There is a village in Scotland far from the bustling of busy cities. Or at least there was. Go, as the crow flies, north from Cromarty, beyond Dornoch Firth, toward the Northwest Highlands, and you will cross green, gently rising countryside to see the hills and lochs of this ancient land. You cannot help but be caught up in a spirit of exhilaration and freedom. Before you reach the ocean, about fifty miles away, turn sharply to your right and proceed directly east toward the North Sea. If you carefully follow my directions, you will come upon a little village nestled in the arms of the beautiful hills of Forever and kissed by the waters of Eternity.

I have never seen this village, and yet, I know it’s there. Perhaps Mardai’s great- grandfather roamed the highlands and visited that village. He was Scottish, you see. As a young lad, I remember the rapture I felt at the sound of the bagpipe. I loved to just stand and listen to a lone piper, piping away at eventide. The bagpipe fascinates me even to this day, so much so that I follow the Scottish festivals and literally spend hours treading behind the pipers. I see myself taking the high road and following the low road beyond Loch Lomond until I meet that special someone coming through the rye. Then off I go singing the Skye Boat Song to where the River Afton flows gently through County Ayrshire. The land of Robert the Bruce and Mary Queen of Scots holds a very special fascination for me.

Suddenly, my mind returned to the Restaurant at the Edge of Eternity, to Marla, Gideon and Theo. I opened my eyes and with firm resolve said to Marla, “I have always wanted to visit Scotland and to go alone the first time. Do you mind, Marla?”

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It is a common knowledge that smoking is extremely dangerous to health. But did you know that aside from the usual lung and heart ailments developed from prolonged exposure to cigarette smoke, the addictive habit has also been found to pose adverse effects to the skin. Thus, many experts and dermatologists assert that quitting smoking is a good skin care measure.

The skin is identified as the largest body organ because it serves as an outer covering of internal systems. It is a common misconception to take care of the skin only from the outside. Through the years, research efforts have established the clear relationship between overall skin health and the nutrients that comes from within. It is in this concept that the major adverse effects of smoking to skin health can be explicitly explained.

The are simple explanations why you are advised to quit smoking to be able to attain good skin care. The first is that the nutrients found in tobacco cause constrictions at the outermost blood vessels, which are instrumental in feeding skin cells with the essential nutrients and oxygen. Thus, smoking is a major identified cause of skin wrinkling and sagging even prematurely. Smoking also has been found to deplete the skin’s elastin and collagen, which give strength and elasticity to the skin.

Lack of oxygen supply results to severe skin discoloration. Because the skin is deprived of the normal and necessary levels of oxygen because of smoking, the area especially around the facial region tends to appear yellowish or sallow. Repeated exposure to heat and smoke coming from cigarettes also result to similar occurrences.

There are about 4,000 identified chemicals and harmful substances found in each stick of cigarettes. Scientists assert that most of these are toxic and are proven to be highly irritants. On top of that, there are 40 carcinogenic substances included that lead to certain forms of skin cancer, specifically the very deadly Squamous Cell Carcinoma. This form of cancer could metastasize to prompt formation of cancer in other body parts.

Aside from these identified internal effects of smoking to overall skin health, the movement of the lips done when puffing smoke from cigarette sticks has been found to form wrinkles around the mouth. That is because people tend to pucker when puffing and emitting smoke from lit cigarettes. The smoke also tends to form wrinkles around the eyes as people naturally tend to resort to the usual reflex of shrinking eyes when exposed to smoke.

The best time to quit smoking is now. Researchers and experts assert that by dumping the addictive habit right away, you would be able to reverse the impact of the activity to your skin. Thus, quitting smoking is one of the best and most effective skin care regimen. For smokers, the attempt could be really hard and could be a major challenge. If you are just starting to form the habit, it would be better if you would drop it right away before you become addicted. Quit smoking and expect to have more beautiful and healthy skin.

Central to understanding persuasion is the concept of neutrality. The laws of persuasion are neither good nor evil. They simply exist. Just as nuclear power can be used to create electricity or an atomic bomb, persuasion can be used to create unity or to force compliance. Whether the outcome is good or bad depends on the person using the laws and how that person applies the techniques of persuasion.

Some people desire to win at any cost, using any available tactics including misusing the laws of persuasion. These individuals are willing to use guilt, violence, intimidation, temptation, bribery, and blackmail to get the desired result.

However, when used properly, persuasion is our best friend. Through persuasion we create peace agreements, promote fund-raising efforts, and convince motorists to buckle up. Persuasion is the means by which the coach of an underdog team inspires players to win. It is also the method employed by the Surgeon General to convince people to have regular mammograms and prostate examinations, by managers to increase employee performance and morale, and by hostage negotiators to convince criminals to free their captives.

Misuse of the laws will only come back to haunt you in the long run. You might get short-term instant results, but your long-term future will be bleak. The tools outlined in this book are powerful and are not to be used selfishly. They should not be considered a means of gaining a desired result at any cost. Rather, you should use these tools to get your desired outcome only when it is a win-win situation for all involved.

The fable of the sun and the wind provides an excellent example of properly implemented persuasion. The sun and the wind were always arguing about which of them was the strongest. The wind believed he was stronger because of his destructive power in tornados and hurricanes. He wanted the sun to admit he was stronger, but the sun held fast to his own opinion and could not be convinced. One day the sun decided he wanted the matter settled once and for all, so he invited the wind to compete with him in a contest. The sun chose the contest carefully. He pointed out an old man taking a walk, and challenged the wind to use his power to blow the man’s jacket off. The wind felt this would be an easy contest to win and began to blow. To his surprise, each gust of wind only made the man cling more tightly to his jacket. The wind blew harder, and the man held on tighter. The harder the wind blew, the more the man resisted. The powerful blows of wind even knocked the man down, but he would not let go of his jacket. Finally, the wind gave up and challenged the sun to succeed in getting the man to take off his jacket. The sun smiled and shone radiantly upon the man. The man felt the warmth of the sun, and sweat began to appear on his forehead. The sun continued pouring out warmth and sunshine upon the man and, at last, the man took off his jacket. The sun had won the contest. If your attempt to persuade is a win-win, others will be eager to do what you want them to do.

Truly I tell you, gratitude is the key to abundance. For if you are grateful, surely you will experience an increase in all the good things you feel you are deserving in Life.

Gratitude does not come from a “this is too good to be true” feeling. Nor does it come from feelings of lack and desperation, such that you are dependent upon external factors as if the world owes you anything. Gratitude comes from a realisation, a proper understanding of things, that goes as deep and as true as that of a mother’s love for her child.

Thankfulness cannot be faked or forced. You can train a child to say “Thank You” when he is given something good, but you cannot cause him to truly experience deep feelings of gratitude and appreciation in his heart.

Perhaps this is why grateful people have always been in short supply. I am referring to the truly grateful, not the masses that only profess gratefulness by the tongue but do not possess it in the depths of their hearts. However, like any other tendencies, true gratefulness can be slowly and steadily instilled in one’s being by consistent and diligent observation and practice.

How does abundance come into the picture of gratitude?

To give a weird but vivid analogy, imagine a person living in a dark, claustrophobic and almost airtight pod. Let’s say, for the sake of this analogy, she is able to live solely on air. Her only supply of air streams in from tiny almost imperceptible holes puncturing the surface of the pod. These holes also happen to bring in a little light into her pod.

Abundance is the virtually infinite supply of air that exists as a plenum outside her pod.

Gratitude is the hole that punctures the pod, allowing some air and some light to enter it.

As she lives and breathes in the pod, she is able to notice the tiny holes that have been sustaining her throughout her life. As she has been paying attention to only a fixed area of tiny holes, she thinks those are the only holes that exist to nourish her with much needed air, when in truth, tiny holes dot the entire surface area of the pod.

Every day, she lives a life of struggle, constantly panting and heaving and gasping for air, punctuated only occasionally when she musters the courage and effort to place herself close to an area of holes and really suck in the air from outside the pod.

Let’s say she is not likely to suffer from asphyxiation because she is able to survive on very minimal amounts of air.

One day, she experiences a breakthrough. During one of those rare moments in which she gets the strength to really suck in air from one of the holes on the pod, she notices that her suction had caused the hole to expand in size, thus, the amount of air that streams in increases.

At first, she ignores this phenomenon. But when the effect happens for a second, and a third time, she sets out to turn her hypothesis into a fact. Soon she discovers that there are actually more holes dotting the surface of the pod than she had realised, because of the increased amount of light that enters due to the increasing size of the hole. So she experiments with the other holes dotting the pod, sucking in the outside air with all her might, until eventually, she has a couple of big holes on her pod that bring in really huge amounts of air and light.

Day by day, she continues this new hole-expanding effort of hers. One day, because of the increasing sizes of the holes and the number of holes that have expanded, the structural integrity of the once solid pod diminishes, and she finds that she can easily, almost effortlessly, rip apart the pod as if it were made of paper – hence, finally liberating herself and transcending into a whole new world of abundance.

Bizarre as this analogy might seem, most of us live like the girl in the pod. There are tiny streams of abundance entering our self-imposed imprisoned life. All it takes is our awareness of these sources of sustenance and abundance and to expand our awareness of them, thus increasing our prosperity in all areas of Life.

Everything is an asset. Are you sitting on them or are you finding ways and means of fashioning those assets into materials that you would use to design the life of your dreams?