How to Attend A Conference As Yourself
"I often feel awkward when I go to a conference. Reluctant to sidle up to a stranger and introduce myself, I roam, like I did at college parties, self-conscious, seltzer water in hand, not fitting in. In the midst of a sea of people chatting away enthusiastically, I am uncomfortable and alone. But when my plane from New York landed in Austin, Texas for South By Southwest, the music, film, and inte... posted on Apr 09 2012, 0 reads

Building a 'Muscular Empathy'
"'We judge others by their behavior. We judge ourselves by our intentions.' In attempting to empathize, we're actually missing the point if we are judging at all. Because then we are more concerned with being knowledgeable, being right -- or even being good -- than we are with actually feeling another person's reality. But even moral imagination, operating creatively from a place of first putting ... posted on Apr 08 2012, 16,979 reads

The Power of Self-Compassion
Are you your own worst critic? It's common to beat ourselves up for faults big and small. But according to psychologist and author Kristin Neff, that self-criticism comes at a price. For the last decade, Neff has been a pioneer in the study of "self-compassion," the revolutionary idea that you can actually be kind to yourself, accept your own faults-- and enjoy deep emotional benefits as a result.... posted on Apr 07 2012, 74,834 reads

Wisdom From Alice, Age 108
At age 108, Holocaust survivor Alice Herz Sommer still practices piano for 3 hours every day. At age 104, she had a book written about her life: "A Garden Of Eden In Hell." At age 83, she had cancer. Alice survived the concentration camps through her music, her optimism and her gratitude for the small things that came her way - a smile, a kind word, the sun. When asked about the secret of her long... posted on Apr 06 2012, 15,223 reads

Two Tragic Moments & One Boy's Compassion
Nearly a decade ago Eddie Canales was watching his son's football game. Chris Canales, a high school senior, had three offers to play college football, and that night, he was having the game of his life. With four minutes left in the fourth quarter, he made a touchdown-saving tackle. But something went wrong. "I could hear my teammates saying, 'Chris, come on, let's go,' " Chris, now 26, remembere... posted on Apr 05 2012, 8,208 reads

Advice as an Art Form
Advice is subjective. But, by passing on advice in a creative way, it is possible to create something that lasts, that people will want to live with and which can let the advice sink in slowly and help out later on. That's precisely the premise of "Advice to Sink in Slowly," a wonderful project enlisting design graduates in passing on advice and inspiration to first-year students through an ongoin... posted on Apr 04 2012, 7,780 reads

How to Make Life a Conscious Practice
When we learn a martial art, or ballet, or gymnastics, or soccer ... we consciously practice movements in a deliberate way, repeatedly. By conscious, repeated practice, we become good at those movements. Our entire lives are like this, but we're often less conscious of the practice. Each day, we repeat movements, thought patterns, ways of interacting with others ... What if we practiced consciousl... posted on Apr 03 2012, 32,266 reads

Seeing in the Dark
A visually stunning ode to time, music, and the stars, Timothy Ferris' film "Seeing in the Dark" celebrates the wonders of stargazing -- from kids learning the constellations to amateur astronomers doing professional-grade research in discovering planets and exploding stars. Here, Ferris reflects on the PBS film, which features never-before seen astronomical photography and special effects. "Our a... posted on Apr 02 2012, 7,378 reads

A Nobel Prize View: Thinking, Fast & Slow
In 2002, Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize in economics -- but he isn't an economist. Kahneman's field is the psychology of decision-making, and that's the topic of his new book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow." Kahneman tells NPR's Robert Siegel about the two systems that make up what he calls "the machinery of the mind:" System 1 -- or fast -- and System 2 -- or slow -- thinking. "We have a very narro... posted on Apr 01 2012, 6,757 reads

The Language of Love
"Love is a funny thing. As the saying goes, we often find love when we least expect, but it might be equally true that when we do find love it's different than we expected. This beautiful short film was created to raise awareness and money for a good cause, which it did. But it has gone so much further in showing us what love looks like, and how we can connect with each other when we have the cour... posted on Mar 31 2012, 10,291 reads