What's the Greatest Gift Your Mother Gave You?
"The way her face absolutely beams when she sees me and her voice lightens with happiness when I call her on the phone. Every time. Even after 38 years," says Kristen Harnisch. "My mother always had a sense of wonderment. The color of a leaf, a sprinkling of snow, the smell of hot soup--she found the greatest pleasure in everyday things," Nancy Bradford reflects. "When I was two days old, I was ab... posted on Apr 21, 6322 reads

Life Lessons from A Winged Visitor
"Something in the sunlight caught my eye. A moving something. A small moving something. Could it really be? A butterfly had landed on the floormat inside the house. Beating its wings ever so slowly, trying to catch its breath. I crept closer, just wanting to capture its beauty in my hands. To just admire its simplicity and intricate design. She sensed my presence, and we locked energies. Slowly, s... posted on Jun 2, 16015 reads

Mr. Happy Man
For six hours each day, Bermuda's Johnny Barnes stands at a busy traffic intersection telling all who pass that he loves them. His delight and sincerity are infectious, and the people of the island love him back. His service is a simple reminder of the power of happiness and loving-kindness to change any day for the better.... posted on Apr 19, 5076 reads

How To Find Your Purpose
"'Find something more important than you are,' philosopher Dan Dennett once said in discussing the secret of happiness,'and dedicate your life to it.' But how, exactly, do we find that? Surely, it isn't by luck. I myself am a firm believer in the power of curiosity and choice as the engine of fulfillment, but precisely how you arrive at your true calling is an intricate and highly individual dance... posted on Apr 22, 56699 reads

Lessons From Those Who Lost & Found
Jill Bolte Taylor, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy and Chef Grant Achatz are an unlikely trio. What do this brain scientist, late eye surgeon, and a leader of the molecular gastronomy movement [yes there is such a thing] have in common? At a takeoff point in their careers they were each dealt a sucker punch -- one that robbed them of what was arguably their greatest gift. Yet none of them threw in the... posted on Apr 25, 32874 reads

How to Stop Labels from Becoming Judgments
"A yoga teacher of mine was describing a class he held for girls struggling with anorexia. He asked them to stand hip-width and was shocked when all of them were standing with their feet as wide as the yoga mat. Their physical bodies were much thinner than what their mental perceptions told them. It isn't something that just afflicts these girls -- all of us fall prey to believing labels that defi... posted on May 9, 24179 reads

Offbeat Graduation Speech Gets Standing Ovation
2012's Baccalaureate speaker at the University of Pennsylvania was an unconventional choice for an Ivy League school. To address their newly-minted graduates, aspiring to dazzling careers, they picked a man who has never in his adult life, applied for a job. A man who hasn't worked for pay in nearly a decade, and whose self-stated mission is simply "to bring smiles to the world and stillness to my... posted on May 14, 397680 reads

The Boy Who Played With Fusion
Taylor Wilson always dreamed of creating a star. Now he's become one. "Taylor would transform the family's garage into a mysterious, glow-in-the-dark cache of rocks and metals and liquids with unimaginable powers ... he would conceive, in a series of unlikely epiphanies, new ways to use neutrons to confront some of the biggest challenges of our time: cancer and nuclear terrorism...he would build a... posted on May 26, 6962 reads

Mr. Rogers at the Emmy Awards
For 33 years, Fred Rogers -- known to one-and-all as Mister Rogers -- invited children into his television "neighborhood" to teach them curiosity, ethics, and self-belief. When honored with an Emmy Award for lifetime achievement, Mister Rogers delivered a thank-you speech very much in keeping with his role as educator and role model -- using ten very special seconds of silence.... posted on Jun 11, 10274 reads

How to Speak More Wisely
"It had been three weeks since my throat started to feel sore, and it wasn't getting better. The pain was most acute when I spoke. So I decided to spend a few days speaking as little as possible. Every time I had the urge to say something, I paused for a moment to question whether it was worth irritating my throat. This made me acutely aware of when and how I use my voice. Which led me to a surpri... posted on Jun 16, 52801 reads

The Opposite of Poverty is Justice
Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer who spends most of his time in jails, prisons, on death row and in low-income communities, shares some hard truths about America's criminal justice system, starting with a massive imbalance along racial lines: a third of young black men between the ages of 18 and 30 has been incarcerated at some point in their lives. In this video Bryan urges the TED audience to think abo... posted on Jun 20, 3328 reads

Three Qualities of the New Politician
There are plenty of politicians who genuinely desire to serve their communities and nations with humility and integrity, dedicating their lives to the cultivation of a wisdom that will benefit society at large; sadly, they are a minority. Politics has become a degraded profession. In this thought provoking piece, James O'dea, who has spent decades of his life in cultivating peace through channel... posted on Jun 23, 15081 reads

Stranger Dinners
A few years ago, Ari Davalos started an art project called Stranger Dinner -- invite six strangers to dinner at her house. In a world separated by Internet connections, she aimed to reclaim the serendipity in her life. "Instead of going to the library and researching on the internet, I want to stroll through the stacks, smell the pages of old books, pick a random book off the shelf, and let some ... posted on Jun 22, 13359 reads

Worth Our Weight: The Taste of Compassion
"I glance down at my GPS to make sure this is where we want to be and in doing so I almost pass my destination. There it is tucked away to the left, sandwiched between two homes: Worth our Weight (W.O.W). The whimsical name brings to mind a weight-loss program or some sort of preemptive apologetic reassurance for long lines. This restaurant has neither. The front is clean, simple and inviting, wit... posted on Jun 27, 11984 reads

What A Plant Knows
"As I was planting my seasonal crop of tomatoes last month, a good friend (and my personal gardening guru) informed me that they liked their leaves rubbed, "like petting a pet's ears," which I received with equal parts astonishment, amusement, and mild concern for my friend. But, as Tel Aviv University biologist Daniel Chamovitz reveals in What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses (public li... posted on Jun 30, 15135 reads

A Refugee Turned Social Entrepreneur
Amber Chand is an entrepreneur in the United States with a unique business model: "She scans the headlines for conflicts around the world and responds. "I swoop in and then identify a group of talented, skilled artisan women who live there [in conflict zones] and who are clearly going to have to rebuild their lives in the shadow of either war or genocide or civil strife," she explains. The Amber C... posted on Jul 3, 4487 reads

A Savior At the Grocery Store
"Numbly, I left my husband, Marty, at the hospital where I had been visiting two of my children and headed for the grocery store. Since it was eleven p.m., I drove to the only store I knew was open twenty-four hours a day. I turned my car motor off and rested my head against the seat. What a day, I thought to myself. With two of my young children in the hospital, and a third waiting at Grandma's, ... posted on Jul 8, 6228 reads

Mystery Knitter's Olympic Masterpiece
"Residents of Saltburn, in North Yorkshire, are scratching their heads today after a mysterious 'yarnbomber' wrapped the town's pier with a 50-yard scarf stretching out along the railings. The impressive garment features woollen athletes competing in various Olympic events, from synchronised swimmers to rowers and cyclists, and has delighted young and old alike as the town discusses the good yarn.... posted on Jul 14, 20124 reads

The Second Glance
Have you ever cringed at the sight of a human being who is physically disfigured? David Roche, who was born with a facial disfigurement, spent years trying to hide from himself. At middle age, he discovered his inner beauty, his spirit and his strength, and he has dedicated his life to helping all people find the inner beauty within themselves and in others.... posted on Jul 15, 4744 reads

Awakening Our Collaborative Spirit
"The notion that open and honest collaboration allows thinking to grow as a collective phenomenon can be traced back to Socrates and other thinkers in ancient Greece. Socrates and his friends so revered the concept of group dialogue that they bound themselves by principles of discussion that they established to maintain a sense of collegiality. These principles were known as 'Koinonia' which means... posted on Jul 17, 22882 reads

A Sister's Deathless Legacy of Love
"After living through an experimental cancer treatment my sister Barb was left unable to work. When she was offered the opportunity to do a mission trip in India if she could come up with $3,000 - she was left thinking there was no way she could go. No way to raise the funds. She asked me to brainstorm with her as to how she could raise money. "The only thing I can do is hug," she told me - and th... posted on Jul 18, 16368 reads

Pilgrims for Peace: One Couple's Incredible Journey
"In the life of each and every one of us, there is a defining moment, one after which we know that our lives will never be the same. For me, 9/11 was that moment." Mony Dojeiji's defining moment eventually led her to an ancient pilgrimage route in Spain, where a chance encounter with an artist would change both of their lives forever. Together they would end up walking a pilgrimage for peace in J... posted on Jul 22, 12364 reads

Life Through A Camera Lens
"'I couldn't believe how beautiful the ocean was,' he commented. 'I've never seen an ocean before, and then to get to see palm trees in person, and to even touch them. It was just amazing.' He began thumbing through a series of photographs on his phone, each displaying an image of a palm tree." Though she'd seen many palm trees before, the writer describing this encounter realized in that moment t... posted on Aug 1, 14449 reads

Meeting Michael: A Kindness Story
"I was sitting at my desk today, looking out the window. I saw an old homeless man crossing the street, carrying a suitcase. I remembered the many times I had looked on from afar, feeling sorry for the homeless but doing nothing... Sometimes we think about compassion but we push it into the deep corners of our heart because we're too busy with life, too shy, or too afraid of strangers. But all it ... posted on Jul 27, 7458 reads

9-yr-old Helps Disabled Brother Finish Triathlons
Over the weekend, brothers Cayden and Connor Long joined hundreds of other children as they competed in the first annual New England Kids Triathlon in Cambridge. The boys did not win the event -- they didn't even come close. But that didn't stop them from winning hearts across the Internet. The Long brothers are not your typical triathletes. Six-year-old Cayden has cerebral palsy and can neither w... posted on Jul 29, 25295 reads

Giving Wings to Little Prisoners
2012 CNN Hero Pushpa Basnet found her calling when she was still a student in social work in Nepal. While visiting a women's prison as an assignment for one of her classes, she felt a tug on her shawl and a little girl smiled at her from behind bars -- a child living with her mother in prison. That image haunted Pushpa until she graduated, and she started a daycare in the morning for children aged... posted on Jul 30, 3331 reads

A Brief History of Timekeeping
"For millennia, humans have sought to make sense of time, to visualize it, to ride its arrow, to hack it, to understand biological connection to it. 'Time is the very foundation of conscious experience,' writes Dan Falk in 'In Search of Time: The History, Physics, and Philosophy of Time.' And yet that awareness has a long history of friction -- to mark and measure the passage of time has proven re... posted on Aug 6, 10677 reads

Dakota 38: One Filmmaker's Ride of a Lifetime
"I remember Silas telling us about meeting a Native American elder who talked about a dream he'd had, an important dream, one that he'd tried to ignore. But finally he understood that the dream had to be re-enacted. There would be a ride of Native Americans on horseback, over 300 miles across the Dakotas in the dead of winter, a healing ride to the place where 38 Native Americans had been hung dur... posted on Aug 9, 4508 reads

How to Be Happy: The Fine Print
Most of us want to be happy and stay that way, and research from positive psychology has shown that making a habit of certain day-to-day activities -- like expressing gratitude, exercising, or performing acts of kindness -- can help us get there. But few researchers have considered how to identify an activity that's best suited to your particular personality and lifestyle. Sonja Lyubomirsky, a pro... posted on Aug 13, 24976 reads

The Man Who Planted A Forest
The year was 1979 in Assam, India. Floods had washed a great number of snakes onto a barren sandbar. When Jadav "Molai" Payeng -- then only 16 -- found them, they had all died. "The snakes died in the heat, without any tree cover. I sat down and wept over their lifeless forms." Then he dried his tears and asked forest officials if they could plant trees in that area. When they told him nothing wou... posted on Aug 16, 79962 reads

Global Warming: A Case for Inner Change
"Alarming data and warnings about climate change have been with us for twenty years. The issue has morphed into something like a low-level toothache. [...] If human nature is to evolve, a new set of assumptions would look something like the following: Human life isn't set apart from life on earth. We must live in balance with Nature. Consumerism isn't unlimited and doesn't lead to happiness. Toxic... posted on Aug 17, 18193 reads

Two Quick Judo-Joy-Chops
"I was on my way to the post office. I hadn't found a parking place on my first pass up the street and was now making a left turn into a small parking lot in order to loop back towards the post office. It's a tight space and there's a mail box set up right inside the lot so people can pull in, roll down their window and reach out to stick a letter into the box without getting out of their cars." W... posted on Aug 20, 4283 reads

It's More Important to Be Kind Than Clever
"Brandon Cook, from Wilton, New Hampshire, was visiting his grandmother in the hospital. Terribly ill with cancer, she complained to her grandson that she desperately wanted a bowl of soup, and that the hospital's soup was inedible (she used saltier language). If only she could get a bowl of her favorite clam chowder from Panera Bread! Trouble was, Panera only sells clam chowder on Friday. So Bran... posted on Aug 31, 128075 reads

10 Life-Changing Perspectives On Anger
We all have had our moments of impatience, rage and frustration...but how do these moments affect our lives? Get curious about anger, and you just might discover an untapped well of vital energy that improves your life circumstances and wakes you up to the whole of life. This article offers 10 powerful perspectives on anger.... posted on Sep 10, 0 reads

The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing
After the sudden death of his father, the poet Kevin Young looked for a collection of poems that might speak to his sense of loss. To his surprise, he couldn't find such a collection, so he went to work compiling one. "The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing". Young speaking on NPR shares, "[Poetry]is able to capture a moment, a feeling, perhaps a fleeting feeling, and even make .... music ... posted on Sep 1, 11700 reads

Never Too Late: A 71 Year Old's Inspiring Journey
"If there ever was an anti-aging pill, I would call it exercise," says Ernestine Shepherd. A remarkable woman who, at age 71 started competitive bodybuilding. This BBC video shares more about her inspiring journey and her dedication to role modeling the power of exercise and a healthy diet. Ernestine's luminous smile and spirit illustrates her deep-held conviction that,"Age is nothing but a number... posted on Sep 2, 6846 reads

Transforming Bullies -- with Babies
"Teacher Raya patrols a group of giggly kindergarten students, looking each so deeply in the eye that many squirm and bashfully reach for her toes. Her father carries her in his arms. Raya is not quite five months old. She's teaching them about being kind and how to talk about their feelings so that later, they don't terrorize each other. Teacher Raya, as they call her, is a "volunteer" with Roots... posted on Nov 10, 7216 reads

The Point of Being Alive
"A few weeks ago, I found myself in one of my favorite cities: Seattle, Washington. Within minutes of my arrival to Pike Place Market, I felt an overwhelming sensation that I was meant to be in that spot, at that moment, with my two children. As we meandered around the colorful and lively market, I witnessed six connections...These moments, later comprised one remarkable collection that illuminate... posted on Oct 8, 67991 reads

The Ripple of One Small Act
When Hilde Back sponsored a young, rural Kenyan student, she thought nothing of it. She certainly never expected to hear from him, but years later she did. Now a Harvard graduate and a Human Rights Lawyer for the United Nations, Chris Mburu decided to find the stranger that changed his life. Inspired by her generosity, he started a scholarship program of his own and named it for his former benefac... posted on Sep 21, 4417 reads

Living with Just Enough
"By now we are all extremely familiar with the litany of challenges we face as a global species... We know there will be no easy fixes, no panaceas, but nevertheless as we try to set priorities and search for the most promising ways to approach these problems, many of us find ourselves looking to different cultures and to earlier eras for inspiration. In this regard, the Edo period of Japan has a ... posted on Sep 19, 25909 reads

Reporting Poverty: Interview with Katherine Boo
While covering poverty and social welfare for the Washington Post in 1993, Katherine Boo was commissioned to write a magazine profile of the new vice president. For most reporters, such an assignment would signal entry into the big leagues. Social issues are regarded as a beat journalists cover until they are deemed important enough to interview politicians, bureaucrats, people of power. "In journ... posted on Sep 29, 4874 reads

Love Leads Into Mystery: Raising A Child With Asperger's
"Daniel teaches me that all rules are arbitrary, answers are illusory, future visions are incomplete. He teaches me about the psychic wounds I carry into my parenting, and my only choice is to heal myself. He teaches me to be more patient, more accepting, more tolerant not just of him but of other kids. I see a nine year old hyper boy out in public these days, and I don't get irritated with him; i... posted on Oct 10, 10110 reads

Families Held Together By Love ... & Skype
We live in a world in which some of the people we are closest to are often not near us at all. When we document our day-to-day existence in photographs and Instagrams, these people are absent. Their presence in our lives is missing from our digital memories. Photographer John Clang's series Being Together seeks to correct this. Using Skype and projectors, he captures families visually as they are... posted on Sep 20, 4626 reads

Is Time Really Money?
"Time is money in the West. Workers are paid by the hour, lawyers charge by the minute, and advertising is sold by the second ($117,000 per second at this year's Super Bowl). Think about this: The civilized mind has reduced time, the most obscure and amorphous of all intangibles, to the most objective of all quantities -- money. With time and things on the same value scale, I can tell you how many... posted on Nov 9, 24473 reads

Detroit's Good Food Cure
"What happens when the Motor City transforms itself into the capital of grow-your-own food? There are more than 1,200 community gardens in Detroit--more per square mile and more per capita than in any other American city. The number of community gardens is just a fraction of the number of kitchen gardens that families grow in yards and side lots. Locals are learning more about nutrition and feelin... posted on Oct 25, 10677 reads

A Weaver's Reflections
Pam Hiller's weaving teacher, Aziz, taught her not to fix mistakes, but to stop and notice -- and then work with them. "It wasn't just paying attention with the mind; it was also listening with the body," says Hiller. "When someone is learning to weave they literally tie the strings in knots. There's a reason I think that we refer to ourselves as getting knotted up in our emotions because that's t... posted on Oct 13, 3623 reads

The Action of Light
"The working class daughter of a Jewish mother and Sicilian father, Joan Di Stefano was working to help with the bills at fourteen. A few years later she was "slinging drinks" to pay tuition for her classes at the San Francisco Art Institute. At seventeen, while working at Macy's in downtown SF, on her lunch-breaks she often visited a bookstore around the corner. That's where she picked up a copy... posted on Nov 14, 5409 reads

Rick Van Beek's 12-Year-Old Inspiration
Rick Van Beek used to smoke two packs of cigarettes and chew a tin of tobacco a day, and the only exercise he got was playing in a Monday night softball league. But two years ago, Van Beek quit smoking, lost weight, whipped himself into shape and started running. It turned out that all Van Beek needed was a little inspiration to get off the couch."If you want to be a runner, you have to have somet... posted on Oct 16, 12684 reads

Throw Your Life a Curve
"According to Juan Carlos Mendez-Garcia, one of the best models for making sense of a non-linear world is the S-curve, the model we have used to understand the diffusion of disruptive innovations, and which he and I speculate can be used to understand personal disruption -- the necessary pivots in our own career paths. [...] Our hypothesis is that those who can successfully navigate, even harness,... posted on Oct 11, 20391 reads

The Man Who Left Hollywood For His True Calling
In a former life Scott Neeson was a high-powered Hollywood exec responsible for the global success of box-office hits like Titanic and Braveheart. But eight years ago, after a poignant experience at a Cambodian garbage dump, he quit his job, sold his mansion and traded in all the trappings of success to dedicate his life to underserved children in one of the poorest countries of the world. Today ... posted on Oct 20, 67328 reads