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July 29, 2011

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Using Soccer to Turn it Around

Lisa Wrightsman used soccer to turn her life around, and now she’s using it to help others do the same. Wrightsman was in a semipro league, but later succumbed to drugs, alcohol, homelessness and jail. Last year, however, she entered a Volunteers of America recovery program and discovered their street soccer program. With soccer as her pivot, she made a big shift in her own life, and then saw the potential of street soccer as a movement to help others also get off the street. “I saw she changed. I wanted what worked for her to work for me,” said Christina Sanchez, 31, who is now part of the team. With Wrightman’s leadership, for the first time, Sacramento will send a women’s Mohawks homeless soccer team to the national tournament this summer. { read more }

Be The Change

Consider challenges you’ve gone through which position you uniquely to serve others.

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July 28, 2011

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Why Are Easy Decisions So Hard?

“Why do I squander so much mental energy on the mundane purchases of everyday life? I think I’ve found a good answer. Although I know that every floss will work well enough, sometimes I still can’t help waste an embarrassing amount of time on the decision. What I believe happens is that instead of realizing that picking a floss is an easy decision, I confuse the array of options and excess of information with importance, which then leads my brain to conclude that this decision is worth lots of time and attention. Call it the drug store heuristic: A cluttered store shelf leads us to automatically assume that a choice must really matter, even if it doesn’t.” Jonah Lehrer, the author of “How We Decide” further describes some clever experiments that expose the cognitive illusion of seemingly important choices. { read more }

Be The Change

Observe your own decision making today. What factors contribute to hard decisions? What factors contribute to easy ones?

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July 27, 2011

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Living Plastic Free

Three years ago, Beth Terry, like many other Americans chose double plastic bags, threw the plastic bottles in the trash and ate frozen dinners — generating about 100 lbs of plastic waste a year. But after seeing a photo of the sea being filled with plastic products, she resolved to live a plastic free life. From January to November 2010, she generated less than 2 pounds of plastic waste. And she went further. Beth discovered that Clorox’s US Brita water filters are recycled in Europe. 7 months, 16,000 signatures and 600 filters later, Beth successfully petitioned Clorox. Beth asks, “What difference can one person make?” Most of all, one person who reduces their plastic waste is motivated to drive for systemic change. As Beth states in this TEDx video, “We have the power to change the menu that’s offered to us.” { read more }

Be The Change

Apply these 5 strategies for reducing plastic’s environmental impact, and check out the 7 misconceptions about plastic recycling. { more }

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July 26, 2011

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A Low Electron Diet

Author Shannon Hayes turns her computer off every morning around 9 am, once her workday is complete. Then she tunes out the rest of the world and tunes into her family, home, and farm. Very often the telephone gets turned off, too. So does the radio. “I shut out the wide world to tend to my immediate world.” Hayes continues: “Radical homemakers are not one-person wonders, single-handedly capable of heroic feats of self-reliance. Rather, we have some meta-skills that work the real magic: savvy functioning within a life-serving economy, an ability to self-teach and overcome fears, realistic expectations, an understanding of what gives us deep pleasure, and, most importantly, relationship skills. I don’t do it all. I am in an interdependent relationship with my family and my closest friends, and together, we get stuff done.” { read more }

Be The Change

Try an experiment of turning off your technology for a set period of time each day for a week.

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July 25, 2011

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Why Patience Pays Off

“Consider this powerful quote by Lao Tzu: ‘Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles, and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?’ We might think of “waiting” as taking time, but it’s actually less about clock time and more about inner space. Of course, there are moments when our immediate gut-level response to a situation is a flash of intuition that can be trusted, moments when it’s crystal clear what needs to be done. But at other times, an experience stirs up some of that inner mud, and at those times, patience engages us in the process of becoming still. An unclear mind, one in which right action isn’t obvious, isn’t a “bad” thing. Wisdom, after all, develops at the edges of our understanding.” A deep reflection on why patience pays off: { read more }

Be The Change

Withhold an immediate response to a question. Instead, practice patience and allow the answer to become clearer.

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July 24, 2011

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You Can’t Buy Empathy

“It’s not what you know but who you know,” the saying goes, suggesting that social connections breed success. But it seems there’s at least one way that the well educated are less socially connected: New research finds that those with an economic advantage have more trouble reading others’ emotions. In a series of studies, researchers examined how well participants could judge the emotions that other people were feeling, a skill known as “empathic accuracy.” In one study, they showed 200 adults photos of faces expressing different emotions, finding that people with just a high school education identified the emotions more accurately than people who had a four-year college degree. { read more }

Be The Change

In this short passage, Paul Gorman talks about the listening mind, and how it facilitates a “closer attunement with the empathy and compassion of our heart.” { more }

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July 23, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

Pick Up Artists Across America

When most people see a fast-food bag fluttering on the corner of the highway, they probably shake their heads and keep on driving. The Pick Up Artists aren’t most people. These four young environmentalists are driving across America, conducting roadside cleanups and spreading the word about reducing waste. After just three months on the road, the Pick Up America project has already collected more than 37,000 pounds of garbage. And they’re only 340 miles into their 2-year, cross-country trip. { read more }

Submitted by: Arathi R.

Be The Change

See something that needs fixing? Take a small step to help serve the situation.

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Millionaire Janitor

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