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In the heart of the Garden of Eden, where everything seems perfect, there is an ancient struggle between freedom and restriction—a struggle we have all experienced.

I accepted the challenge of writing about motivation thinking it was an easy task, after so many motivational speeches read, listened to, or given.

Our reality isn’t always a calm place. Feelings of safety and peace that are so necessary for our well-being often elude us. What is happening today on a global level only goes to show how fragile our world is, and how easily we can lose control over the things we thought we had mastered.

Joaquín Carmona had 16,000 followers on Twitter, and his posts about Spanish athletics were appreciated even by sport professionals. None of his followers had ever met him in person, and when silence fell on his account for three months, people began to look for him, write to him and ask who Carmona really was.

Trust is so difficult to build, and yet so easy to lose. A lie, a broken promise, or infidelity may lead to the weakening and breaking of trust between partners. Sometimes rebuilding that trust may seem impossible. But the good news is that it is possible to restore trust in a relationship.

The possibility of completely rewriting the rules by which we organise our lives has always captured people's imagination. However, such a reorganisation has materialised, at best, in the pages of a philosophical book and has remained, for the most part, a utopia. But there are exceptions, of course.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, Max Lucado wrote an article summarising the spiritual lessons we can learn from an event that the news described as a "once in a thousand year flood".

A smooth sea never gave a skilled sailor, said Franklin D. Roosevelt, suggesting that without hardship, challenges and even failures, we cannot become our best selves.

Whether we see ourselves or not as living collections of our habits, we know from experience that, once formed, our habits are not as malleable as we would like them to be.

My first Bible was given to me by Pastor Damian Zamfir in the winter of 1972. Pastor Zamfir, the man who led my first steps on the path to Christ, invited me to visit him in the parish house of the Adventist church on Rodnei Street in Targoviste.

What can you do in the face of a terrible diagnosis, which condemns you to life in a wheelchair? What can you choose besides despair or resignation? Kayla chose to run.

Fines, military ordinances, police and army patrolling the streets – this is the reality we have suddenly found ourselves living in. It is a tightening reality, a rigid corset-like structure of rules.

I was a young student looking for a good paying job to support my family and my studies. On that day, I found myself in the head nurse’s office at the nearby nursing home for the elderly.

A global crisis situation, such as that generated by the current pandemic, is a complex picture with many variables bringing high levels of emotional distress. During a pandemic, many people will face a wide range of reactions and emotions, and the psychological impact will often be greater than the medical one.

In 1991, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe published Generations, theorising that every 80 years (one generation cycle) would consist of four “turnings”. Beginning after a crisis, the first turning would involve a feeling of recovery, or “high”. The second would be a spiritual awakening, while the third would see the dissolution of institutions and the rise of individualism. And finally, a crisis...