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 (12,043 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)

was thanks to artist Walter Gabrielson that I was able to get in touch with James Turrell. Gabrielson was an old friend of Turrell’s from Pasadena and, like Turrell, also a pilot. The prospect of meeting this remarkable artist was exciting and arranging it took some persistence. Michael Bond, who managed Turrell’s projects around the world, was encouraging, but he suggested some homework. I should go to Los Angeles to experience one of the artist’s pieces in a private collection there, The Second Meeting. Although I was already familiar with Turrell's work from reading about it, the visit to LA underlined my sense of his unique place in the art world. Eve... posted on Mar 26 2017 (16,061 reads)

number of precariats, who, if not completely locked out of the economy, must increasingly compete for temporary employment at low wages—to the point that they can’t pay off student loans or consumer debt, qualify for mortgages, save for retirement, or make plans for the future. Many are essentially one paycheck away from destitution. Standing’s solution is a 29-plank platform of policy changes he calls “the Precariat Charter.” Some are as basic as redefining work to include all productive labor, paid or unpaid, while others are as “revolutionary” as unconditional basic income (UBI), which would pay a basic, livable stipend to every man, woman,... posted on Nov 26 2017 (21,321 reads)

countries in an endless war with each other. Generations of enemies born into hating the opposition. And with no end in sight, Yoav Peck has found a way to harness peace and cultivate unity between two groups of unlikely allies. Co-Executive-Director of the Sulha Peace Project, Yoav says the key is in listening and in working from the heart and not the head. “Each of us has a story. It's important to the Israelis to establish a situation in which not only are they listening to the Palestinians but that the Palestinians are listening to us. And it means listening to the history of our families. Any political future must address the human needs of both sides, We at Sulha stand on... posted on Sep 18 2017 (8,450 reads)

children are playing on a playground and they're fighting, the very first thing that we tend to do is separate them. Separation works to stop the fighting, but it doesn't work to settle the issues that they're fighting over. So there are relatively primitive and relatively advanced methods for handling any particular type of conflict. And those are endless -- throughout our lives, we have nothing but opportunities for transcendence and transformation! To change the form of the thing, and by changing it, we learn from it and discover some higher order of capacity, to come to terms with this thing that was giving us the most trouble.” Ken Cloke is Director ... posted on Nov 27 2017 (14,989 reads)

about you? What’s the hardest part about conversations for you? DAVID WHYTE: I think the hardest part of any conversation is paying attention to something other than yourself, creating a real-life frontier. The hardest part is giving up the name you are going under, the story you’re a part of—giving up your idea of where the conversation is going. That’s the crux of it: the listening ear. I certainly went through this giving up early on in my twenties when I worked as a naturalist in the Galapagos Islands. I got to those islands in freshly-minted scientific arrogance where I soon found that none of the animals had read any of the zoology books I had read.... posted on May 23 2018 (22,469 reads)

Bakshi is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist and storyteller who writes about social and political movements in contemporary India. Two of her well-known books include ‘Bapu Kuti: Journeys in Rediscovery of Gandhi’, chronicling the work and lives of activists engaged in social transformation rooted in the philosophy of Gandhi, and ‘Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom: for a market culture beyond greed and fear’ that looks at the history, philosophy and anthropology of market-systems. In this free-ranging Awakin Call with Rajni Bakshi, a wide range of diverse and thought-provoking themes are illuminated. Some examples include what being a child of Partition ... posted on Aug 23 2018 (5,053 reads)

we celebrate programs and projects that serve as beacons of gratefulness. These efforts elevate the values of grateful living and illuminate their potential to transform both individuals and communities. Join us in appreciating the inspiring and catalyzing contribution these Changemakers offer to shaping a more grateful world. Solar Sister Solar Sister trains and supports women to put clean power in the hands of people in rural African communities. This women-led movement works to recruit, train, and support entrepreneurs who earn income by selling clean energy products directly to people without power. Since its founding in 2010, Solar Sister has reached over 1.5 mill... posted on May 22 2019 (6,404 reads)

with the Multiple Hats Syndrome Despite the neighborly support, I was stretched thin with all the hats I wore, striving to perfection in every role: mother, sister, daughter, wife, physician, teacher, friend, colleague, acquaintance, and so on. For seventeen years I left home at six in the morning with both children plus three or four other neighborhood children in the carpool. I’d drop the girls off at the girls’ school, the boys at the boys’ school, then come to work. After a long day at work, I would pick them up and drop them at whatever after-school practice they had, run to the grocery store, pick up some food for them, come back to the office and work un... posted on May 18 2020 (5,665 reads)

I respect on the inadequacy of the simplistic ways we take up such questions, if we take them up at all — the necessity of moral imagination and the cultivation of character alongside all of the so-called hard skills that are no longer serving us. This is at the heart of her book, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World. It feels important to me, in a moment like this, to look below the radar of rupture — to see models and practices that work, and that in fact can take up the huge hard problems. Acumen, which Jacqueline Novogratz founded and leads, is an exercise in creative, human-centered capitalism: a venture capital fund that serv... posted on May 26 2020 (6,914 reads)

in the millions, topping bestseller lists across the US, Canada and Australia and causing a revolution in the medical world. Having studied the classics and philosophy as a young undergraduate in Toronto, Norman earned a medical degree, followed by psychiatric and psychoanalytic training at Columbia University in New York. This bedrock of philosophy compelled Norman to pursue life’s big questions: What is mind? What is consciousness? What is life? Spellbinding in its brilliance, his work to date has had a profound impact on our understanding of the human brain. What was formerly thought, for centuries, to be in a state of degenerative decline, the brain is now understood to ... posted on Nov 10 2021 (12,152 reads)