Sunday, July 4, 2010 Generosity Water  What happens to a young man who has been a successful business person since the 8th grade, who by his senior year was earning six figures then loses it all when the real estate market goes under? Well, if you're Jordan Wagner, you bring clean drinking water to people in need. "I had lost everything I had made. This humbling experience helped me realize that I had been living a pretty selfish lifestyle. I decided to change my mindset and commit the next season of my life to helping others," Wagner reflects. Inspired by a church water project, Wagner journeyed to Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia, where he saw a young child walking six miles to carry 45-pound cans of clean water for his family. With a renewed commitment to service, Wagner began Generosity Water, a nonprofit that is currently building new wells for in need. Read More >>
back to top  Saturday, July 3, 2010 Soul Food: So All May Eat  In a world where a bite of fast food is cheaper than fresh fruits and vegetables, processed goods line the walls of food banks and soup kitchen gruel lacks key nutrients, being low-income means running on a toxin-rich diet. But at the SAME (So All May Eat) Cafe in Denver, Colorado, customers can walk in with empty wallets and leave nourished by healthy, organic food that otherwise would have broken their budgets. Rather than setting prices, the SAME Cafe invites customers to pay whatever price they think is fair or volunteer in exchange for a meal. Fueled by a lot of heart, pay-as-you-can and pay-it-forward restaurants are springing up across the United States, nourishing bodies and souls with food, service, and community. Read More >>
back to top Friday, July 2, 2010 The Brain of a Sociopath  "You see that? I'm 100 percent. I have the pattern, the risky pattern. In a sense, I'm a born killer." An ironic statement, coming from a neuroscientist who studies the brains of killers. After discovering his own lineage to be wrought with murderers, Jim Fallon peered into his own brain and found that, genetically speaking, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. He found an empty area in his orbital cortex, the part of the brain involved with ethical behavior. But the gentle scholar displays little tendencies towards violence. So what distinguishes Fallon from a psychopath? A nurturing childhood, he believes. While brain chemistry and genes play their part, his research indicates that a caring environment can make all the difference. Read More >>
back to top Thursday, July 1, 2010 A Global Teacher  From a tiny closet in Mountain View, California, Sal Khan is educating the globe for free. His 1,516 videotaped mini-lectures -- on topics ranging from simple addition to vector calculus and Napoleonic campaigns-- are transforming the former hedge fund analyst into a YouTube sensation, reaping praise from even reluctant students across the world. "I think he rocks. I'm studying pre-algebra and I love it," says 11-year-old Felix Thibodeau of Wilmington, North Carolina. Derek Hoy of Australia's University of Queensland agrees, "I learned more about calculus in the last few hours than in the whole of the last semester at university." Khan envisions a world free of dense textbooks, crowded lecture halls and bored students. With 70,000 people tuning into his lectures every day, his dream seems pretty close to reality. Read More >>
back to top Wednesday, June 30, 2010 9 Ways to be Happy in the Next 30 Minutes  There are mornings when we rush out of bed in a vague fog. Days that seem to spiral progressively down the drain. But sometimes, all we need to do is stop. Take a breath. And re-discover ourselves in the moment. "Being happier doesn't have to be a long-term ambition," Gretchen Rubin states. "You can start right now." She suggests that little things, like taking a walk outside, doing a good deed, ridding yourself of a nagging task, or even just acting happy can radically transform our moods, boost morale, and energize us for the rest of the day. Read More >>
back to top Tuesday, June 29, 2010 The Beggar Who Gives Alms  It was an unusual sight. A man in tattered clothes limping through school gates with a bundle of brand-new clothes to give away. In an age of rapid technology and rising standards of living- a world where we are told to provide for ourselves before thinking of others- Khimjibhai Prajapati sure knows how to let go. After the downfall of his tea business, Khimjibhai sought refuge as a beggar outside a Jain temple. For the past ten years, he has lived on the alms of passerby, taking just enough for a bit of food and some money to send to his ailing wife. The rest go to the poor, like the instance last Saturday, where he spent his savings to buy clothes for 11 hearing and speech-impaired girls at a nearby school. Bharat Shah, a trustee of the school exclaims, "I have never seen such philanthropy in the 35 years of career." But for Khimjibhai, the principle is simple: "Whether rich or poor, one should always try to help the needy." Read More >>
back to top Monday, June 28, 2010 The Art of the Mind  "After about an hour I got to a ridge top that I'd never been on before. It was hot. I headed down the ridge, looking for a shady spot to eat my sandwich. I saw a large tree, standing alone, about one hundred yards off the edge of the trail. It had a great view: a vast swath of the East Bay stretching away to San Francisco with the Golden Gate in the distance. Not a bad place to be homeless, I thought." After finishing his sandwich, Tom Weidlinger looked at the tree more closely. He noticed a few small, weathered canvases tucked in between some of the branches. "As far as I could see there was nothing on the canvases except patches of black and grey mold. Whatever had once been painted on the surfaces had apparently been eradicated by sun, rain, and wind. Then I moved closer and picked up the smallest canvas, leaning against the base of the tree trunk. There was something on it after all. Typed in tiny and now faded Courier letters was this inscription: "Welcome to the art of the mind." Read More >>
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It is so often true that "what goes around, comes around," and that life lessons often walk in through the most unexpected doors. On one hot summer day, a single mother and her son find themselves on a broken down bus. When their fellow elderly passengers grow unbearable hot and uncomfortable, the mother-son duo hand out all their food without a second thought, even though they have no money to spare to buy more. Eventually, they make it to the train station, but only to discover they had missed the last train of the evening! With no other option but to spend a dinner-less night at the station, a stranger nearby shouts, "Hey you two, come over here!..." [ 
Chris Mburu feels fortunate to have received an education at all. Growing up in a mud house in Kenya, it seemed unlikely that he or his neighbors would escape a cycle of poverty. Today, Mburu is a Harvard Law School graduate and works as a human rights advocate for the United Nations. How did this happen? A small and consistent act of hope from a teacher in Sweden. Years ago, Hilda Back decided to sponsor a child in Kenya to go to school. While the 15 dollar monthly donation seemed insignificant to her, she kept it up because she thought even a small act was worth performing. Little did she know her small commitment would help educate and empower a whole generation of Kenyan children years later. Mburu started a foundation (named in Back's honor) to give other poor and promising children the same opportunity Back had given him. Their story has even been made into a documentary called "A Small Act," which airs July 12 on HBO. [ 
Tucked away in the small village of Kamikatsu, Japan is a phenomenon that is saving the future of our planet. This township of just over 2,000 residents separates household waste into 34 categories, recycling everything under the kitchen sink: food, phones and even sake bottles! Most likely the first to achieve Japan's mission of a zero waste environment by the year 2020, Kamikatsu emulates hope for a clean, vibrant and sustainable planet. [ 
Ever notice a feeling of warm satisfaction from giving someone a gift? Or a sense of joy from treating someone else to a meal? This link between good vibes and good deeds may be more than coincidence, say researchers at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School. In a recent study, participants were given $10 and asked to decide how much of it to share with someone else. Those who gave more money away reported higher levels of happiness- both in hormone levels and questionnaire results. "The moral of the story is that the economic decisions we make can have downstream health consequences," concludes study co-author Lara Aknin. Maybe money can buy happiness after all, if it's given away... [ 
Patience is one of those qualities that doesn't get much consideration -- especially in our fast-paced 21st century. But there is tremendous wisdom in it. Patience is what helps us let go of an unhelpful obsession with outcomes and with our limited identities. It is a recognition that our reality is in flux and we don't always know what is best. Practiced deeply, patience is what dissolves unexamined reactions and habits of interpretation, allowing us to see things in a way that is more real, more whole, more true. But the trouble with patience is that it usually comes too little, too late. We've already yelled at a loved one, or thrown away months of work in despair. So how do we develop patience before we actually need it? Here are five practical tools to experiment with. [ 
"I like your jeans." "I like your brown shoes." "Have a nice day!" Don't you love it when someone says something nice about you? Doesn't that brighten your day? Imagine how wonderful your day would be if someone said something nice about you, just because. Brett Westcott and Cameron Brown, also known as The Compliment Guys at Purdue University, are doing exactly that. "When people come up after they've had a bad day and say thanks for a good compliment, that brightens my whole day," says Cameron. Compliments are so contagious, that the duo even went on a 10-day compliment tour last summer! [ 
