R. Trower Behavioral economist Dan Ariely points out the surprising joy and engagement we feel when we make things. We are the CEOs of our own lives. We work hard to spur ourselves to get up and go to work and do what we must do day after day. We also try to encourage people to work for and with us. We do this in our personal lives, too: from a very young age, kids try to persuade their parents to do things for them. As adults, we try to encourage our significant others to do things for us; we attempt to get our kids to clean up their rooms; and we try to induce our neighbors to trim their hedges or help out with a block party. Rather than seeing motivation as a simple, rat... posted on Dec 26 2016 (15,704 reads)

figure out how to manifest that in a different way to the rest of the world. TS: Now, in Becoming Wise, you write, again, in the beginning of the book that the connective tissue that runs throughout the entire book is the language of a surprising word here, Krista: "virtue." The language of virtue. KT: Really? That's surprising? TS: I felt really surprised by it. It's a word that I love; I love virtue, and I think a lot about bringing virtue into business, which can seem contradictory to people. But it's really important to me. But then you said something about virtue—that you believe that this is now a magnetic word, especially for ... posted on Dec 31 2016 (13,219 reads)

heart not your paycheck. Where others might have felt scarcity and tried to cut back on giving gifts, this man instead asked his wife to go ahead and spend $100 to buy gift cards to share with hard-working hospital staff . (More) Mitzvah for the Syrian Refugees The temple she works at is involved in helping Syrian refugee families. She took time to go to their homes personally.  After seeing what was needed, she worked with her husband who is in wholesale furniture business, to get donations of furniture they really need. The kids will now have  mattresses and a bunk bed. Her “mitzvah” (a good deed in Jewish) brought two families together in the... posted on Jan 4 2017 (19,384 reads)

by opening the door to the first classroom - the natural world, from backyards to neighborhoods to parks and public places."  Siblings: How to Help them be Friends Forever: "I know that most siblings fight, and that social scientists have consistently recorded high levels of hostility in sibling relationships relative to other relationships. But this is not okay with me; I want my kids to be kind to each other. My dad and his brother are lifelong best friends and business partners. My brother and I are close friends. I want this for my kids, too. But how? Fortunately, we parents of multiple children have some good science to guide us.” Does Forgivenes... posted on Jan 10 2017 (10,577 reads)

No one made you do this. To act as though you’re burdened by your gifts, and burdened by your talent and exhausted by your creative endeavors, as though you were committed to it by an evil dictator rather than having chosen it with your free will is also ridiculous. And finally, and worst of all, you’re scaring inspiration away. Inspiration, like all of us, wants to be loved and appreciated, and if it hears you talking about how much it’s ruining your life, it will take its business elsewhere. So whenever I hear creative people complaining about how it’s a battlefield, and how they’re bleeding over their work, and how awful it is, I always want to whisper to ... posted on Jan 11 2017 (28,522 reads)

beauty always reflects on the outside. This is something we have all heard time and again. But then, do we spend less time in front of the mirror? Do we still pay attention to outward appearances and draw a lot of conclusions based on those? We have not stopped making external appearances a topic of conversation at most social gatherings – business or otherwise. We still spend a lot of time getting ready for an event, office, function or a party. Roald Dahl wrote, “You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”  Thi... posted on Jan 28 2017 (24,494 reads)

reach. Through her work with GLG, Riva has focused on plans for national expansion, positioning her organization for growth, and developing data security infrastructure to support key constituencies. Riva points to one Compass client as a prime example of that vision in action. Vilmarys Cintron was raising her daughters in the very same public housing complex she’d grown up in. But after graduating from the Compass program, she was able to buy her own home and start a daycare business. “The day that Vilmarys moved out of public housing, we received several calls from other people in her development asking, ‘What’s the program that Vilmarys did, and how ca... posted on Mar 2 2017 (12,936 reads)

1999 Liz Mitten Ryan, award-winning artist, mother of six and founder of a successful fine art publishing company in Vancouver, traded in the secure terrain of her known life to move with her architect husband, and a herd of eleven horses, to Gateway 2 Ranch -- a 320-acre slice of paradise nestled in the grasslands of British Columbia. For several months their home was a simple tent in the midst of an enchanted landscape studded with lakes, wild flowers, emerald hills and whispering woods. In this vast solitude it became customary for Liz to spend her days following the herd. Communing with them she began to recognize their deep gift for  connection to all of life, and how bei... posted on Mar 9 2017 (16,614 reads)

bone fractures overnight. When Weiss asked Jimmy what he did to heal, the answer was always the same: “I told you. I get out of the way. Creator comes through me; the spirits of my ancestors come through me and they heal.” A graduate of Washington and Jefferson College with a B.A. in biology/pre-medicine, Weiss completed several years of graduate study in insect ecology and zoology at the University of Maine. During this period he established an environmental consulting business and was supported by the National Science Foundation for environmental curriculum development at the University of Maine. In 1985 he graduated from the University of New England College of Os... posted on Apr 10 2017 (20,498 reads)

point for setting up Toybox Mums as a playful space (both physical and online) where mums can develop their own skills and contribute to toy designs that will improve their children’s capacities. Toys are tools that can connect people, generate new ideas, and nurture new ways of interacting with each-other. The seeds of Toybox began a few years back, but it wasn’t until 2016 that I developed the actual concept. I held the first inception workshop with ten other young mums and a business innovation specialist in Nairobi, Kenya in January 2017. We played around with three questions: How can we create toys that facilitate inter-generational play? How can we create gende... posted on Mar 28 2017 (11,983 reads)

but judge others’ behavior as clear signals of their glaring character flaws. “So if I trip on the sidewalk, it must’ve been uneven,” Hershfield said. “But if you trip, you’re clumsy.” You need to follow this writing advice because you’re a beginner; I, Professional Writer, am above it, and that lede wasn’t coming to me because … because I just needed caffeine, or something. In a roundabout way, Hershfield is in the advice business. Part of his work focuses on ways to nudge Americans into saving more for retirement, and when I interviewed him several months back about his work, I asked him if he was drawn to this line o... posted on May 30 2017 (7,779 reads)

the same time, Stargate empowers its players to run the show. The seven members of the first season, for instance, signed off on the firing of three cast mates who missed several rehearsals. “Young folks who have been in the system are not accustomed to having a voice and setting the tone,” observes Elkin, who watched the actors “get in touch with themselves” while crafting a “lyrical piece of art.” Stargate’s teachers are successful show business pros, who include four-time Emmy-winning writer Judy Tate and guest artist Lemon Andersen, a convicted crack-dealer-turned-monologist who has appeared in several Spike Lee films. Rehearsals a... posted on Apr 23 2017 (7,718 reads)

she has a loving husband… I wonder if she has realized what a special gift her extra sensitivity is, even with the pain that it brings her. Being sensitive is having more information come in than the average individual, on a certain level. And I wonder if she's found enough support-- that she hasn't gone into this deep despair and disability. That is what this sensitivity can lead to if it isn't supported in the right way. One therapist said to me, and he'd been in the business 40 years, “My practice took a whole different shift when I stopped looking for the diagnosis, the label, the problem and started looking for the person's strengths.” What were... posted on Apr 25 2017 (16,928 reads)

Food not Bombs, the street theatre part really became a hook for people to ask questions. So then we decided to dress up as hobos. We had found out the Bank of Boston was funding the building of nuclear power plants so we will go to the stockholders' meeting and have a big pot of soup out of the groceries I was recovering. We went to the shelter and I explained what we were doing and people there thought this was great so all these people turned up at lunch. Maybe 75 of them along with the business people and stockholders and our friends were all eating outside of this stockholders' meeting. It was so magical that we decided to quit our jobs and just do this. The actual homeless guy... posted on Jul 7 2017 (8,544 reads)

by her childhood, she excelled at El Cerrito High School, impressing teachers in her Advanced Placement classes and filling her schedule with softball games and dance rehearsals. By senior year, however, she felt her foster family was pressuring her to move on. “All this time, I looked at them as being my own family. I did everything that you’d expect of a child, going to school, not getting into trouble, applying to college,” Bolnick says. “I came to see it as a business transaction: them being paid [by the government] for taking care of me, and me getting the benefit of being a child in their custody.” Disgusted, she left and spent the summer living at... posted on May 27 2017 (8,757 reads)

significant homeless population. In 2016, between 6,000 and 7,000 residents lived on the streets. That number, while small in comparison to homeless populations in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, is noticeable in medium-sized Tulsa. Former panhandlers work as day laborers as part of the “There’s A Better Way” program in Albuquerque.Photo courtesy of There's A Better Way The visibility of panhandlers is worrisome to those in Tulsa’s business districts, says Bynum, and city residents want change. After Bynum’s election, his social media accounts were flooded with a Washington Post article about Albuquerque’s ... posted on Jun 10 2017 (8,632 reads)

school,” she says. “So I spent my days being one of few black people, and I spent my nights being in a predominantly black neighborhood. I believe that really shapes the work that I do, because I’ve always been a bridge-builder.” Today, Harris is building bridges in the Bay Area as the co-founder of Hack the Hood, an Oakland-based nonprofit that introduces young people of color to careers in technology by training them to design and build free websites for small businesses. The participants, who range in age from 16 to 25, learn crucial skills for the 21st-century economy, and the local businesses establish an online presence that they otherwise might not hav... posted on Jun 18 2017 (6,857 reads)

women make the products in the following months. We collect the product in March and sell them through different crafts festivals and online stores.” The SHEN range of products includes stationery and bookmarks, woollen socks, jewellery and crocheted items. Every year, 10 women from the programme participate in Delhi’s popular Dastkar festival to showcase and sell their products. The event gives the women an opportunity to interact with customers and also learn about running a business enterprise. As the women carve their path toward self-sufficiency and empowerment, they also step forward to protect their local ecology and wildlife. Image courtesy Munmun D... posted on Jun 24 2017 (14,421 reads)

6 percent of U.S. workers checked their work email when they or their spouse were in labor.   Technology can bring happiness. Anyone who’s found the perfect meditation app or downloaded a grandchild’s photo won’t doubt that. But technology can also bring anxiety, stress, and frustration. And that seems to be a given, too, making us throw our hands in the air. We accept that technology will always be a mixed bag and we have to take the bad with the good. "I worry that maybe our happiness is getting left behind." According to Amy Blankson, author of the new book The Future of Happiness: 5 Modern Strategies for Balancing Productivity a... posted on Jun 25 2017 (12,423 reads)

great, but the technology great and the service great.” TreeHouse aims to make sustainable options appeal to more than just die-hard environmentalists. “If we want healthy and sustainable homes to be the norm, they have to be better than conventional homes. And everything around the process has to be better,” Ballard emphasizes. That’s part of why he decided to start a for-profit company to accomplish his environmental goals. “If you’re in a for-profit business, all of your assumptions are tested all the time,” he says. “It forces you to very quickly arrive at what works to affect change.” Ballard has ambitious goals for TreeHou... posted on Jul 5 2017 (8,908 reads)