20 Simple Tools for Happiness

Happiness is a journey, not a destination; happiness is to be found along the way not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and it's too late. The time for happiness is today not tomorrow. --Paul H. Dunn 

Tip of the Day:
"Happiness is ephemeral, subject to the vagaries of everything from the weather to the size of a bank account. We're not suggesting that you can reach a permanent state called "happiness" and remain there. But there are many ways to swerve off the path of anxiety, anger, frustration, and sadness into a state of happiness once or even several times throughout the day." This Reader's Digest article offers 20 ideas to help get you started. [ more ] 

Be The Change:
If you could add your own happiness "tool" to the list above, what would it be?

Three Words of Wisdom

When I dig another out of trouble, the hole from which I lift him is the place where I bury my own. --Chinese Proverb 

Inspiration of the Day:
"One evening I was parked in front of the mall wiping off my car. I had just come from the car wash and was waiting for my wife to get out of work. Coming my way from across the parking lot was, what society would consider, a bum. From the looks of him, he had no car, no home, no clean clothes, and no money. There are times when you feel generous but there are other times that you just don't want to be bothered. This was one of the "don't want to be bothered" times." So begins a real-life story about an ordinary encounter that had extra-ordinary results... [ more ] 

Be The Change:
Give someone something they need today -- even if it's just a compliment

Alternative Medicine Is Mainstream

Everything we think, everything we say, everything we do, is either health creating or health negating. When we begin to look at health and healing that way, we can enter the realm of health creation from anywhere -- nutrition, exercise, contemplative practice, relationship. --Dr. William B. Stewart 

Good News of the Day:
Heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer and obesity account for 75% of health-care costs, and yet these are largely preventable and even reversible by changing diet and lifestyle. The latest scientific studies show that our bodies have a remarkable capacity to quickly heal if we address the lifestyle factors that often cause these chronic diseases. Many people tend to think of breakthroughs in medicine as a new drug, laser or high-tech surgical procedure. They often have a hard time believing that the simple choices that we make in our lifestyle -- what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke cigarettes, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and social support -- can be even more powerful than drugs and surgery. This Wall Street Journal Article shares further. [ more ]

Submitted by: Eric Case

Be The Change:
Incorporate an additional, healthful choice into your life this week.

The Big Fun Box

Healing yourself is connected with healing others. --Yoko Ono 

Good News of the Day:
Grant Prather knows what it's like to spend endless days in the sterile environment of a hospital room surrounded by tubes and treatment trays. Prather, 26, was born with cystic fibrosis, a debilitating disease that can progress to a systemic failure of the lungs, liver, pancreas and intestines. At one point, the doctors told his parents to prepare for his funeral. Although there's no cure for CF, Grant pulled through, but relied on an oxygen tank to breathe until his double lung transplant in 2000. Now he's done things he never dreamed possible, such as going to college, driving, running and bringing kids in hospitals a chance to have fun through his non-profit, The Big Fun Box. [ more ] 

Be The Change:
Take a peek at the items inside The Big Fun Box, and see how little everyday things can help light someone's day. [ more ]

Financial Literacy for the Masses

I have seen, time and again, that given an informed choice, the poor do not want a hand out, but simply a hand up. They want the dignity that comes from doing for self. That education is the ultimate poverty eradication tool, and when you know better, you tend to do better. --John Bryant 

Fact of the Day:
For years John Bryant has been telling anyone who will listen about the problems caused by widespread ignorance of finance. In 1992, in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, he founded Operation HOPE, a non-profit organization, to give poor people in the worst-hit parts of the city "a hand-up, not a handout" through a mixture of financial education, advice and basic banking. Among other things, Operation HOPE offers mortgage advice to homebuyers and runs "Banking on Our Future", a national personal-finance course of five hour-long sessions that has already been taken by hundreds of thousands of young people, most of them high-school students. He calls the attempt to help people help themselves out of poverty through financial literacy and economic opportunity the "silver-rights movement." This Economist article shares more. [ more ] 

Be The Change:
The FDIC created a program called Money Smart to help people enhance their money skills. Check out the training modules, or share them with someone who could benefit from them. [ more ] 

Are you Socially Intelligent?

Simply paying attention allows us to build an emotional connection. Lacking attention, empathy hasn't a chance. --Daniel Goleman 

Fact of the Day:
It is not enough to be intelligent, or even emotionally intelligent. The rules of the game have changed: we also have to be socially intelligent. So concludes Dr. Daniel Goleman, the bestselling author who first coaxed the idea of emotional intelligence into public consciousness. In his recent book, "Social Intelligence," Goleman presents a manifesto for a more compassionate, more socially interconnected, world. Mirror neurons -- the special brain cells that allow us to empathize and "catch" each other's emotions -- mean that human beings can wield great emotional power over others. Goleman finds this troublesome: "Mirror neurons make us far more neurally connected than we ever knew; this creates a pathway for emotional contagion. If you really care about people, it gives a new spin to the term social responsibility: what emotional states are you creating in the people you're with?" [ more ] 

Be The Change:
In this 4 minute video, Daniel Goleman explains Social Intelligence and the role of the brain in establishing rapport in human relationships. [ more ]

What if only religious weddings were legal?

Imagine a country where marriages between inter-religious couples are only legal if they occur outside its borders -- where there are, in fact, no civil weddings at all. That country is Lebanon.

Civil weddings are recognized in Lebanon, but they cannot take place inside the country. Marriage, divorce and inheritance are regulated according to the conventions of Lebanon's 18 recognized religions.

Help secure a place for civil marriage in Lebanon. »

The result is that people in Lebanon who don't believe in religious weddings have to go abroad to get married (if they can afford it). This is a problem for:

• couples who are Hindu, agnostic, Bahai, atheist, or members of any of the religions excluded by the country's constitution;
• couples who come from different religions; and
• couples who share the same faith but see themselves as secular.

Please urge Lebanese officials to recognize the right of citizens to civil marriages. »

Thanks for taking action! Samer ThePetitionSite

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