Gratefulness.org Here in our Stories of Grateful Living, we honor the voices of our community as we invite people to share their personal experiences with gratefulness. Join us in appreciating the explorations, reflections, and insights of fellow community members as we collectively learn what it means to live gratefully. In the short poetic video Iyore, Imuetinyan Ugiagbe shares her powerful story. Every moment offers an opportunity to be grateful. When we choose to be grateful, our soul glows. My name is Imuetinyan Ugiagbe and I am a visual storyteller who happens to be visually impaired. The title of the piece I am sharing with you is Iyore (pro... posted on May 12 2022 (3,380 reads)

we ‘floor the pedal’ in our daily tasks, our exercises, our educational growth. Daniel Kahneman, in his bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow, emphasises the need for both fast thinking — often automatic actions, such as judging distances when driving — and slow thinking — deliberation to thoroughly examine a matter, to understand all possibilities, before coming to any conclusion. It may be as simple as parking a car in a tight space or making a decision about a business strategy. Thinking fast means the mind will turn to prior solutions. Thinking slow allows new ideas to emerge. There is a general perception that slowing down is wasting time or indicates ... posted on Aug 4 2022 (3,726 reads)

multiple intersections of our historical precedents, our respective lineages & storylines, and what future beings to come (including ourselves) require for reconciliation and healing.  This book is a direct result of these working lines, the fabric of relationships we steward, and our ongoing inquiries. What we have written in these pages is informed by our engagement with funders, activists, social movements, elders, cosmologists, anthropologists, economists, financial investors, business leaders, policy wonks and others. In addition, we conducted ongoing research of critical discourse in the space, hosted and led funder gatherings, and interviewed over a hundred people to inf... posted on Sep 20 2022 (4,475 reads)

says Nikos. “The world can absorb a certain amount of ignorance. But things are now out of hand, so we need to think in a new way. We have become used to thinking in a certain way, but that way is out of sync with nature.” Drive by agendas, such as development, growth, and innovation, we practice “spiritual materialism,” disconnecting us from reality and distorting it through a narrow view of conquest consciousness. In this epoch of “endarkenment,” business and political “leaders” even insist that our need for a thriving, just world is not “realistic,” even though we—and they—all know that our well-being depen... posted on Oct 19 2022 (3,733 reads)

and remember? How to venerate the world? More and more, I think a solution is awe. As Dacher Keltner’s work shows, awe seems to orient us to things outside of our individual selves. It suggests our true nature is collective. Studying narratives of awe in cultures across the world, Keltner and colleagues found that a common part of natural awe is the sense that plants and animals are conscious and aware. I try and listen again. Perhaps slime molds just want to go about their damn business. How? On dead wood, debris, twigs, leaves, all the stuff we tidy away judiciously and ignorantly, not realizing that we are destroying exquisite jewels. As our systems fail and break down,... posted on Feb 5 2023 (3,589 reads)

Zachary Shore was a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, he called his parents to tell them he was dropping out. Legally blind by age 16, his vision had continued to deteriorate, and he found himself socially isolated, fearful, and debilitated by eye strain. After an encounter on campus with a fellow blind student who had just returned from a solo excursion with seeming ease, Zach had a moment of awakening: “My problem wasn’t my blindness. It was my lack of skills and confidence.” He would indeed come to find a remarkable set of skills and confidence — eventually earning a doctorate from Oxford University, becoming a distinguished scholar of internat... posted on Feb 8 2023 (1,938 reads)

that is, when you look at this graph, it’s maximal uncertainty. This is why I think it’s so hard and why the journey of Sounds True that you have inspired ever-so-many people with and certainly interpersonal neurobiology, it feels like it’s coming to that place that when you open to uncertainty, you release the possibility of connection. And this is I think, this is this really incredible moment in our human family to do this. There’s a window to make a change in business as usual. Joanna Macy calls it “The Great Turning,” and anything that we can do to actually bring this Great Turning, which means instead of just the solo self of separation, we r... posted on Mar 10 2023 (2,318 reads)

there it goes, you know? And there it goes. Cynthia: Beautiful. It's incredible. I was getting a sense, as you were talking -- you were very embodied -- and I was getting a sense of what it might look like in these sterile hospital rooms with this team of -- well, are you all women? Is your team all women? Shay: It's not all women, no. Cynthia: Ok, females and males almost like dancing and communicating in nonverbal ways, and outside the door is hospital business as usual. I love it. I love it. And it gives me hope that these kinds of healings are happening and have been happening, you know, sort of hidden in plain sight for decades now. So that's... posted on Mar 16 2023 (2,604 reads)

really doing is pointing to the fact that we belong to each other and there's no condition." So then to another question, which was: “Why Soul Biographies? Why black and white?” I didn't know what I was doing. But when you're following this way of life taking hold of you and living itself through you, it's a pain in the backside, to be honest, sometimes, physically, because you're not in control. You're just not in control. You can't stick a business model on it as such. You can't do any of that. I don't think you can. I've tried many times. I've tried. It has a life of its own because it's life living itself through y... posted on Apr 11 2023 (3,100 reads)

           of age. Centuries of pleasure before us and after us, still right now, a softness like a worn fabric of a nightshirt,  and what I do not say is: I trust the world to come back.              Return like a word, long forgotten and maligned               for all its gross tenderness, a joke told in a sunbeam, the world walking in, ready to be ravaged, open for business. [Music: “Molerider” by Blue Dot Sessions] Tippett:So the poem you wrote, “Joint Custody.” You get asked to read it. It’s wonderful. And I want you to read... posted on Apr 22 2023 (3,167 reads)

remember that whatever discipline you are in, whether you are a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a designer, whatever you do you have one thing that's unique. You have the ability to make art. And for me, and for so many of the people I have known, that's been a lifesaver. The ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones. Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I'm serious. Husband runs off... posted on May 21 2023 (4,386 reads)

two categories — the be-sought, and the besotted. Amaryllis was besotted– with a disinterested shepherd. She turns, as the spurned in Greek legends often do, to the Oracle of Delphi– that dispenser of non-linear advice, who excels at keeping things interesting. Oracular wisdom suggests Amaryllis adopt a 30-day regimen of piercing her heart with a golden arrow while standing at the cottage door of her crush. She complies, and on the final day of this rather risky business, the crimson drops of blood splattered on the ground are transformed into ruby red flowers. The theatrical alchemy of it all melts the shepherd’s indifference. As he embraces his self-h... posted on Jun 3 2023 (3,490 reads)

the end goal. The yellow underwing moth ruins itself upon candle flame not through an innate love of heat, but by conflating it with heaven’s light by which it steers its life’s course. What is it we truly seek when we dream of flying? If it is unfettered freedom, then this most universal of desires may prove to be an unexpected trap, as the aforementioned birds in this essay have ascertained, at least on an energetics level. Laughing at gravity for any length of time is a tiring business, not so much in the face but more with the incessant flapping, necessitating an incessant munching of bugs or fish or sticks of butter, the latter of which might be platonic perfection in cal... posted on Jul 10 2023 (2,628 reads)

eyes, God used a humble instrument to restore the deflated and depressed Bill to a state of grace. At least, that is how Bill saw it; he referred to his first meeting with Father Ed as his “second conversion experience.” Father Ed planned his trip to New York City as a one-night stopover on his rail journey to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he was to address a meeting of the Proportional Representation League on November 18. His calendar does not indicate that he had any business in New York; it seems his only reason for spending the night there was so he could visit the Alcoholics Anonymous clubhouse and, he hoped, meet Bill Wilson. It was eight p.m. on November 1... posted on Aug 2 2023 (6,314 reads)

the page moment. I’m curious, when you reflect on this poem going viral during our time right now 2016 and then all of the repeated ways when there’s a tragedy in the world that people bring up Good Bones and send it through social media. What do you think is in the poem that has landed so powerfully for people? MS: It’s almost not for me to say, and in some ways when I write a poem and then I send it into the world or a memoir or an essay it sort of stops being my business what other people think about it. But what I hear from people about why they share it is that it acknowledges the difficulty and darkness in the world. It doesn’t have a Pollyanna outlo... posted on Aug 10 2023 (2,914 reads)

for the sole purpose of slowing down. to savor stillness. to allow myself the gift of being. *** LATE BLOOMER Most successful thirty under thirty. Wealthiest forty under forty. We can’t all be burgeoning poppies, bursting forth, robust and colorful. Show me those who are more tortoise than hare. The actress who gets her first starring role at forty. The writer who publishes his first novel at fifty. The entrepreneur who launches a business at sixty. The painter who opens a gallery at seventy. Recount the stories of those who bloom like the agave americana, slow and steady, maturing over decades until flowers rip... posted on Oct 2 2023 (5,230 reads)

as a producer, and I would even say kind of a midwife to bringing art and music and beauty into the world. But I would like to ask you, just — I mean you started Def Jam, was that in high school or college? I’ve seen both. Rubin: That was in college. Tippett: In college. What was it that you felt needed to be in the world that wasn’t in the world, that was in that impulse to create that for you? Rubin: Well, I didn’t know anything about the music business or how to do anything professionally. Just, I was in a punk rock band and I made recordings of my own band. And then I hung out in record stores because that’s where you could learn the... posted on Nov 30 -0001 (30 reads)

you don’t get it, or your hard work does not pay off. Faced with a sense of loss and disappointment, we have no choice but to respond. In his famous work Man’s Search for Meaning, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote that every person is questioned by life and can only answer to life by being responsible. In each of us, he proposed, we have a responsibility—or the ability to respond. Whether you are a leader who lost a job or an opportunity, an entrepreneur starting a new business, or simply facing a personal challenge, your ability to respond (and how likely you are to bounce back) is partly shaped by the way you talk with and to yourself. Below, we share three easy-t... posted on Apr 3 2024 (3,683 reads)

what’s an individual to do? When the great Naomi Klein gets asked this question, she answers: “Stop thinking of yourself as an individual.” I would add to that one small word: “only.”Stop thinking of yourself only as an individual.Second shift: there’s no one right way to be a changemakerHonour what makes you, you. Instead of judging it as imperfect, see how you might use it in a way that connects to something bigger: to community, to democracy, to business and finance, culture, education… to whatever and with whomever you belong. Who can you team up with to learn, divest, inspire, re-imagine, include? Who can you listen to, and how can y... posted on Apr 10 2024 (1,790 reads)

Sarvodaya was first used by Gandhi to describe his own political philosophy: “Universal uplift.” Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne (center) has scaled a national movement. Credit: Sarvodaya Photo Archive Since its inception, Sarvodaya has grown to include more than 15,000 villages and has energized these communities to build more than 5,000 preschools, community health centers, libraries, and cottage industries. It has also established thousands of village banks and more than 100,000 small businesses — all without any government support. Their slogan characterizes the relationship between spiritual and economic development: “We build the road, and the road builds us.” ... posted on May 7 2024 (1,647 reads)