and one study showed they have changes in their amygdala, a brain area involved in fear and the response to threat. If you’re intimidated by the time investment, take heart — fMRI studies show that as little as 11 hours of total training, or an hour every other day for three weeks, can produce structural changes in the brain. If you’re considering dipping your toes in the practice, I wholeheartedly recommend meditation teacher Tara Brach, who has changed my life. But perhaps the most striking finding in exploring how our beliefs affect our bodies has to do with finding your purpose and, more than that, finding meaning in life. The most prominent studi... posted on Sep 13 2014 (27,010 reads)

executive David Campbell never imagined that a casual lunch with a friend in Boston in December 2004 would change the course of his life. Their conversation turned to the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami that had ravaged Southeast Asia two days earlier. It was a personal shock to his friend who had eaten lunch at a Meridien Hotel in Phuket, Thailand, just ten days before. The hotel had been damaged and several guests killed. The story deeply affected Campbell, who scoured the web to learn all that he could about the largest natural disaster of his lifetime. When he discovered a hotel in Bang Tao, Thailand, that had been damaged but, miraculously, still had Internet service, an ... posted on Dec 10 2014 (20,318 reads)

me, this is stepping into someone else’s shoes just to sell them another pair. I believe that the best use of empathy is not in the commercial world but in the social one, where it allows us to challenge prejudices and create political change. And if you look through history, there are some extraordinary figures who have harnessed this power by engaging in what I think of as “experiential empathy.” This is where you don’t just imagine someone else’s life (a practice technically known as “cognitive empathy”) but try to live it yourself, doing the things they do, living in the places where they live, and knowing the people they know. ... posted on Jan 15 2015 (29,252 reads)

“every walk is a sort of crusade.” “Go out and walk. That is the glory of life,” Maira Kalman exhorted in her glorious visual memoir. A century and a half earlier, another remarkable mind made a beautiful and timeless case for that basic, infinitely rewarding, yet presently endangered human activity. Henry David Thoreau was a man of extraordinary wisdom on everything fromoptimism to the true meaning of “success” tothe creative benefits of keeping a diary to the greatest gift of growing old. In his 1861 treatiseWalking (free ebook | public library | IndieBound), penned seven years after Walden, he sets out to remind us of how that prim... posted on Jan 2 2015 (30,215 reads)

positive self-talk to eat better, feel stronger, and rejuvenate your body.  When day-to-day life seems to revolve around providing for others, we can forget to nourish our own bodies and spirits. And yet, self-care is what empowers us to give back to the world, fully and joyfully. Start your practice by taking just a few moments each day to affirm your commitment to eat well and live a healthful life.  Each bite of food contains the life of the sun and the earth. The whole universe is in a piece of bread. —Thich Nhat Hanh I choose well so that I can feel well. —Nathalie W. Herrman Preparing fresh, healthy meals instead of ... posted on Feb 2 2015 (69,012 reads)

will give you a talisman. Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? Will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away." —Mahatma Gandhi Mahatma Gandhi was one of the great empathetic adventurers of the twentieth century, a master in the art of looking at the world from another’s perspective. His philosophy was embodied in what is known as “Gandhi’s talisma... posted on Mar 2 2015 (24,224 reads)

mentoring carries many benefits, but it's becoming more and more rare. Here are some tips for renewing an age-old practice. When I was in high school, I had a lot of big questions. I wanted to know if it was possible to devote your life to your work without compromising your integrity. I wanted to know how to be a powerful man without being a jerk. And I could not understand why so many adults seemed to be okay with the systematic injustices that plagued my hometown. I read dozens of biographies as a teenager, in search of some answers. But for many years, I did not feel safe talking to an adult about any of this, for fear of being told I was crazy. I crave... posted on May 22 2015 (27,573 reads)

gifts” and now are called “natural resources.” I always suppose that experts may be wrong. But even if they are wrong about the alleged human causes of climate change, we have nothing to lose, and much to gain, by trusting them. Even so, we are not dummies, and we can see that for all of us to stop, or start stopping, our waste and destruction today would be difficult. And so we chase our thoughts off into the morrow where we can resign ourselves to “the end of life as we know it” and come to rest, or start devising heroic methods and technologies for coping with a changed climate. The technologies will help, if not us, then the corporations that will ... posted on May 5 2015 (10,720 reads)

New Mexico, Roger was loved and nourished by his parents, Jose Amado and Dorotea Montoya; nurtured by excellent teachers; and blessed with opportunities rarely available in such remote, financially distressed areas. Roger showed extraordinary promise. As a teenager he earned a ;place on the team representing the US and Canada, traveling to Romania, France and Denmark. At 20, he received a merit scholarship to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in New York City, which led to an astonishing life as a professional dancer, performing all around the world. Why leave such an enviable position, at the pinnacle of such a career? Roger had other dreams. He was keenly aware of the children... posted on Sep 19 2015 (10,515 reads)

behavior, our relationship with success and failure in both professional and personal contexts, and ultimately our capacity for happiness. The consequences of believing that intelligence and personality can be developed rather than being immutably engrained traits, Dweck found in her two decades of research with both children and adults, are remarkable. She writes: For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. How does this happen? How can a simple belief have the power to transform your psyc... posted on Oct 9 2015 (25,538 reads)

strategy often resembles a “seed” model whereby the beginnings are small but eventually grow in complexity and completeness.” The example Siegel gives of top-down processing is a red light, which controls traffic but at the same time restricts it. He invites those present to visualize how we process whatever comes at us with internal green, yellow, and red lights. Top-down thinking is neither bad nor good, he adds, and very useful when it helps organize one’s life. But it can become a prison when there is too much restriction. As for bottom-up processing, he calls it “Beginner’s Mind.” “Hmm,” I mutter to myself as I rest for a... posted on Dec 10 2015 (25,305 reads)

our entire lives are spent in a quest to gain control, security and comfort in our lives. Unfortunately, we never really get it, so we keep trying, relentlessly. This is the main activity of our lives. What would happen if we stopped? We could be less restricted by fear, less anxious, less driven by the need for comfort … and more in love with life as it is. You might be surprised by how much we strive for control. The Ways We Try to Get Control The basic nature of life is that it is everchanging, uncontrollable. When we think we have stability in life, something comes up to remind us that no, we don’t. There is no stability, no matter how much we’... posted on Mar 10 2016 (15,523 reads)

by one puzzle piece profoundly affects each of the others. You matter, your actions matter, your art matters. We’d like to be clear that while this letter is written with an artistic audience in mind, these thoughts transcend professional boundaries and apply to all people, regardless of profession. FIRST, AWAKEN TO YOUR HUMANITY We are not alone. We do not exist alone and we cannot create alone. What this world needs is a humanistic awakening of the desire to raise one’s life condition to a place where our actions are rooted in altruism and compassion. You cannot hide behind a profession or instrument; you have to be human. Focus your energy on becoming the best human... posted on Mar 16 2016 (16,854 reads)

Lawrence Bloom. His team invented today’s ubiquitous hotel cards that promote towel reuse. But the businessman turned earth guru doesn’t plan to stop there; he’s on a lifetime mission to save us from ourselves. Alicia Buller reports. One day, many years ago, Lawrence Bloom sat in his luxury Mercedes, parked outside his seven-bedroomed, three-bathroomed house in London’s wealthy Hampstead. “Is this it?” he asked himself, as a familiar charge of fear coursed through his veins. “I had reached that material place where everybody aspires to be and, for me, anxiety was like a coat hanger: the jacket that I had worn before that moment was &lsq... posted on Mar 19 2016 (11,798 reads)

the person that he was, and if you are the lucky child who gets his heart, you should know what you can expect. *** Eric’s heart was the biggest part of him. He loved more than normal people. He seemed to have an extra portion of vitality and capacity to love than most of us have. Maybe he knew, somehow, that he wouldn’t have as much time as the rest of us, and he was determined to get as much living done as he could. Eric loved life. In the summer he begged to go swimming, in the winter he wanted to go sledding. When I went to adopt my dog he came with me and rode with her all the way home. He had a childlike optimism... posted on Apr 1 2016 (10,258 reads)

my own mind, there would have been no reason to write”. ~ Joan Didion I was at my parent’s dinner table. Before me was a worn journal of thin and discolored pages and a neat script that was gently fading away. It was my grand fathers journal and now belonged to my father. I never knew my grandfather. He had died in the months leading up to my birth, and had named me in his final days even though there was no proof that the baby to come would be a girl. In the expat life I grew up in, I never got to visit the home he had lived in, the places he had frequented and the people who had been a part of his life’s journey. I was now about to enter his world, th... posted on May 23 2016 (14,498 reads)

for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), where the Dalai Lama was a founding benefactor. As a philanthropist, he has given millions of dollars to support health care and educational charities around the world. He attributes his success partly to a kind woman named Ruth, who took 12-year-old Doty under her wing. Over the course of a memorable summer, she taught him techniques of mindfulness, visualization, and compassion that would transform his life. Now, with his book and with CCARE, he is sharing those practices (and the new science behind them) with others—and hoping to help them avoid his mistakes. “It can hurt to go throu... posted on Jul 5 2016 (56,555 reads)

                                      — Leslee Goodman The MOON: How do you describe yourself and your work? What do you do? Leyva:  I work with high school students for a program called AHA!—Attitude, Harmony, Achievement—teaching social and emotional learning skills through in-school and after-school programs. It’s the best job I’ve ever had in my life. It’s one of those jobs where you get up in the morning and you can’t wait to go to work. There’s so much meaning there. I’m a licensed drug and alcohol treatment couns... posted on Sep 3 2016 (13,411 reads)

completing a mourning process. Of seeking clarity of purpose and where next to call home. Of thinking for some time how our culture lacks deep rituals that mark the transition to manhood, and how easy it is without them to get lost somewhere between boy and man. And of how, maybe twenty years late, I am here to finally step across. _______________ The next day begins with sage smudging and a Blessing of the Seven Directions. Robert instructs us in basic survival techniques. The wildlife here is more likely to sting you than eat you, but there are bears in the woods and a pack of coyotes — chattering, yelping, barking — that visits us in the ni... posted on Oct 19 2016 (10,381 reads)

like this. First, there has been a collapse of civic virtue in the society around us, a collapse into expressive and competitive individualism, and a loss of integrated vision. This view was articulated for us most recently by the work of Robert Bellah and his colleagues in Habits of the Heart. Second, the argument runs, higher education can and should respond to this collapse by becoming a model of community in at least two ways. One is to develop new- cooperative social forms for campus life (i.e., in dormitory classroom life, where habits can be formed). Second, higher education should reorganize curricula toward a more integrated vision of the world offer more interdisciplinary stu... posted on Nov 13 2016 (12,530 reads)