Because I Said I Would
Alex Sheen keeps his promises. One year after his friend Charlie Cordell killed Vincent Canzani while drinking and driving, Alex stood outside of a busy bar with a sign telling those leaving that he was ready to drive them home that night and even take them back to their cars in the morning. And he did it for free, because he had a promise to keep. When someone snuck him a tip, he donated it to "M... posted on Aug 26, 7914 reads

Look With Your Heart: Lessons From My Grandmother
Mia Tagano visits her 94 year old grandmother -- who now has dementia -- and discovers a whole new, less verbal, way of communicating her love through heart, hands and hugs. To her surprise, when she brings this approach to her grandmother's roommate who has suffered a stroke, it radically transforms their communication and opens up both women profoundly. This heart-warming story shares more...... posted on Jul 29, 0 reads

Julia Cameron On How To Get Out Of Your Own Way
"Art is a spiritual transaction. Artists are visionaries... Art is an act of faith, and we practice practicing it." For anyone interested in the ineffable grasping and spiritual practice of the artist, Maria Popova of brainpickings.org summarizes Julia Cameron's seminal text The Artist's Way, "exploring its gateways, its obstacles, and how we can get out of our own way."... posted on Sep 3, 25393 reads

From Hero To Host
For too long, too many of us have been entranced by heroes. Perhaps it's our desire to not have to do the hard work, to rely on someone else to figure things out. But perhaps it's time for us to face the truth of our situation -- that we're all in this together, that we all have a voice -- and figure out how to mobilize the hearts and minds of everyone in our workplaces and communities.... posted on Aug 28, 35370 reads

Good Night Margaret: A Love Story Against The Odds
Take a moment to enjoy this short documentary film from the New York Times entitled, "Good Night, Margaret." It is the uplifting story about Margaret "Muffi" Lavigne and Chris Plum, both of whom have muscular dystrophy. But this story focuses not on their disabilities. Instead, it focuses on something they both feel incredibly lucky to have discovered...love. As Chris so poignantly states in the f... posted on Sep 8, 19950 reads

Kids Making A Mark On The World
Riley De Graff, a resourceful student from Sun Valley Elementary School in San Rafael, CA, effected positive change for the earth by asking a parent to help her recycle used markers in her school. By creating a petition through Change.org, the school collected over 90,000 signatures and mobilized a used color markers recycling campaign which is now supported by the Crayola company and Dixon Ticond... posted on May 2, 2444 reads

Radical Kindness: The Banker Who Gave It All Away
On the surface, Philip Wollen does not look like the radical type. Named as one of the top-wanted executives in Australia, he was a vice-president of Citibank when he was 34 and a general manager at Citicorp. Around 1990, however, Philip decided to give away 90% of his capital. His aim, he says, is to die broke; to give away all he owns with "warm hands." Now, his Winsome Constance Kindness Trust ... posted on Aug 30, 9502 reads

Marina Keegan & The Opposite of Loneliness
Marina Keegan's posthumous writings are moving, sensible and funny. Her parents, with the help of her college professor, put them together to honor Keegan's loving, compassionate spirit after her tragic death. By doing so, they transformed their anger, sadness and grief into a force for positivity and forgiveness that will inspire you. ... posted on Sep 15, 0 reads

Bridging the Clothing Divide
Developmental organizations typically work on food, education, health care, and economic opportunity, but very few address the need for clothing. For materially poor people, however, clothing is shelter. Anshu Gupta shares, "In earthquakes, the shake kills people; in a tsunami, the water kills people; but in winter, the cold does not kill people. It's the lack of proper clothing. Why don't we cons... posted on Oct 23, 13814 reads

Perfect Pairing: Young People Teaching Seniors About Technology
"Seniors who feel like today's technology has left them in the dust are hitching a ride with a philanthropic gaggle of students who, in their spare time, are helping older generations return to the fast lane with their iPods, iPads, smart phones and computers. A group of teenagers who never knew a world before computers launched Wired for Connections/Mentor Up...designed to help senior citizens un... posted on Oct 2, 39457 reads

Giving Discarded Laptops New Lives & New Homes
It started with a small request made during one of Becky Morrison's many trips to Guinea. Instead of a donation of t-shirts and toys, she was asked if she might bring a laptop. In preparation for her next trip, Becky posted the request to social media. Within minutes, 10 used laptops once destined for the trash heap, were offered a brand new 'home'. It was then that Becky founded Globetops, an org... posted on Oct 14, 16994 reads

The Relationship Between Self-Compassion & Procrastination
What causes us to procrastinate, and how can we change our relationship with this tricky habit? Beyond "just getting started," consultant and life coach Linda Graham suggests that self-compassion may be the key to addressing procrastination and its cycle of negativity.... posted on Oct 9, 60400 reads

Of Webs, Boxes and Boundaries
Margaret Wheatley shares: "When my children were small, I had a slogan on my refrigerator that read: 'If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.' Perhaps that was my children's first lesson in systems thinking. We adults learn this, too. If others are struggling, we experience the consequences of their struggle. If others don't feel safe, we aren't safe. Great teachers have been trying to teach us t... posted on Aug 31, 22080 reads

Tom Carter's Epic Journey Through China
Tom Carter's wanderlust had taken him through the entire length of Mexico, Cuba, and Central America. To continue seeing the world, he decided to teach English in China. Working in this role for a few years non-stop allowed him to save up just enough to traverse the country. Equipped with a digital camera, listening ear, and no agenda, Carter unwittingly ended up creating the most comprehensive bo... posted on Sep 18, 13831 reads

An Innovation That Is Lighting India's Villages
Worldwide about 1.5 billion people lack access to electricity, a statistic hard to fathom in our current digital age. In India, more than 400 million people have no electricity. Gyanesh Pandey, who grew up in a village in Bihar, India without electricity, and three of his friends are creating a different reality for thousands of people through a company they founded known as Husk Power Systems. Re... posted on Nov 8, 14825 reads

Former Orphan Creates Safe Haven For Street Kids
Crouching in the back of a van is a young boy with a fresh injury. He'd been hit with a bottle when he got into a fight. Stanislas Lukumba, a tall, good-looking, fortyish nurse, checks for shards of glass as the driver shines his cell phone on the wound. For the past eight years, Stanislas has made nightly trips in the van, a mobile clinic that runs in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.... posted on Jan 6, 15631 reads

Slow Medicine: An Interview With Victoria Sweet
Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco was, as far as anyone knows, the last almshouse, or Hotel-Dieu, in this country -- a hospital for the sick and poor. Dr. Victoria Sweet took a position there, a place where she and other physicians could practice a different kind of medicine -- an intimate, intuitive, deeply skilled medicine focused on continuing care and observation of the patient, minus com... posted on Oct 8, 22611 reads

35 Images of Kindness Within Conflict
This collection of photos showing everyday individuals standing for love in times of terrible violence will shake your spirit and open your heart. These acts of love suggest that "during times of conflict and political or religious civil unrest, the power of the human spirit's capacity for non-violent protest and kindness still shines through."... posted on Sep 17, 99307 reads

The Forest Man of Majuli Island
It has been said that the single most powerful thing one can do to combat climate change and promote peace is to plant a tree. Jadev Payeng has been doing just that since the 1970's on the once-barren sandbar on the banks of the Brahmaputra River in Assam, India. Over 40 years later, the forest he's planted is now larger than New York City's Central Park and is home to several thousand varieties o... posted on Aug 17, 4800 reads

The Extinction of Quiet
Noise pollution is linked to health problems and some argue it interferes with our natural connection to the earth. As the world's quiet places disappear, are we forgetting how to listen? In 1989, "acoustic ecologist" Gordon Hempton received a grant to document and record the natural sounds of Washington state. He identified 21 wilderness places to record -- sites unsullied by the sounds of traffi... posted on Oct 17, 19607 reads

DailyBread: A Simple Idea That's Feeding The Hungry
Simplicity can be disarming. That's what Carolyn North discovered. It started with an impulse to save the leftover Thanksgiving turkey her neighbor had discarded as trash. Thirty years later, she and a rotating team of friends-turned-volunteers have been quietly recovering surplus food and delivering it to free food shelters and pantries across the San Francisco Bay Area. ... posted on Oct 30, 16622 reads

Preserving The World's Most Delicate Sites
California-based nonprofit, Global Heritage Fund, is taking a unique approach to preserving our world's most endangered sites. They are bypassing the often tangled ties of bureaucracy, to invest directly into the community which surrounds it. By bringing together highly skilled engineers and archeologists, they are able to save some of our world's most sacred sites. And, in doing so, they're worki... posted on Dec 26, 13875 reads

Is There A Right Way To Get Angry?
Anger can cause us a great deal of hurt, but it can also be a positive force that propels us to act and can spur creativity and fuel success. It is all about how we manage our anger in those instances when we feel overwhelmed by it. Read further to learn more about 'the right way' to get angry and how you can harness your anger for good. ... posted on Nov 23, 28894 reads

A Simple Act of Kindness
As children, we're taught to be wary of strangers. To walk away, even when we know someone might need our help. Sadly, the world today seems to elicit this type of fear. And, as parents, we continuously struggle to help our children find the balance between staying safe and helping others. Read this inspiring story to learn how one mother's day of errands quickly became a teaching moment for her a... posted on Dec 17, 33573 reads

Kindness: The First Gift
"Kindness has gracious eyes; it is not small-minded or competitive; it wants nothing back for itself... Kindness casts a different light, an evening light that has the depth of color and patience to illuminate what is complex and rich in difference." John O'Donohue takes us on an eloquent exploration of kindness and its role in the unfolding universe.... posted on Nov 28, 48627 reads

From Rwandan Garbage Dump To Harvard
After 2-year old Justus' parents vanished during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, he lived in a stripped-out car in the Kigali City Dump, surviving on food scraps thrown out by nearby restaurants and hotels. Six years later, Clare Effiong was driving through Rwandan dirt roads in a taxi cab, looking for ways to "do good." Her intuition told her to pull over when she saw a group of children, including ... posted on Jan 8, 24152 reads

The Deaf & Blind Artist Who Never Gave Up
The story of Emilie Gossiaux, a native of New Orleans who now lives and works in New York City, is nothing short of extraordinary. At the age of 5, Gossiaux began to suffer from an untreatable disorder that caused her to start losing her hearing. Years later, in yet another cruel twist of fate, Gossiaux was in an accident that left her blind. Remarkably, she continued to follow her love of art and... posted on Feb 24, 19104 reads

Priorities & The Art of Pruning:
As life gets busier and busier, many find that it is almost impossible to juggle new ideas, new challenges or perhaps even new relationships. According to James Clear, this is where the analogy of pruning a rose bush comes into play: before we exhaust ourselves with trying to perfect the big picture perfect, we need to make careful and difficult decisions about what to cut out or trim back on. Doi... posted on Dec 11, 29594 reads

The Hero At The Checkout Counter
When a musician encounters an extraordinary unsung hero at the checkout counter of his neighborhood grocery store, he is so moved that he cannot get the experience out of his mind for weeks. His thoughts and feelings eventually manifest into words on his blog: "When real heroism steps out of a movie, or off the pages of a book...it has the capacity to touch a part of you that has been sleeping. It... posted on Dec 29, 24663 reads

34 Images of Heart-Warming Humanity
Popular news and media outlets often report negative stories and rarely shed light on all the good that happens on a daily basis. Here are 34 stories of random acts of kindness that will warm your heart and bring a smile to your face.... posted on Dec 9, 214389 reads

Photographing Horses To Save Their Lives
They are the symbol of the American West -- strong, resolute, assured. And yet, nearly 150,000 wild horses are sent to slaughter each year in the U.S. Though, The Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 was intended to protect them, an increase in cattle interests has caused their allocated territory to diminish. Until recently, their plight has gone largely unnoticed. But, thanks to t... posted on Jan 31, 8165 reads

Giving People A Hand Up, Not A Hand Out
I saw Joe sweeping up New York City's detritus, dressed in the familiar blue pants and shirt of Ready, Willing & Able. Four months out of prison, he said, "I've learned my lesson, but the situation was pretty dismal." That's when he turned to the Doe Fund, as tens of thousands of homeless men and ex-cons have done since 1990. Today the Doe Fund's 400 fulltime employees (some 70% of them graduates ... posted on Jan 4, 31367 reads

What The People Of The Amazon Know That You Don't
"Many human afflictions are diseases of the heart, the mind and the spirit. Western medicine can't touch those. I cure them." Deep in the Amazon rainforest, there are a small number of indigenous tribes who maintain a healing tradition that far pre-dates the development of modern medicine. In this powerful TED talk, ethnobiologist Mark Plotkin outlines the many challenges and perils that are endan... posted on Jan 24, 34677 reads

Wendell Berry on Solitude And Creativity's Enemies
Wendell Berry's remarkable work, What Are Humans For?, is filled with philosophical insights for the would be artist in us all. Here, Maria Popova of Brainpickings extracts some of the most poignant and moving moments from his piece, interweaving them with thoughts from Thoreau and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips.... posted on Feb 1, 27896 reads

Desmond Tutu: Forgiveness Is Liberating
"In many ways it has been unbelievable. It has been almost breathtaking--this willingness to forgive, this magnanimity, this nobility of spirit." Desmond Tutu shared these words in 1997, speaking to a crowd about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and their efforts to heal the deep wounds of racism. In the wake of the killings of Mike Brown and Eric Garner, scholar Angela Davis su... posted on Apr 3, 12935 reads

Using Brain Science To Transform Schools
After Sept 11th 2001, child trauma psychiatrist Pamela Cantor was hired to assess the emotional impact of the attacks on New York school children. What she discovered surprised her. "From lower Manhattan to the Bronx, most of the children I met were traumatized less by what they had witnessed that terrifying morning than by the experience of growing up in poverty," says Pamela. She found that "one... posted on Feb 4, 38612 reads

Tiny Living: Making it Work
When it comes to owning a home, the phrase "bigger is better" has become the norm. But a new breed of home owners have decided to go with the "less is more" approach and scale down to -- gulp! -- well below 500 sq. feet. The reasons are clear right away: less expensive, less cleaning, less maintenance -- and also more energy efficient, cozy and elegantly streamlined. As Jay Shafer wrote in his boo... posted on Feb 12, 25969 reads

The Difference Between Education & Training
"The root word of education -- educare -- means to lead forth a hidden wholeness in another person." These are the words of Rachel Naomi Remen, whose course, the "Healer's Art," is now taught in half of American medical schools and seven countries around the world. Her words remind us that competence and completeness are each held within the other, and that we are already enough.... posted on Jan 28, 35742 reads

All the World's a Stage
As the old saying goes, “laughter is the best medicine.” And for Grant Snider, who practices orthodontics by day, and webcomics by night, here’s proof that he believes in that very notion. Take a moment to enjoy these fanciful, thought-provoking and sometimes whimsical comics about daily life from the mind of Mr. Snider.... posted on Sep 24, 6924 reads

Duane Elgin On Voluntary Simplicity
Duane Elgin is an unusual social visionary, one with an MBA from Wharton and a master's degree in economic history. He is a passionate advocate for shifting away from the consumer mentality which has driven history for hundreds of years. According to Elgin we are now in a time of great transition, a time that can no longer sustain the materialism of a consumerist society, and that calls for new wa... posted on Mar 28, 24639 reads

Sheila Donis: A Life of Giving
Don’t miss this interview with an extraordinary woman, Sheila Donis, born on the west side of Chicago, one of nine children living in a small two bedroom apartment above a tavern. A nun for nine years, she left to become a teacher and then an administrator in poor inner-city Chicago schools, a job she loved. She also fought for donations to help her teachers and students and, over a period ... posted on Apr 11, 14468 reads

Going To School With Her Great-Great-Granchildren
Ninety-year-old Priscilla Sitienei is believed to be the oldest primary school student in the world. As an active midwife in Kenya, Priscilla helped deliver many of her primary-school classmates, including six of her great-grand children who are in her class. Community members and students affectionately call Priscilla "Gogo," which means grandmother in the local Kalenjin language. To them, Gogo i... posted on Mar 7, 5225 reads

Why It Pays To Put Kids In Control
For years, our public systems have been plagued with issues. More recently, the predominant focus has been that of social control -- where, the "policing of behavior trumps the expanding of minds." In light of this, educating for insurgency may seem a radical, and potentially, dangerous proposition. But, what if this new model empowered students to get involved and take control of their educationa... posted on Mar 10, 15757 reads

The Contentment Habit
For many of us, it is easy to fall into the habit of thinking or feeling that we are not doing enough when we see others doing great things or having amazing experiences. Constantly comparing ourselves to others and/or feeling as though we are not enough causes us to become unhappy and takes away from living in the moment. Read this article on how to appreciate every day and every moment more.... posted on Mar 9, 40975 reads

Music And The Developing Brain
Can music make you smarter? Research demonstrates it most certainly can. In fact, a 1993 study of college students showed them performing better on spatial reasoning tests after listening to a Mozart sonata. But, what is the connection? And, more importantly -- why would acquiring musical skills influence language and other higher brain functions? Read this fascinating article to learn why. ... posted on Jul 24, 12738 reads

Mary Oliver: Listening to the World
"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting / over and over announcing your place in the family of things." In a rare interview, Mary Oliver shares details from her life and her poetry with On Being's Krista Tippett.... posted on Mar 18, 29372 reads

Is There a Fingerprint for Compassion?
As society continues to learn more and more from scientific research when it come to things like medicine and the environment, it has also led to something that might be a little more surprising: matters of the heart, or more simply … compassion. With the help of several scientific teams, researchers are starting to discover that one of the main nerves in the body might just be the fingerpri... posted on May 19, 13631 reads

Grow a Key Inner Strength
As the complications of life start to build -- whether it is health issues, financial concerns, or relationship problems -- it's important to find resources that enable you to skilfully navigate these challenges. And some of the best resources -- like mindfulness, compassion and determination -- are ones that already lie within you. Psychologist Rick Hanson, Founder of the Wellspring Institute for... posted on May 20, 16581 reads

Project 562: Photographing Beyond Stereotypes
Three years ago, photographer Matika Wilbur set out on an ambitious undertaking, traveling across America to photograph members of all 562 of America's federally-recognized tribes. Through her project, Wilbur has sought to address the problematic and romanticized depiction of Native Americans in the majority of images featuring them. Herself a member of Native-American tribes, Wilbur asks, "How ... posted on May 7, 7511 reads

How To Focus A Wandering Mind
"We've all been there. You're slouched in a meeting or a classroom, supposedly paying attention, but your mind has long since wandered off, churning out lists of all the things you need to do -- or that you could be doing if only you weren't stuck here...Suddenly you realize everyone is looking your way expectantly, waiting for an answer. But you're staring blankly, grasping at straws to make a se... posted on Apr 18, 152649 reads