Has this happened to you?
You place your coffee order and by the time you find a buck or two for the tip, the barista has their back to you. You look at the hand-decorated, ornamented tip jar and pause. Do you drop in the tip while no one is looking, or do you wait to get “credit”– a “thank you” for your “thank you.”
What did you do?
Does a tip fall into a jar if there is no one in the cafe to see it? Does it count? Of course it is counted at the end of the day. But in that moment, it’s not counted as your act of gratitude.
But are we tipping to enhance our own status or tipping to support someone else? Is tipping about us or…
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Raise your expectations to succeed.
“Aim for the moon and, even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” – W. Clement Stone
Or, inversely, lower your expectations to feel like you succeeded.
“The secret of happiness is low expectations.” – Barry Schwartz
Expectations can be healthy or unrealistic.
My son Griffin is in Kindergarten. We didn’t expect autism and had never suspected it until our pediatrician raised the concern when Griff was only 18-months old. Then kindergarten seemed like light years away and an impossibility.
Would he talk? Would he learn? Would he listen?
He exceeded our expectations during kindergarten. Academically he performed on a fourth grade-level; that’s as high as the test would go….
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Vladimir Putin named Steven Seagal as the Russian Special Envoy to the United States. While writing Where Am I Giving I went on a Steven Seagal tangent I thought was worth sharing. As a kid I watched a few of his movies, but until I went down the Steven Seagal rabbit hole to research the tangent I never realized how deplorable of a person he seems to be.
To set things up… the tangent came in the first chapter of the book when I write about my first post-college trip. I had been taken in by a monk, Sange, who had stayed at Steven Seagal’s house. We were prepping for a celebration in honor of Sange’s teacher Penor Rinpoche.
Here’s…
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According to the Independent Sector, a membership organization of nonprofits, the value of volunteer time is “the average wage of non-management, non-agricultural workers.” So actually the stat is pretty meaningless and simply an average wage of an American worker.
Not every volunteer or volunteer task is equal.
I worked summers at my parents’ wood truss manufacturing plant swinging a hammer, pushing a broom, and cutting and stacking boards. But I am by no means a carpenter. When I built a bookshelf in shop class in high school, the cuts were rounded and it was a rocking bookshelf, which really isn’t a very desirable quality for a bookshelf. My father, on the other hand, can build anything. If Dad…
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Yesterday Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, announced that the United States was withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council.
George W. Bush thought about doing the same thing. The Obama administration recognized the group wasn’t the most effective, but decided to work from within it.
But putting the politics aside…do you have any idea what the human rights actually are?
I bet you can’t name all 25 articles. I bet you didn’t even know that there aren’t 25 articles but 30. Ha! Got ya! I certainly couldn’t until I looked them up while researching WHERE AM I GIVING? Here’s an excerpt–probably…
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(Facing Pride volunteers, photo by Kira Childers)
“I don’t think they should be executed, just imprisoned.”
And by “they,” the twenty-something grad student in Uganda meant anyone who was gay.
Throughout my travels I’ve seen that the most consistently persecuted group is anyone in the LGBTQ community. “Homosexuality” is illegal in 74 countries and punishable by death in 14.
Each country seems to have a group, at least one, of people looked down upon. There is usually some regional variance. Costa Ricans aren’t fans of Nicaraguans taking their jobs. The government of Myanmar denies the existence of the Rohingya. Most countries don’t like migrants. Sometimes the hate is fueled by…
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My new book Where Am I Giving? comes out on July 25th, or 15th, or who knows? I’m not JK Rowling. However, I do I believe there is magic in this book that can make each of our lives and the world better.
I need your help! The world’s a noisy place and marketing budgets are limited.
So far I’ve received some great endorsements from world renowned philosophers, bestselling authors, and Gandhi’s grandson, but none of them meant as much as what my high school English teacher, Dixie Marshall, wrote to me after reading an early version of the book:
“I believe this is the most important book you have written and may ever write. It’s really an impressive book, a valuable book,…
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I met Lisa Martino-Taylor when I visited St. Louis Community College for the first time eight years ago. Since then I’ve spoken with her sociology classes a few times.
Lisa acquired government documents that uncovered a US military program during the Cold War that tested radiological, chemical, and biological weapons on Americans living in urban populations.
This isn’t some chem-trails conspiracy. Lisa wrote her dissertation on this, has been featured in reputable media outlets around the world, has inspired lawmakers to demand a full investigation, and recently released a book on it.
From a recent AP story, Cold War radiation testing widespread, author claims:
Martino-Taylor said the offensive radiological weapons program was a top priority for the government. Unknowing people in places throughout…
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If you’ve shopped at Walgreens recently, no doubt you’ve seen red clown noses for sale. They fight poverty or something, whatever that means.
“60 percent didn’t quite understand what we did,” says Janet Scardino, CEO of Comic Relief USA that partners with Walgreens to sell the noses.
Between the US and the UK, the campaign has raised more than $1.4 billion, which goes to organizations like Save the Children, Feeding America, and the Boys & Girls Club to help children in need.
NPR’s Goats & Soda reported on the campaign: “But how does buying a red foam nose at a drugstore for a buck help the cause? And does this charity with the silly name really do good work? We…
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Sitting in the Downtown Farm Stand, the only 100% organic grocer in my area, I watched the presidential returns come in on election night in 2016. I swore between sips of organic beer, as the election started to fall Donald Trump’s way.
How is this our country?
How is it that I can’t understand the voting decisions of nearly half of Americans?
Someone should really do something about this.
Dave Ring, the owner of the Farm Stand, hosted our small election gathering. Gary Younge, a reporter from The Guardian, was also there. Gary was reporting on Muncie, an area that went for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the primary. He told us this is how Brexit felt. One day you wake up…
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