Awesome Stories 271

/ April 30, 2016

This week Awesome Stories brings you whale wonder, altruism, skating grace, more play and The Spark.

Whale Wonder

I love how excited this group becomes when watching and touching the whales in this video. The mother whale clearly trusts this group and decides to share her baby with them. Watch and share the joy.

The Recipe for Happinessaltruism, Awesome Stories

Matthieu Ricard, also known as the world’s happiest man, has a unique recipe for happiness. After spending 25 years in hermitage as a Buddhist monk, he decided to see if he could help humanity. Since returning to the everyday world, he’s been part of 150 humanitarian projects, including books, TED Talks, research for meditation’s effect on the brain and lately the benefits of altruism. His latest book highlight the research, impacts and importance of altruism for the world. His book makes the case that learning to live for the good of others may be necessary to overcome the world’s challenges.

Grace Under Pressure

This performance was so graceful and fluid. I can easily see why they won gold at the world figure skating championship in Boston. I hope you enjoy this mesmerizing skating performance by Canada’s Megan Duhamel and Eric Radford as much as I did.

The Spark

It’s nice to know there are scientists and individuals determined to use science for good. The Spark is a collection of knowledge collected and distributed for the purpose of helping preserve people and the planet. The goal is to make independent scientific knowledge widely available to the public and counter the current trend for science to be shaped by corporate and government influence rather than strictly independent for highest good. And you can even recommend or upload information too.

Risky Play

We have an idea that children are too fragile or unintelligent to assess the risk of any given situation.

According to the latest research, we need to let children run a little wild and even encourage some risky activities. Most kid’s play spaces are too safe and too sanitized. By risky, they mean giving kids the opportunity to assess and manage challenges. Then they develop a broader range of mental, social and physical skills. They don’t mean inherently dangerous, just real world challenges and risks. This was common sense when I was growing up, but reverses our cultural trend to protect kids and adults from all apparent dangers.

I decided to offer one more Awesome Stories before I leave and really don’t know if I will be posting or not while I travel. We’ll see whether I find access and inspiration. I also feel a digital holiday might be good for me.

May your week be filled with beauty, grace and play!

 

 

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21 thoughts on “Awesome Stories 271”

  2. Lovely stories, Brad. Thank you! Most remarkable to me: the happiness monk/speaker and the skaters who took my breath away. I didn’t quite see the mother whale lift the calf, but it was nice to see the two whales.

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  5. Thank you for these beautiful stories. I’m glad you shared them with us before your travels, and I hope you find peace in your journey. We all need those times of quiet to rest and find our selves again.

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  6. Once again, here’s a collection of fabulous stories! I want to learn more about “the world’s happiest man” – and, I have to admit (while chuckling) that I was waiting for the line, “…and I’m going to go try this monk thing out for myself for awhile” at the end of that paragraph.
    I could see you doing that, actually. 😀
    Anyways, I hope you’re having a nice weekend. Thank you again for the nice compilation of what is going right with the world. I truly love these.

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  7. That was truly a magical performance, two highly talented people in total sync with each other! I recently bought two of Ricard’s books as I am very interested in altruism/compassion/empathy and how it can be turned from the emotional state into action steps that facilitate change.

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  9. Hi Brad,

    The Sparc looks like a great project. It was interesting to see the scientist-author Mae-Wan Ho as one of the contributors to the article that is on the homepage. I have read several of her books and think she is a pretty remarkable scientist and thinker.

    Peace
    Michael

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  11. glad to see you appreciate Matthieu Ricard – our fellow citizen… his statements have been present @ my blog several times… 🙂
    * * *
    my very best, lots of inspiration & have a sunny weekend! cheers, Mélanie Bedos-Nicolas

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