Yearly Archives: 2013

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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