Positive futures

You are today where your thoughts have brought you & you will be tomorrow where your thoughts will lead you. Engage in the future when seeing possibilities.

The science of learning can offer some surprising and useful perspectives on how we guide and educate young people.

With the emergence of a global civilization, we need to move beyond the “us and them” mentality that lends itself to so much conflict, violence, and self-destruction. An absolutely essential ingredient for this is empathy.

Here are just a few more extremely interesting ideas that are changing the way we think about our species:

Roman Krznaric’s concept of Outrospection, the act of learning more about ourselves and our world by empathizing with others, and “The Six Habits of Highly Empathic People”;Charles Eisenstein’s ideas about an expanded sense of self explained in his books, Ascent of Humanity and Sacred Economics;Non-Violent Communication, developed by Marshall Rosenberg (we even have a newly-formed local Non-Violent Communication team here in Athens, Greece); andScilla Elworthy’s powerful Ted Talk about fighting with non-violence.

Also, more and more organizations centered around empathy, compassion, altruism and generosity are popping up all the time. Here are just a few: Greater Good, Roots of Empathy, Center for Building a Culture of Empathy, Random Acts of Kindness, Charter for Compassion, The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (not to mention all of the talk and action around sharing and gift economies, like the Post Growth Institute’s Free Money Day.)  by Jen Hinton,

Beyond Happiness: Buddhism and Human Flourishing Patheos (blog) We read Seligman's book, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, debating the psychology and ethics of various ways of...

21st Century Schools, Anne Shaw, What is 21st century education?

Even when not doing something for pay, do something anyway. (I love the concept behind NoShortageOfWork http://t.co/gw9A8tLNGS. I've always felt this way.

The science of learning can offer some surprising and useful perspectives on how we guide and educate young people.

"German psychoanalyst Eric Fromm said, “The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.”

Everyone I have ever known — I take that back — every likableperson I have ever known in this world has admitted to periods of sheer insecurity. They looked at themselves from the perspective of someone else — perhaps a person with no appreciation of their talents, personality traits, abilities—and judged themselves unfairly according to the perverted view."

Every time you encounter another person, think: help this person. It's not altruistic. Nothing else can so quickly supercharge your career and improve the quality of your life.When you walk into