word “yes” barely escaped from my mouth when my child jumped straight into the air and screamed, “Yes, I would! I would!” Without missing a beat, she eagerly asked, “Can I get started right away?” Although it was close to bedtime, I was thrilled by her enthusiasm. I offered her twenty minutes to write. My excited little author ran to get a pencil and paper then positioned herself next to me on the floor. Although it is my inherent nature to instruct, guide, and make suggestions, I said nothing. This was her story, not mine. Therefore, I knew the words must be hers, not mine. So there the two of us sat in the peace and quiet ... posted on May 19 2013 (35,199 reads)

natural instinct is, and always has been -- to give. When you take Econ 101 in college, you will learn that all of economics is rooted in the assumption that people aim to maximize self-interest.  I hope you don’t just take that for granted.  I hope you challenge it.  Consider the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa who have rocked the history of our planet with the exact opposite assumption, with the belief in the goodness of our human nature. Or consider Ruby Bridges. Six-year-old Ruby was the first African American girl to go to an all-white school on Nov 14, 1960.  All the teachers refused to teach her, except for one ... posted on May 27 2013 (549,466 reads)

hunter-gatherers. We’ve become addicted to where the next click might lead us, so we keep hunting incessantly. Overwhelmed by inputs, caught in our self-sealing cycles, we devolve into self-manufactured people driven apart by rigid opinions and lonely for acceptance, into hungry ghosts grasping for the next new thing to satisfy us.  I chose the word devolve very carefully. The most dire consequence of this instant-access, information-rich world is that it has changed the very nature and role of information. In living systems, information is the source of change; Gregory Bateson defined it as that which makes a difference. Information no longer plays this mind-changing role... posted on Jun 7 2013 (68,361 reads)

Two leaders in the same circumstances doing the same thing can bring about completely different outcomes, depending on the inner place from which each operates. I learned this from the late Bill O’Brien, who’d served as CEO of Hanover Insurance. When I asked him to sum up his most important learning experience in leading profound change, he responded, “The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor.” The nature of this inner place in leaders is something of a mystery to us. Studies of athletes’ minds and imaginations as they prepare for a competitive event have led to practices de... posted on Jul 9 2013 (88,357 reads)

(Then Again, You Really, Really Do): Time, energy, vision, and love will go an astonishingly long way, but funding counts. “Your balance sheet is feedback,” a business adviser bluntly told me. “It shows whether you have a viable model." True, the only meaningful metric is the thriving of people and planet. And the financial system is fictive (the numbers only work when people at the “bottom of the pyramid” are omitted from the bottom line, and the value of nature is discounted to near zero). Put on a realgreen eyeshade and nearly every business on Earth is revealed to be running in the red. Still, one must respect—no, embrace—the dance-... posted on Apr 13 2014 (13,341 reads)

renowned spiritual teacher on getting stuck in the future and saving the planet. To the uninitiated, Eckhart Tolle might be mistaken for a nature photographer. His persona—a soft German-accented voice, a boyish visage, his love of vests—doesn’t exactly scream, “guru!” Yet Tolle is one of the world’s most popular spiritual teachers and a literary powerhouse whose best-selling books The Power of Now and A New Earth have influenced millions. Born in Germany, educated at the universities of London and Cambridge, and now a resident of Vancouver, Canada, Tolle writes and lectures on the evolution of human consciousness. His work syn... posted on Jun 23 2013 (84,173 reads)

the work was worth. She had been inspired by the "pay what you will" model of Panera Bakery, a large restaurant chain that decided to use one of its branches in Missouri as an experiment in giving several years ago. They removed prices and asked patrons to pay according to their own sense of the value of the "purchase." Ron Shaich, Panera's former CEO who ran the Panera Foundation, explained the innovation to USA Today: "I'm trying to find out what human nature is all about." The flourishing gift economy - from charitable donations to volunteer service to pay-it-forward generosity - seems to have a welcome answer to Ron Shaich's question. ... posted on Jun 26 2013 (24,449 reads)

best way to talk about it is through poetry and with music. So let's listen to another one. TS: OK. We'll listen to a piece, this is called "Raggedness." And this is also from Just Being Here: Rumi and Human Friendship. Maybe you can introduce it for us, Coleman. CB: Well, this is [about] lots of changes that happen in a student-teacher relationship. You'll see, "I was dead, and then alive." So it's all about the continuous changing nature of a relationship, where maybe a teacher's involved, but nobody knows who's the student and who's the teacher. It keeps changing back and forth. OK, let's hear it. [Music and... posted on Dec 29 2013 (35,768 reads)

were able to build a more compassionate, cosmopolitan patriotism, such when Martin Luther King, Jr., argued in 1967 that opposing war is the “privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions.” Nussbaum draws on history and philosophy to make her case for a new brand of patriotism, but does her argument cut against human nature, as some allege? The answer is no—recent psychological research points to many steps we can take to extend the legacy of King. As we celebrate this Fourth of July, here are four for us to... posted on Jul 4 2013 (20,273 reads)

century ago, industrialists like Andrew Carnegie believed that Darwin’s theories justified an economy of vicious competition and inequality. They left us with an ideological legacy that says the corporate economy, in which wealth concentrates in the hands of a few, produces the best for humanity. This was always a distortion of Darwin’s ideas. His 1871 book The Descent of Man argued that the human species had succeeded because of traits like sharing and compassion. “Those communities,” he wrote, “which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.” Darwin was n... posted on Jul 15 2013 (37,652 reads)

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is just a language problem. But what you're pointing out is that a lot of our — the culture's glorification of will and triumphing by determination, that's also a form of mind-body, you know, we're asserting the mind-body connection without calling it that. Mr. Sanford: Right. It's a form of integration. Dominance over bodies … Ms. Tippett: Right. Mr. Sanford: … is what human beings have done for thousands of years, whether it be nature, whether it be each other. That it's — my whole point is that we also need — that's one thing we want in the tool belt, to use will when you need to have it. But we, I think... posted on Jun 29 2016 (29,929 reads)

was really created by stretching out black lawn bags, it felt personal, and they wanted to know more. After reading about how people clean up after an oil spill, students asked, “What can we do?” One boy suggested they put on their gardening gloves. Then they got to work, completely restoring the mock habitat they had worked so hard to create. When their work was done, they joined their teacher to discuss what they learned: why it was important to take care of nature, what they could do to help, and how the experience made them feel. “I could have cried,” Wright-Albertini says. “But it was so rich a life lesson, so deeply felt.” Inde... posted on Aug 14 2013 (46,822 reads)

secure,” but “imagine what our energy policy would look like if every person became more aware of their impact on the planet.” At least that’s the theory. There’s little evidence so far that mindfulness is sweeping through the corridors of power, and there’s an upbeat tone in Ryan’s approach that seems out of place with the realities of Washington DC: “Strip away the materialism, the marketing, the media and the technology and our fundamental nature is revealed,” he writes, “joyous, generous and courageous.” Still, given that US politics is soaked through with cynicism, “gotcha” tactics and manipulation, ev... posted on Sep 6 2013 (28,500 reads)

laugh ever, and he laughs because things really do touch him down to the core. He is kind and smart and sweet and a very important part of our family. He is the VERY BEST FRIEND to little man #5.....who is really equally special. I will never understand what I did to deserve the 5 children I have been blessed with, you would just have to spend a day with them to understand. Our last regular paycheck was in April of this year. Through so many incredible acts of kindness, acts of nature, acts of God, and lots of hard work in every form, we have made it month to month and day to day and week to week, and had absolutely EVERYTHING we have needed...but not muc... posted on Aug 29 2013 (28,594 reads)

that understanding to guide our actions. That makes it different from kindness or pity. And don’t confuse it with the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” As George Bernard Shaw pointed out, “Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you—they might have different tastes.” Empathy is about discovering those tastes. The big buzz about empathy stems from a revolutionary shift in the science of how we understand human nature. The old view that we are essentially self-interested creatures is being nudged firmly to one side by evidence that we are also homo empathicus, wired for empathy, social cooperation, and ... posted on Aug 25 2013 (230,017 reads)

translations, and concepts that cannot be properly explained across cultures. Somehow narrowing it down to just a handful, we’ve illustrated 11 of these wonderful, untranslatable, if slightly elusive, words. We will definitely be trying to incorporate a few of them into our everyday conversations, and hope that you enjoy recognising a feeling or two of your own among them. 1 | German: Waldeinsamkeit A feeling of solitude, being alone in the woods and a connectedness to nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson even wrote a whole poem about it. 2 | Italian: Culaccino The mark left on a table by a cold glass. Who knew condensation could sound so poetic. 3... posted on Aug 31 2013 (168,017 reads)

do people become leaders? What type of leadership interferes with or destroys the network?  What happens after a healthy network forms? What's next? If we understand these dynamics and the life-cycle of emergence, what can we do as leaders, activists and social entrepreneurs to intentionally foster emergence? What is Emergence? Emergence violates so many of our Western assumptions of how change happens that it often takes quite a while to understand it.  In nature, change never happens as a result of top-down, pre-conceived strategic plans, or from the mandate of any single individual or boss.  Change begins as local actions spring up simultaneously... posted on Sep 2 2013 (35,105 reads)

somewhere five minutes ago, she insisted on buckling her stuffed animal into a car seat. When I needed to grab a quick lunch at Subway, she’d stop to speak to the elderly woman who looked like her grandma. When I had thirty minutes to get in a run, she wanted me to stop the stroller and pet every dog we passed. When I had a full agenda that started at 6 a.m., she asked to crack the eggs and stir them ever so gently. My carefree child was a gift to my Type A, task-driven nature—but I didn’t see it. Oh no, when you live life distracted, you have tunnel vision—only looking ahead to what’s next on the agenda. And anything that cannot be checked of... posted on Sep 13 2013 (132,878 reads)

our mental lives. These processes allow for creativity, planning, imagination, memory—capacities that are central not only to our survival, but also to the very essence of being human. The key, I believe, is learning to become aware of these mental tendencies and to use them purposefully, rather than letting them take over. Meditation can help with that. So don’t beat yourself up the next time you find yourself far away from where your mind was supposed to be. It’s the nature of the mind to wander. Use it as an opportunity to become more aware of your own mental experience. But you may still want to return to the present moment—so you can come up with an answe... posted on Apr 18 2015 (152,157 reads)