A few weeks ago, I returned to the classroom of Dennis Dalton, the most important college professor of my life. From the back of an amphitheater seating several hundred students, I realized how much things had evolved at Columbia and Barnard. The lecture hall was now equipped with a wireless sound system, webcams, video projectors, wireless internet. Students were using computers to record the lecture and to take notes. Heads were buried in screens, the tap tap of hundreds of keyboards like rain on the roof.

On this afternoon, April 16, 2008, Dalton was describing the satyagraha of Mahatma Gandhi, building the discussion around the Amritsar massacre in 1919, when British colonial soldiers opened fire on 10,000 unarmed Indian men, women and children trapped in Jallianwala Bagh Garden.

When people think of dreams, and what it takes to make them happen, they often underestimate their own mind power and what is going on beneath the surface of conscious awareness.  Internal energy creates and manifests precisely what a person needs, even if it is not necessarily what they consciously want and work toward. Every human being has his or her own secrets waiting to be rediscovered.

In the case of Self-Disclosure: Changes from Within, it initially becomes apparent the author has her own ideas of dreams she hopes to realize.  She focuses her energy and the power of intention in certain conscious directions, only to learn her unconscious mind and the universe clearly have other plans. Before long, she realizes she is in for a big wake-up call that touches on every area of her life.

The most powerful pharmacy in the world is right between your ears!  Thoughts are things. They can heal or harm. Beliefs mold your brain.

Other than eating breakfast regularly, and eating more fruits and vegetables, the one characteristic that is present in all healthy older people is resiliency – that hard-to-measure quality of adapting to change, shifting with changing tides, and seeing the glass half full.

This is because your thoughts have real and measurable effects on your body and brain. Every cell in your body listens to your thoughts. Your immune cells know your deepest feelings.

Your stem cells are wired to your brain and help you repair and regenerate. But they ONLY turn on and make new brain cells when you relax!

In my role as a counselor, teacher, and parent, I’ve heard many reasons that people use to explain an unhappy existence . . . and almost all of them inevitably fall into one huge category, which I call “excuses.”

The rest of the chapter will introduce you to 18 of the most commonly used ones, along with a brief commentary about each of them. This will give you a primer before you go on to learn the Excuses Begone! method that’s detailed in the rest of the book.

Here they are, in no particular order: