We are a non-profit organization Humanity Integrated that is comprised of people who find themselves in the most interesting yet trying times of human evolution – the time of global crisis, which is the first stage of a profound change.
This Is Our Life – one more penny toward changing the social mindset toward values of mutual responsibility by changing the discourse in the media.
We look forward to seeing you Wednesday September 12th, 7:00pm online or in Toronto, where we will have a community discussion on our decreasing quality of life and look for what changes we can put forth to improve the quality of life.
“Problema” from Latin problema (genitive problematis) ‘problem’, ‘puzzle’, ‘enigma’, ‘question proposed for solution’, from Ancient Greek πρόβλημα (problema, ‘obstacle’), from προβάλλω (proballo, ‘to throw or lay something in front of someone’, ‘to put forward’), from prefix προ- (pro-, ‘in front of’) + βάλλω (ballo, ‘to throw’, ‘to cast’, ‘to hurl’).
A cinematic interpretation of the world’s largest round table gathering, PROBLEMA is a visually imaginative, thought-provoking invitation to a world of global dilemmas. Spanning seventeen questions confronting who we are and where we’re going, the film follows the insights, perceptions, reflections and views of over 100 people from more than 50 nations sat together in one circle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5dCRG_f_CU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=agmDxXIZHNY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVPZ0uQPRPI
Blow after blow, we rise from the ashes of our never-dying ego. At times, there is an impression that a collapse is imminent, and then it seems that everything is going to be okay. Only through such gradual, step-by-step development do we become aware that we must change.
The internal collapse we don’t wish to experience but are all subject to is necessary solely in order to pull us out of our own swamp, elevate us, and force us to start thinking. As a matter of fact, a consistent painful experience is but a persistent call to change. All trials and tribulations gradually pull a person out of himself, meaning out of his or her ego.
With each new step “out of ourselves” that we take, we process another type of egoism, its greater part. Repeated blows to the ego still don’t let us feel the difference and realize that with each time, our egoism goes through greater transformation and teaches us about who we are. It is extremely diverse and adapts to any situation. It always seeks how to benefit…
There is nothing accidental; nothing happens just “because”. Egoism helps us to evolve, and therefore, we cannot skip the stages of our development until the ego reaches its height and alters, or rather, transforms in order to use its own energy to act altruistically – for the good of all. But before we are conscious and mature enough to realize our altruistic potential, we have to swallow every pill, which is the only way to learn. There is no other option.
Then, when we look back on our painful experiences, we are able to comprehend what was required for the transformation of the heart to occur. And it only be achieved through human connection, merging with the hearts of others.
We have always been egoistically pushed forward by nature; we have always followed it blindly; in other words, we were instinctively pushed forward by our desire to keep fulfilling ourselves, and as it kept manifesting in us, we strove towards wealth, fame, power, knowledge—anything at all.
As a result, we have reached certain satiety, and our egoism has come to a dead end; we cannot even say that it keeps growing. On one hand, there is a certain line of reevaluation of our values: “Is it right to continue to strive towards the attainment of fame, knowledge, wealth, and power? Is this the meaning of our development?”
On the other hand, we see that our dependence on each other forces us to introduce some other international economic formulas, which must take our interdependence into consideration, in other words, if I will suffer, you will also suffer, no matter how egoistic it now appears to be. Even today, I still try to build my happiness on the suppression of others, base my power on being stronger than others, and by collecting more.
We must take the integration of the world into consideration. And if we do not correspond to this integration, we will not be able to understand the way we are supposed to advance in accordance with the world and nature. Today we feel nature’s challenge, its pressure on us with the only purpose of making us gradually begin to change ourselves to become like it. This has never happened before.
If we were to look at it from an ontological perspective, we would see that nature has always pushed us towards egoistic development. And now, on the contrary, it is showing us that egoistic development has come to an end; in other words, we have completed our development of the still, vegetative, and animate levels, when we were instinctively pushed forward by nature; this is why this level of human development is called animate.
But now we must begin developing on the “human” level, when we understand and perceive the surrounding world to the point of changing ourselves to suit it. Neither the world nor nature are forcing us to change instinctively, evoking these desires in us, which forced us to build a society, economy, technology, etc.: This no longer exists today.
Documentary unfolding the science behind the idea of six degrees of separation. Originally thought to be an urban myth, it now appears that anyone on the planet can be connected in just a few steps of association. Six degrees of separation is also at the heart of a major scientific breakthrough. That there might be a law which nature uses to organize itself and that now promises to solve some of its deepest mystery.
“While other internet films have exposed the world’s political and economic corruptions, this film will delve deeper, uncovering the origin of the unfolding problems, and more importantly, the solution.”
Renowned cellular biologist, Dr. Bruce Lipton narrates the process of a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly over a milieu of imagery in “The Evolution of the Butterfly”. The film combines first hand footage from the Occupy Wall Street movement with stylized portraits of the recent economic collapse and gives a backdrop of hope to sometimes bleak reality.
For more information on the caterpillar and butterfly, humanity and society, see Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future And A Way To Get There From Here – http://www.brucelipton.com/spontaneous-evolution-overview/
Happy to share with you this profound conversation we had with one of our favorite sages, Elisabet Sahtouris, during the Thanksgiving holidays. Hear her comment on the “ecstasy of unity and connection.” An incredible person, scholar, scientist, and a woman, from whom we draw so much insight and wisdom. An interview worth your time…
We found that happiness can spread like a virus through social networks. In fact, if your friends’ friends’ friend becomes happy, it significantly increases the chance that you’ll be happy.
–Dr. James Fowler, in “Happiness Is… – MSNBC.”
A study by two professors from Harvard and UCSD, Dr. Nicholas Christakis and Dr. James Fowler, found that when a person becomes happy:
Happiness isn’t a solitary experience; it’s dependent on others. Harvard researchers followed 4,739 people for 20 years, measuring how social networks, siblings, friends and neighbors are affected by the happiness of others.
The study controlled factors of age, gender, education and occupation.
Researchers found that close physical proximity is essential for happiness to spread. A happy friend who lives within a half-mile makes you 42% more likely to be happy yourself. If that same friend lives two miles away, the impact drops to 22%. Happy siblings make you 14% more likely to be happy, but only if they live within a mile. Happy spouses provide an 8% boost, if they live under the same roof.
Previous research has shown that people who are happy have healthier hearts, they have lower levels of stress hormones, and they live longer.
–Dr. James Fowler, in “Happiness Is… – MSNBC.”
Text in this post is excerpted from the videos shown above.
Image: "true happiness" by Anton Kudris.
Seeing eye-to-eye about the employee-supervisor relationship is equally, if not more important than the actual quality of the relationship
– Fadel Matta, lead investigator on the study and a management researcher in MSU’s Broad College of Business.
A new study led by Michigan State University business scholars finds that workers are more motivated if they and their supervisors see eye-to-eye about a bad relationship than if they have different views about their relationship.
Past research suggests workers and their bosses often have differing views about the quality of their relationship. Matta and his fellow researchers set out to examine whether that affects actual work engagement, or motivation.
It does. According to the MSU-led study of 280 employees and their bosses, motivation suffered when an employee believed he or she had a good relationship with the boss but the boss saw it differently. The finding held when the flip side was true and the boss believed the relationship was good but the subordinate did not. The two were surveyed separately, meaning the boss did not necessarily know how the employee felt about him or her, and vice versa.
Interestingly, employee motivation was higher (and the employee was more apt to go above and beyond his or her basic job duties) when the worker and supervisor saw eye-to-eye about the relationship, even when it was poor.
“Some people would say it’s better to fake it, but our results indicate that the opposite is true,” said Matta, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Management. “At the end of the day, it’s better for everyone to know where they stand and how they feel about each other.”
– Michigan State University’s Department of Management, Trouble With Your Boss? Own It. , Nov. 21, 2014
The quotes in this post are all by Martin Seligman, from the lecture “Ideas at the House: Martin Seligman – Well-Being and Happiness,” which can be viewed at the bottom of this post.
Freud and Schopenhauer told us the best we could ever do in life was not to be miserable; that the object of human progress, the object of psychotherapy was to reduce suffering to zero. I’m going to argue today that that’s empirically false, it’s morally insidious, and it’s politically a dead end; that there’s much more to life than zero.
30 years ago, the word “happiness” was a tremendously vague word. It meant very many different things to different people, and it could not be measured. But now, we have good measures of the elements of well-being.
Technically, we call these states “positive affectivity” and they are bell shaped. That means, right now, 50% of the people in the world are not cheerful and merry. They are not smiling. It is highly genetic. It is about 50% heritable and most importantly, the best we can to with smiling, being merry, being cheerful, is to raise it by about 5-15%.
In fact, I spent most of my life working on misery and people would ask me: why didn’t I work on happiness? The reason I didn’t, there was a very influential study in the mid-1970s by Phil Brickman in which he found 14 people who had won the lottery and he was able to track their happiness.
It turned out you get very happy when you win the lottery and it lasts for about three months. And then three months later you’re back to where you were, back to your curmudgeonly self. It turns out you can’t change a curmudgeon into a giggler, but you can get those of us who are in the lower 50% of positive affectivity to live at the upper part of our envelope.
Barbara Fredrickson and Marcel Losada go into corporations, 60 American corporations, and they write, they record every word that’s said. And they classify the words into positive and negative words and then they relate this to how the corporation is doing economically. So, it turns out, there is a ratio of positive to negative words said that correlates with economic status of corporations. So:
John and Julie Gottman, two of the leading marital therapists in the world, locked couples in an apartment for a weekend. They listened to every word that was said and computed the ratio of positive words to negative words, and predicted divorce.
One month we said: “Has something awful happened to you?” on the website AuthenticHappiness.org. Within a couple of weeks, 1700 people had answered saying:
One or more of the worst 15 things that can happen to a human being had happened to them. We measured their well-being and their strengths.
Our findings were very surprising:
Now, remember these people survived. They’re on our website. They’ve come to it with- stronger than people who had two. We asked the question then, this is an example of what Nietzsche told us: “If it doesn’t kill us, it makes us stronger.” It seems to be true.
Then, we asked a question: “What strengths predicted the people who would grow?”
And here are the five strengths:
…were the predictors of who would show the most increases in well-being.
We have an exercise that we have young people do. It’s the distinction between pleasure and philanthropy.
I assign my students to do something fun next week, and to do something philanthropic, altruistic. And then, to write up what happens. And what happens, I’ll just tell you emblematically, one of my students, ah, when you do something fun like shopping, going to the movies, hanging out with your friends, it has a square wave offset. That is, when it’s done, it’s done.
When you do something altruistic, something else happens.
For one of my students, her 9-year-old nephew called her on the phone during this assignment. It was her mid-term week, and she needed to tutor him. She’d spent two hours tutoring him in fractions and she said:
“After that, the whole day went better. I was mellow. I could listen to people. People liked me more.”
Then, one of my business students said:
“I’m in the business school because I want to make a lot of money. And, I want to make a lot of money. It’s reasonable. Money brings happiness, it brings security, it brings contentment, it brings control, but I was astonished to find out that I was happier helping another person than I was shopping.”
This, it turns out, to be a human regularity; important to know that. It’s the way we’re built.
With the current globalization of our problems, we need to extend our circle of empathy and view humanity as a worldwide extended human family. As long as we refrain from facing that challenge, divisiveness and unsolvable conflicts will persist.
–Rodrigue Tremblay, in “Rodrigue Tremblay C.V. on The Code for Global Ethics”
[In a more universal civilization], first and foremost, the scope of human empathy would be more universal and more comprehensive, and would not merely apply to some chosen people, to members of a particular religion or to persons belonging to a particular civilization. In practice, this would require that we establish a higher threshold of human morality, beyond the traditional norm of the Golden Rule (“Treat others as you would have others treat you.”) It would require that we adopt what I call a Super Golden Rule of humanist morality that incorporates the humanist rule of empathy: “Not only do to others as you would have them do to you, but also, do to others what you would wish to be done to you, if you were in their place.” — Of course, the corollary also follows: “Don’t do to others what you would not like to be done to you, if you were in their place.”
–Rodrigue Tremblay, in “For a Better Global Civilization”
Three interrelated moral imperatives that have always been sound moral values, but which I feel will become increasingly required for humanity to go forward and survive. And I refer to: – more human EMPATHY, – more interpersonal TOLERANCE, and – more interpersonal SHARING (altruism and generosity) as a foundation for a more harmonious, for a freer and for a more prosperous world.
–Rodrigue Tremblay, in “For a Better Global Civilization”
According to the empathy principle, one must aim at treating others as if one were in their place, and not necessarily expecting reciprocity as is the case in the traditional Golden rule of morality that one finds in virtually all moral systems (“Do to others as you would have them do to you”).
The empathy principle can thus be framed this way: “Do to others what you would wish to be done to you, if you were in their place.”
That is why I say that empathy can be the solid foundation of a more civilized global society based on the solidarity of all human beings. It is the awareness that other people can suffer, be happy and flourish just as one does, and that one should treat others accordingly.
–Rodrigue Tremblay, in “For a Better Global Civilization”
As an economist but also as a humanist, I believe that collectively, we must aim at creating the greatest good for the greatest number of people, not the maximizing of purely selfish personal financial objectives.
–Rodrigue Tremblay, in “For a Better Global Civilization”
Many economists, and I am one of them, believe along with British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) that the pursuit of money does not necessarily lead to personal happiness and to general well-being. Happiness is more than money and power.
Indeed, many studies have shown that while it is true that well-being tends to rise with income, it also tends to level off after reaching a certain level. Surveys show, for example, that many people often prefer to earn less rather than be deprived of sleep time, or rather than commute long distances, or rather than living away from friends. This is a reflection of the notion that economics and money are not everything in making people happy and satisfied. There are other values in the moral scale of things, and that’s what I would like to emphasize.
–Rodrigue Tremblay, in “For a Better Global Civilization”
This Super Golden Rule of human morality could indirectly encompass the idea of moral reciprocity, but it goes much further towards genuine altruism, compassion and human empathy. It truly defines our moral obligations to others in positive terms about what should be done—not in negative terms with the implied fear of retaliation for bad behavior (“Don’t do to others what you would not like to be done to you, because they may do it to you if you mistreat them”).
I think that such an approach to morality is likely to impose itself in the future as human beings realize more and more that they are all living on the same small Planet, and that if they want to survive collectively (and not repeat the disastrous experience of the dinosaurs who became extinct some 65 million years ago, after roaming the Earth for close to 200 million years).
–Rodrigue Tremblay, in “For a Better Global Civilization”
As I see it, the world today faces a fundamental moral dilemma.
—On the one hand, we live in an environment in which technology and scientific progress—as we would expect—have made survival somewhat easier for many populations.
—On the other hand, economically, this is done increasingly in a competitive global context, and this could have potentially perverse effects on our tendency to feel empathy for others.
–Rodrigue Tremblay, in “For a Better Global Civilization”
The central question is: Besides teaching science and general knowledge, can we also teach empathy, compassion and civility, especially to the young?
–Rodrigue Tremblay, in “For a Better Global Civilization”
To reach that new level of global ethics, we may need nothing less than a moral revolution in our thinking, a new moral norm, a global moral revolution, to fit the modern problems we are facing today and in the future. Such a moral revolution may even be needed for our own biological survival as a species.
In general terms, let me say that I firmly believe that we should adopt the simple but somewhat revolutionary idea that we are living on the same small planet and that we should attempt to survive on this planet as members of the same human race.
–Rodrigue Tremblay, in “For a Better Global Civilization“
We are, first of all, not solitary creatures and second of all, we are deeply embedded in the lives of others. It’s very easy to forget that and to engage in an atomistic fallacy — where we think that all we have to do is study the individual components of a system in order to understand the system. That’s clearly not the case when it comes to social systems.
–Nicholas Christakis, in “Q&A with Nicholas Christakis: Our modern, connected lives”
If a few nations step forward and begin changing the narrative of ‘us and them’ to ‘everyone,’ we will see a new dawn. If a few nations begin actually making operational a verification system we can all depend upon and push to bring all into such a system, we will all benefit.
–Jonathan Granoff, in “A Good Framework for a Good Future”
A social network is a kind of human superorganism, with an anatomy and a physiology — a structure and a function — of its own. Our local contributions to the human social network have global consequences that touch the lives of thousands every day and help us to achieve much more than the building of towers and the destruction of walls.
–James Fowler, in “Social Network Guru”
Many problems that challenge us today can be traced back to a profound tension between what is good and desirable for society as a whole and what is good and desirable for an individual. That conflict can be found in global problems such as climate change, pollution, resource depletion, poverty, hunger, and overpopulation.
–Martin Nowak, in “SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed”
We are beginning to see the entire universe as a holographically interlinked network of energy and information, organically whole and self referential at all scales of its existence. We, and all things in the universe, are non-locally connected with each other and with all other things in ways that are unfettered by the hitherto known limitations of space and time.
–Ervin László and Jude Currivan, in “CosMos: A Co-creator’s Guide to the Whole World”
If humans were to model the lifestyle displayed by healthy community of cells, our societies and our planet would be more peaceful and vital.
–Bruce Lipton, in “The Wisdom of Your Cells: How Your Beliefs Control Your Biology”
If ordinary people really knew that consciousness and not matter is the link that connects us with each other and the world, then their views about war and peace, environmental pollution, social justice, religous values, and all other human endeavors would change radically.
–Amit Goswami, in “The Self-Aware Universe”
The idea of the universe as an interconnected whole is not new; for millennia it’s been one of the core assumptions of Eastern philosophies. What is new is that Western science is slowly beginning to realize that some elements of that ancient lore might be correct.
–Dean Radin, in “Entangled Minds”
Collaboration is vital to sustain what we call profound or really deep change, because without it, organizations are just overwhelmed by the forces of the status quo.
–Peter Senge, in “The Fifth Dimension: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization”
It is indeed a paradox that so many from what are considered developing countries wish to come to the West, where we have an epidemic of depression, isolation, and loneliness, while the U.S. alone consumes 25 percent of the world’s resources. However, it is often these “third-world” cultures that offer some of the most profound wisdom and insights that have been garnered over thousands of years, while our own history spans a few hundred years.
–James Doty, in “The Science of Compassion”
The human brain now holds the key to our future. We have to recall the image of the planet from outer space: a single entity in which air, water, and continents are interconnected. That is our home.
–David Suzuki, cited in Pauline Vetuna, “A Force of Nature: David Suzuki”
We are (most of us) embedded in an exceedingly complex network of social relationships, many of which are vital to our well-being. Every day we confront issues relating to the needs and wants of others and must continually make accommodations. And in addressing these conflicting interests, the operative norm is – or should be – fairness, a balancing of the interests and needs of other parties, other ‘stakeholders.’
–Peter Corning, in “What’s the Matter with Libertarianism?”
The more we study the major problems of our time, the more we come to realise that they cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems, which means that they are interconnected and interdependent.
–Fritjof Capra, cited in Michael Jackson, “Systems Approaches to Management,” p. 5
Social change will only come about through a process of education, that education is not limited to the classroom or to institutions of higher education, and that each of us, as an individual, has a responsibility to serve as an educator.
–Daniel Chodorkoff, in “Education for Social Change”
School performance, public health, crime rates, clinical depression, tax compliance, philanthropy, race relations, community development, census returns, teen suicide, economic productivity, campaign finance, even simple human happiness — all are demonstrably affected by how (and whether) we connect with our family and friends and neighbours and co-workers.
–Robert Putnam, in “Robert Putnam, Social Capital and Civic Community”
Harmony is the deepest factor for the universal peace. But it will be effective only if people will know how to achieve and develop social harmony.
–Ernesto Kahan, in “Spirituality, Harmony, Poetry and Medicine”
The planetary phase of history has begun, but the future shape of global society remains profoundly uncertain. Though perhaps improbable, a shift toward a planetary civilization of enriched lives, human solidarity, and environmental sustainability is still possible.
–Paul D. Raskin, in “The Great Transition”
Perhaps we humans are cosmic dwarfs; perhaps we are molecular giants. But there is no denying our mid-scale complexity. We humans live neither at the range of the infinitely small, nor at that of the infinitely large, but we might well live at the range of the infinitely complex. We live at the range of the most caring; we ourselves might embody the most capacity for caring.
–Holmes Rolston, in “Care on Earth: Generating Informed Concern”
There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole, the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality.
–Werner Heisenberg, in “The Part and the Whole”
What is needed is the intelligent management of Earth’s resources. If we really wish to put an end to our ongoing international and social problems, we must eventually declare Earth and all of its resources as the common heritage of all the world’s people.
–Jacque Fresco, in “Jacque Fresco on the Future”
Human beings are ’emotional amoral egoists,’ driven above all by emotional self-interest. All of our thoughts, beliefs and motivations are neurochemically mediated, some predetermined for survival, others alterable.
–Nayef Al-Rodhan, in “Emotional Amoral Egoism: A Neurophilosophical Theory of Human Nature and Its Universal Security Implications”
Until we begin to see each other as ourselves, nothing will change. We are one planet.
–Peter Joseph, in “Where Are We Going?”
Flourishing goes beyond happiness, or satisfaction with life. True, people who flourish are happy. But that’s not the half of it. Beyond feeling good, they’re also doing good—adding value to the world.
–Barbara Fredrickson, in “Review of Positivity by Barbara Fredrickson”
Especially now when views are becoming more polarized, we must work to understand each other across political, religious and national boundaries.
–Jane Goodall, in “And if we dare…”
Human rights without responsibility, without a sense of decency, a sense of compassion, is not good enough for a society to flourish… We need to broaden our scope from the legalistic language to the language of the heart.
–Tu Weiming, in “TU Weiming in Vienna: Rise, Tianxia, rise!”
We must see ourselves in community with all other people at local, national and global levels. While this may seem superficially easy, it is actually not. Western culture, now globally dominant, has systematically trained us to think and act as though we are separate individuals, often in competition with each other for scarce resources of one sort or another, primarily money, which has be-come the perceived means to all we want and need in life.
–Elisabet Sahtouris, in “The Biology of Globalization”
We [must] all acknowledge our role as global citizens, and to fully step forward into that role of global citizenship. We must recognize our interconnectedness and to know that we are all actors on the world stage carrying great responsibilities. Each person has an impact upon the whole. There is no actor in the world who acts in isolation.
–Audrey Kitagawa, in “Practical Spirituality”
As we enter the 21st Century it is clear that we have entered an unprecedented global age in which our diverse cultures, religions, philosophies, worldviews and perspectives encounter one another in the marketplace of our global village. It is now clear that our future sustainability on this planet calls for radical advances in our rational and human capacities to negotiate the powerful forces between worlds as the human family moves towards a sustainable global civilization.
–Ashok Gangadean, in “Meditations”
The whole system is under tremendous strain. Although the increasing pace of change is essential for developing new solutions, it is also pushing society to its limits. In global structures, it all comes to a head in the form of sudden crises. This leads to tipping point situations in which the seemingly impossible becomes possible.
–Franz Josef Radermacher, in “Interview with Franz Josef Radermacher”
Much of modern life is based upon a false logic, a logic that assumes that happiness and well-being come from financial prosperity.
–Nic Marks, in “The Happiness Manifesto: How Nations and People Can Nurture Well-Being”
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
–Albert Einstein, in The New York Times, June 20,1932 AEA 29–041
Image: "Punctuated" by Shari Alisha
According to a new report from the National Institute for Safety Management, on any given day, the average American’s life is entrusted to more than 2,000 different people who are complete strangers.
The report, which shows how any one of these anonymous individuals making a single mistake can easily cause another person’s death, concluded that it is only through sheer luck that anyone ever makes it through a 24-hour period alive.
“People you don’t know and will never even meet—food-safety regulators, bridge inspectors, whoever installed the gas lines in your home—ultimately have the power to decide whether you live or die,” the report read in part. “We have no choice but to trust that these individuals are always being very careful and know exactly what they’re doing.”
“Which is of course something we have no way of actually knowing,” the report added.
Jacob Drummond, a spokesman for NISM, unveiled a staggering list of strangers responsible for a person’s life each day, which includes everyone from officials who make sure there aren’t deadly toxins in the air we breathe, to construction workers who precariously hoist building materials over pedestrians’ heads, to motorists who stay focused and don’t veer into oncoming traffic during the rush-hour commute.
–“Report: Life Put In Hands Of 2,000 Complete Strangers Every Single Day,” in The Onion.
An experiment published in PLOS ONE showed that when 9- to 11-year old kids were asked to do acts of kindness for several weeks, not only did they get happier over time but they became more popular with their peers.
And another big intervention we just finished at a company in Spain showed that asking some employees to be generous to a randomly chosen list of colleagues (we called this our “Secret Santa” manipulation) produced huge benefits (for increasing happiness, connectedness, flow, and decreasing depression) not just for the givers, but for the receivers and even for observers. The recipients of kindness “paid the kind acts forward” and even acquaintances of the givers became happier and were inspired to act more generously themselves.
–Sonja Lyubomirsky, in an interview with Gretchen Rubin, “We Have Found That Almost Any Types of Acts of Kindness Boost Happiness.”
Image: "Ripple" by Taro Taylor.
![Got to Believe: I Believe Project [Music]](https://mutualresponsibility.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/got-to-believe_750x260.png)
As a songwriter I always felt a huge responsibility to write something from my heart that would add to the world and make it better place for all.
Finding Mutual Responsibility and the Roundtable Live Project showed me that others felt this same concern and had found a way to work towards making it a reality.
“Got To Believe” is a song that was born out of this inspired awareness and belief that together we really can start to make a difference and change our world.
–Deb Zemke, singer/songwriter.