Mark Twain's Top 9 Tips for Living A Good Life, by Henrik Edberg
no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” “Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” “When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.” You may know Mark Twain for some of his very popular books like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He was a writer and also a humorist, satirist and lecturer. Twain is known for his many – and often funny – quotes. Here are a few of my favourite tips from him. 1. Approve of yourself. “A man cannot be... posted on Sep 29 2013 (590,252 reads)

Pamela Sukhum & The Beautiful Project, by Anne Veh
Sukham's warmth and openheartedness invites us all to find the artist within and to experience life and all it’s infinite possibilities on a path for beauty and truth. In this Awakin call conversation, hosted by Bela, Pamela shares her journey from one captivating story to the next, beginning with a life changing realization that she needed to leave a stable career to trust an inspiration… to paint. It was a joy to moderate this call, being introduced to Pamela through the kindness of Pavi a year earlier. The two artists share the same title for their work, Infinite Vision! Pamela trusts her heart, from moment to moment, inspiration to inspiration, connection to co... posted on Apr 9 2014 (26,400 reads)

6 Ways Being Mindful Can Make You a Better Leader, by Bruna Martinuzzi
you consider mindfulness to be just another buzzword or New Age fad, think again. Mindfulness has been around for centuries and has now made the transition from Tibetan monasteries to the corporate boardrooms of America. In "The Mindful Revolution," a recent TIME magazine article, Kate Pickert says that already many devotees see mindfulness "as an indispensable tool for coping—both emotionally and practically—with the daily onslaught." Is it worth your while, as a business owner, to pay attention to this trend? The Meaning of Mindfulness One of the best definitions of mindfulness comes from Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor of medicine emeritus at the Univ... posted on Jun 1 2014 (143,990 reads)

4 Ways to Be More Present in Travel, by Audrey Scott
          Travel is like a good, challenging book: it demands presentness—the ability to live completely in the moment, absorbed in the words or vision of reality before you." – Robert Kaplan It’s de rigueur to speak of “creating memories,” particularly when it comes to travel. This tendency has only been intensified by and through social media and online sharing. Similarly, we’ve written about creating a story-filled life, the idea being that experiences rather than material goods are what truly shape who we are. While I still believe that implicit underlying premise to be ... posted on May 7 2014 (16,384 reads)

Elizabeth Gilbert On Big Magic, by Tami Simon
my guest is Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth is an author, essayist, short-story writer, and novelist.In 2006, she wrote her landmark memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, which spent 199 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold over 10 million copies worldwide. Her latest novel, The Signature of All Things, is a sprawling tale of 19th-century botanical exploration. O, The Oprah Magazine named it “the novel of a lifetime.” Elizabeth Gilbertis a featured presenter at Sounds True’s 2014 Wake Up Festival. She’ll be speaking on the topic of “Big Magic: Thoughts on Creative Living.” The Wake Up Festival takes place August 20th–24th in Estes Park, Col... posted on Sep 16 2014 (24,187 reads)

Seven Ways To Inspire Healing After Disaster, by Michele Rosenthal
I was a teen growing up outside New York City, my mom was a big country and western fan. I remember the collective groans from my brother, Bret, and me as she ferried us and our friends to after-school activities to the honky-tonk sounds of what I heard as hillbilly twang. One of my mom’s favorite songs was about what to do when you face challenges in life. The lyrics were simple: “There ain’t no easy horses but you gotta learn to ride.” Mom reminded us of that often. Many years later, Bret and I were living in New York City on 9/11. Afterward, our parents begged us to move to the suburbs, where they hoped we’d be out of danger. For Bret and me, leav... posted on Aug 9 2014 (15,541 reads)

Sources of Light, by Karen Horneffer-Ginter
born with millions of little lights shining in the dark And they show us the way One lights up Every time you feel love in your heart One dies when it moves away" -- Michael Passenger Like so many of us, I felt such sadness in hearing the news of Robin Williams' death. Although I'm aware that creative, bright, and humorous people are as susceptible as anyone (maybe even more susceptible) to depression, there's something about the uniqueness of Robin Williams' gifts that makes me wish he could have been spared emotional anguish. I'd also like to imagine that anyone who played such incredible characters as the therapist... posted on Nov 25 2014 (18,099 reads)

9 Ways the Culture of Watching Is Changing Us, by Barry Chudakov
constant use of cameras, TVs, computers, and smart devices is affecting our thoughts and behavior to a degree we may not even realize Watching and being watched are no longer confined to how newborns bond with their mothers or apprentice chefs learn from sushi masters. Watching now changes how we identify ourselves and how others understand us. “Selfies” are not an anomaly; they are personal reflections of a wholesale adoption of the new culture of watching. We are watching so many—and so many are watching us in so many different places and ways—that watching and being watched fundamentally alter how we think and behave. While 50% of our neural tissue is d... posted on Sep 11 2014 (33,925 reads)

Conscience and Courage, by Richard Whittaker
Lee Hoinacki: Conscience and Courage One day, browsing through the San Francisco Chronicle, I noticed the announcement of a program being put on by Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown. Among the list of topics were two evenings devoted to medieval philosophical Latin. Medieval philosophical Latin? Sure enough, that’s what it said. I'd taken Latin in high school and on no account would I miss a civic program so improbable. It marked my introduction to a remarkable man, Lee Hoinacki.  Hoinacki by turns had been a Dominican priest, a professor of political science and a subsistence farmer. He's the author of four books: El Camino, Stumbling Toward J... posted on Feb 3 2015 (17,325 reads)

Three Words to Help Retrain your Brain, by Knowledge@Wharton
‘Think Like a Freak,’ Start with These Three Words Are you sure it is a bad idea to quit a job? In Think Like a Freak, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt argue that we are often overly confident about what we think we know, and they recommend a way to think differently to solve problems and make decisions. Wharton management professor Adam M. Grant recently interviewed Dubner about his new book when he visited campus as a guest lecturer in the Authors@Wharton series. In this interview, Dubner discusses why we should say, “I don’t know” much more often than we do. An edited transcript of the conversation appears below. Adam Grant: Your books... posted on Mar 25 2015 (67,238 reads)

Margaret Heffernan: Dare To Disagree, by Thu-Huong Ha
people instinctively avoid conflict, but as Margaret Heffernan shows us, good disagreement is central to progress. She illustrates (sometimes counterintuitively) how the best partners aren’t echo chambers — and how great research teams, relationships and businesses allow people to deeply disagree. Transcript: 0:11      In Oxford in the 1950s, there was a fantastic doctor, who was very unusual, named Alice Stewart. And Alice was unusual partly because, of course, she was a woman, which was pretty rare in the 1950s. And she was brilliant, she was one of the, at the time, the youngest Fellow to be elected to the Royal College of Physicia... posted on Jun 10 2015 (28,149 reads)

Should We Train Doctors for Empathy?, by Jill Suttie
years ago, I was told that I needed a full hip replacement. I was 46 years old and athletic, and had none of the precursors for the condition. I was devastated. The orthopedist who gave me my diagnosis, however, was not particularly sympathetic. He pointedly ignored my tears while presenting me with the hard facts, answering my questions—like, “How could this happen to me?”—with answers that were technically precise but emotionally detached. And, while he spoke, he didn’t make eye contact, reassure me, or make any other effort at acknowledging my pain and confusion. Needless to say, I didn’t choose him as my surgeon. Instead, I later found an or... posted on Nov 14 2015 (13,131 reads)

The Way We Think About Work Is Broken, by Barry Shwartz
I'm going to talk about work. And the question I want to ask and answer is this: "Why do we work?" Why do we drag ourselves out of bed every morning instead of living our lives just filled with bouncing from one TED-like adventure to another? You may be asking yourselves that very question. Now, I know of course, we have to make a living, but nobody in this room thinks that that's the answer to the question, "Why do we work?" For folks in this room, the work we do is challenging, it's engaging, it's stimulating, it's meaningful. And if we're lucky, it might even be important. So, we wouldn't work if we didn't get paid, but tha... posted on Nov 26 2015 (19,362 reads)

A University Art and Science Fusion Program, by Richard Whittaker
remember hearing about Donna Billick from John Toki some years ago. John is generous in spreading the word about artists who impress him. Thinking for oneself, passionate commitment, resourcefulness and actually getting things done would rank high among the qualities he values. John’s glowing description stuck in my mind.      So when a few months ago, at an open house at Toki’s Leslie Ceramics in Berkeley, I happened to meet Billick, I was already primed. She was arranging a display of handmade ceramic honeybees. I asked her what were they all about and in no time we were in a lively conversation. The honeybees, I learned, were ambassadors for the U. C. D... posted on Apr 30 2016 (10,234 reads)

The Science of the Story, by Jeremy Adam Smith
know in our gut when we’re hearing a good story—and research is starting to explain why. Stories are told in the body. It doesn’t seem that way. We tend to think of stories as emerging from consciousness—from dreams or fantasies—and traveling through words or images to other minds. We see them outside of us, on paper or on screen, never under the skin. But we do feel stories. We know in our gut when we’re hearing a good one—and science is starting to explain why. Experiencing a story alters our neurochemical processes, and stories are a powerful force in shaping human behavior. In this way, stories are not just instruments of... posted on Jun 9 2016 (19,720 reads)

Chris Henrikson: The Community Cure for a Violent Culture, by Leslee Goodman
Henrikson is the founder of Street Poets, Inc., a non-profit poetry-based violence intervention program for high-risk youth in the juvenile detention camps, continuation schools and streets of Los Angeles County. Henrikson also calls it “a poetry-based peace-making organization,” which uses the creative process as a vehicle for individual and community transformation. I first learned of Street Poets at a Malidoma Somé ancestor ceremony in Ojai, California, which two young Street Poets also attended. The young people—a heavily tattooed Latino male and a shy, curly-haired female—silenced us all with the power and vulnerability of the original s... posted on Jul 29 2016 (16,084 reads)

The Little Free Pantry, by Cat Johnson
this month, Shareable posted a short article about the Little Free Pantry in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Created by Jessica McClard, the Pantry is an easy way for people to share surplus food and household goods, and access items they may need. The response to the post has been incredible. In the first week, over 21,000 people read the article and it has been shared over 700 times on Facebook. Our hunch is that people love the low-cost, direct action approach that McClard is taking to fighting food insecurity on a neighborhood level. As we face overwhelming global issues, seeing a simple, human-scale project addressing problems on a local level is a welco... posted on Aug 11 2016 (16,023 reads)

To Feel the Love: A Conversation with Barry Svigals, by Jeff Zaleski
the beautiful woods of Newtown, Connecticut, a new elementary school is about to open. Pleasing to the eye and soul, this new school replaces the Sandy Hook Elementary School in which, on December 14, 2012, twenty young children and six adults were shot and killed by a lone gunman. Not long after the shootings, the town decided to raze the old school and to build a new one on its site. The architecture firm chosen to design the Sandy Hook School was Svigals + Partners, based in New Haven. In June 2016, Parabola sat down with Barry Svigals, founder of Svigals + Partners, to talk about the design and construction of the new school and the challenge of realizing its potential t... posted on Aug 22 2016 (17,166 reads)

A Deep Dive Into The Gift Ecology, by Audrey Lin
various corners of the US and globe—from CA to North Carolina, Boston to India, Dubai to China—a crew of our October Laddership Circle tuned in on Tuesday for a deeper dive breakout call on Gift Ecology. "Holding the Questions" Prior to the call, everyone shared initial reflections online. Then, after an opening couple minutes of silence, we each tossed in a question for the conversation—ranging from practical implementations and sustaining gift-based systems to notions of an “inner gift-ecology” and how to honor our families’ wishes along the way. Chris, who comes from many years of monastic living, qu... posted on Jan 26 2017 (11,897 reads)

Why Play? This is Serious. , by Sarah Huxley
isn’t the opposite of work—it’s vital for social transformation. Materials used at the inception workshop for Toybox Mums in Nairobi, January 2017. Credit: Sarah Huxley. All rights reserved. It’s fair to say that, like many other people, I’ve been a pin ball in the international development fruit machine for many years. Sometimes I’ve hit the jackpot by working with great people on programmes or advocacy that have truly benefitted young people; at other times I’ve fallen into the dark pit of skepticism and disappointment. For all the talk of ‘breaking down silos,’ some people seem inordinately invested in preserving them. W... posted on Mar 28 2017 (12,095 reads)