each day. Now I am no stranger to going out and doing things, but this is the first time I have ever been focused and paid attention to 'Kindness Acts' to the degree that was required in coming up with what I was going to do each day, preparing for it when I needed to, and then writing about it for 60 days. Here is what I want to share. In my experience, there is no such thing as a 'kindness act' There is no separate 'act' that can be called Kindness. I believe our true nature IS kindness and that when we are not acting out of fear( which is what manifests as self interest, greed, material competition, and not- enoughness) we act out of love. In that act of love, we ... posted on Jan 3 2015 (68,343 reads)

reflected his unwavering belief in the need to empathise with one’s enemies – who were not really enemies but simply other human beings whose lives and values were of equal worth to one’s own. The half a million deaths that occurred during partition in violence between Hindus and Muslims showed that the moral challenge of doing so was too great in that turbulent moment of history. Perhaps Gandhi was excessively idealistic, and should have admitted the darker sides of human nature that prevented the empathetic understanding he valued so highly.Yet I believe he was right to stress the importance of empathy for those on opposite sides of social and political divides. Empat... posted on Mar 2 2015 (24,710 reads)

sense of urgency. It sets up the perfect neurochemical setting for the creation of a society of adrenaline addicts. As technology governs more of our lives, we find ourselves in a widening gap between chronos and kairos—the ancient Greeks’ two words for time. The former refers to chronological or sequential time, and the latter signifies a time lapse, a moment of indeterminate time in which everything happens. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative, permanent nature. Chronos is a stopwatch. Kairos is a compass. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven, Ecclesiastes assures us. In other words, relax, it’s ta... posted on Feb 11 2015 (23,084 reads)

are discovering how music affects the brain, helping us to make sense of its real emotional and social power. I still remember when I first heard the song by Peter Gabriel, “Solsbury Hill.” Something about that song—the lyrics, the melody, the unusual 7/4 time signature—gave me chills. Even now, years later, it still can make me cry. Who among us doesn’t have a similar story about a song that touched us? Whether attending a concert, listening to the radio, or singing in the shower, there’s something about music that can fill us with emotion, from joy to sadness. Music impacts us in ways that other sounds don’t, and for year... posted on Mar 6 2015 (30,945 reads)

your mind of what you should be doing or where you should be. Those ideal experiences aren’t of any higher quality than the experience you’re having right now.      *  See the wonder in this moment. Right where you are, right now. Notice the amazing things around you, and in you, as if you’re seeing it for the first time ever. Notice the miracle of your body, your mind, your surroundings. How did all this come to be? The building you’re in, or the nature you’re in, didn’t just magically appear — it’s almost as if the world conspired to make this moment happen, and you get to be here to witness it. Awesome! That’... posted on Mar 9 2015 (41,001 reads)

to only when the economy or war shortages demanded it. Instead, we can aim for three things: Setting some spending guidelines to lean on, modeling a few sensible tactics for our children, and adopting family rituals that make spending fun—but only on things that have real value and meaning. Every new generation of parents is astounded and alarmed when confronting the goods and experiences available to their own children. But there’s something about the always-on, instant-access nature of so much of life in recent years that really does seem fundamentally different. Our culture of consumption can make it challenging for parents to navigate kids away from materialism and towar... posted on Mar 19 2015 (22,350 reads)

life, no matter how they did it. For example, in pre-school and kindergarten and first grade, we have to let kids play. I told you the story of the little boy who was psychologically having a lot of problems. I let him do art everyday for a couple of months. Another boy, ran away several times in the public schools in Indianapolis. He never came to school. But I finally got a hold of him. I said you’re always in the woods. What do you want to do? He said, “All I like is nature.” So I asked our teacher who is a naturalist, the one who didn’t pass math in seventh grade. I asked her if she would take this boy. She said, “I’ll take him, if you get... posted on Apr 11 2015 (14,490 reads)

make sure that happens, this year we launched Sughar Foundation in the U.S. It is not just going to fund Sughar but many other organizations in Pakistan to replicate the idea and to find even more innovative ways to unleash the rural women's potential in Pakistan. 14:00     Thank you so much. 14:02     (Applause) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 14:10     Chris Anderson: Khalida, you are quite the force of nature. I mean, this story, in many ways, just seems beyond belief. It's incredible that someone so young could do achieve this much through so much force and ingenuity. So I guess one question: T... posted on Apr 19 2015 (11,160 reads)

helps you channel your thought process. And the target doesn’t even have to be logical. Recently I was having trouble finishing a chapter of a novel I’ve been writing. One day I got some Chinese takeout and decided to write something based on whatever prophetic words hatched from my fortune cookie. My fortune actually pointed me toward an interesting plot shift that was just what my characters needed. 2. Don’t wait for inspiration. My mother was a talented painter of nature scenes but stopped painting in her early 40s. Whenever I asked her why she didn’t put brush to canvas anymore, she’d tell me that she didn’t feel inspired. Many creative wanna... posted on Mar 23 2015 (62,686 reads)

whole systems to take into account the interdependence of the parts. Attend to all facets of organizational health – leadership, relationships, teams, individual role performance, organizational purpose, outcomes, and consistent strategy. Sensemaking - the on-going inquiry into how individuals and groups create coherence. 4. Gather for Group Emergence Cultivate parallel ways of knowing - intuition, intellect, somatic awareness, respect for ancestral knowledge, regard for nature and physical space. Be alert to what is emerging in the energetic field of the group - both thoughts and emotions. Allow disturbances to established ideas or norms to lead to greater disc... posted on Apr 29 2015 (24,185 reads)

PALMER: It's an act of rebellion to show up as someone trying to be whole and I would add, as someone who believes that there is a hidden wholeness beneath the very evident brokenness of our world. [music: “Seven League Boots” by Zoe Keating] KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: The history of rebellion is rife with burnout. Burnout, which Parker Palmer has defined, as “violating my own nature in the name of nobility.” Then you have the irony of this moment we inhabit, where we are freer, psychologically and practically, to be rebels. But the forms and institutions we are dealing with don't need smashing. Most of them are imploding all on their own... posted on May 8 2015 (16,946 reads)

 *  What type of leadership interferes with or destroys the network?    *  What happens after a healthy network forms? What’s next? If we understand these dynamics and the lifecycle of emergence, what can we do as leaders, activists and social entrepreneurs to intentionally foster emergence? What is Emergence? Emergence violates so many of our Western assumptions of how change happens that it often takes quite a while to understand it. In nature, change never happens as a result of top-down, pre-conceived strategic plans, or from the mandate of any single individual or boss. Change begins as local actions spring up simultaneously in ma... posted on Apr 22 2015 (13,835 reads)

we miss the good things that are outside of the spotlight. Something else happens as well: When we focus on bad things, we’re triggering the stress response, often below conscious awareness. If you think of the Stanford Prison experiment as a kind of model of real life—if you conceive of yourself as living in the equivalent of that basement—then you’re going to be stressed. What is stress? As another Stanford professor, Robert Sapolsky, likes to say, stress is a tool nature gave us to survive lion attacks. Of course, you’re not a primate on the African savannah menaced by lions. You’re a modern human who, for example, might be caught in a traf... posted on May 24 2015 (15,363 reads)

There is almost no path a human being can follow that does not lead to heartbreak. Illustration by Roger Duvoisin from 'Petunia, I Love You.' Stripped of the unnecessary negative judgments we impose upon it, heartbreak is simply a fathometer for the depth of our desire - for a person, for an accomplishment, for belonging to the world and its various strata of satisfaction. Whyte captures this elegantly: Realizing its inescapable nature, we can see heartbreak not as the end of the road or the cessation of hope but as the close embrace of the essence of what we have wanted or are about to lose. […] Heartbreak ask... posted on May 12 2015 (31,080 reads)

a lot of energy on a big project is to simply get started. The Zeigarnik Effect (mentioned above) is a construct that psychologists have observed in numerous studies on “suspense.” One such study gave participants brain-buster puzzles to complete, but not enough time to complete them. The surprising thing was, even when participants were asked to stop, over 90% of them went on to complete the puzzles anyway. According to the lead researcher: “It seems to be human nature to finish what we start and, if it is not finished, we experience dissonance.” It’s the same thing that happens when we become engaged in a story in a book, movie or TV show: we ... posted on Jun 8 2015 (19,704 reads)

the Huli are some of the most extraordinarily beautiful people on the planet. They're proud. They live in the Papua New Guinean highlands. There's not many of them left, and they're called the Huli wigmen. And images like this, I mean, this is what it's all about for me. And you've spent weeks and months there talking with them, getting there, and I want to put them on a pedestal, and I said, "You have something that many people have not seen. You sit in this stunning nature." And it really does look like this, and they really do look like this. This is the real thing. And you know why they're proud? You know why they look like this, and why I broke my bac... posted on Jun 28 2015 (24,312 reads)

of all those famous and powerful people. I thought, I’d love to be able to do that, but it was so far outside of my thinking it wasn’t as if I was just going to go out and try it. But I did get his book. It still sits in the house here, and I look through it a good bit. I was always drawn to the f/64 crowd and their legacy here in Monterey of Ansel Adams, Ed Weston, Imogen Cunningham and all of that. RW: Wynn Bullock. Morley Baer. A lot of those people were focusing on nature, weren’t they? Bob: Some of them were using nude models, but they were nude models as form. So it was almost like they were creating still life in the environment. The nudes are part o... posted on Jun 13 2015 (16,143 reads)

Mellon “Storytelling is our effort as human beings to find greater truths.” On a warm June morning, I am seated with a circle of dear friends in the garden of Betty Peck and Anna Rainville, mother and daughter who for over 30 years have welcomed children, friends, families, early childhood educators to play, sing, and share gifts at their home in Saratoga. Longtime friend, Mary Roscoe of the Children in Nature Collaborative brings fresh strawberries and bread from a local farmers market; family friend Stefan and his finance Lauren are in town visiting, and decide to stay on for the conversation. We are speaking with Nancy Mellon, an elder in the global... posted on Jun 27 2015 (17,888 reads)

finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.” In contemplating the shortness of life, Seneca considered what it takes to live wide rather than long. Over the two millennia between his age and ours — one in which, caught in the cult of productivity, we continually forget that “how we spend our days is … how we spend our lives” — we’ve continued to tussle with the eternal question of how to fill life with more aliveness. And in a world awash with information but increasingly vacant of wisdom, navigating the maze of the human experience in the h... posted on Aug 3 2015 (1,611 reads)

role: "First, remove fear in student. Second, impart knowledge. Third, don't give up until they learn." Ward similarly elaborated on using "curiosity is a gateway to empathy", inspired by Dacher Keltner's recent work on awe:  When you look up into these trees, and their peeling bark and surrounding nimbus of greyish green light, goosebumps may ripple down your neck, a sure sign of awe. So in the spirit of Emerson and Muir – who found awe in nature and changed our understanding of the sublime – Paul Piff staged a minor accident near that grove to see if awe would prompt greater kindness. Participants first either looked up into the ... posted on Aug 14 2015 (20,567 reads)