Seeking Better Ways of Thinking & Being, by Maria Jain
August 2016 DailyGood featured the powerful story of Buddhas On Death Row -- a multi-dimensional collaboration between two pen friends, one of them a woman in Finland, the other a man on Death Row in the United States. Here is a follow-up piece on their journey as it continues to unfold... Note: Saturday, September 24th 2016 there will be a global conference call with Maria Jain, the Finnish half of this remarkable duo. You can learn more about the call, and RSVP here. Art, inner cultivation, and friendship. Buddhas on Death Row illuminates a profound journey unfolding in the darkest of places, sending rays of light to the outside. The small street-leve... posted on Sep 21 2016 (11,292 reads)

Seven Ways to Help High Schoolers Find Purpose, by Patrick Cook-Deegan
the past decade, I have had the chance to ask thousands of teenagers what they think about school. I’ve found that the vast majority of them generally feel one of two ways: disengaged or incredibly pressured. One thing nearly all teens agree on is that most of what high school teaches them is irrelevant to their lives outside of school or their future careers. One study found that the most common feelings among high school students are fatigue and boredom. Another study concluded that 65 percent of the jobs that today’s high school graduates will have in their lifetime do not even exist yet. But we are still teaching them in the same way that we t... posted on Feb 1 2016 (11,681 reads)

Gifts for Gifted Children, by Betsy Cornwell
Eisenstaedt, Children at a Puppet Theatre, Paris, 1963 Each summer I teach creative writing classes at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. It’s a wonderful job for many reasons: my colleagues are uniformly, eccentrically brilliant, I’ve taught at campuses all over the country, from Los Angeles to the U.S. Virgin Islands, and since the program is a sleepaway camp, the mood is always more summer vacation than school-day drudgery. But the real reason I love this job, what makes me cross an ocean and leave my spouse behind for six weeks every year, is my students: my breathtakingly intelligent students, radiating curiosity and teenage awkwardness and de... posted on Sep 28 2016 (34,194 reads)

How to Talk to Strangers, by Kio Stark
Rothman Kio Stark has always talked to strangers — she believes these fleeting moments give us new ways to fall in love with the world. She shares five ways to spark a meaningful interaction with someone you’ve never met before. What does it take to say a simple hello to a stranger you pass on the street? How might that interaction continue? What are the places in which you are more likely to interact with people you don’t know? How do you get out of a conversation? These sound like easy questions. They are not. Each of the following expeditions provides a structure and a contrivance to help you explore the world of people you don’t know. Ea... posted on Oct 15 2016 (17,629 reads)

Life Lessons from a Mountain, by Andrew Hinton
meet in the parking lot of a grocery store in Ashland, Oregon on Sunday morning. It is the 17th of July, a date I’ve celebrated as long as I can remember. The day I was born. I have driven 5 hours south to meet a group of strangers in anticipation of a different kind of birth. I am here, exactly 42 years after entering the world, to finally become a man. Nervous hellos. Final checks. Cars and trucks packed with camping equipment, rations, and gallon bottles of water. We snake up into the hills in convoy. Shops and signs and other vehicles gradually fall away until the tarmac becomes a dusty track. Huge pines tower above us, almost blocking out the clear blue sky.... posted on Oct 19 2016 (10,753 reads)

Why We Shut People Out and What To Do Instead, by Robert Waldinger
the thrill of building walls as a kid? Forts made from snow, or a giant cardboard box. Burying ourselves in blankets and pillows. Walling ourselves off from our enemies — real or imagined — to fight heroic battles until it was time for dinner. Even as adults, we swear undying loyalty to our local sports teams and hate their rivals. While the athletes themselves flit from one team to another in search of bigger contracts, we’re sure our home team is special. We’re passionate, sometimes to the point of violence, even though we know it’s only a game. We make artificial divisions everywhere: Democrats and Republicans, black and white, millennials... posted on Oct 20 2016 (24,046 reads)

The Beauty of What We Will Never Know, by Pico Iyer
hot October morning, I got off the all-night train in Mandalay, the old royal capital of Burma, now Myanmar. And out on the street, I ran into a group of rough men standing beside their bicycle rickshaws.And one of them came up and offered to show me around. The price he quoted was outrageous. It was less than I would pay for a bar of chocolate at home. So I clambered into his trishaw, and he began pedaling us slowly between palaces and pagodas. And as he did, he told me how he had come to the city from his village. He'd earned a degree in mathematics.His dream was to be a teacher. But of course, life is hard under... posted on Nov 7 2016 (20,680 reads)

Spotlight on Gratitude, by Shari Swanson
October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday of November as a day to give thanks, a new national holiday, Thanksgiving. He urged his fellow citizens then embroiled in civil war to not lose sight of the gifts surrounding them, among them "fruitful fields and healthy skies." Lincoln understood that, even in the worst of times, gratitude is essential. As we celebrate Thanksgiving this year, 153 years after Lincoln's pronouncement, perhaps it is just as important to set aside time for deep reflection and gratitude as it was during the Civil War. To help you find a deep sense of gratitude in this holiday season, we look back thr... posted on Nov 24 2016 (14,966 reads)

Educating Our Children's Hearts: A Mother's Reflections on Home-Schooling Her Daughter, by Meghna Banker
you for inviting me here. I will probably be sharing less from the perspective of a teacher, but more from the experience of a mother. Very early on, even before my child was born, I had the privilege to be located in a place where Gandhi-ji has spent so much of his life. Lot of the experiments in education and lifestyle, values had begun and thrived over there. I think the seeds were starting to be sown right in those moments. When I was to become a mother I had such beautiful welcome messages for the baby and how this baby is going to be shaped into this world. What are the values that the baby is going to learn and what kind of a person that he or she is going to grow up into... posted on Jan 6 2017 (18,906 reads)

A World Where We Trust Strangers, by ted.com
talk about trust. We all know trust is fundamental, but when it comes to trusting people, something profound is happening. Please raise your hand if you have ever been a host or a guest on Airbnb. Wow. That's a lot of you. Who owns Bitcoin? Still a lot of you. OK. And please raise your hand if you've ever used Tinder to help you find a mate. (Laughter) This one's really hard to count because you're kind of going like this. (Laughter) These are all examples of how technology is creating new mechanisms that are enabling us to trust unknown people, companies and ideas. And yet at the same time,&... posted on Jan 22 2017 (18,142 reads)

How to Find and Support Trustworthy Journalism, by Democracy Fund
you are hungry for news you can trust, journalism that helps you make decisions about your community, reporting that holds power to account, then this is for you. This is my personal advice for people who want to support journalism that matters. It is just a starting point, it is not comprehensive, and it’ll become stronger and more useful if you add your ideas to it. Use the comments to add your list of newsrooms you subscribe to and support. Now more than ever, it is important to our democracy that we seek out and support good journalism. Every person is going to construct their media diet differently, so any list I create will be incomplete. My goal here is to provide a framew... posted on Feb 6 2017 (20,540 reads)

To Heal the Human Heart, by Robin Grille
We Know Everything About Empathy? It must have been a thrilling moment when Ernest Rutherford came up with his revolutionary model of the atom. The image of Rutherford’s atom is probably the most iconic, familiar and favourite symbol in the world of science. Remember the adorable little bunch of coloured marbles in the nucleus, with a few electrons whizzing around them in elliptical orbit? Humanity was enamoured with this symbol, every classroom had a picture of it up on the wall The Rutherfordian model for what was then believed to be the unit of existence was eminently useful for a number of purposes, and it helped to answer many questions that had mystified physicists until... posted on May 15 2021 (43,357 reads)

Ron Nakasone & The Art of Sho, by Peter Doebler
five minutes talking with Ron Nakasone and you will sense two things: a wisdom that makes you curious and a casualness that makes you comfortable. One example of this kind of relaxed intelligence was when I was having lunch with him and we were discussing some of the ins and outs of doctoral research. In an off-handed way he said, “Don’t worry about finding the answers; find the questions. When you find the right questions the answers will follow.”       Dr. Nakasone’s inquisitive nature is evident in the variety of activities he has pursued and keeps pursuing. He is an accomplished scholar in Buddhist studies (he is a member of the Core Doc... posted on Feb 22 2017 (7,987 reads)

Eight Ways to Stand Up to Hate, by Elizabeth Svoboda
no denying it anymore: Hatred is erupting all over the United States, after having long simmered beneath the social surface. In less than one week, the Southern Poverty Law Center has tallied more than 400 incidents of “hateful intimidation and harassment”—and millions of Americans now fear becoming victims of verbal and physical assaults, possibly thanks to some very threatening and violent language coming from the very top of our society. In the face of such upheaval, how can you prepare to protect those who are being threatened—to stand up for the worth and dignity of every person, even when it’s uncomfortable or scary? It all start... posted on Mar 6 2017 (26,719 reads)

Active Hope, by Joanna Macy
Joanna Macy and Chris Johnston suggest a life-sustaining civilization can be achieved with active hope. The Great Turning [a shift of comparable scope and magnitude to the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution] involves the transition from a doomed economy of industrial growth to a life-sustaining society committed to the recovery of the world.... The Great Turning is a story of Active Hope. To play our best part, we need to counter the voices that say we're not up to the task, that we're not good enough, strong enough, or wise enough to make any difference. If we fear that the mess we're in is too awful to look at or that we won't be able to... posted on Mar 19 2017 (18,399 reads)

Why Behavioral Science Has Become the Next Big Thing for Solving Society’s Problems, by Chris Peak
since Dr. Stanley Milgram conducted his notorious experiment in the early 1960s, in which he asked participants to obediently administer a high-voltage “shock” to a victim, researchers have uncovered a wealth of fascinating insights into the human mind. But much of this study has been confined to laboratories and academia. As managing director at ideas42, NationSwell Council member Alissa Fishbane is bucking that trend by applying the lessons from behavioral science to the social sector. At ideas42, her team advises governments and nonprofits about how to better structure their programs in education, healthcare, criminal justice, ... posted on Mar 15 2017 (11,882 reads)

Anthony Chavez: Continuing His Grandfather's Legacy of Inspiration, by Awakin Call Editors
in the footsteps of his grandfather, Anthony Chavez wants to make difference in the lives of young people. "What I want to tell the youth is that their voices do matter that they can start making change now," Chavez says. He is the grandson of César Chavez, who formed the United Farm Workers union and led the Farm Workers Movement in California in the 1960s, fighting for civil rights while promoting nonviolence. "I remind students what my grandfather said, 'We don't need perfect political systems, what we need is more perfect participation,’" Chavez has said. Anthony, the oldest son of Socorro and Paul Chavez, César'... posted on Mar 22 2017 (10,758 reads)

Business The Way Nature Intended, by Giles Hutchins
is an old saying, ‘May you live in interesting times’. When someone said this to you it was viewed as both a blessing and a curse, because to live in interesting times means to face both danger and opportunity, to simultaneously embrace both breakdown and breakthrough, which is exactly what these transformative times demand of us. The UN Secretary General refers to these times as the Great Transition; Joanna Macy, Thomas Berry, Charles Eisenstein and others have referred to it as the Great Turning, due to a trilemma of social, environmental and economic factors. My own contribution to this Great Turning is to shed some light on our relationship with Nature, to ... posted on Apr 3 2017 (11,263 reads)

A Mindful Approach to Time Management, by Heleo Editors
Vanderkam is the bestselling author of multiple books on productivity and time management, including I Know How She Does It, 168 Hours, and What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. She recently joined Leah Weiss, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, writer, and consultant who specializes in the application of mindfulness to workplace environments, for a Heleo Conversation on incorporating mindfulness into our day-to-day lives. This conversation has been edited and condensed.  Laura: Could you talk a little bit about what you mean by mindfulness and purpose? Leah: Mindfulness is a term that is be... posted on Apr 1 2017 (14,861 reads)

Designing for the Circular Economy, by Knowledge@Wharton North America
do you do with a toaster when you no longer want it? Until recently, no one thought about that question until the toaster was ready for the scrap heap. Today, advocates of the circular economy suggest that the best time to address end-of-life issues is when a product is first being designed. It’s at that point that it has the greatest potential for circularity. If the designers of your toaster had thought about it not as a disposable appliance but as a product with value worth preserving, your options would be considerably enhanced. That, in fact, is what the designers at the London-based Agency of Design (AoD) did. As part of a project that “looked at the end of life of ... posted on Apr 24 2017 (16,222 reads)