a little pencil in the hands of God who is scripting his love letter to the world.” ~Mother Theresa   Finding a letter of encouragement in the mail or tucked unexpectedly in the unlikeliest of places is sometimes all we need when in doubt or feeling down on our luck.  And imagine receiving this note anonymously, as if some magical force out there knew just what you needed to hear and wanted you to know that you haven’t been forgotten.  The First Letter.... In the fall of 2010, in the midst of her own depression and loneliness, Hannah Brencher was inspired to become this magical force.  Not inspired by something wonder... posted on Jan 11 2013 (26,594 reads)

Degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Moved by the dire situation faced by migrant workers in her beloved city of Beijing, she recruited help from her friends and numerous volunteers to create the Dandelion School for children of migrant workers. One thing I had always wanted to do, but never had the opportunity, was to transform a whole school environment into a stimulating place for learning, filled with colors and inspiring images. The Dandelion School offered me a rare opportunity to realize my dream to create a total learning environment with the engagement of the whole school community. It is easy to measure the i... posted on Jan 20 2013 (8,904 reads)

years I worked with families who were very abusive to their children. Over time, I came to realize that all of the suffering that the children collected—whether it was domestic violence or child abuse or neglect—was a result of the absence of empathy in the parent. There wasn’t one of those parents who woke up and decided, “Today is the day I’m going to hurt my child.” These were not monsters; these were people who I loved, actually. I remember working with a group of teenage mothers who had all lived through sexual or physical abuse as children and were now struggling with addiction. They had great difficulty empathizing with their chi... posted on Jan 26 2013 (40,138 reads)

you ever sat down with your doctor and talked about your brain—heart to heart?  Neither have I.  But that’s exactly what happened in our Forest Call with Dr. James Doty. Apparently he is capable of living several lives simultaneously.  Among other things He is a neurosurgeon with top ratings from the Consumer Research Council of America.  He is the founder and Clinical Director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University.  He is an inventor of surgical instruments and an entrepreneur.  He is a philanthropist whose gifts support global health and peace initiati... posted on Feb 22 2013 (21,483 reads)

June 2010, Snigdha Manickavel and her husband Bapoorau brought home a little black puppy from an animal shelter in South India. Mia had been brought in with her mother and three of her siblings, and was the only one of the pups to survive. The young couple who adopted her had no idea how deeply this bright-eyed newcomer would touch their hearts and transform their lives. In this short piece Snigdha opens a window onto their experience...which at its core is the experience of anyone who stumbles upon the gift of unconditional love. Mia will not always come if you call her. She may or may not sit: it depends on her mood. She definitel... posted on Mar 31 2013 (15,043 reads)

you ever thought to yourself how amazing it is the way you control your body?  We all know biologically how we function.  But I mean the actual processes of your mind sending neurological signals to your arms and legs.  It takes almost no time at all for you to take a step or raise your hand.  You don’t even have to think about it, you just do it.  Imagine the sparks of energy that start from your brain and then travel through your neurological pathways to all of your extremities in a matter of milliseconds, creating the result of you running or the intricacies involved in playing a sport.  It has always astonished me to imagine the complexities of... posted on Apr 15 2013 (14,732 reads)

show each other the way out at San Francisco’s Delancey Street. In early May 1995, Margie Lewis sat on a bench at the Delancey Street Foundation, a residential education center for addicts and ex-convicts in San Francisco, awaiting intake. Until that moment, her life had been defined by institutions—teenage years in the California Youth Authority and long stays in jail as an adult. Enrollment in the program was her last chance—her only alternative to the life sentence that would otherwise be mandated by the state’s new “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law. Lewis was filled with optimism. At Delancey, she saw no paid professional social wo... posted on May 24 2013 (11,571 reads)

live in a time of massive institutional failure, collectively creating results that nobody wants. Climate change. AIDS. Hunger. Poverty. Violence. Terrorism. The foundations of our social, economic, ecological, and spiritual wellbeing are in peril. Why do our attempts to deal with the challenges of our time so often fail? The cause of our collective failure is that we are blind to the deeper dimension of leadership and transformational change. This “blind spot” exists not only in our collective leadership but also in our everyday social interactions. We are blind to the source dimension from which effective leadership and social actio... posted on Jul 9 2013 (97,217 reads)

words have been exchanged; Now at last let me see some deeds! ...What does not happen today, will not be done tomorrow. - Goethe I can almost pinpoint the moment when I decided to save the world. It was sometime after my Mom died—my Mom who was the secret solar center of my life; whose letters always ended in exuberant sign-offs (lovelovelove, three exclamation points); who’d insisted, despite her terminal diagnosis, that I not cancel my book tour because the subject—compassion—was, for her, life’s indispensable thread. I’d begun writing my book The Compassionate Life to blow the dust off my bodhisattva vows, little suspectin... posted on Apr 13 2014 (13,563 reads)

Africa, the storytellers did not get paid, this is not their profession. The fact is that everybody told stories. And this really fascinated me. Storytelling, I learned very early, is a means of communicating, probably the means of communicating ideas, and communicating the organization of a society. And so it seems to me it's necessary that everybody in one way or another be a storyteller. Storytellers are constantly in the process of taking ancient images and casting them into contemporary kinds of forms. And so there's no such thing as an original story. I don't care where it is, whether it's written or oral, the fact is t... posted on Jun 25 2013 (13,743 reads)

century ago, industrialists like Andrew Carnegie believed that Darwin’s theories justified an economy of vicious competition and inequality. They left us with an ideological legacy that says the corporate economy, in which wealth concentrates in the hands of a few, produces the best for humanity. This was always a distortion of Darwin’s ideas. His 1871 book The Descent of Man argued that the human species had succeeded because of traits like sharing and compassion. “Those communities,” he wrote, “which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.” Darwin was n... posted on Jul 15 2013 (37,934 reads)

decade’s worth of research on gratitude has shown me that when life is going well, gratitude allows us to celebrate and magnify the goodness. But what about when life goes badly? In the midst of the economic maelstrom that has gripped our country, I have often been asked if people can—or even should—feel grateful under such dire circumstances. This essay is adapted from Gratitude Works!: A 21-Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity My response is that not only will a grateful attitude help—it isessential. In fact, it is precisely under crisis conditions when we have the most to gain by a grateful perspective on life. In the face of demoralizatio... posted on Sep 12 2013 (99,278 reads)

research reveals what happens in a wandering mind—and sheds light on the cognitive and emotional benefits of increased focus. 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 semi-coherent response. The curse of the wandering mind! But don’t worry—you’re not alone. In fact, a&n... posted on Apr 18 2015 (152,743 reads)

19 years old, Godfrey Minot Camille was a tall redheaded boy with a charming manner who planned to enter medicine or the ministry. In 1938, Camille enrolled in a study that would follow him for the rest of his life, along with 267 other Harvard College sophomores deemed by recruiters as likely to lead “successful” lives. This essay is adapted from Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study Only gradually did the study’s staff discover that the allegedly “normal” Godfrey was an intractable and unhappy hypochondriac. On the 10th anniversary of his joining the study, each man was given an A through E rating anticipating future pers... posted on Oct 23 2013 (67,357 reads)

was working right, so it was exciting from that perspective. But also, just to have that discovery, to know. I mean, that was our first indication that, oh, my God, we're going to find lots of these things. We're going find lots of Earth-sized planets, and that was tremendously exciting. Ms. Tippett: I feel like something that's happening now and you just embody it is somehow these space telescopes are making a big difference. You know, Hubble is one that people see these images. It's kind of bringing all of that more into awareness, right? It feels more real and also getting a sense of the exuberance and beauty that's not just in the images that come back, but... posted on Jan 29 2014 (26,922 reads)

is like a spotlight—whatever it shines on becomes brighter in the mind. This knowledge can help us build compassion, says Paul Gilbert. Why do we need compassion? This week, we feature the video of a Science of a Meaningful Life presentation by Paul Gilbert, the author of Mindful Compassion. This essay is inspired by his talk. We need compassion because life is hard. We are all susceptible to diseases and injuries. Every one of us has a lifespan that had a start and will have an end. Just like you, I am vulnerable to disease. Just like you, I could have a blood test tomorrow that says my life is going to end. Just like you, I could hear that my son has been killed... posted on Jan 26 2014 (25,411 reads)

immersing yourself in the creative world of people doing amazing things can bring unexpected results. My son Justin is interested in 3D animation, and my daughter Chloe is into screenwriting, and so it was a thrill to take them on a tour of Pixar Animation Studios, courtesy of one of the Pixar animators. Bernhard Haux is a “character technical director”, which in his case means he models characters and works on their internal motions (I think — I didn’t fully grasp the lingo). Which means he is just a small piece in the larger Pixar machine, but a piece that’s aware of what everyone else is doing too. He’s worked on major movies such as Up,... posted on Dec 26 2013 (30,321 reads)

Change the rules University procurement policies are one of the most effective pressure points for students seeking big change. The college apparel industry, which retailed an estimated $4.6 billion in 2011, is mostly supplied through overseas factory labor for brands like Nike and Adidas. When one Adidas factory supplier in Indonesia abruptly closed in April 2011, 2,700 workers were left without jobs and were owed $1.8 million in severance pay. United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) responded by launching a two-year campaign aimed at pressuring university administrators to end their contracts with Adidas if the company refused to pay the workers. Seventeen universities and c... posted on Jan 21 2014 (44,882 reads)

is a powerful moral emotion—it moves us to care for the suffering of others, and enables us to live cooperatively with one another. Yet we live in a society of constant connection, in which the successes and sorrows of others are brought to us instantly through phones, computers, TV, radio, and newspapers. With that increased connection comes the risk of becoming overwhelmed or overburdened by our emotions. Fearing exhaustion, we turn off our compassion. But my research suggests we can actually expand our compassion bandwidth without hurting ourselves. As the science of compassion develops, we can find empirically supported ways to cultivate and sustain compassion when... posted on Mar 9 2014 (20,712 reads)

show giving makes people happy, and happiness makes people give--but not always. Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton offer three ways to help people feel good about giving. On a fine summer morning in Vancouver, British Columbia, our graduate student Lara Aknin approached passersby with a box of envelopes and an unusual request: “Are you willing to be in an experiment?” If people said yes, she asked them how happy they were, got their phone number, and handed them one of her mysterious envelopes. When people opened the envelope, they found a five dollar bill, accompanied by a simple note. For some of them, the note instructed: Please s... posted on Nov 11 2013 (33,435 reads)