group of teens known as the "Burrito Boyz" has made and delivered more than 33,000 breakfast burritos to San Diego's homeless. But it took a mentor to inspire them. Let's call him Burrito Dad. Michael Johnson grew somewhat alarmed at son Alec's gizmo-packed Christmas list two years ago, so he decided to impart some perspective. According to Yahoo, he and wife Mehrnaz thought feeding the homeless might do the trick. Thus, the family and Alec's friend Luke Trolinger set about wrapping 54 egg-and-cheese burritos one Sunday in November and handed them out. More than 130 Sundays later, their nonprofit Hunger 2 Help is rolling in good will. It has grown to ... posted on Aug 22 2013 (40,360 reads)

met Geoff Nedry in person a couple of years ago at a ServiceSpace retreat in Phoenix, AZ. I knew he was one of the ServiceSpace volunteers who did a lot of work for the KindSpring web portal. [formerly HelpOthers.org] It's a site where "Smile Cards" can be ordered. What is a smile card? In the following interview, this is explained. The cards are shipped at no fee to anyone who requests them. The cards are an encouragement to people to carry out random acts of kindness. Nothing is specified about what that means other than not passing up the small opportunities that are always presenting themselves, as in holding a door open for a stranger. People are encou... posted on Sep 10 2013 (24,510 reads)

often mistakenly think that putting pressure on employees will increase performance. What it does increase is stress—and research has shown that high levels of stress carry a number of costs to employers and employees alike. Stress brings high health care and turnover costs. In a study of employees from various organizations, health care expenditures for employees with high levels of stress were 46 percent greater than at similar organizations without high levels of stress. In particular, workplace stress has beenlinked to coronary heart disease in retrospective (observing past patterns) and prospective (predicting future patterns) studies. Then there’s... posted on Nov 25 2013 (29,837 reads)

many of you know how to watch television?" I asked my class one day. After a few bewildered and silent moments, slowly, one by one, everyone haltingly raised their hands. We soon acknowledged that we were all "experts," as Harold Garfinkle would say, in the practice of "watching television." The purpose of our un-TV experiment was to provoke us into seeing television as opposed to merely looking, and to stop the world as the first step to seeing. Here we engage in stopping the world by stopping the television. For an experiment, students were asked to watch TV consciously. Insofar as this is sort of "Zen and the Art of TV-watching,... posted on Aug 30 2013 (30,106 reads)

more progressive challenge was to work through the guilt and knowingly let the butterfly go? In the end, part of me wants to argue for that. But, then again, maybe letting go once only leads to more letting go. Maybe you have to believe in the value of everything to believe in the value of anything. Maybe giving in a little only hastens the terminal disenchantment. . ." At times poignant, at times playful, at times provocative, Wild Ones is altogether fantastic. Public domain images via Flickr Commons ... posted on Sep 5 2013 (14,591 reads)

received a letter in the mail the other day. It was the kind of letter that is painful to read because it stirred up old feelings and made me believe, for a mere moment or two, that I was right back in the muds of my yesterday. That, at any moment, I could be vulnerable to pulling the thread that would lead to my unraveling once again. I stood still; I put the phone in my pocket; I breathed in to read: “I’m tired of feeling like this but cannot seem to break the cycle of blah. Part of me does not want to get better because I don’t want to get better just to fall apart again. How can I even begin to find something else to define me, when I feel so empty ri... posted on Sep 15 2013 (30,870 reads)

go to the library in Santa Monica to write quite often. The other day, I went there to get some work done, and I see this man standing and looking at some books. New nonfiction. He has a sign on his chest that says “Be Love.” I ask him if I can take a picture, and he happily obliges. I turn around to get some money in my wallet. (He’s homeless—that much is evident. There are a lot of homeless that hang out at the Santa Monica library.) I turn back around, and he’s taken the sign off. “Picture’s free,” he says, “but you have to wear this for two hours. I’m David, what’s your name?” I ask him to ... posted on Sep 7 2013 (51,135 reads)

no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” “Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” “When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.” You may know Mark Twain for some of his very popular books like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He was a writer and also a humorist, satirist and lecturer. Twain is known for his many – and often funny – quotes. Here are a few of my favourite tips from him. 1. Approve of yourself. “A man cannot be... posted on Sep 29 2013 (593,680 reads)

is destiny, declared Sigmund Freud. But if Freud were around today, he might say “design is destiny”—especially after taking a stroll through most modern cities. The way we design our communities plays a huge role in how we experience our lives. Neighborhoods built without sidewalks, for instance, mean that people walk less and therefore enjoy fewer spontaneous encounters, which is what instills a spirit of community to a place. A neighborly sense of the commons is missing. You don’t have to be a therapist to realize that this creates lasting psychological effects. It thwarts the connections between people that encourage us to congregate, cooper... posted on Oct 15 2013 (74,811 reads)

order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion." Albert Camus When I was a child, I wanted to be a hermit. I can remember in particular a strange background desire I had for some years to live alone in a pine forest. Why a pine forest? I have no real idea. I have never spent much time at all in a real pine forest (as opposed to the serried ranks of plantation pines which layer the hills of the north of England.) But that was where I wanted to be. I could imagine myself dwelling in the dark, dank heart of a pinewood. Life there, I knew, would be more intense, more magical, than life at home. For a time, as a romantic and imaginative child, I en... posted on Nov 7 2013 (25,906 reads)

sculpture by Robert Indiana in New York. Photo from Wikimedia commons. Can love be a positive force for change in the public sphere as well as in our private lives? If not, Transformation is in trouble: openDemocracy’s new section has staked its future on demonstrating that radical changes are possible in politics and economics when approached in a spirit of human connection and solidarity.  At first glance, there’s an obvious problem with this thesis: can we really “love our enemies,” or even our friends and colleagues who we don’t know very well? Is there any scientific basis for believing that love can stretch beyond the boundaries of our ... posted on Oct 17 2013 (23,454 reads)

"Up" documentaries have followed 14 people from ages seven to 56—and in the process illustrated recent discoveries about the science of a meaningful life. The film critic Roger Ebert famously called the “Up” series “an inspired, even noble, use of the film medium.” It started, accidentally, in 1964, when the British TV program World in Action profiled 14 seven year olds with the aim of discovering how social class shaped their worldviews. There was no intention of going beyond that one episode, called Seven Up! Symon has faced the death of his mother, the births of his children, unemployment, divorce, and re-marriage (to Vienetta, at righ... posted on Nov 4 2013 (36,498 reads)

sad to report that in the past few years, ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21st century companion, leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control.  Some of this was to be expected, because humans usually default to the known when confronted with the unknown.  Some of it was a surprise, because so many organizations had focused on innovation, quality, learning organizations, and human motivation.  How did they fail to learn that whenever you impose control on people and situations, you only succeed in turning people into non-creative, shut-down and cynical workers? The destructive impact of command and control ... posted on Oct 3 2013 (28,062 reads)

our ancient spiritual traditions, you know, gain a new kind of relevance, parts of them do in this ultramodern world, because, also, I mean, Pico Iyer went to a monastery. I mean, you know, there are religious spaces are some of those last places that are reserved for quiet, and it's been very countercultural but may be less so again. I don't know. Mr. Hempton: Mm-hmm. Well, recently it's been discovered that cave paintings in France, for example, that show the staggered images of bison and other animals of the hunt, that those paintings occur in acoustically unique environments within the cave. And it's believed that, by listening and listening to their echoes, t... posted on Oct 18 2013 (39,632 reads)

at a one-day Awakin retreat in Princeton NJ, we were asked to reflect on the notion of abundance and scarcity. And in particular, in which ways these notions manifested in our lives. The theme was carried throughout with various readings, shares and again during a writing exercise, when we were asked to think of a gift that had been given to us and how this gift had an impact on our lives. One personal reflection of mine, took me down memory lane to about seven years ago, to a time when I was experiencing some hardships that wanted to come in a sequence of one after the other. At the time, I had started a job in a city that was new to me, and as a fairly new n... posted on Oct 4 2013 (31,148 reads)

be a successful leader or entrepreneur, we need to become intimate not only with our strengths but also with our blind spots, those aspects of our personality that can derail us. John C. Maxwell defines a blind spot as "an area in the lives of people in which they continually do not see themselves or their situation realistically." All of us have blind spots. A Hay Group study shows that the senior leaders in an organization are more likely to overrate themselves and to develop blind spots that can hinder their effectiveness as leaders. Another study by Development Dimensions International Inc. found that 89 percent of front-line leaders have at least one blind spot in th... posted on Sep 18 2013 (38,385 reads)

for Seth Godin on the Art of Noticing, and Then Creating Krista Tippett, Host: We live in a world that is re-creating itself one life and one digital connection at a time. And Seth Godin is one of the most original and helpful voices I know on this landscape for which there are no maps. He was one of the early Internet entrepreneurs and remains a singular thought leader and innovator in what he describes as our post-industrial connection economy. Rather than merely tolerate change, he says, we are all called now to rise to it. We are invited and stretched in whatever we do to be artists — to create in ways that matter to other people. And Seth Godin even sees mark... posted on Sep 27 2013 (29,569 reads)

to make the right choices about food is the single most important key to environmental awareness — for ourselves, and especially for our children. Until we see how we feed ourselves as just as important as — and maybe more important than — all the other activities of mankind, there is going to be a huge hole in our consciousness. If we don't care about food, then the environment will always be something outside of ourselves. And yet the environment can be something that actually affects you in the most intimate — and literally visceral — way. It can be something that actually gets inside you and gets digested. How can most people submit so... posted on Sep 23 2013 (26,154 reads)

keep asking me what it feels like to have been assaulted in a hate crime. Honestly, I can't come up with a better response than simply "gratitude." I'm thankful for a few reasons. If they had attacked me any more violently, I may not be awake right now to tell my story. If they had attacked me even half an hour earlier, they would have harmed my wife and one-year-old son. And if they had attacked me anywhere else, I may not have had bystanders there to save me. I recall my assailants shouting slurs like "Osama" and "terrorist" before grabbing my beard. My most vivid and unexpected memory actually occurred after I was punched and thrown to th... posted on Oct 7 2013 (29,124 reads)

life cycle of a simple cotton T-shirt—worldwide, 4 billion are made, sold, and discarded each year—knits together a chain of seemingly intractable problems, from the elusive definition of sustainable agriculture to the greed and classism of fashion marketing. The story of a T-shirt not only gives us insight into the complexity of our relationship with even the simplest stuff; it also demonstrates why consumer activism—boycotting or avoiding products that don’t meet our personal standards for sustainability and fairness—will never be enough to bring about real and lasting change. Like a vast Venn diagram covering the entire planet, the environmental an... posted on Sep 28 2013 (31,898 reads)