Coelho's 1 Min Manual For Climbing Mountains
"A. Choose the mountain you want to climb: don't pay attention to what other people say, such as 'that one's more beautiful' or 'this one's easier.' You'll be spending lots of energy and enthusiasm to reach your objective, so you're the only one responsible and you should be sure of what you're doing." Through 11 simple but profound guidelines, Paulo Coelho, bestselling author of "The Alchemist," ... posted on Dec 20 2011, 48,977 reads

Secret Santas Take the Country by Surprise
The young father stood in line at the Kmart layaway counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children. He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn't be able to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter. "She told him, 'No, I'm paying for it,'" recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in India... posted on Dec 19 2011, 16,495 reads

The Never-Ending Story
In 2006, Jonathan Harris and a colleague launched We Feel Fine, a project that took the Web's emotional pulse by culling personal data from blogs. It was the first of several groundbreaking websites that Harris helped to create, and the project attracted widespread attention. In the following years, however, Harris began to feel like a voyeur. Determined to find a more open, transparent way to cha... posted on Dec 18 2011, 3,728 reads

Locked Up, Yet Calm Within
"Prison time, you're in a box. Every second, every day, every year, every decade -- there's no hope. No matter what you accomplish in there, no matter what you do in there, you're still in that box." These are the words of boxer Dewey Bozella, locked up for 26 years for a crime that he did not commit. His is a story about the triumph of the human spirit, and living proof of the maxim: "never give ... posted on Dec 16 2011, 4,228 reads

7 Spiritual Perspectives on Personal Leadership
"How do you deal with change? How comfortable are you with what is on your plate? Are you creating or are you resisting? The quality of your leadership depends on how you deal with the cards that you draw and how you succeed using what you got." This article presents an approach for increasing personal mastery and leadership effectiveness, based on ancient spiritual wisdom from around the world. ... posted on Dec 15 2011, 64,840 reads

Stepping Out of the "Should" Trap
"'I should make more money. I should lose weight. I should volunteer more often.' In saying 'should' so often, I found myself feeling trapped by a sense of obligation and expectation. I felt this vague pressure to conform to external standards, to be someone or do something. It felt like just being me wasn't okay. I felt pushed to follow a particular path, behave in specific ways, and believe cert... posted on Dec 14 2011, 38,971 reads

How Doctors Die
"In his last few months of life after discovering that lung cancer had spread into his brain, my older cousin Torch went to Disneyland for the first time, ate his favorite foods, had no serious pain, and remained high-spirited. Torch wasn't a doctor, but like many doctors who have access to medical care when diagnosed with a fatal disease, he chose state of the art end-of-life care: death with dig... posted on Dec 13 2011, 0 reads

The 9 Dwarves: A Legend of Conservation
With multinational companies accelerating exploitation of oil, timber and minerals, activist Ladislas Desire Ndembet decided that he had to supply a stronger local voice in the West African nation of Gabon. Financed out of his own modest salary from running a cleaning business on the side, Ndembet's NGO is an inspired movement to conserve some of the world's largest intact tropical rainforests for... posted on Dec 12 2011, 8,954 reads

The Library Rethought
Libraries have a special place in history as a hearth of culture that kindled the greatest feats of science and the grandest works of art. Yet today, they're in danger of being left precisely there -- in history. As our collective use of libraries dwindles in the digital age, five brave efforts are innovating the concept of "the library" in ways that make it as culturally relevant today as it ever... posted on Dec 11 2011, 8,697 reads

What a 10-Year-Old Did for the Tar Sands
10-yr-old Ta'Kaiya Blaney stood outside Enbridge Northern Gateway's office on July 6, waiting for officials to grant her access to the building. She thought she could hand deliver an envelope containing an important message about the company's pipeline construction. But the doors remained locked. "I don't know what they find so scary about me," she said, as she was ushered off the property by secu... posted on Dec 10 2011, 8,035 reads