People need to stop comparing themselves to others, or happiness will always elude them. Someone will always be smarter. Someone will always be more attractive. Someone will always be younger. Someone will always be more popular. But they will never be you. Society makes being "the best" out to be the Holy Grail, but is uniqueness not more important? We bring a unique combination of qualities, skills, and quirks to the table -- ones that make us who we are. By comparing yourself to other people, you're essentially saying there is a standard against which you wish to compare yourself. This, for many people, leads to a sudden urge to want to be more like others, thereby relinquishing key facets of their individuality. Sure, you might admire smart, health-conscious, or stylish people and wish to surround yourself with those of that ilk so as to learn a few things from them. However, that should never translate into abandoning the very goals, principles, attit...

Many people -- myself included -- let life get them down sometimes. We fret over the fact that life never quite seems perfect -- there's always a problem to be resolved, an issue to be addressed. Here's the reality: Life was never perfect before, it won't be perfect today, and it won't be so in the future either. We can do things to put our ducks in a row as best as we can, but we can't just sweep everything under a rug and go about our business. It doesn't work that way. As counterintuitive as this may sound, it's a good thing that life presents a steady stream of challenges. It keeps us on our toes and striving to better ourselves. Can you imagine a life completely devoid of worries or goals? We'd have nothing to look forward to if things remained the same day in and day out. Of course, you want to minimize the stress in your life and not allow problems to tailspin into crises. But you shouldn't feel despondent over the fact that your l...