are you a pessimist? And you respond with?   WU: I actually am a possibilist.   TS: You have to explain to us what that means.   WU: Which means I don’t have a crystal ball to know what’s going to happen in the future, but I know that in the present moment, there are possibilities for us as human beings to transform our conflicts. The reason why I know that is I’ve seen it happen so many times with my own eyes in conflicts ranging from at home, in the workplace, but in the larger world from impossible conflicts like racial apartheid in South Africa where it seemed like war was going to go on forever and where a political transformation took place, ... posted on May 13 2024 (2,981 reads)

from "A Call to Fearlessness for Gentle Leaders" address at the Shambhala Institute Core Program, Halifax, June 2006 I think these questions are worth holding for a while. How do you call yourself? How do you identify yourself? And have you chosen a name for yourself that is big enough to hold your life's work? I have a colleague who first suggested this to me. And he said, "So many of us choose names that are too small for a whole life." So, we call ourselves, 'cancer survivors;' that seems to be a very bold name, but is it big enough to hold a life? Or, 'children of abuse.' Or, we call ourselves 'orphans,' or 'widows,'... posted on Jul 8 2013 (43,652 reads)

a more human world in this age of technology.      Azevedo was born in the Azores and his family moved to the U.S. before he entered school. His journey is an inspiring one. I spoke with Americ at his office at the University of California, Berkeley.   Richard Whittaker:  What’s the language in the Azores?   Americ Azevedo:  It’s a dialect of Portuguese. I came to the U.S. when I was two years old with my mother. My father came and worked on a dairy farm until he had enough money to send for us.   RW:  And you told me your early experiences in school were difficult.   AA:  It wasn’t until I hit firs... posted on Nov 12 2013 (29,669 reads)

artworld doesn’t need me.”  I’d say that’s an open question. Here’s how ServiceSpace introduced our conversation: “Our guest speaker, Lily Yeh, took on an initiative that transformed an abandoned lot in inner-city north Philadelphia into an art park. The park blossomed into the Village of Arts and Humanities—an organization that has built many more art parks and gardens, renovated abandoned homes, and created educational programs, art workshops, after-school programs, a youth theater, and joyful community celebrations. Lily’s new organization, Barefoot Artists Inc., now teaches residents and artists how to replicate the Villa... posted on Feb 22 2015 (25,794 reads)

world a little bit on its axis. Enrique Martínez Celaya is a world-renowned painter who trained as a physicist. A philosopher’s questioning and a physicist’s eye shape his original approach to art and to life. One critic has described his art as an effort “to discern a deeper order that underlies what is obscured by the appearances of disorder.” Enrique Martínez Celaya poetically speaks of the “whisper” of the order of things. He says that works of art that speak to humanity across time possess their own form of consciousness and that a quiet life of purpose is a particular form of prophecy. [music: “Seven League Boots” b... posted on Nov 12 2017 (9,512 reads)

very core of humanity and the central mission of higher education, and advocates for the intentional integration of meaning, purpose, and spirituality within our institutions. Please share your background and experiences in education and the connection to issues of meaning, purpose, faith, and spirituality. At age 70, having spent the past 40 years of my life intentionally and intensely devoted to this area, I am able to reflect back on my early experiences that shaped my life’s work. I was raised in a very open and slightly left-of-center mainline Protestantism in the Chicago suburbs where faith and reason cohabited very nicely. Within this environment, I grew up feeling tha... posted on May 8 2018 (12,578 reads)

Havea on Muhammad Yunus I first came across the work of Professor Muhammad Yunus in 2009 when a friend gave me a copy of his book, Creating a World Without Poverty. I read it at a time of transition, having just moved to the Middle East to start a job helping set up an office of an international company in a young country. It was with the backdrop of this fledgling economy, where the promises of capitalism and development were alive and strong, that I heard Professor Yunus’ clarion call: “What if you could harness the power of the free market to solve the problems of poverty, hunger and inequality?” His answer was clear, yes we can, and hi... posted on Jul 24 2018 (7,665 reads)

is a great force for healing – something we all need in our lives…We are more committed than ever to the importance of our work. That’s because it is so powerful – able to build bridges between people, able to evoke memories and emotions, and as more and more research is showing – able to help people feel better. Since 2002, Musicians for World Harmony (MWH) has used the healing power of music to serve at least 10,000 people impacted by disease, aging, war, and cultural divides. Its work in the U.S. and Africa has touched seniors living with dementia, children living with Nodding Syndrome and AIDS, communities living with the impact of war, refuge... posted on Oct 12 2018 (6,932 reads)

Hübl: William, in all your work in conflict areas, what do you see as the symptoms of trauma? And do you see that there’s a kind of recycling of trauma as a part of the conflict you work with? William Ury: Thomas, it’s a pleasure to be speaking with you. I was trained originally as an anthropologist and was always keen to study human beings and how we related. The passionate question that’s been guiding my work is, “How can we human beings get along with each other in the midst of our very, very deep differences?” That’s led me into hot zones around the world, conflicts where you see some of the darkest and most destructive human i... posted on Nov 16 2018 (9,103 reads)

See what John points out. Here is my conversation with John Prendergast: John, I feel so happy and lucky to have this chance to talk with you about your new book, The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence. The deep heart is something that I care so much about and has really been a discovery process for me, and I think probably for many, many Sounds True listeners. So to begin with, what do you mean by the deep heart? JP: The heart is, I have discovered in my own experience in my work with people both as a therapist and as a spiritual teacher, has just this remarkable sensitivity and depth of both knowing and feeling, so it's multidimensional. I'll briefly describe wha... posted on Dec 23 2019 (9,051 reads)

The Sounds True Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational tools to communities in need, including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans and those in developing countries. If you’d like to learn more or feel inspired to become a supporter, please visit SoundsTrueFoundation.org. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen. Jean Shinoda Bolen is a psychiatrist, a Jungian analyst, and an internationally known author and workshop leader. She’s the author of 13 books in over 100 foreign editions, including The Tao of Psychology, Goddesses in Everywoman, and Moving Toward the Millionth Circle: Energ... posted on May 9 2022 (4,169 reads)

he’s a speaker, teacher, author, and public intellectual. He refers to himself as a renegade academic. He’s globally recognized for his poetic, unconventional, and, I would say, soul-stirring and healing views on our global crisis and social change. He’s the author of two books, We Will Tell Our Own Story and These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home. He’s the executive director of the Emergence Network and he’s host of the course, We Will Dance With Mountains, which begins on October 18th. Now, let us make sanctuary with Bayo. I’m turning it over to you, brother. Bayo Ak... posted on Jun 16 2022 (2,578 reads)

your background? And I noticed that you spent two and a half years as a forest renunciate, and that really got my attention. And how, from that deep place of practice, you came to be a teacher of mindful communication. Oren Jay Sofer: Sure. Thanks, Tami. Happy to be here with you. So I started studying and practicing Buddhist meditation when I was about 19 in college, both due to ordinary First World suffering and a good dose of curiosity, and came across Marshall Rosenberg’s work with Nonviolent Communication about five years later when I was living and working at the Insight Meditation Society as a cook. And having arguments with my colleagues about how to cut the carrot... posted on Sep 21 2022 (3,589 reads)

between Tami Simon and Gabor Mate. You can listen to the audio version here. Tami Simon: I am absolutely thrilled about having the opportunity to host this particular edition of Insights at the Edge Live with Dr. Gabor Mate. Let me tell you just a little bit about Gabor. One thing is that Hungarian born, he lives now around the corner from where I am, here in Vancouver, Canada. He is a physician who, after 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, worked for over a decade in downtown Vancouver’s East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. I have a deep appreciation of Gabor’s work when it comes to helpin... posted on Feb 26 2023 (7,781 reads)

productivity tips for a nominal fee (your reading time). I’d like to think I helped people move closer to their dreams, but today I have different advice: Toss productivity advice out the window. Most of it is well-meaning, but the advice is wrong for a simple reason: it’s meant to squeeze the most productivity out of every day, instead of making your days better. Imagine instead of cranking out a lot of widgets, you made space for what’s important. Imagine that you worked slower instead of faster, and enjoyed your work. Imagine a world where people matter more than profits. If any of that appeals to you, let’s look at some traditional productivity advice,... posted on Nov 15 2011 (17,088 reads)

not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” - Buddha Have you ever lost yourself in your work, so much so that you lost track of time? Being consumed by a task like that, while it can be rare for most people, is a state of being called Flow. In my experience, it’s one of the keys to happiness at work, and a nice side benefit is that it not only reduces stress but increases your productivity. Not bad, huh? When I wrote about called The Magical Power of Focus, I promised to write more about how to achieve Flow, a concept that is very much in vogue right now and something mo... posted on Apr 30 2012 (34,829 reads)

this time. I think that’s probably been my central focus. TS: When you find yourself in some moments or some experience [thinking], “Gosh, I could be wasting my time right now.” What are those kinds of moments like, or those activities, or those pathologies? When you think, “Oh, I’m wasting my time right now. This is not what I want to be doing.” EG: Well, mostly, I don’t really waste my time in terms of how I use my hours for productivity and work, because I sort of love my work. If anything, I’m always trying to make more and more and more time for it. It’s— really, the place where I get stuck—it’s in rela... posted on Sep 16 2014 (24,317 reads)

today’s busy world, we’ve become a people obsessed with productivity and “work hacks.” Getting more done in less time allows us to get ahead, and even gives us more availability to do the things we love outside of work. The problem we run into is that it is easy to get motivated, but hard to stay disciplined. Most of us look at productivity in the wrong way: task management tools are shiny at first and then go unused. Being chained to your desk is as unhealthy as it is unproductive. Achievement isn’t about doing everything, it’s about doing the right things–productivity means saying no. Focus and consistency are the bread-and-butter... posted on Jun 8 2015 (19,704 reads)

is. MS. TIPPETT: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. MS. TIPPETT: From a weekly email to seven friends in 2006, Brain Pickings became a website, a Twitter feed, a weekly digest, and much more, and has been included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive since 2012. Maria Popova was born in Communist Bulgaria, and she came to the United States to study at the University of Pennsylvania. She started Brain Pickings as an internal office experiment while she was working one of multiple jobs to pay for her studies. MS. TIPPETT: Okay, so I want to say that when I really understood that you grew up in Bulgaria, I understood you in a new way, what you do. I fe... posted on Jul 15 2015 (12,042 reads)

Crooker: Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2015). Margaret Rozga: When I reviewed your book Gold for Verse Wisconsin, I loved the joy, the optimism, in many of your poems, even those that pay their respects to sorrow. Those poems focus on your grief at your mother’s death, but in the third section of the book, you turn from fall to spring, from night to dawn. You write in “Soft,” “Let’s praise / what’s still working.” Does writing the poems help to give you that joy which the poems express? Barbara Crooker: I write from personal experience. If you look at the facts of my life, you might not ... posted on Jul 26 2016 (11,382 reads)