Why Stories Matter
"Storytelling, recognised in every society as a way of making sense of cultural roots or social reality, is an elaborate form of metaphor, and memoir is its masterpiece: life stories enable us to share insights and enhance mutual understanding in a social, political, psychological and spiritual sense. Memoir is revolutionary precisely because, when shared, it's a way towards the truth." In this es... posted on May 20, 0 reads

Ursula Le Guin: Inner Preacher vs Inner Teacher
"Art transforms us not with what it contains but with what it creates in us". Author Ursula La Guin challenges the notion of imbuing her work with meaning, and instead suggests that meaning is created by the reader. Instead of trying to convey a certain message or truth, La Guin argues that such messages are revealed to her only as she writes, but do not drive her to write in the first place. A pi... posted on Jun 27, 8392 reads

How to Be a Lifelong Learner
Barbara Oakley has spent much of her life discovering her hidden potential. Her newest book, Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential debunks myths and exposes artificial obstacles that get in the way of learning and discovering your hidden potential. She also provides tips on learning how to learn, including focusing (or not), practicing efficiently, and e... posted on Jul 4, 16095 reads

How Do We Respond? A Question to Artists
To some, the creative process needs no justification or rationale; yet there are times of upheaval in history that seem to ask the artist: Why are you creating this? What is your purpose? What social change do you hope to achieve with your art? Mirka Knaster is one such artist who has explored the question of how artists use their work to address political concerns. In this post Knaster discusses ... posted on Mar 16, 7960 reads

Why Are We Here?: Lessons Gleaned on Life's Meaning
Perhaps one of the most asked and elusive questions since the dawn of human curiosity is 'what is the meaning of life?' What would you answer? Is there even an answer? In this inspired social project, Aljoscha Dreisorner asked people from all walks of life, from friends to strangers to children and the elderly, what they believe their meaning to be. The answers are as enlightening as they are vari... posted on Jul 6, 15511 reads

How to Age Gracefully
What would you say to your seven-year-old self? Play more? Don't yell so loud? How about 'stay weird'... as one nine year old puts it. As we move through our lives, our many experiences, mistakes and accomplishments shape how we live in the world. Hindsight is an amazing thing, and the ability to look back and consider what we could have done is a bitter-sweet feeling, as there's no reliving the p... posted on Jun 20, 14369 reads

Graduation: A Song & Speech for the Ages
Just in time for the millions of students around the world preparing for the milestone of graduation, comes this powerful music video! Written by be-the-change rapper Nimo Patel in India and animated by the French animators 'Superfruit Collective', it features a chorus of students from the Philippines, and excerpts from a graduation speech in America by ServiceSpace founder Nipun Mehta -- a true g... posted on May 4, 27731 reads

Rebecca Solnit: On Breaking Silence
Human beings have a tendency to remain silent regardless of whether they need to utilize their voices. Rebecca Solnit sees how that tendency has harmed the women's movement. She quotes poets, inspirations, authors and more, including Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Audre Lorde, Elie Wiesel, Hannah Arendt and Laura Jackson. Rebecca believes and acknowledges that the quickest fix is to use our voices, noting t... posted on Aug 27, 10340 reads

Slow Down, Slow Food, Slow Science
Human beings move too fast. In 2008, a grassroots community-builder, best-known simply as, "Pancho" penned an essay detailing his reasons for leaving his graduate program, in part because of realities at the university that he perceived to be misaligned with the principles of non-violence. Pancho believes that when we slow down our processes and practice mindfulness our lives, and the lives of tho... posted on Jul 10, 6653 reads

Thomas Ponce: On Behalf of All Living Beings
Thomas Ponce is a 16-year-old animal rights advocate and a citizen lobbyist from Casselberry, Florida. He is the founder of Lobby For Animals, the Coordinator for Fin Free FL, and founder of Harley's Home, which is used as his school-based animal rights club. A vegetarian at age of 4, he began writing about animal rights at the age of 5. Soon after, Thomas's parents realized that his advocacy for... posted on May 22, 18796 reads

The Vibrations of Conflict
"Cole Porter clearly got it right. But what exactly is it that changes from major to minor when we say goodbye? What permits music to express and stimulate our moods so precisely? How does it ignite or dampen our spirits, make us feel romantic or cynical, lighthearted or blue? Why do simple sequences of musical notes or complex symphonic strains cause us to weep with sorrow, waltz with elegance, m... posted on May 24, 8854 reads

Marie Howe: The Power of Words to Save Us
In this edition of On Being, poet Marie Howe shares how poetry allows us to connect with others, through the words we find and the spaces between them. A former Poet Laureate of New York, Howe did not begin writing poetry until she was a young adult, as she transitioned from her career as a teacher. Influenced by her Catholic upbringing in a large family of 9, Howe reflects on the meaning of ordin... posted on Jul 23, 9095 reads

Recovering the Diamonds
What unfolds when you listen and see without the distortion of judgment? What diamonds are hidden an inch beyond one's judgment? Here, you see the first impressions of Juan Carlos, Director of Rehabilitation in the Guatemalan Prison System, of seemingly hardened incarcerated prisoners, faces tattooed with symbols and words, insignia of dangerous gang affiliations -- Juan Carlos feels fear, uncert... posted on Dec 25, 2933 reads

The Power of Dabbling: How Hobbies Make Us More Creative
Productivity expert James Clear uses behavioral science to help nearly half a million newsletter subscribers optimize their habits. Here is his recent filmed conversation with bestselling author Steven Johnson (author of ten books, including Where Good Ideas Come From and, most recently Wonderland, highlighting the influence of wonder and delight on the movements that shape history). This conversa... posted on Sep 24, 9344 reads

The Solace of Wild Places in Nature and Ourselves
Most of us live far from truly wild places that could give us comfort from the troubles of this world, yet we badly need this healing found in nature. The Japanese recognize this need for connection to nature and have a custom they call "shinrin-yoku," which means forest bathing. In this piece, Lucia Bettler recommends that we each take time to rest our minds and hearts in the quiet greenness of M... posted on Aug 12, 16531 reads

How To Give Away A Billion -- Or Not
Best-selling author David Brooks was asked what he would do if he had a billion dollars to give. In his recent NY Times op-ed piece, he answers: "Only loving relationships transform lives, and such relationships can be formed only in small groups. I'd seed 25-person collectives, a group of people who meet once a week to share...Each collective would have a curriculum, a set of biographical and ref... posted on Jul 28, 10167 reads

Garden Gloves
What can a simple pair of garden gloves teach us? In delving deep into her gardening practice, Alanda Greene found a profound insight in her experience of being pulled between the need to wear them for protection, and the desire to feel all the sensations of the earth. Gloves give us protection and safety. Much like when we choose to wear mental gloves to protect ourselves in life from overwhelmin... posted on Sep 27, 8489 reads

Spotlight on Finding Common Ground
Tensions run high. Sides are polarized. Even attempts at neutral, innocuous conversations seem stymied and fraught. How can we reestablish connection in our fractured communities? How can we reengage in conversation? How can we move forward together into our shared future? In this Spotlight on Finding Common Ground, we take a look back into past DailyGood features offering advice on how to come to... posted on Jul 2, 9515 reads

It Was About Friendship, Not The Home
Author Colin Beavan discusses a memoir by Drew Philip called "A $500 House In Detroit" in which the author meets and befriends his new neighbors. The article chronicles Drew's journey, revealing that in his quest to do the right thing, he focused on friendship and worked to transcend and accept differences between him and others.
... posted on Nov 4, 8503 reads

The Science on the Benefits of Nostalgia
It's natural to reflect on the past with a sense of longing - a desire to return to the way things used to be. In fact, our memories of positive events tend to be more crystallized in our minds than those of negative or neutral ones. But does nostalgia come at a cost? While some research suggests that nostalgia can interfere with one's attempts to cope with the present, it has also been found to p... posted on Oct 30, 7710 reads

To Be Content Is to Be Grateful
Even after the most traumatic events, we can still find contentment. One way to achieve this is through gratitude. When Cynthia Mee lost everything in a house fire, instead of looking at it as something destructive, she saw it as educational -- grateful for the life lessons she never would have encountered had it not happened. She was grateful for being alive; the fire hadn't killed her. The Red C... posted on Aug 20, 12267 reads

Living In Deep Time
"To be a contemplative is to learn to trust deep time,...to learn how to rest there and not be wrapped up in chronological time." Richard Rohr discusses the contemplative life, how to transition into deep meaning as we age, the challenge of generations engaging in spiritual transformation and applying this work in his retreats for men. He likens the contemplative life to the mythic hero's journey:... posted on Sep 11, 15156 reads

Thom Bond: Changing the Conversation with NVC
In 2002 Thom Bond was a successful environmental engineer, passionate about designing smart buildings that used alternative energy. Then he chanced upon Marshall Rosenberg's landmark book on Non-Violent Communication. "By the time I read Chapter 1, it hit me that I had found what I was looking for." Thom realized instinctively that he'd come upon a new technology -- one that was human-oriented as ... posted on Jul 9, 21072 reads

Change Yourself, Change Your Story
"Storytelling, recognised in every society as a way of making sense of cultural roots or social reality, is an elaborate form of metaphor, and memoir is its masterpiece: life stories enable us to share insights and enhance mutual understanding in a social, political, psychological and spiritual sense. Memoir is revolutionary precisely because, when shared, it's a way towards the truth." In this es... posted on Jun 10, 9553 reads

The Gift of Cold
"For our ancestors, winter was a test of survival," writes Fabiana Fondevila, a journalist, children's book author and ritual maker from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She remarks that "although ... many of us ... have heated homes, transportation and warm clothing, the season of bare trees takes us back to the experience of that first vulnerability." In this poignant essay on winter, Fondevila encourag... posted on Nov 16, 14782 reads

Ani Choying: Gratitude and Service
Ani Choying Drolma never expected to be a Rockstar Nun. She only wanted to be of benefit to others in her life and has done so in many ways. She suffered abuse as a child, yet her heart is full of compassion, not resentment. She went on to adopt a child and eventually inspired a foundation to support others in helping orphans. Her gift of singing was eventually shared not out of ego, but out of a ... posted on Nov 20, 10802 reads

The Three Sacred Tasks: A Climate Scientist & Father Reflects
Disconcerted by the dramatic changes underway in Earth's climate systems, Climate scientist and father Peter Kalmus set out on a quest to change his life and the world. A quest that led him ultimately to cut his climate impact to less than a tenth of the US average, while simultaneous increasing his sense of joy and fulfillment. What follows are two excerpts from his new book "Being the Change: Li... posted on Aug 19, 9528 reads

Inside the Mind of Temple Grandin
Temple Grandin, renowned American author, animal behavior expert, and advocate for autistic people, has written many books -- including Animals in Translation, The Autistic Brain, and Thinking in Pictures -- and is currently a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. In this 60 minute interview on Insights at the Edge you'll learn the differences between verbal and visual thinkers... posted on Dec 28, 7241 reads

Fighting Bullying Through Hip-Hop
Through the power of music, New York City actor Nate Lombardo has been able to help stop bullying in elementary schools all over the US. He founded Groovy Projects, an educational initiative incorporating music, rap and performance to empower elementary school students by showing them how being positive and creative can make life better for everyone. Students say they have discovered that they h... posted on Feb 3, 1766 reads

An Unexpected Friend at Our Awakin Circle
Awakin Circles started two decades ago when a family in California decided to open their living room on a weekly basis for people to practice stillness, participate in a circle of sharing, and partake of a meal together. Today there are dozens of Awakin Circles held in homes that span the globe. In these ordinary settings, extraordinary stories unfold. Such as this one from an Awakin Circle held e... posted on Oct 13, 12129 reads

Algorithms & Love: Dancing with the Creative Tension of Our Time
"The data we can extract, the data we handily give up for the sake of short-term convenience or simply out of ignorance, is of monumental proportions. But we extract all this data to what end?" In a recent talk, ServiceSpace founder Nipun Mehta paints a vivid picture of today's world -- a world where algorithms powered by big data undergird almost every field of human endeavor, and have brought us... posted on Aug 17, 22069 reads

The Kindness Bus
Bob Votruba lives in converted bus, a response to a mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007. Instead of falling into fear and hate, Bob decided to fight hate with kindness. He bought an old school bus, sold everything, and hit the road. His goal? To commit one million acts of kindness in his lifetime. Bob's particular focus is on ending bullying and associated adolescent suicides, but he encourages... posted on Sep 29, 14133 reads

7 Simple Ways to Cultivate Comfort
How can we find comfort for ourselves and bring it to others, amidst sadness, stress, or loss? We need not look beyond our capacity to lend an open ear, share a warm smile, offer a hug, or voice a simple thank you. In this insightful article, author Colette Lafia shares 7 ways we can be messengers of comfort, bringing peace and compassion to ourselves, families, friends, communities, and the world... posted on Feb 25, 33542 reads

Odes to Ordinary Things
Inspired by the gift of a book of "Odes to Common Things" by Pablo Neruda, the editors at A Network for Grateful Living, extended an invitation to submit odes to "ordinary things." The response was happy and immediate. Their inbox steadily filled with poems celebrating weeds, streetlights, shoes and crickets. There were love letters to a blender bottle, an acorn, slippers, an iPad -- even to the v... posted on Sep 24, 9893 reads

On Death Row: Creating Art from Pain
"American Buddhist artist, Moyo, studies the image of the Buddha using a multitude of mediums. Purposeful strokes of prison-issued watercolor paint, jewel-toned ink, colored pencil, and crayon all come together to manifest his unique vision of the Buddha almost always depicted with a delicate smile. He does this from his cell in solitary confinement, smaller than the average parking space, where h... posted on Sep 28, 13408 reads

Being and Doing
Sometimes life seems like a never-ending battle between doing and being. If I wish to be present, I need to turn my attention toward myself, but most of us lose our connection with ourselves as soon as we go into movement. Yet as we watch great dancers, great athletes and great actors move, we can't help but see how deeply connected they are with themselves, seemingly listening to themselves while... posted on Dec 13, 13134 reads

A Call for Another Way of Living
After he was asked to leave the order of the Christian Brothers, and with no training in filmmaking, Godfrey Reggio made the remarkable Qatsi trilogy. He had a way of following his own vision. "What I learned is that it's what I did every day that determined what I was going to think. I've never forgotten that. Every now and then, I'll give a convocation address at a university and I try to always... posted on Oct 25, 11622 reads

Five Habits of the Heart
In Habits of the Heart, Parker Palmer describes ways of seeing, being, and responding to life that involve our minds, our emotions, our self-images, our concepts of meaning and purpose that are critical to sustaining society. These five habits are: an understanding that we are all in this together; an appreciation of the value of "otherness"; an ability to hold tension in life-giving ways; a sense... posted on Jan 2, 23444 reads

How Gratitude Can Transform Your Workplace
While you may not associate gratitude or expressions of appreciation with the workplace, they're beginning to have a powerful impact on how employees relate to one another, as well as rates of satisfaction, stress, and even sick days. Many organizations have been developing ways to overcome the barriers that often inhibit expressions of thanks among employees, and finding that the effects extend f... posted on Jul 4, 10500 reads

Mind the Stream: Where Mindfulness and Technology Meet
"Look around you. How many devices are bidding for your attention? If someone came into your dwelling space, could they tell what year it was by the technology that immediately surrounded you, or would they have to dig a little deeper?" Writer Emily Barr poses these questions, and others in this reflective essay that weaves together the latest findings around how our minds and our lives are being... posted on Oct 11, 13776 reads

Stone by Stone
Facing a row of heavy sodden soil to be turned by hand, and looking up at the wider project of other rows; these moments come up in so many ways over and over in our lives. "How will this all get done?" we wonder. The choices to procrastinate, to look for a quicker or easier method, or to give up and walk away declaring "It can't be done!" are all possibilities. The approach we take in each of the... posted on Dec 2, 11255 reads

Spotlight on Peacemakers
It is so easy to stir the stew, to add your own spice and heat to it until it boils over rendering anything inside charred and devoid of nutrition. How much more difficult it is to soothe an angry temper, to see from another's point of view, to broker peace? In this Spotlight on Peacemakers, we take a look back at DailyGood features on remarkable people who have brought peace to tense situations a... posted on Oct 18, 1567 reads

How to Build Trust and Lead Effectively
Cameron Stauth believes that the world is in the worst crisis of trust that we have ever seen, and that it manifests in almost every aspect of life: business, politics, media, friendships, and families. “We all need a big dose of a healthy degree of trust, and we need to learn how.” Cameron teamed up with counterintellience expert Robin Dreeke to write a book on how to build trust that... posted on Feb 5, 12726 reads

Great Writers on the Letters of the Alphabet
Late in life the English poet, novelist, essayist, and social justice advocate Sir Stephen Spender asked artist David Hockney to draw each letter of the alphabet, then invited twenty-nine of the greatest writers in the English language to each contribute a short original text for one of the letters. Among them: Susan Sontag, Seamus Heaney, Martin Amis, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Ted Hughes, I... posted on Dec 16, 7139 reads

The Intelligence of Plants
Plants are intelligent; perform complex mathematical computations; plan for the future; and even interpret meaning. Stephen Harrod Buhner came to this conclusion by opening his understanding up to the many cultures and individuals who have listened to plants in order to learn what they have to say. He learned from the direct stories of indigenous people whose first person accounts all said they le... posted on Mar 9, 24978 reads

Why Your Brain Needs to Dream
Matthew Walker, neuroscientist and author of "Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams," maintains that dreaming is like overnight therapy and that it enhances creativity and problem-solving. He shares more in this article that also includes five tips for enhancing sleep. ... posted on Apr 22, 17572 reads

Embracing Holy Envy
"In 1985, Lutheran Bishop Krister Stendahl, in defending the building of a Mormon temple by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Stockholm, enunciated "Three Rules of Religious Understanding:" "When trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies."'Don't compare your best to their worst," and:
"Leave room for holy envy."... posted on Mar 14, 3706 reads

The Empty Promise of Productivity and the Art of Slowing Down
How often do we add items to our lengthy to-do lists, squeeze an extra meeting into an already packed day, or find ourselves focused on the task before us, only to be repeatedly interrupted? In a world of constant movement, it's easy to neglect to give ourselves the care, attention, and leisure time we deserve. "What if we applied the same principles we use for mastering our workdays to become mas... posted on Dec 26, 21249 reads

Walking as Creative Fuel
Over one hundred years ago, Scottish writer Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, penned an essay entitled, "The Fellow that Goes Alone" about the simplest of activities that can yield the most creative thoughts: walking. In this ode to ambulating, Maria Popova weaves together quotes and excerpts from literature's big proponents of the timeless exercise, creating a piece that celebra... posted on Jan 27, 12719 reads

The Healing Place
Jay Davidson is no stranger to the significant, often life-shattering consequences of alcoholism. That's why he founded The Healing Place, a residential facility for alcohol and substance abuse recovery in Louisville, Kentucky. Modeled after the 12-Step Program, the shelter provides peer-to-peer support to participants, who live together for 9 months, go to AA meetings together, and support one an... posted on Feb 10, 12187 reads