Stories by Maria Popova - DailyGood

7 Ways to Have More by Owning Less

Maria Popova 101,728

Stuff. We invariably accumulate it and often times develop a certain emotional attachment to it. To some extent, ...

More Than Human: Striking Animal Portraits

Maria Popova 71,216

""Erasing the awe-inspiring variety of sentient life impoverishes all our lives," historian Joanna Bourke wrote in ...

Six Pillars of the Wholehearted Life

Maria Popova 70,713

In what has been named as one of the best commencement speeches of all time, Parker Palmer, author, educator, and ...

How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love

Maria Popova 64,088

"'Find something more important than you are,' philosopher Dan Dennett once said in discussing the secret of ...

Bertrand Russell's 10 Commandments of Teaching

Maria Popova 58,571

Philosopher, mathematician, historian, and social critic Bertrand Russell is one of the most intellectually diverse ...

How We Grieve: Learning to Live with Loss

Maria Popova 56,026

John Updike wrote in his memoir, "Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So ...

Material World: a Portrait of the World's Possessions

Maria Popova 54,062

"Photojournalist Peter Menzel's visual anthropology captures the striking span of humanity's socioeconomic and ...

Bobby Mcferrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy": a Neuropsychology Reading

Maria Popova 54,054

"In 1988, Bobby McFerrin wrote one of the most beloved anthems to happiness of all time. On September 24 that year, ...

Lessons From 7 Years of Brain Pickings

Maria Popova 49,812

In 2006, Maria Popova shared an idea with a few friends: to start a weekly digest featuring five stimulating things ...

Where Children Sleep: James Mollison’s Poignant Photographs

Maria Popova 48,609

'Where Children Sleep' is a remarkable series capturing the diversity of and, often, disparity between children's ...

7 Essential Books on Optimism

Maria Popova 47,365

Every once in a while, we all get burned out. Sometimes, charred. And while a healthy dose of cynicism and ...

Timeless Wisdom From the Late Nelson Mandela

Maria Popova 47,308

"We have lost Nelson Mandela, unequaled patron saint of equality, peace, and human rights. But while the body might ...

Why the Capacity for Boredom Is a Good Thing

Maria Popova 46,701

When was the last time you were bored -- truly bored -- and didn't instantly spring to fill your psychic emptiness ...

Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on Anger, Forgiveness and What Maturity Really Means

Maria Popova 45,798

"Our emotional life maps our incompleteness, philosopher Martha Nussbaum wrote in her luminous letter of advice to ...

7 Must-Read Books on Education

Maria Popova 44,487

Education is something we're deeply passionate about, but much of today's dominant formal education model is in need ...

Fixed Vs Growth: the Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives

Maria Popova 43,949

Years of research by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck highlights the power of our beliefs, both conscious and ...

This Will Make You Smarter

Maria Popova 41,886

Suppose you had the chance to ask the world's top scientists, psychologists and innovators what they believed were ...

David Whyte on the True Meaning of Friendship, Love, and Heartbreak

Maria Popova 41,304

After a certain age, words flow from us, often without a second thought. So how can we come back into a conscious ...

Anne Lamott on Grief, Grace, and Gratitude

Maria Popova 40,327

In this sharp yet poignant piece, writer Anne Lamott reflects on mortality and what it means to be truly alive. She ...

Love After Love: Derek Walcott's Poetic Ode to Being at Home in Ourselves

Maria Popova 40,234

It is often said that in order to truly love another, you must learn to love yourself. But, what does loving ...

The Psychology of Choice: 5 Perspectives

Maria Popova 38,898

"Why are you reading this? How did you decide to click the link, load the page and stay? How do we decide to do ...

The Spirit of Sauntering: Thoreau on the Art of Walking and the Perils of a Sedentary Lifestyle

Maria Popova 38,578

In Thoreau's 1861 treatise "Walking" penned seven years after Walden, he sets out to remind us of how that primal ...

A Final and Lovely Collaboration

Maria Popova 38,398

Beloved children's author Ruth Krauss penned more than thirty books for little ones over the course of her ...

The Science of Stress and How Our Emotions Affect Our Susceptibility to Burnout and Disease

Maria Popova 37,682

Many people have studied the effects that stress can have on the body, "but no researcher has done more to ...

How Language Enabled Innovation and Evolution

Maria Popova 36,550

"How did 'culture' develop, exactly? Language, says evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel, was instrumental in enabling ...

The Nature of the Self

Maria Popova 35,708

Our emotions, beliefs, and ideals are constantly changing, and most cells in our bodies are completely renewed every ...

The Science of How Your Mind-Wandering Is Robbing You of Happiness

Maria Popova 34,441

""The main thing is to get what little happiness there is out of life in this war-torn world," Clare Boothe Luce ...

Wislawa Szymborska: Life-While-You-Wait

Maria Popova 33,803

From Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska's poem, "Life-While-You-Wait" is "-- a bittersweet ode to life's string ...

Julia Cameron on How to Get Out of Your Own Way

Maria Popova 33,295

"Art is a spiritual transaction. Artists are visionaries... Art is an act of faith, and we practice practicing it." ...

An Experiment in Love: Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Six Pillars of Nonviolent Resistance and the Ancient Greek Notion of 'Agape'

Maria Popova 32,908

Non-violence is a term one often hears next to names like Martin Luther King and Gandhi. It may bring to mind ...

Wendell Berry on Solitude and Why Pride and Despair Are the Two Great Enemies of Creative Work

Maria Popova

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