You always brush your pearly-whites, you gargle antiseptic mouth rinses, and you floss. Throw in regular dental check-ups and you ll think that you re the poster boy for oral hygiene. What if I tell you that you re forgetting something. Nope, because you re forgetting your tongue. You taste with it, you lick with it, and when temptation arises, you even wag it. Don t you think it s high time to start cleaning it. After all, I m sure you don t want to sport a white, abnormal-looking tongue. An oft-neglected part of oral hygiene, tongues are not flat and smooth even if they appear that way to you. They have fissures which make for suitable anaerobic bacteria breeding places. This bacteria is the major source of stink breaths. Plus, you won t be able to remove the viscous, jelly-like film of plaque covering your tongue through rinsing. What you must do is to scrape it. Don t be; because cleaning your tongue takes no effort. You could do it in as little as a 1-2 minutes. Before you do that, read up to avoid scrubbing your tongue raw. First, you don t have to buy special tongue cleaners since your regular toothbrush will do. However, tongue cleaners are easier to maneuver. Use a...

-- Khalil Gibran Our life works and can be full of joy when we make effective choices. Our life can be full of sorrow if we make ineffective choices. Chooser vs. Victim As a child, choices were made for me and I had little power over what happened to me. This is normal for children, but when we take this attitude as adults I call it being a victim. The opposite of being a victim is to be The Chooser. The concept of choice is remarkable, and that we have choices I consider to be a fact. Though in my life, I ve forgotten this fact many times when I was impulsive or reactive. I find it challenging to take responsibility for my failures and pain as being the result of my own choices. I ve had many wake-up calls that acting out of ignorance or impulse doesn t absolve me of responsibility for making a bad choice. When I was sixteen, a new driver, and got a ticket for making a U-turn across a double-yellow line I told the cop honestly that I didn t know it was against the law, and felt it grossly unfair that he ticketed me anyway. I fought the ticket in traffic court and lost. My only defense was I didn t know. I didn t mean to break the law. The judge told me ignorance was not an...

I often wonder why I have made the choices I have made and how they have led me to this place. When I was a fulltime employee for a large corporation I can remember being so dissatisfied with myself and my work environment. It wasn t that I had a bad job or that I worked with bad people but I still felt very unhappy with my circumstances. It wasn t something I could place a finger on at the time but now looking back I have a better feel for why I felt so lost. I didn t stay in college and I have always held the belief that somehow I had limited myself because I was not willing to do the leg work required to be recognized as someone of importance. I m not sure how a college degree would have made me a different person or if it really would have had any real effect on the person whom I have become. I have always relied on self education. I have spent many years teaching myself through reading and researching topics that I find interesting. When I am focused on a topic I immerse myself into the subject matter as if it is the most important thing for me to be doing at that moment. My lack of a college degree has nothing to do with me being lazy or unguided. I have always felt...