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Craziness Is in the Eye of the Beholder

By B. Lynn Goodwin. "I love my crazy husband," says my battle-gray shirt, which is splotched like an artist's canvas "I love my crazy wife," says a similar one that he wears. We got them on a visit to Padre Island, not far from Corpus Christi, TX, where my husband grew up. The night we purchased them, we also wore them to dinner. Maybe I was grinning self-consciously. More likely I was beaming. A woman in the bar with dark eyes and curly gray hair nodded as she read them. Her eyes were filled with understanding and approval as she…

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Choosing A Different Direction

By Gail Lynne Goodwin. Life may provide the circumstances, but we get to choose how to respond to them. I've just returned from sailing with a mastermind group in the British Virgin Islands. We set sail from Anegada to The Bitter End in Virgin Gorda, which is backwards from the trek that most sailors take. As we were sailing our course, there were a lot of boats sailing directly towards us, a 180 degree different heading from our own. One of our crew, who is new to sailing, mentioned that he was amazed that we were able to sail in…

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Harvesting Happiness: Career Day

By Lisa Cypers Kamen. When I participated in my first career day, I was barely old enough to walk to the bus stop by myself. What does a fourth grader know about a career? Very little, but boy, did we try to dream up big goals. Clustered in my elementary school’s tiny library, my classmates and I were each on a mission to find the perfect careers to compliment our strengths. Doctor was a popular pick for the science geeks. There were many future firefighters and presidents in the room, mostly among the classmates who were natural leaders. The more talkative…

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10 Tips for Inspiring Your Kids to Be the Best They Can Be

By Laura Burkey. Children are our pathway to the future, and their well-being is paramount to our world's and our family's survival. When we are at our best, we can inspire our children to do their best whether it’s on the athletic field, in the classroom, or anywhere in the world. It might seem easy to push our youngsters to be great, particularly when they are small. As toddlers, we applaud their toilet-training techniques and jump with glee when they count to 10 without any prompting. As parents, our proud meters routinely surpass the stratosphere because, let’s be honest, we…

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En”vision” 2013

By Natalie Forest, PhD. On my way home from the "Festival of Lights" recently, while thinking about some of my students I realized that I needed to write another blog, one to help jumpstart 2013 for everyone - so, here it is. One thing that I have learned about and begun to teach about in more specific ways is the Law of Attraction.  It can be very intriguing when you begin to really pay attention and become aware of your thoughts and how negative they often are.  The amazing part about the Law of Attraction is that is always works…

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Today’s Brilliance from Jaden Mitchell

If you can dream it, you can do it! I want to be a policeman when I grow up. My sister Shandi wants to be a teacher. Even though I am only 7 and my sister is 3, we are dreaming big. It does not matter if we change our dreams over and over again. If you can dream it and set a goal you can do it! If you want to be the president of the United States of America, you can do it! Our mommy and daddy give us a ton of encouragement everyday which helps us in…

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Harvesting Happiness: Enemy #1

By Lisa Cypers Kamen. If life was one long-running cartoon, we'd spot anger right away - beet-red face, steam shooting out of the ears, sweat dripping from the forehead.  We'd be able to see anger build up in ourselves and maybe, just maybe, get our emotions in check before they boil over. Life is not a cartoon. Steam will not shoot out of your ears. You will probably never sweat enough to be soaked head to toe during your angry spell. But, chronic anger is linked to physical health issues — higher risk of coronary artery disease and heart attack,…

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Empowered YOUth: 5 Ways to Restore Peace and Repair Connection in Your Family

By Michael Eisen. In a day and age where parents and kids text more than they talk, where a family that doesn't feud is an anomaly, and where the one thing that most parents and kids have in common is the stress and anxiety they face—something's gotta give! If we are going to empower the next generation and generations to come to live up to their true potential and to live a life full of passion and optimism, it is incredibly important that we create a more supportive and understanding family unit. Below are five principles and strategies that will…

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Believe and You Will Make It Happen!

I believe that God gave us our beautiful, amazing world. I have learned that with a smile, passion and the gift of sharing, you can make a difference in the world, even if it's small, and a difference in one person's life, it can happen. I am blessed to get to travel and meet a lot of people. The kids I have met this past year have made me realize a few things. One, I have a lot of work to do to reach my goal of every kid in the US having a reusable water bottle and two... I…

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Harvesting Happiness: Planet Drama

By Lisa Cypers Kamen. When it comes to rooting out environmental disasters on Planet Earth, cartoon superhero Captain Planet has got the formula down. In the TV show, the green-haired, blue-skinned environmental wonder boy joins forces with the Planeteers — five pollution-fighting kids that represent earth, wind, fire, water, and heart — to stop environmental disasters throughout the world. Whether it was poor sanitation or deforestation, Captain Planet and the Planeteers had all the elements needed to keep the world beautiful. Captain Planet’s message on environmental stewardship was way before its time, and is undoubtedly still crucial today. But lately,…

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Harvesting Happiness: Words of Mass Destruction

By Lisa Cypers Kamen. What is your weapon of choice? I'm not talking about physical weapons. I'm talking about the verbal weapons we use against each other every day. From angry words and harsh words to belittling words and careless words, when times get tough, it sometimes becomes easier to say something cruel than to say something compassionate. The result? Words of mass destruction. In a world where email and text messaging are king, this problem is magnified exponentially because our communication is stripped of everything other than potentially deadly words. Gone are the compassionate eyes or pats on the…

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Watering the Bamboo

Many of us are heralding the arrival of the new year by making a New Year's resolution or two. Unfortunately, for the vast majority, the annual attempt to start fresh and turn over a new leaf will fail. But don’t despair. After more than a dozen years of working with and studying successful people, teams and organizations, I believe giant timber bamboo farmers can teach us a lot about what it takes to make our resolutions stick. If you water giant timber bamboo in the first year, nothing happens. If you water the second year, nothing happens. If you water…

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