4 Habits of Effective Communicators
"Have you ever met someone who is exceptionally easy to talk to? Someone who simply through good conversation gets you to open up? Makes you feel smarter, more interesting or just understood? These are all common traits of "supercommunicators" people who are consistently able to create authentic connections with others just by listening and talking." Journalist and author Charles Duhigg outline... posted on Mar 3, 4004 reads

Defining World Happiness
Each year, the World Happiness Report ranks 146 countries by their level of happiness. Scandinavian countries are usually found at the top of the ranks, while war-torn or deeply impoverished countries are generally at the bottom. In recent years, psychologists have been looking at how cultural bias affects these rankings. ... posted on Mar 26, 1381 reads

Transforming Stress into Self-Identity
Ever noticed how your 'stress' becomes who 'you' are? This intriguing characteristic suggests that unresolved emotions get stored in our physical and emotional bodies; and, over time, these built-up residues create a 'state'. This state, if sustained, soon morphs into our identity, becoming our new 'normal'. We start identifying ourselves with these states, for instance, 'I am an anxious person', ... posted on Mar 30, 2194 reads

When Melodies Unlock Memory Reservoirs
Candy Cohn often would speak with her late mother, Lillian, in English, with a few words here and there in Yiddish. Then, one day, Lillian "started singing a beautiful Yiddish love song called Sheyn Vi Di Levone. 'I'd never heard her sing it. I never heard her play it. The look on her face and the joy. I hadn't seen that in her in a long time,'" Candy Cohn described to WLRN Public Radio. ... posted on Mar 31, 1284 reads

Unveiling Gifts from Uncertainty
Through a poignant reflection of her father's debilitating stroke, Christie Aschwanden explores the concept of uncertainty as not just an inevitable hazard of life, but a herald of new opportunities. When her father transitions from a robust long-distance cyclist to being wheelchair-bound, she realizes that life's sudden changes knock open the door to adjusting, learning and transforming in unexpe... posted on Apr 12, 1824 reads

Luminous Darkness: A Journey Through Suffering
Mystic-poet Lucy Grace shares her profound insights around human suffering and its transformative potential. Recalling a pivotal insight at school, the day after a frightening encounter with a gang at the age of eight, she describes, "I looked at my thumb and I said to myself, 'Lucy, don't worry, it's really hard now, but this thumb is part of your future. This thumb exists on the adult that you a... posted on Apr 26, 3999 reads

ChatGPT: A Partner in Unknowing
Writer and adaptive leadership trainer Dana Karout takes us through a insightful exploration in her essay on how ChatGPT is mere a reflection of our own limited ways of viewing the world. In her work with students and in building capacity with individuals and communities to hold conflict and navigate complexity across various levels of authority, she looks into how ChatGPT gets us, humans, to what... posted on May 15, 3319 reads

What Should I Do Today?
Finding moments of meaning and purpose amidst everyday chaos can feel like a daunting task. This article serves as a compass for navigating the complexities of daily life by embracing intentionality and mindful decision-making with a simple yet profound question: "What should I do today?"  Rather than succumbing to the pressures of productivity or routine, we are encouraged to approach each d... posted on Jun 1, 3076 reads

Breathing with the Forest
'Breathing with the Forest' is an immersive digital experience that explores the illusion of separation between us and the rest of the planet, a reminder that “with each breath we exchange parts of ourselves with the wider world.” The Capinuri tree grows in the Amazon river floodplain where the Breathing experience creators photographed and collected three-dimensional scans and audio r... posted on Jun 2, 2326 reads

The Good News You Might Have Missed
We get to choose whether to despair or hope. And it is increasingly difficult to choose hope in a world with headlines about famine, war, intolerance, and disaster. That choice, however, can be made more equitable, when we also choose to widen our field of vision to include less attention-grabbing, click-oriented headlines. Angus Harvey delivers a striking reminder in his 9-minute TED2024 talk tha... posted on Jun 7, 6742 reads

Five Keys to Managing Intrusive Thoughts
"Persistent thoughts can be signals to ourselves about underlying life issues that need resolution," writes Dr. Jill Suttie. "But by drawing upon mindfulness, a self-distanced perspective, physical exercise, redirection, and social support, you can perhaps find a path forward." Dr. Suttie presents these five practices as collaborators for our internal world of thoughts, which sometimes feel like t... posted on Jun 13, 3606 reads

How Luddite Teens of New York Changed My View of Social Media
The article shares a student author’s journey of reevaluating their social media use after encountering the Luddite Club, a group of New York teens who reject digital norms in favor of more fulfilling, offline activities. Inspired by their commitment, the author deleted Instagram and TikTok, experiencing improved attention span and appreciation for creative and meaningful pursuits. This expe... posted on Jun 15, 2920 reads

Painting in the Dharma
In 1969, Rosalyn White moved from Washington D.C. to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California. "I was like a kid in a candy store!" she says. The hippie revolution was still in bloom and she discovered a place in Berkeley, Calif. called the Nyingma Meditation Center. That's where she met Tarthang Tulku. Little did she know how her art journey was to change. For over ... posted on Jun 25, 1547 reads

The Night I Died
Tracy Cochran describes a night when she was robbed by three men while walking down a dark street. One held her in a chokehold that can kill in less than twenty seconds. During the chokehold, Tracy had what is described as “conscious dying, or transference of consciousness at the time of death, or even a flash of enlightenment without meditation.” She describes it in exquisite detail a... posted on Jul 3, 5734 reads

How Being Distracted May Lead You to Overindulge
Researchers find that multitasking during one activity can lead to overindulgence later. For instance, eating a sandwich while using your phone can result in less satisfaction, and more snacking afterwards. They call it hedonic consumption: “that when people experience less pleasure during consumptive activities, it primes them to want to make up for that loss with compensatory consumption (... posted on Jul 16, 2568 reads

A New Strategy to Cope with Emotional Stress
How do healthcare workers, emergency responders, and anyone in high-stress environments sustain wellbeing for the long-run? A new study from MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research may have an answer. "How you think can improve how you feel," says John Gabrieli, an MIT brain and cognitive sciences professor and senior author of the paper. In the study, MIT researchers showed a series of images... posted on Jul 22, 2351 reads

The Londoners Walking Their Way to Better Mental Health
Therapists are creating walking groups to “support people outside of the therapy room, getting us outdoors, off our phones and connecting with new people.” They create intentionality by asking people to: metaphorically leave something behind; have an open mind; be mindful of their surroundings; individually choose a concern on which to focus; and the therapist walks along to help nurtu... posted on Sep 4, 1030 reads

A Sparrow's Song To Lift Up the Sky
"The sparrow heard that the sky was falling, and while all the other creatures fled, she asked herself, 'What can I do? I'm just a sparrow.' But then, in a flash of brilliance, she lay on her back, pointing her tiny feet towards the sky. 'What are you doing, Little Sparrow?' the others asked. 'Well, I've heard the sky is falling, and so I'm doing my bit to hold it up.'," Nipun Mehta recounts a sto... posted on Sep 17, 3272 reads

Can Social Media Keep Indigenous Languages Alive?
In some cases, only a few elderly speakers of the language remain among seventy Indigenous languages in Canada. Instead of written word, people are using social media to help keep the languages alive by helping people learn the way all babies learn, by speaking one word at a time. “We breathe life into languages by speaking them.” A single Indigenous word can carry “thousands of ... posted on Oct 2, 595 reads

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Greenpeace activists set up shop in a "guerrilla garage" in an abandoned building in London and started giving away free tanks of petrol to astonished motorists. The fuel wasn't gas; it was bio-diesel fuel made from crops. Greenpeace spokesperson Matthew Spence explained the giveaway was intended to drive home the point that "we can switch to green fuels right now and make a huge reduction in the ... posted on Aug 6, 887 reads

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A new study by the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation concluded: "Serving garlic bread at dinner enhanced the quality of family interactions. This has potential application in promoting and maintaining shared family experiences, thus stabilizing the family unit, and also may have utility as an adjunct to family therapy."... posted on Aug 20, 562 reads

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Somalia was decimated by warfare and then abandoned by the international community in 1995. The country has almost no infrastructure, no government, and no foreign aid or investment. Yet, thanks to the spirit of some irrepressible local entrepreneurs, the country is starting on the road to recovery. Some Somali see the lack of foreign aid and government as helping to create, rather than hinder, op... posted on Aug 27, 1148 reads

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Each time you log-on to the Rainforest Jukebox [http://www.rainforestjukebox.org], the site's sponsors will purchase and preserve the equivalent of two square-feet of rainforest. The website, created by Australia's 20-year-old Rainforest Information Center, features more than 40 tracks of streaming audio by Midnight Oil, Cruel Sea, the Warumpi Band, and others. Lands being saved include several t... posted on Sep 11, 585 reads

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The lunar cycle and lunar phases are observable behaviorally and physiologically in numerous life forms. These effects occur in fish, shellfish, insects, mammals (including humans), and plants. For example, shellfish renew their shells, Guppy-fish have a color sensitivity on their back that is most responsive during Full Moon, etc. ... posted on Sep 12, 478 reads

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Ryan listened as his teacher explained that villagers in Uganda were drinking bad water and could have a well with clean, running water for only seventy dollars. As a six year old, this was a lot of money, but he was determined and not only raised the seventy, but half a million and still growing. ... posted on Mar 19, 869 reads

Not an Ordinary World Cup
The soccer ball sounds like the clatter of a rattlesnake's tail, fans are barred from cheering too loudly and the sidelines are clear plastic walls meant to keep the players in-bounds -- clearly not an ordinary World Cup. Save for the goalkeepers, all of the athletes are legally blind. Welcome to the fourth World Championships of Soccer for the Blind. Spectator Marcelo Gonzalez, who coaches blind ... posted on Dec 7, 1504 reads

The Harlem Children's Zone
Once the center of a renaissance, Harlem, New York, has slowly declined, now symbolizing urban poverty and decay. But today, there's a new renaissance under way in Harlem, with the construction of new buildings, businesses and schools. One leader is Geoffrey Canada, whose vision, quite simply, is to save children, and he has amassed a staggering amount of private money -- more than $100,000,000 --... posted on Jun 22, 2126 reads

Adventure Playgrounds
There's an unusual park in Berkeley, California. Looking at it, "playground" probably wouldn't be your first thought. "Junkyard" is more like it. And well, that would be accurate. Berkeley's Adventure Playground is one of a handful of playgrounds in the United States based on a concept that grew in popularity after World War II. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark, the landscape architect C. Th.... posted on Sep 21, 3522 reads

Branded
A high schooler wears a Pepsi shirt to school on Coca-Cola day and gets suspended for insurrection. A sixth-grader covets a $500 Kate Spade bag, only to toss it a year later. A family drops $1,400 a day to take an SAT tutor along on vacation. These dispatches from a label-obsessed adolescence come courtesy of Alissa Quart, whose new book, Branded, informs readers that youthful consumerism doesn't ... posted on Jul 28, 1557 reads

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He was the top man in the CIA for his artistic genius -- he used to create disguises for spies. Now, he uses his skills to help people feel better about themselves and more at ease in the world. Prosthetic artist Robert Barron creates new noses, eyes, ears and hands for people who have lost them to disease or injury, or who never had them in the first place. His talent and craftsmanship are stagg... posted on Feb 19, 1268 reads

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Bedridden from a serious car accident, she couldn't do anything ... let alone win five national track and field titles and hold a World Record! But that's what Marilyn King did. Then she realized the power of her mental rehearsal skills and applied it to peace. She formed the UN sponsored Olympic Peace Team -- a worldwide initiative engaging Olympic champions to teach these skills to young peop... posted on Feb 8, 1336 reads

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The City of Berkeley is at it again. This time, it's the first city of its size to use biodiesel fuel called B100 for all 200 of the city's diesel vehicles -- garbage trucks, fire engines, and school buses. B100 can be made from just about any plant oil and animal fat and has far cleaner emissions than traditional petroleum.... posted on Jul 12, 772 reads

A 5 year-old Victim's Forgiveness
A child's grace and forgiveness have inspired Boston. 5-year-old Kai Leigh Harriott looked up from her blue wheelchair in the hushed courtroom and faced the man who fired the stray gunshot that paralyzed her nearly three years ago. "What you done to me was wrong," the dimpled girl with purple and yellow plastic ties in her braids said softly. "But I still forgive (you)."... posted on May 6, 3574 reads

A Priceless Wedding
The musicians were playing, the 2,000 guests were dining, the priest was preparing the ceremony and the bride was dressed in red, her hands and feet festively painted with henna. Then, under the wedding tent, the groom's family asked for more dowry. 25,000 dollars more. So Nisha Sharma, the bride, picks up her cell phone, calls the cops and lands her groom in jail. She is being hailed internati... posted on May 20, 1915 reads

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Tired of seeing soda cans and beer bottles strewn along the road of her rural Virginia hometown, 9-year-old Brooke Crowther designed a flyer and got other kids and parents together to help her clean up. It wasn't long before this little movement would become Pollution Solution Kids, spawning similar activities all over the East Coast.... posted on Jun 22, 828 reads

Quiet Soldiers of Compassion
In 1971, Baba Amte took his young son Prakash Amte to a fierce, isolated jungle to work with the Madia Gonds a tribal people: 37 years later, the family is still there and running a hospital that treats over 40,000 Madia tribals a year, a residential school and a training program for barefoot doctors. All of this free of charge. It also has an animal orphanage -- affectionately christened Amte's A... posted on Aug 29, 2321 reads

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Due to the vast destruction of tropical forests, the remaining shade-grown coffee plantations of Mexico, Central America, Colombia and the Caribbean have become the last safe haven for songbirds, hummingbirds and other native and migratory birds.... posted on Oct 25, 1306 reads

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Gregory Smith is not your average 12 year old. A college sophomore with mighty aspirations, he travels the world over, speaking to heads of state and nobel laureates, advocating world peace and children's rights. At 12, he has already dedicated his life to serving children, and is noted to pass each day singing as he goes.
... posted on Aug 23, 1112 reads

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If you found yourself on the early bus in Jackson, Mississippi, you might just be lucky enough to have Sheila O'Flaherty as a fellow passenger. She would look you over, and if you happened to be under age ten, she might fumble in her canvas bag and pull out a library book, and offer to read to you between stops. If this turned out to be your regular route, say, on the way to a public school across... posted on Oct 26, 552 reads

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Started by Ben Cohen, cofounder of Ben and Jerry's, TrueMajority.com sifts through all the stuff going on in Congress. When your voice counts to create a just and sustainable world, you get an email alert. Then just by clicking one button a fax is sent to your congressperson in your name. It takes about 2 minutes a month and it’s free. ... posted on Sep 28, 988 reads

The Science of Boredom
Virtually everyone gets bored once in a while. Most of us chalk it up to a dull environment. "The most common way to define boredom in Western culture is 'having nothing to do'" says psychologist Stephen Vodanovich of the University of West Florida. And indeed, early research into the effects of boredom focused on people forced to perform monotonous tasks, such as working a factory assembly line. ... posted on Aug 30, 3582 reads

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While on a teaching and trekking expedition, Dr. Irvine-Halliday had an idea -- to light up rural homes without electricity. He invented White Light Emitting Diodes (WLED) which are powered by energy-renewable water mills, solar panels, wind and water turbines and pedal generators.... posted on Dec 12, 1260 reads

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One of Geneen Roth’s perhaps most well-known and controversial exercises helps people to experience what they have as "enough": in conjunction with her advice to "carry a chunk of chocolate everywhere," Roth teaches how to eat that chocolate slowly and with complete awareness. The exercise, she writes, "reminds us to wake up, pay attention, stop reaching for what we don’t have, and focus on wh... posted on Oct 15, 1138 reads

How To Get Unstuck
"Do you feel overwhelmed? Exhausted? Directionless? Hopeless? Battle-torn? Worthless? Alone? These symptoms are what I call The Serious Seven -- the seven most common indicators that you're stuck. If you're feeling one of these emotions, it's likely you -- or your organization -- is stuck. I think one of the most interesting observations we gleaned from studying stuck teams is that successful team... posted on Sep 4, 6211 reads

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After any disaster, people and resources organize without planning into coordinated, purposeful activity. Everything happens quickly and a little miraculously. These self-organized efforts create effective responses long before official relief agencies can even make it to the scene. But organizational theorists have had a hard time explaining or replicating this concept. Now, Margaret Wheatley ... posted on Jan 3, 1001 reads

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The 50 Cistercian Sisters of Mount Saint Mary Abbey rise each morning at 3, pray until nearly 8 and then begin their work day making chocolate, the labor they have chosen to support themselves and their life of what they call "beautiful simplicity." Except that now 20% (and increasing) of their orders are coming in online.... posted on Apr 17, 1022 reads

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Dawn and Ed started their family by adopting two children. A year later, they adopted a child from an Native Adoption Program and three from Vietnam. Then, two more from DHS and one from India! With a 500 dollar grant from a local club, Dawn started an adoption agency in 1977 to share her knowledge. Today, MAPS helps children worldwide ... from starting an orphanage to building a one-room sch... posted on Jan 11, 804 reads

Newspaper by Children from the Slums
Children from New Delhi's slums have come together ... to start their own newspaper! 'Udayachal' has become a vehicle for highlighting the problems and concerns of the slum dwellers. Trained by the Gandhi Media Literacy program, the paper's associate editor enthusiastically noted, "Just watch us for the next six months and we will be able to do wonders. Udayachal is not just meant to be a newsp... posted on Aug 6, 1083 reads

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He's 22, leads an organization with four employees, and through his website is able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in a matter of days and move thousands of people to action. That's Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org ... he's redefining peace activism and highlighting the power of the web as a tool for organization.... posted on Feb 13, 1709 reads

Friends Until the End
They were neighbors, then became buddies and now they're friends till death do them apart. Walter Jednak, 85, just had a heart attack and his best friend, Howard Hunter, 73, is helping him stay alive. The inspiring story of this uncommon friendship has inspired tons of emails and letters from readers, after it was first published.... posted on Sep 24, 1301 reads