books include Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Drawing on the Artist Within, the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Workbook, and Color: Mastering the Art of Mixing Colors.  The 4th revised edition of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was published in 2015.  Dr. Edwards' books have been translated into 18 foreign languages.   In this interview with two academic researchers, she responds to some of the most salient questions about her life and her work. 1)           Michael Shaughnessy/Cynthia Kleyn-Kennedy (MFS/CKK): From reading your book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brai... posted on Jul 9 2023 (2,580 reads)

a simple five-minute interaction with another person dramatically increase your weekly productivity? In some employment environments, the answer is yes, according to Wharton management professor Adam Grant. Grant has devoted significant chunks of his professional career to examining what motivates workers in settings that range from call centers and mail-order pharmacies to swimming pool lifeguard squads. In all these situations, Grant says, employees who know how their work has a meaningful, positive impact on others are not just happier than those who don't; they are vastly more productive, too. That conclusion may sound touchy-feely, but Grant has docum... posted on May 15 2012 (32,882 reads)

host: I'm Krista Tippett. Earlier this year, the TerriSchiavo case raised ethical and medical questions that remain long after her death. But the media and political frenzy around her tragedy focused on the right to life. Missing in that debate was a real attention to the quality and the meaning of death. My guest today, Joan Halifax, works as a kind of midwife to dying people. She'll speak this hour about what she's learned and how she lives differently after three decades accompanying others to the final boundary of human life. She says that Americans often think of death as a failure.  Today, we'll explore her very different per... posted on Jun 5 2013 (25,299 reads)

idea of fulfilling work—a job that reflects our passions, talents and values—is a modern invention. Open Dr. Johnson's celebrated Dictionary, published in 1755, and the word “fulfilment” doesn't even appear. But today our expectations are higher, which helps explain why job satisfaction has declined to a record low of 47 percent in the U.S., and is even lower in Europe. If you count yourself amongst those who are unhappy in their job, or at least have that occasional niggling feeling that your work and self are out of alignment, how are you supposed to go about finding a meaningful career? What does it take to overcome the fear of cha... posted on Aug 8 2013 (51,708 reads)

ago, you were talking about your grandfather and how important he was to you.   CS:  He was pretty impressive partly because he had no teeth left in his mouth, but he refused to wear his dentures. So everything was [mumbles]. He would even eat corn on the cob without teeth. RW:  Wow. CS:  And he would get so frustrated, if you didn’t understand him and he had to repeat himself. And he would even do funny things. He had one of those recliner Lazy Boy chairs. He worked at Sears Roebuck and he would come home after work and get in the chair and start watching something on TV. And immediately, he’d fall asleep. We would go to change the channel and he&rsq... posted on Dec 1 2013 (21,747 reads)

this. I know exactly what it is, but I can't describe it. I'm not even going to attempt to describe it. But it's there. And it's something for which you can't say, "Oh, well, it's sorta there, sorta not there." It's definitely there. You know when you've smelled the orange. A bunch of us run a non-profit, ServiceSpace, and we empower other non-profits with websites. It's fully volunteer run and we do everything for free, so there's a lot of work. Many times, I'll be working at 1:00 a.m. I'm doing work, and all of a sudden, OK, 1:00 a.m. I'm tired and I could really use some sleep. So I'm thinking, all right, I want to go ... posted on Mar 7 2014 (45,597 reads)

works in mysterious and often paradoxical ways. Creative thinking is a stable, defining characteristic in some personalities, but it may also change based on situation and context. Inspiration and ideas often arise seemingly out of nowhere and then fail to show up when we most need them, and creative thinking requires complex cognition yet is completely distinct from the thinking process. Neuroscience paints a complicated picture of creativity. As scientists now understand it, creativity is far more complex than the right-left brain distinction would have us think (the theory being that left brain = rational and analytical, right brain = creative and emotional). In fa... posted on Mar 24 2014 (178,846 reads)

But equally, whatever the world wants to happen for you will not happen either. And what happens is this meeting. And it’s in that meeting that you overhear yourself being surprised by your reality, by the larger context that you haven’t yet explored. So you’re trying to overhear your self whom you didn’t know you knew. And you’re trying to speak it out loud in the world so it can be known consciously. There should be a lovely sense of surprise when you’re working at that edge and a sense of being gifted. Often people will say, “Well I didn’t write that piece, it just wrote itself.” Or “I felt as though I was the recipient of som... posted on Jul 7 2014 (40,181 reads)

that soon creativity, passion and beauty showed up as central themes. Passion, Johnson argues, is the element that makes it possible for a real breakthrough in thought to take place. And beauty, he explained, goes a long way in establishing the bona fides of the results of scientific experiments. Upon his home, he sent me an example of one of his beautiful electron microscopy photographs. Richard Whittaker: Maybe you could describe briefly your position and a general description of the work you do. Ed Johnson: I am a molecular biologist and do experiments toward basic molecular understanding of cancer and AIDs. A lot of people don’t know that these two are related, but they... posted on May 26 2014 (10,882 reads)

saying, “If anybody’s interested, please call this number.” My phone was ringing off the hook for the next week. So we invited everyone over to my house. We had a party, and we literally started the organization two days later. What happened at the party was that everyone was enthusiastic and relieved, even, to have something to do. Because everyone feels awful—in the face of hunger, in the world, but especially in their own community. So this person had a friend who worked for that bakery, and that person had a friend who worked in a restaurant. So already, in the first week, we already had about six runs that we could make. I contacted one particular food kitche... posted on Oct 30 2014 (16,264 reads)

that way. To be a writer and to have that daily — have a ritual of writing. MS. OLIVER: Well, I don't — as I say I don't like buildings. MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. MS. OLIVER: So I was — the only record I broke and in school was truancy. I went to the woods a lot with books. MS. TIPPETT: Right. MS. OLIVER: Whitman in the knapsack. But I also liked motion. So I just began with these little notebooks and scribbled things as I — they came to me. And then worked them into poems later. And always I wanted the "I." Many of the poems are "I did this. I did this. I saw this." I wanted them — the "I" to be the possible re... posted on Mar 18 2015 (28,355 reads)

decades, we've been taught that economic growth and buying more stuff will make us happy—while trashing the planet. The good news is, there’s a better kind of happy: It starts with meaningful work, loving relationships, and a thriving natural world. Photo by Tom Wang / Shutterstock. In the last 100 years, we got very confused about happiness. This is no small thing. The way we define happiness drives what we do, what we’re willing to sacrifice, and how we spend our money and our time. This confusion didn’t just happen. Advertisers spend billions spreading the illusion that more stuff will bring us happiness. And policy wonks of all pol... posted on Mar 13 2015 (33,979 reads)

article originally appeared on The Body Is Not An Apology and is reprinted by permission. More of Cody Charles’ writing can be found here. This is a follow-up to my previous piece entitled Ten Counterproductive Behaviors of Social Justice Educators. The latter was written for folks who consider equity work as their core life purpose. I wrote Ten Counterproductive Behaviors of Well-Intentioned People for the folks who consider themselves good people invested in social justice and conversations around equity, but who may show up in the ally role most often. Well-intentioned people make mistakes, lots of them. Mistakes must be expected and being held accountable has to be expected... posted on Mar 18 2016 (39,577 reads)

Project in San Francisco, and he’s an assistant clinical professor of medicine at University of California San Francisco. A self-described “suburban boy,” he moved all over the U.S. growing up with his family until he attended Princeton. And there, the accident that nearly killed him set him on a path to medicine, but first to studying art. MS. TIPPETT: Design is such an important word for you and such an important notion that I feel runs through all your life and your work, and, to me, there is a spiritual aspect of that, expansively defined. And I’m just curious about where you trace the origins of that. Would you say that you always had a “design sens... posted on Apr 4 2016 (25,677 reads)

minute I learned how to read, it was as though I’d been given this huge treasure. Every book was a box I suddenly knew how to open, and in it, I could meet people, go to other worlds, go deep in all kinds of ways. And I spent my childhood in the hills and in the books. And those — so that was not maybe what people think of conventionally as spirituality, but that was my company, my encouragement, my teaching, my community. MS. TIPPETT: That’s lovely. The sweep of your work is wonderful and it’s daunting as an interviewer, but I actually thought I would start with — I’d just love to have a conversation with you about this piece that was in Harper&r... posted on Jun 25 2016 (10,637 reads)

the scattered members come together. In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world. II The task of healing is to respect oneself as a creature, no more and no less. A creature is not a creator, and cannot be. There is only one Creation, and we are its members. To be creative is only to have health: to keep oneself fully alive in the Creation, to keep the Creation fully alive in oneself, to see the Creation anew, to welcome one’s part in it anew. The most creative works are all strategies of this health. Works of pride, by self-called creators, with their premium on originality, reduce the Creation to novelty, the faint surprises of minds incapable of wonder. ... posted on Jul 18 2016 (33,414 reads)

year, about fifteen of us had a breakout call with some visionaries of World in Conversation and Laddership Circles, around working with volunteers.  Below is a glimpse of the Q&A that emerged, on the call and afterwards.] Our efforts attracts many volunteers, but we don't use them effectively. What do you suggest? The most fundamental design principle is our mindset. Typically, volunteers are used as a means to an end -- this is our mission, we need this stuff done to achieve our mission, and you can help us do these chores. ServiceSpace doesn't work that way. For us, volunteer experience is an end in itself. We believe that if a volunteer ha... posted on Jan 12 2017 (19,035 reads)

don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.” “If we design workplaces that permit people to find meaning in their work, we will be designing a human nature that values work,” psychologist Barry Schwartz wrote in his inquiry into what motivates us to work. But human nature itself is a moody beast. “Given the smallest excuse, one will not work at all,” John Steinbeck lamented in his diary of the creative process as he labored over the novel that would soon earn him the Pulitzer Prize and become the cornerstone for his Nobel Prize two decades later. Work, of course, h... posted on Jan 15 2017 (17,146 reads)

at one-time was the CEO of Accuray, a company that went public in 2007 with a valuation of $1.3B. Amazingly, having lost essentially every penny he had in the dot com bust, he gave all the stock he had in Accuray away to live up to charitable commitments. He ultimately gave over $30M to charity when he was effectively bankrupt. He remains on the advisory board or the board of directors of a number of non-profits and until recently was the chairman of the Dalai Lama Foundation. Dr. Doty’s work has been highlighted in newspapers and magazine throughout the world. -- Immanuel Joseph The Interview  IJ. I wanted to start with something that is on top of everyone's mind here ... posted on Feb 1 2017 (11,906 reads)

for thirty years. She is the co-founder and research director at the international TerraMar Research and Learning Institute, a nonprofit cetacean research institute located in Santa Barbara, California. Dr. Frohoff is also co-founder of Wild-Wisdom, a new nonprofit that not only provides educational and experiential opportunities for connecting with what is wild and wise within and around us, but also contributes to the lives of the wild animals from whom we learn. Dr. Frohoff’s work for government and non-profit agencies has contributed to the revision and implementation of management and legislation protecting marine mammals in captivity and in the wild in almost a dozen co... posted on Jun 30 2017 (13,087 reads)