host: I'm Krista Tippett. Earlier this year, the TerriSchiavo case raised ethical and medical questions that remain long after her death. But the media and political frenzy around her tragedy focused on the right to life. Missing in that debate was a real attention to the quality and the meaning of death. My guest today, Joan Halifax, works as a kind of midwife to dying people. She'll speak this hour about what she's learned and how she lives differently after three decades accompanying others to the final boundary of human life. She says that Americans often think of death as a failure.  Today, we'll explore her very different per... posted on Jun 5 2013 (25,545 reads)

was running late. My wife Eleanor and I had agreed to meet at the restaurant at seven o’clock and it was already half past. I had a good excuse in the form of a client meeting that ran over and I wasted no time getting to the dinner as fast as possible. When I arrived at the restaurant, I apologized and told her I didn’t mean to be late. She answered: “You never mean to be late.” Uh oh, she was mad. “Sorry,” I retorted, “but it was unavoidable.” I told her about the client meeting. Not only did my explanations not soothe her, they seemed to make things worse. That started to make me angry. That dinner didn’t turn out to be o... posted on May 22 2013 (340,809 reads)

the ’90s, I had an inner opening that shifted my entire worldview. Though I’d not been drawn to poetry for years, I found myself turning to Rumi, Kabir, and Mirabai. But I hungered for poems that spoke to the stuff of the world I was living in as well as the timeless truths of the mystics. Luckily, I discovered the work of Jane Hirshfield. In addition to her seven books of poetry, Hirshfield has published several classic books of essays and played a major part in bringing the words of women mystics to modern audiences through the anthologies she edited and co-translated, which include Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women and Mir... posted on May 23 2013 (17,059 reads)

are pleased to present an excerpt from Adam Grant’s new best-selling book, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success.Grant is an organizational psychologist at The Wharton School, where he has studied why some people become successful while others languish. His answer is surprising: The people most likely to rise to the top are often those who give the most to others—people Grant calls “givers,” as opposed to the “takers” who try to get as much as possible from others and the “matchers” who try to give and take in equal amounts. Here are 10 research-tested actions you can take to become a successful giver at your work or in ... posted on May 29 2013 (32,935 reads)

up. Don’t press snooze. Sling your legs over the side of the bed. Right. Left. Turn on music. Good, good music. Like first date, new shoes, or better yet, barefoot music. You need a life soundtrack. Has anyone told you that yet? Pick out something spectacular from your closet. Feel good in your skin. Put on an item that tells some kind of story. Always have a story to tell, just a wrist or coat sleeve away. And if that yellow sweater ain’t got a story yet, vow that this will be the day it comes home with one. Wear bright cardigans on the rainy days. Rain boots on any day. And, if the sun is shining and someone asks why you are clomping around in red wel... posted on May 28 2013 (36,333 reads)

don't have to understand chaos theory to appreciate the new species of corporate organization that Dee Hock has unleashed on the planet, an organizational paradigm that could very well represent the next step in the collective evolution of the human family. You don't even have to know anything about corporate structure, nor do you have to nurse a secret passion for institutional reform. All you have to do is take a long look at a snowflake, reflect on a forest, ponder the neurons in your brain—or use your Visa card—and you will begin to appreciate the intricate, manifold hive of pulsing impulses and multidimensional parleys of information that give rise to everything ... posted on May 30 2013 (34,776 reads)

Veh told me about Jane Wodening. She told me Jane was an astonishing writer, that she wrote about animals, creatures, about the intimate life of nature around her. That her writing was like no one else she knew of. And then she thought of Barry Lopez. Well, it was okay to bring in Barry Lopez in the same conversation. In fact, Anne was putting together an exhibit at the Di Rosa in Napa, California. It would be called “Entering the Wild” and would feature a hand-illustrated book by Barry Lopez along with works by five other artists. It would also feature several of Jane’s books of stories. Anne hoped to find a way to bring Jane out from Colorado for the opening. I remem... posted on Jun 3 2013 (16,369 reads)

many small trickles of water feed the mightiest of rivers, the growing number of individuals and organizations practicing servant-leadership has increased into a torrent, one that carries with it a deep current of meaning and passion. Robert K. Greenleaf 's idea of servant-leadership, now in its fourth decade as a concept bearing that name, continues to create a quiet revolution in workplaces around the world. Since the time of the Industrial Revolution, managers have tended to view people as tools, while organizations have considered workers as cogs in a machine. In the past few decades we have witnessed a shift in that long-held view. In countless for-profit and nonprofit organiz... posted on Jun 4 2013 (122,157 reads)

is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand. --Rilke I was going through airport security the other month, participating in the grind of pulling out my laptop and my Ziploc baggie full of plastic bottles, and removing my belt and my shoes and my watch and my jacket and trying to fit them all into the plastic bin in such a way that nothing would fall out as it went through its screening. On the other side, I quickly gathered my belongings so they wouldn't get run over by the oncoming stream of objects. I started shuffling forward with my shoes half on and my arms weighed down by my scattering of possessions. As I glanced up, I saw a g... posted on Jun 14 2013 (24,228 reads)

there is a defining conceit at the heart of the way so many of us think about leadership, it is that of the no-nonsense, hard-charging, often-wrong-but-never-in-doubt boss who enjoys the glories (and bears the burdens) of success all alone. That’s what makes executive life (in theory) so glamorous: Who isn’t eager to match wits with brilliant rivals and stay one step ahead of a complex world? Of course, that’s also what makes executive life (in reality) so exhausting: What happens when rivals come at you from more directions than ever, when markets change faster than ever, when problems loom larger than ever? As a business culture, we’ve made the lure of exe... posted on Jun 17 2013 (26,272 reads)

lot of people search for ways to find happiness, but I’ve found the idea of contentment to be more important than happiness. Why contentment over happiness? A couple of important reasons: Happiness can go up or down each day (or moment), but contentment is something more stable. We tend to seek to increase happiness by adding things (food, excitement, a warm bath, time with a loved one) but contentment is a skill that allows you to subtract things and still be content. Contentment can actually be a good place to start as you make changes (changes and contentment might seem paradoxical to some, but hear me out). What is contentment? For me, it’s really about being... posted on Jun 22 2013 (36,957 reads)

a post-literate age, Rebecca Solnit is a masterful essayist and author who writes with a style that is seductively brilliant. She can create a compelling commentary or book out of a wisp of an idea that others would summarily dismiss. Solnit, however, takes that sometimes contrarian thought and weaves together seemingly disparate evidence to make a persuasive, often lyrical, argument on its behalf. Except it is not really an argument - her writing is the opposite of shrill. Solnit is not a naïve optimist by any stretch of the imagination; she understands the dark side of the human species. But to be passive in the face of adversity is to hinder positive change. As Solnit wrote in ... posted on Jun 24 2013 (14,862 reads)

must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.” “If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.” Mahatma Gandhi needs no long introduction. Everyone knows about the man who lead the Indian people to independence from British rule in 1947. So let’s just move on to some of my favourite tips from Mahatma Gandhi. 1. Change yourself. “You must be the change you want to see in th... posted on Jun 28 2013 (1,383,754 reads)

thoughts on how change happens: Like most of us I am a passionate change agent. After all, who would spend a third of their life accumulating all that knowledge and skill if not for the hope of making a difference?  So it is surprising how long it has taken me to recognize the power of a simple story to make change. I have always been a story teller. In the past this tendency was viewed by my medical colleagues as, to say the least, dubious. In Medicine a story is often dismissed as  “anecdotal evidence”, a sort of second class data far less relevant to a physician’s work than the outcome of a well designed scientific study.  “You only have t... posted on Jun 30 2013 (66,907 reads)

Send your books on a journey Books introduce us to fascinating strangers; they take us to places we would never visit alone. So why not send them out into the world, to share stories with new readers? Better yet, why not follow their adventures? That’s the idea behind BookCrossing. Put a tracking label on your book, leave it in a public place, and wait to see where it turns up next. The labels encourage new readers to release the books they find, and to enter where they found them on the website: train stations, park benches, and cafes across the globe. Part social networking, part world library, bookcrossing.com connects book lovers, anonymously, to the pleasure of sha... posted on Jul 6 2013 (27,039 reads)

a recent visit to the Bay Area, I had the pleasure of meeting Trebbe Johnson and found her a charming and intensely passionate advocate for the healing we need both individually and in a global sense. In 1997 she founded Vision Arrow, a program that combines wilderness exploration and the search for meaning. A few years later, she founded a second program, Radical Joy for Hard Times, which evolved naturally from the first. The two programs complement each other. In her notes for Vision Quest she writes, “I don’t know anyone whose life hasn’t been an incredible journey of ups and downs, sorrow in the midst of great joy and, even more amazing, joy in the midst of the deepe... posted on Jul 22 2013 (18,618 reads)

is fast becoming a fashionable tool for improving your mind. With mounting scientific evidence that the practice can enhance creativity, memory and scores on standardized intelligence tests, interest in its practical benefits is growing. A number of “mindfulness” training programs, like that developed by the engineer Chade-Meng Tan at Google, and conferences like Wisdom 2.0 for business and tech leaders, promise attendees insight into how meditation can be used to augment individual performance, leadership and productivity. This is all well and good, but if you stop to think about it, there’s a bit of a disconnect between the (perfectly commendab... posted on Jul 7 2013 (39,548 reads)

THE WORLD BEGAN, there was a place for everything in the human heart, and everything was in its place. This meant one never, ever had to look for anything. Which sounds awfully convenient, and that is exactly what it was. Awfully. Convenient. In this impeccable order of things everything happened on a schedule. Serendipity, for instance got the 2 pm slot on Tuesday afternoons (which meant of course that humanity invariably snoozed through it). Everything under the sun was reliable and remarkably tedious. People soon began to devise little games for themselves to make things more interesting. To this end, they banished love to the rainforests and perched happiness high ... posted on Jul 12 2013 (32,373 reads)

writing the movie Soul Surfer (a true story about a teenage surfer, Bethany Hamilton, whose arm was bitten off during a shark attack), I discovered that Bethany went back into the water to try surfing again less than one month after the horrific attack. When I asked her how she could have possibly gotten the courage to go back into the water, especially so soon after the terrifying event, she told me quite simply that she knew if she waited even another day longer, she may never have gone back in again. She told me how some surfers can “psych themselves out” after a gnarly accident thinking about all of the “what ifs” and replaying the terror of the mo... posted on Jul 20 2013 (42,588 reads)

is pretty common. After all, we are usually the world's number one experts on our own shortcomings. If finding fault with ourselves was a virtue, most of us would be saints. Still, sending ourselves self-hating messages leads to misery more often than to motivation. It leads to lower self-esteem and self-confidence. Meanwhile, it turns out that if you treat yourself with respect or even gratitude, you're likely to increase your effectiveness in work and even in your personal life. Research has indicated that people who score high on tests of self-compassion have less depression and anxiety, and tend to be happier and more optimistic. They may even ... posted on Jul 21 2013 (69,191 reads)