A Morning When Everything Fell Into Place
"I finally found a Motel 6 about twenty-five miles east. When I got there around 11pm, from the cars and people I saw -- it was still warm outside, maybe 85 degrees -- I got the impression I was deep in gang territory. A young couple checking in at the office counter ahead of me added to this impression. I was nervous and felt out of place, but ended up getting a good night's sleep. In the morning... posted on Aug 26, 12026 reads

Dogs with Custom Wheelchairs Inspire Rehab Patients
Cruising in their custom wheelchairs, Chili and Arlo are the center of attention wherever they go. But for patients at the Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation in Dallas, these two canine caregivers are also an inspiration. "Many of the patients are new to wheelchairs," Linda Marler, the program's director told TODAY.com. "When they see Chili and Arlo, they say, 'If those dogs can do it, so can I.'... posted on Sep 7, 10335 reads

Unexpected Gestures of Compassion
"Through some incredible good luck no one was seriously hurt but the experience was very frightening. There was so much smoke that my first thought was to just get out of my car as fast as I could. I could hear the children from the car behind me screaming and crying as I was trying to claw my way out of my car. When I got out, I could see their mum was frantically trying to comfort her shaking c... posted on Sep 22, 4283 reads

Recycling Soap and Saving Lives
That bar of soap you used once or twice during your last hotel stay might now be helping poor children fight disease. Derreck Kayongo and his Atlanta-based Global Soap Project collect used hotel soap from across the United States. Instead of ending up in landfills, the soaps are cleaned and reprocessed for shipment to impoverished nations such as Haiti, Uganda, Kenya and Swaziland. "I was shocked ... posted on Oct 1, 4097 reads

Connected: Love, Death, & Technology
"From the beginning of time, every new technological advancement has brought with it a complex mix of positive and negative repercussions as well as unintended consequences. I set out to make a film that addresses the potential of our twenty-first-century technologies and the importance of harnessing their powers. I also wanted to examine what can happen when these new technologies take over and s... posted on Oct 3, 21424 reads

National Treasures: Wild Horses, Wild Kids
Jean Albert Renaud sleeps in a barn. His bedroom shares a wall with the stall of a stallion named Incitatus. On winter nights, he can hear the wind whistling across the hills, but Renaud (or Jar, as he is known) is warm in the company of his eight horses. He sleeps there because he wants to. Jar's life has never been conventional, but today it is focused on his noblest effort yet -- preserving and... posted on Oct 4, 7990 reads

How to Live a Single-Tasking Life
Multi-tasking is no longer about being productive -- it's a way of living. It's not a sane way of living, however, and it's not necessarily the most effective way of working either. Imagine instead, a single-tasking life. Imagine waking and going for a run, as if running were all you do. Nothing else is on your mind but the run, and you do it to the very best of your abilities. Then you eat, enjoy... posted on Oct 5, 39837 reads

The Art of Seeing
Something happened to successful artist Jane Rosen when she came to California -- something that changed the trajectory of her work. "The exposure to the beauty of the place -- the coast, the hills, the redwoods -- made a deep impression. One day, as she stepped out of her house, she looked up and saw a red-tailed hawk soaring above her. "As I stood looking up at the hawk, in a voice as clear as d... posted on Oct 9, 6489 reads

25 Insights on Becoming a Better Writer
Today, writing well is more important than ever. Far from being the province of a select few as it was in Hemingway's day, writing is a daily occupation for all of us -- in email, on blogs, and through social media. It is also a primary means for documenting, communicating, and refining our ideas. As essayist, programmer, and investor Paul Graham has written, "Writing doesn't just communicate idea... posted on Oct 13, 34093 reads

Why Do Some People Learn Faster
Why are some people so much more effective at learning from their mistakes? A new study by Jason Moser at Michigan State University is premised on the fact that there are two distinct reactions to mistakes, both of which can be reliably detected using EEG. The first reaction is called error-related negativity (ERN). It appears about 50 milliseconds after a screw-up and is mostly involuntary. The s... posted on Oct 19, 13539 reads

Becoming a Presence Activist
"A friend of mine is visiting from out of town and staying in East Oakland, in an area that's infamous for its gang violence and unrest. This friend happens to be a monk. He shaves his head and dresses in the traditional brown robes of his monastic order -- not the kind of person who blends easily into the background. Having spent many years making compassion a conscious practice, his response to ... posted on Oct 18, 22841 reads

Secrets of the 100-yr-old Marathoner
Most people hang up their boots as they get older, but Fauja Singh only began running in his eighties. At the age of 94, he ran a full marathon in less than 5 hours, but on 16 Oct 2011, at the age of 100, he still has it in him. Singh did what no other person has done: he became the oldest person and the first centenarian to finish a marathon. Along the way, he's received sponsorship deals, but he... posted on Oct 21, 42316 reads

A Case Study of Anonymous Giving
"Giver Girl" and her husband "Giver Boy" came up with a simple yet powerful idea: donating $52 to a different charity every week for a year. After each experience, they post their moving reflections, invite others to join in, and maintain total anonymity. The brilliance of their project is captured in a week when they spontaneously decide to make that week's gift a $52 tip to a waitress serving th... posted on Oct 25, 15790 reads

The Decision-Making Flaw in Powerful People
The decisions made by powerful people in business and other fields have far-reaching effects on their organizations and employees. But new research finds a link between having a sense of power and having a propensity to give short shrift to a crucial part of the decision-making process: listening to advice. Power increases confidence, researchers say, which can lead to an excessive belief in one's... posted on Oct 26, 11183 reads

An Amazon Tour Guide's Inspiring Story
Nearly 21 years ago, Patty Webster landed her dream job as an adventure tour guide in the Peruvian Amazon. But as she shared the area's beauty and culture with tourists, she realized there was a darker side to the rainforest paradise. "I saw how poor they were and realized that people were dying because they didn't have medical care," Webster said. She started sharing her supplies with the locals ... posted on Nov 7, 3803 reads

8 Approaches to Simplicity
Uncluttered, Ecological, Family, Compassionate, Soulful, Business, Civic, Frugal. According to Duane Elgin, author of the classic 'Voluntary Simplicity,' these eight words constitute distinct aspects of simplicity. "As these eight approaches illustrate, the growing culture of simplicity contains a flourishing garden of expressions whose great diversity -- and intertwined unity -- are creating a re... posted on Nov 10, 19185 reads

When Generosity Meets Venture Capital
What happens when someone who has spent much of his life on volunteerism and generosity keynotes an event for venture capitalists and entrepreneurs? "My instructions for the talk were: don't be humble, talk about scale. I actually laughed out on the phone, when I heard that, only to realize that it wasn't a joke. The other keynote was a billionaire, who had invented 33 medical devices and held 150... posted on Nov 14, 34438 reads

Is This a Business or an Art Project?
"To call Robert Fogarty an accidental entrepreneur is a bit of an understatement. If you haven't heard of Fogarty's Dear World, a venture that grew out of a not-for-profit fundraiser called Dear New Orleans, it's likely to hit your radar screen soon. He's a photographer whose striking portraits feature people with heartfelt messages written on their hands, arms, and faces in black marker. The imag... posted on Nov 27, 3987 reads

Need to Create? Get a Constraint
"One of the many paradoxes of human creativity is that it seems to benefit from constraints. Although we imagine the imagination as requiring total freedom, the reality of the creative process is that it's often entangled with strict conventions and formal requirements. Pop songs have choruses and refrains; symphonies have four movements; plays have five acts; painters still rely on the tropes of ... posted on Nov 21, 6809 reads

A 15-yr-old Dog's Gift
"I have the pleasure of meeting hundreds of incredible heroes, but this one caught me off guard. Your hair will stand on end as you read the story of this man and this dog who picked one another up time and time again: 'I saw in the front yard what appeared to be a very old dog that was in obvious distress. He would walk in a semi-circle, then fall to the ground, then struggle back to his feet a... posted on Nov 19, 107527 reads

Attitude of Gratitude
Cultivating an "attitude of gratitude" has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners. A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked. How to practice gratitude? Research shows that those who keep a simple gratitude... posted on Nov 24, 6212 reads

If You Want to Be a Rebel, Be Kind
The night before, Pancho Ramos Stierle heard about growing tensions in the community and thought, "If police are stepping up their violence, we need to go and step up our nonviolence." So on that Monday morning at 3:30AM, Pancho and his housemate Adelaja went to the site of the Occupy Oakland raid. With an upright back and half-lotus posture, they started meditating. The photos of Pancho meditat... posted on Nov 29, 166493 reads

Honesty Paid Off For Dave
About a year ago, a homeless man in Arizona found a bag full of cash and made a fateful decision: he returned it. 49-year-old Dave Tally was in debt, unemployed, had lost his driver's license for DUI violations, sleeping on a mat when he found $3,300 at a local light-rail station. When he returned it to its owner, a college kid, the gratitude and kindness of the kid touched him. "He hadn't had... posted on Dec 1, 5642 reads

An Old Japanese Love Warrior
"This so enraged the drunk that he grabbed the metal pole at the center of the car and tried to wrench it out of its stanchion. I could see that one of his hands was cut and bleeding. The train lurched ahead, the passengers frozen with fear. I stood tip. I was young and in pretty good shape. I stood six feet, weighed 225. I'd been putting in a solid eight hours of aikido training every day for the... posted on Dec 8, 43461 reads

The Never-Ending Story
In 2006, Jonathan Harris and a colleague launched We Feel Fine, a project that took the Web's emotional pulse by culling personal data from blogs. It was the first of several groundbreaking websites that Harris helped to create, and the project attracted widespread attention. In the following years, however, Harris began to feel like a voyeur. Determined to find a more open, transparent way to cha... posted on Dec 18, 3757 reads

A Eulogy For My Mother
"For the first 58 years of my life, I would have to say that my relationship to my mother was a complex and difficult one. She was a huge personality, full of great passions, creativity, rages, and generosity. I remember saying to friends that I loved my mother in small doses, but that she didn't come in small doses. She was a force of nature." Celebrated filmmaker Mickey Lemle has shared the stor... posted on Jan 3, 0 reads

The Sniper and the Trumpet Song
Two weeks after D-Day, Col. Jack Leroy Tueller's made a decision to play his trumpet. The last remaining German sniper threatening his unit was so moved that he couldn't shoot, and surrendered the next morning. By choosing to play "his love song" Jack had sensed the fear and loneliness in that sniper, and had recognized that he too had that within himself. Now 90 years old, in this two minute vide... posted on Jan 2, 4497 reads

Ben Davis Keeps His Promise To Meemaw
One van. One father. One son. Thirty-one cities. 30,724 pounds lost among 1,516 participants. 1,255,740 views on YouTube. When Ben Davis makes a promise to his Meemaw, he means business. It was Christmas Eve of 2008 when Ben's grandmother expressed her concern for him simply by asking whether he was happy. "I was 360 pounds," Ben told me. "I was in a deep depression, I had lost a relationship as a... posted on Jan 4, 11966 reads

Benefits of Rising Early -- and How to Do It
"Recently, reader Rob asked me about my habit of waking at 4:30 a.m. each day, and asked me to write about the health benefits of rising early, which I thought was an excellent question. Unfortunately, there are none, that I know of. However, there are a ton of other great benefits. Now, let me first say that if you are a night owl, and that works for you, I think that's great. There's no reason t... posted on Jan 8, 169036 reads

A Cookie Giving Experiment in New York City
"At around 12:30 AM Thursday morning, I began my expedition to give out cookies to strangers in NYC. I first offered a cookie to the front desk security guard; he looked in the bag and took the biggest cookie he could find and said thank you. I thought, "Well that's the biggest cookie in the bag, that's a bit selfish." Nonetheless, I smiled and was happy to give him a cookie. Lesson 1: I noticed m... posted on Jan 20, 5241 reads

Portrait of a Healer
"Some of his patients are sent to him by local hospitals, especially in hopeless cases; when, for example, amputation seems to be the only option. Sergio Castro is seen by many as the last hope. People come to him with gangrene, hoping that they will be able to keep their limbs, for he has achieved what some perceive as "miracles". Sergio is not a doctor; Sergio's somebody who really cares about p... posted on Jan 22, 19309 reads

5 Books on the Psychology of Love
"It's often said that every song, every poem, every novel, every painting ever created is in some way 'about' love. What this really means is that love is a central theme, an underlying preoccupation, in humanity's greatest works. But what exactly is love? How does its mechanism spur such poeticism, and how does it lodge itself in our minds, hearts and souls so completely, so stubbornly, as to per... posted on Jan 24, 14731 reads

The Visionary Architecture of Paolo Soleri
Architect Paolo Soleri is regarded as a visionary, much to his dismay. His thought and vision combines the ethical and the metaphysical in terms of how to structure and build our cities. He says, for example, "We have reached the point where we understand the appearance of self-awareness is one of the most incredible things that's happened in the universe. So, slowly we are developing some kind of... posted on Jan 30, 5211 reads

The Green School in Bali
With natural light and a breeze that passes through, John Hardy's dream of building a green school comes alive in Bali. Created with bamboo architecture, no walls and a diverse range of teachers, this school not only teaches reading, writing, and arithmetic but also teaches how to reconnect to nature, endeavoring to develop future green leaders from 25 different countries. This 14 minute TED talk ... posted on Feb 4, 4215 reads

The Joy of Quiet
The future of travel, I'm reliably told, lies in "black-hole resorts", which charge high prices precisely because you can't get online in their rooms. Has it really come to this? We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we're so busy communicating. And -- as he might also have said -- we're rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardl... posted on Feb 9, 15791 reads

From Me to We: Everyday Generosity
Talented filmmakers David and Hi-Jin Hodge wanted to inspire generosity on Valentine's Day. So they asked a diverse group of 25 friends, young and old: what does generosity mean to you? And what lessons have you learned from practicing acts of everyday kindness? In this powerful 5-minute video, these everyday heroes share beautiful responses that inspire all of us to go out and be generous, not ju... posted on Feb 15, 4082 reads

11 Amazing Thank You Notes
What do Elizabeth Taylor, Roald Dahl, Marilyn Monroe, Neil Armstrong and Barack Obama have in common, besides being famous? Each of them wrote touching letters of gratitude, printed here in their original writing. For example, once upon a time (1989), a little girl named Amy sent a bottle of colored water, oil and glitter to Roald Dahl, who knew right away that this was a dream in a bottle inspire... posted on Feb 16, 90886 reads

Social Media for Social Transformation
"Any social-change hero succeeds in doing three fundamental things -- raising awareness, creating impact, and transforming the heart. Today's technologies, particular social media, can be significant tools. For awareness, the Internet has been an absolute amplifier. For impact, the Internet has been a mixed bag: remarkable potential in democracy movements, but significant problems ranging from cyb... posted on Feb 21, 55482 reads

Profit vs. Principle: The Neurobiology of Integrity
Let your better self rest assured: Dearly held values truly are sacred, and not merely cost-benefit analyses masquerading as nobel intent. Neuroscientist Greg Berns of Emory University and colleagues posed a series of value-based statements to 27 women and 16 men while using an fMRI machine to map their mental activity. Test participants were asked if they'd sign a document stating the opposite of... posted on Feb 29, 19157 reads

"Steal" Like an Artist
"Austin Kleon is positively one of the most interesting people on the Internet. His Newspaper Blackout project is essentially a postmodern florilegium, using a black Sharpie to make art and poetry by redacting newspaper articles. In this excellent talk from The Economist's Human Potential Summit, titled 'Steal Like an Artist,' Kleon makes an articulate and compelling case for combinatorial creativ... posted on Mar 1, 9092 reads

The Power of Metaphors
"When Pablo Picasso, the Spanish artist, was a schoolboy, he was terrible at math because whenever the teacher had him write a number on the chalkboard, he saw something different. The number four looked like a nose to him and he kept doodling until he filled in the rest of the face. The number 1 looked like a tree, 9 looked like a person walking against the wind, and 8 resembled an angel. Everyon... posted on Mar 4, 49417 reads

How Language Enabled Innovation and Evolution
"How did 'culture' develop, exactly? Language, says evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel, was instrumental in enabling social learning -- our ability to acquire evolutionarily beneficial new behaviors by watching and imitating others, which in turn accelerated our species on a trajectory of what anthropologists call 'cumulative cultural evolution,' a bustling of ideas successively building and improv... posted on Mar 11, 34697 reads

Broken Bodies, Broken Minds, Amazing Spirits
"Yesterday I went to the nursing home to visit my step mom's grandma. She just got out of the hospital recently where she underwent some serious operations. I wanted to surprise her after work so I stopped by for a quick visit. When I got there she was happy to see me. We hugged, kissed and exchanged greetings. Then I heard a woman crying. It was my great grandma's roommate. The curtain was drawn ... posted on Mar 18, 5812 reads

Five Poverty-fighting Women to Watch
Across the globe, women are taking on the challenge of poverty in creative, smart and sustainable ways. This article highlights five dynamic women whose work collectively spans Haiti, India, Afghanistan, Kenya and beyond. Their uplifting and diverse contributions seem poised to reach new heights in the coming year. Learn more about them and how to keep up with their journeys here.... posted on Mar 28, 17176 reads

Advice as an Art Form
Advice is subjective. But, by passing on advice in a creative way, it is possible to create something that lasts, that people will want to live with and which can let the advice sink in slowly and help out later on. That's precisely the premise of "Advice to Sink in Slowly," a wonderful project enlisting design graduates in passing on advice and inspiration to first-year students through an ongoin... posted on Apr 4, 7867 reads

The Practice of Gratitude
"There are really three medicines that you should put in your medicine bundle every day, which are the power of genuine acknowledgment and gratitude, genuine apology, and the spirit of laughter and joy." So begins a heartwarming interview with Angeles Arrien, a teacher, author, and cultural anthropologist, who is affectionately called the "Gratitude Lady". Here, Arrien speaks to Sounds True about ... posted on Sep 17, 30467 reads

Staying Sober Through Service
What does making coffee at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings have to do with staying sober? A whole lot, according to recent studies that show that the physical and psychological benefits of service also benefit those with addictions. Addicts who help others, even in small ways - such as calling other Alcoholics Anonymous members to remind them about meetings or making coffee - can significantly impro... posted on May 16, 11616 reads

The Power of Self-Compassion
Are you your own worst critic? It's common to beat ourselves up for faults big and small. But according to psychologist and author Kristin Neff, that self-criticism comes at a price. For the last decade, Neff has been a pioneer in the study of "self-compassion," the revolutionary idea that you can actually be kind to yourself, accept your own faults-- and enjoy deep emotional benefits as a result.... posted on Apr 7, 75424 reads

How to Attend A Conference As Yourself
"I often feel awkward when I go to a conference. Reluctant to sidle up to a stranger and introduce myself, I roam, like I did at college parties, self-conscious, seltzer water in hand, not fitting in. In the midst of a sea of people chatting away enthusiastically, I am uncomfortable and alone. But when my plane from New York landed in Austin, Texas for South By Southwest, the music, film, and inte... posted on Apr 9, 0 reads

Caine's Cardboard Arcade
Caine Monroy spent his summer vacation building an elaborate cardboard arcade in his dad's used auto parts store. The adorable 9-year old worked for months to perfect the game designs, making displays for the prizes, and creating elaborate security systems. Unfortunately, his dad's store is in an industrial part of East L.A. that gets almost no foot traffic. So Caine had exactly zero customers ..... posted on Apr 13, 5141 reads