On a beautiful Saturday morning, I joined several friends who were setting up a traditional Easter egg hunt for children of varying ages. The hunt was at my friend Sarah’s home—a sprawling 20 acres where she and her husband Keith keep big dogs and even bigger horses.

Listening to Sarah admonish the littlest hunters before they set off to find their eggs, I realized her advice to them could also apply to my own recent searches for life’s goodies. Maybe you’ll find it useful as well:

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One of the cardinal sins of dreamstopping is pigeonholing: putting ourselves in a limited space and failing to see our other possibilities. Of course, if you were going to be pigeonholed, there are worse spaces to be boxed into than Hollywood movie star and sex symbol. That’s the space Hedy Lamarr occupied in the 1930s and 40s.

Lamarr was a stunning dark-haired Austrian-born actress who later became an American citizen. She captivated directors as a 19-year-old in the 1933 Czech film Ecstasy, and within a decade was capturing plum roles opposite Hollywood’s top leading men. Billed as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” she even wound up playing the ultimate Biblical seductress in director Cecil B. DeMille’s lavish 1949 production Samson and Delilah.

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After J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up debuted at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London in December 1904, English children soon began demonstrating the courage of their convictions. In the story, Peter told the Darling children that if only they believed with enough conviction, they could fly. And like the Darling children in the play, the children in the audience believed. They believed with such conviction parents soon began complaining to Barrie that their little ones were beginning to suffer injuries as they tried to take off but fell back to earth. The playwright resolved the problem by introducing another necessary ingredient to his formula for flying: fairy dust.

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In May 1995, actor Christopher Reeve was in Virginia, on horseback, approaching the third of 18 jumps in the finals of dressage event. The triple-bar was about 42 inches high, but Reeve’s horse, Eastern Express, couldn’t seem to find the proper footing for the leap. The horse stopped abruptly and Reeve pitched forward over the horse’s neck, landing on his head on the other side of the jump.

The accident left 42-year-old Reeve, best known for his big-screen portrayals of Superman, paralyzed and unable to breathe without the help of a respirator. At a tribute dinner a few months later, he described the moment, five days after the accident, when a supportive friend gave him a spark of hope:

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Almost a half-century after it was released, Days of Wine and Roses, starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, is still considered one of the film community’s most realistic depictions of addiction. And perhaps the most harrowing moment in this study of a couple’s downward spiral from middle-class success to alcoholic nightmare is what’s known as the greenhouse scene. Lemmon’s character, Joe Clay, has hidden a flask among his father-in-law’s prized plants, and in a desperate frenzy, destroys the greenhouse trying to find it.

Lemmon was nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a host of other awards for his riveting portrayal of Clay, especially in the pivotal greenhouse scene. But what most filmgoers didn’t realize was that the famous scene was a retake. In the original, Lemmon gave what he believed was the best performance of his career. But there was a glitch and the footage was lost. He had to find a way to summon that powerful, gut-wrenching emotion a second time.

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My sister-in-law once told me she likes her anger because it makes her more productive. I knew exactly what she meant. My biggest achievements in life have come after someone told me I’d never make it and I got hoppin’ mad. “Really? Watch me.“

Though my last name is Roberts, I don’t know of any relation to famed horse whisperer Monty Roberts. But when it comes to our reactions to naysayers, his mother and I are kindred spirits. In his autobiography, The Man Who Listens to Horses, Roberts shared the first time he voiced his life dreams.

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Great news for the millions of people who find it excruciatingly awkward to stand in front of a mirror and say things like:

I’m a wonderful person.

The world loves me.

I deserve good things.

I am lovable.

What’s the good news? You can stop the embarrassing love affair with yourself.

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And why should I care? you ask.

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When I was little, kids didn’t get the food choices they get now. Parents and schools spooned it onto the plate and that was it—take it or leave it. For the most part, I took it. But my stomach instinctively rebelled at one staple of the school diet: the unidentifiable meat.

Oh, the lunch ladies could tell me it was beef, chicken, or fish. But if it came in a pressed patty that I couldn’t readily identify as beef, chicken, or fish, forget it. My stomach would not accept it no matter how carefully it was disguised by sauces, gravies, cheese, or buns. So I missed a lot of post-lunch recesses while lunchroom aides forced me to sit glumly at the table and keep poking at the blob with my fork before finally letting me go.

Maybe I should have been schooling them.

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Sometimes you’re coasting along through life when the sudden ringing of a telephone heralds a warning, the sky opens, and a mountain drops into your path. This mountain is the Family Emergency and it takes precedence over all the other mountains you’re trying to move.

Often the first thing you have to do in reacting to the Family Emergency is transport yourself from where you are to wherever the rest of the family is gathering to deal with the crisis. That means getting ready to travel with no time to waste while your mind runs in a thousand directions at once. So you’ll already have a leg up on that unexpected mountain if you’ve done part of your travel planning in advance.

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