Radical Joy For Hard Times, by Trebbe Johnson
I receive a gift, I am conscious of both the gift and the giver. Gratitude suffuses me. This gratitude often transforms into a wish to give something back to my generous giver. We are conscious of this desire to give back when it comes to people who are givers. Places are givers, too. And we can give back to them. When we do, we become more courageous, more creative—and certainly more grateful! ~ Trebbe Johnson Here in our feature “Grateful Changemakers,” 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 u... posted on Apr 26 2021 (5,106 reads)

Overcoming Toxic Positivity, by Adam Grant, Susan David
is a transcript of a podcast conversation between Adam Grant and Susan David.]Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to ReThinking, my podcast on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. My guest today is psychologist Susan David, an expert on emotional agility. Her popular TED Talk and bestselling book on the subject offer poignant insights and practical tools for getting better at managing our moods and feelings. Susan grew up in South Africa, teaches at Harvard Medical School, co-founded the Institute of Coaching and regularly shares ideas ... posted on Mar 28 2024 (638 reads)

How Patience Can Help You Find Your Purpose, by Kendall Cotton Bronk
am I going to do with my life? What really matters to me? How will I leave my mark? These questions can fill us with hope, inspiration, and direction when we have some sense of what the answers may be. If we don’t, they can fill us with confusion, frustration, and irritation. Leading a life of purpose, or making an enduring commitment to contributing to the broader world in personally meaningful ways, is associated with a range of benefits, including better physical health, enhanced psychological well-being, superior academic achievement, and enriched social connections. Despite these advantages, leading a life of purpose is rare, as researcher William Damon describes in his 200... posted on May 1 2024 (4,275 reads)

Study, Practice and Serve: Peter Senge, by Prasad Kaipa
Senge - Founding Chairperson - Society for Organizational Learning Dr. Peter M. Senge is the founding chairperson of SoL and a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Senge is the author of The Fifth Discipline: the Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. He has lectured extensively throughout the world, translating the abstract ideas of systems theory into tools for better understanding of economic and organizational change. He has worked with leaders in business, education, health care and government. The Journal of Business Strategy (September/October 1999) named Dr. Senge as one of the 24 people who had the greatest influence on bus... posted on Aug 28 2011 (11,801 reads)

6 Ways to Empower Others, by Starhawk
makes a good leader? The gift of strengthening everyone else.     Photo by Zer Cabatuan. An empowering leader holds and serves a vision broad and deep enough to inspire others and allow them to take parts of it and make it their own. When Rob Hopkins founded the Transition Town movement, his vision was to take the insights of permaculture and ecological design and apply them on a local community level. That was a big vision, far too big for any one person to realize alone. Within it, there was room for many people to step up and realize their own creative ideas and pursue their interests — how t... posted on Apr 18 2012 (56,484 reads)

Alive Enough? Reflecting on Our Technology with Sherry Turkle, by On Being
Tippett, host: Sherry Turkle founded and directs the intriguingly titled MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. She made waves with her book Alone Together; it was widely reviewed as a call to "unplug" our digital gadgets. But as I've read her and listened to her speak, I hear Sherry Turkle saying something more thought-provoking: that we can lead examined lives with our technology. That each of us, in our everyday interactions, can choose between letting technology shape us and shaping it towards human purposes, even towards honoring what we hold dear. Engaging Sherry Turkle on this is full of usable ideas — from how to declare email bankruptcy to teachi... posted on Jul 1 2013 (29,349 reads)

Seth Godin on the Art of Noticing and Creating, by Seth Godin
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 (29,449 reads)

Five Ways to Develop Ecoliteracy, by Daniel Goleman, Zenobia Barlow, Lisa Bennett
following is adapted from Ecoliterate: How Educators Are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence. Ecoliterate shows how educators can extend the principles of social and emotional intelligence to include knowledge of and empathy for all living systems. For students in a first-grade class at Park Day School in Oakland, California, the most in-depth project of their young academic careers involved several months spent transforming their classroom into an ocean habitat, ripe with coral, jellyfish, leopard sharks, octopi, and deep-sea divers (or, at least, paper facsimiles of them). Their work culminated in one special night when, suited with goggles and homemade air ta... posted on Sep 26 2013 (31,342 reads)

Catching Song: On Being With Bobby McFerrin, by On Being
McFerrin: This is what I want everyone to experience at the end of my concert is everyone has this sense of rejoicing. I don't want them to be blown away by what I do, I want them to have this sense of real, real joy from the depths of their being. Because I think when you take them to that place then you open up a place where grace can come in. Krista Tippett, host: Who better to contemplate the human voice — its delights, its revelations, and its mystery — than Bobby McFerrin? He's won 10 Grammys and is as comfortable with Chick Corea as with Mozart. He's also known for drawing thousands of strangers into singing the Ave Maria, beautifully, to... posted on Aug 15 2014 (14,668 reads)

How I Work To Protect Women From Honor Killings, by Khalida Brohi
preparing for my talk I was reflecting on my life and trying to figure out where exactly was that moment when my journey began. A long time passed by, and I simply couldn't figure out the beginning or the middle or the end of my story. I always used to think that my beginning was one afternoon in my community when my mother had told me that I had escaped three arranged marriages by the time I was two. Or one evening when electricity had failed for eight hours in our community, and my dad sat, surrounded by all of us, telling us stories of when he was a little kid struggling to go to school while his father, who was a farmer, wanted him to... posted on Apr 19 2015 (11,041 reads)

Community, Conflict and Ways of Knowing , by Parker Palmer
years ago, my own yearning for community in education led me out of the mainstream of higher education to a small place called Pendle Hill, a 55-year-old Quaker living/learning community near Philadelphia. It is a place where everyone from teachers to cooks to administrators receives the same base salary as a witness to community. At Pendle Hill, rigorous study of philosophy, nonviolent social change, and other subjects, goes right alongside washing the dishes each day, making decisions by consensus, and taking care of each other, as well as reaching out to the world. Out of that long, intense experience, what might I share that would somehow be hopeful and encouraging? I learned, of ... posted on Nov 13 2016 (13,232 reads)

The True Birthright of the Storyteller, by Rajni Bakshi
three decades of being engrossed in the craft details of storytelling there is a substantial array of discoveries, dilemmas and unsolved questions clamouring for attention. At the centre of this apparent jumble is a core question: What is the swadharma [a Sanskrit word that loosely translates to duty or unique role accorded to one by nature] of a storyteller in the larger quest for change today? An assortment of dilemmas and sub-questions spin off from this central point. How to be a storyteller without getting embroiled in argumentation? How important is it to sift insight from ideology? What is the most empathic way to link seemingly disparate realities? An inv... posted on May 10 2017 (7,285 reads)

The Vibrations of Conflict, by Kenneth Cloke
Vibrations of Conflict [Excerpted from Kenneth Cloke, The Magic of Mediation: A Guide to Transforming and Transcending Conflict  © 2003] How strange the change From major to minor, Every time we say goodbye. Cole Porter Cole Porter clearly got it right. But what exactly is it that changes from major to minor when we say goodbye? What permits music to express and stimulate our moods so precisely? How does it ignite or dampen our spirits, make us feel romantic or cynical, lighthearted or blue? Why do simple sequences of musical notes or complex symphonic strains cause us to weep with sorrow, waltz with elegance, march in disciplined military formations, or swirl sensuous... posted on May 24 2017 (8,814 reads)

Music & the Brain: The Fascinating Ways Music Affects Your Mood and Mind, by Barry Goldstein
Ways That Music Affects the Brain The field of music and neuroscience is greatly expanding and is indicating many beneficial ways music can engage and change the brain. Let’s discuss how music affects the brain and mood by engaging emotion, memory, learning and neuroplasticity, and attention. In looking at the many ways that music engages the brain, we can begin to understand how creating a consistent musical program can target and enhance certain brain functions. 1. Emotion Research indicates that music stimulates emotions through specific brain circuits. We can easily see how music and the brain engage mood and emotion when a child smiles and begins t... posted on Jul 27 2017 (76,602 reads)

Matt Walker: Sleeping Enough to Be Truly Awake, by Awakin Call Editors
evidence is overwhelming, it is irrefutable.  Sleep is the single most effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body health each and every day,” -- Matt Walker, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory. Calling the global sleep-loss epidemic “the greatest public health challenge we now face in the 21st century,” Walker examines the impact of sleep on human brain function in healthy and clinical populations.  Through his work at UC Berkeley, he has been at the forefront of sleep research. He has linked sleep deprivation to psychiatric ... posted on May 31 2017 (59,236 reads)

Five Limits Your Brain Puts on Generosity, by Summer Allen
suggests that our brains may be wired for altruism, but there’s a catch—well, five of them, actually. Humans can be remarkably generous. Americans gave a record $390 billion to charitable organizations in 2016 through a combination of individual giving and philanthropy from estates, corporations, and foundations. And people give in myriad other ways as well, from everyday acts of kindness toward loved ones to volunteering to large acts of altruism, like donating a kidney to a stranger. This isn’t surprising, given how wired we appear to be for giving. But there are limits to our generosity—and many people want to be more generous th... posted on Jan 18 2018 (11,316 reads)

A Conversation with Ashton Applewhite, by Awakin Call Editors
her career, New York-based author and activist, Ashton Applewhite has written about a wide variety of subjects including Antarctica, astrophysics, and a village in Laos that got access to the internet via a bicycle-powered computer. Since 2007, she has been writing about aging and ageism at ThisChairRocks.com, and has authored a book by the same name. She's also the voice of “Yo, Is This Ageist?" and has been widely recognized by the New York Times as an expert on ageism. What follows is the edited transcript of an Awakin Call with Ashton. You can listen to the full recording here. Pavi Mehta: Ashton, what brought you to where you are today, and what dre... posted on Feb 22 2018 (13,829 reads)

Trauma in the Body: An Interview with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, by Elissa Melaragno
IN THE BODY: EXPLORING NEW HOPES FOR HEALING Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. is the founder and medical director of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts, a professor in the department of psychiatry at Boston University Medical School, and the director of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, which Congress established to raise the standard of care and improve access to services for traumatized children, their families, and communities.  Dr. van der Kolk’s newest book, The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma, offers a sweeping and revolutionary new understanding of the causes and consequences of trauma and how to heal t... posted on Apr 21 2018 (61,440 reads)

Transforming Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, by Parker J. Palmer
a respected educational writer, teacher and activist, Parker J. Palmer shares some powerful thoughts on the current landscape of higher education with regard to pedagogy and practice. Through his personal and professional experiences with teaching and learning, Palmer highlights the existing disconnect between objectivist thinking and subjective experience within our classrooms and campuses and how to address this in order to better navigate the connection between our external and internal worlds. Palmer argues that, at the present time, we no longer can ignore the “inner drivers” that connect to the very core of humanity and the central mission of higher education, and advoca... posted on May 8 2018 (12,287 reads)

Peter Levine on Freedom from Pain, by Tami Simon
Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today I speak with Peter Levine and Maggie Phillips. Maggie Phillips is a licensed psychologist and currently serves as director at the California Institute of Clinical Hypnosis. She has authored numerous papers and articles as well as the books Finding the Energy to Heal: How EMDR, Hypnosis, TFT, Imagery, and Body-Focused Therapy Can Help Restore Mindbody Health and Reversing Chronic Pain: A 10-Point All-Natural Plan for Lasting Relief. Peter Levine has spent 45 years studying and treating stress and trauma; is the developer of somatic experiencing, a naturalistic approach to healing trauma; and has... posted on May 26 2018 (22,108 reads)