into the part of your brain that admits bitter truths. Your job sucks. The mere fact that window envelopes with pretty checks in them arrive every two weeks is not doing it for you anymore. You are becoming very good at the thousand-yard stare, the long, unfocused look past your cubicle into a green-and-gold world out there somewhere, a world that’s passing you by. Or perhaps you’re so damned wiped out at the end of a day on the assembly line, behind the cash register, or at the nurse’s station that the thousand-yard stare shrinks to six inches.

My doctoral thesis was about biological transformation and how the hidden intelligence inside each cell communicates with the whole entity as change is happening. I netted a tank full of tadpoles from a local pond and then studied them at intervals as they metamorphosed slowly into frogs. The same question that guided my research then is still exciting now: What is the natural intelligence that guides transformation?

Tadpoles are fascinating to watch. They’re orderly change artists, masters of subtle and sneaky transformation. Perfectly engineered water wonders, tadpoles have big heads and graceful, tapering tails that offer little resistance to forward movement. With no fanfare at all, the pollywog simply starts to change one day: His tail gets shorter as his body absorbs it, and he sprouts four tiny limb buds.

Along with all the nuts and bolts I’ll teach – the “how to” – there are also a number of fundamental principles all successful people follow. Without these fundamental principles, the nuts and bolts are pretty much useless. If, however, you really embrace these fundamental principles, the nuts and bolts become easy to implement. The nuts and bolts almost become an afterthought, a process of filling in the blanks.I want to share one of these principles with you today. This principle is truly magic, and if you can integrate it into your life, it will improve everything.

Valentines Day began back in November for over 10,000 Los Angeles County children, as they entered the first annual Love Equals children’s Valentine’s Day writing contest, a joint venture of the Screen Actors Guild Foundation and Zimand Entertainment.

Love Equals reached out and touched students and teachers at 2500 Los Angeles County schools, crossing income and cultural lines, in neighborhoods such as Ranch Palos Verdes, Skid Row, Woodland Hills, Inglewood, Pasadena El Monte, Pacific Palisades and San Pedro. The teachers spurred their students, ages six through 11, to write and send in their essays and poems expressing what “love” means to them.