the Good News

[Osho Rewa]

Hey Friends,

There is so much of good news out there, share what you find for all of us on here.

Cheers

[Osho Rewa]

Harvard's crowded course to happiness

The most popular course at Harvard this semester teaches happiness.

The final numbers came in this week: Positive Psychology, a class whose content resembles that of many a self-help book but is grounded in serious psychological research, has enrolled 855 students, beating out even Introductory Economics...

...In the last several years, positive psychology classes have cropped up on more than 100 campuses around the country, said Shane Lopez, an associate professor at the University of Kansas, who recently co-wrote a positive psychology textbook...

...Among the research findings that support the idea that happy people function better: A study of aging nuns found that those with a positive outlook in their 20s lived as much as a decade longer than those with a negative outlook, and people who were asked to keep a diary every night for six months, recording things that had gone well that day, fared better in measures of happiness, optimism, and physical health than those who did not...


http://www.boston.com/news/local/articl ... happiness/ (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/03/10/harvards_crowded_course_to_happiness/)

[Osho Rewa]

Pat shared this with us a bit back:

Positive Thinking in Tehran:Youth Embrace Self-Help Movement
New Age Devotees, Chanting 'Yes, I Can,'

..The self-help craze -- long part of life in the Western world -- is taking the Islamic Republic by storm. Iran is one of the world's youngest nations, with 70% of its 65 million under the age of 30...

...Every day, dozens of self-help seminars take place, some underground at people's homes and others in public venues, all around the sprawling capital and in some of Iran's bigger cities. "The Secret," tops the best-seller lists here. The Farsi translation is in its 10th printing. State-owned television Channel Four has broadcast the book's companion video, shot in documentary style and distributed world-wide on DVD, four times in the past six months...

...At newsstands in Tehran, over a dozen magazines are dedicated to the art of happiness with a New Age twist. Their pages are packed with ads promoting lessons about how to use feng shui to decorate your house; how to open your chakras; and how to awaken the financial genius hidden inside you...

...At a recent session, about 1,000 attendees packed the large auditorium, swinging left and right to an upbeat Persian pop tune. Clapping, they chant his slogans to the music: "Yes, I can!" and "Tomorrow is ours to make!"...

..."No other movement has received this kind of mass social endorsement in Iran," he says. "This will inevitably transform our society and the next generation."...

...Bakhtiar Khazaee, a 38-year-old maintenance engineer, has been attending Mr. Azmandian's seminars for a year. "I used to think every thing was God's will," he says. But "now I don't think this way any more. I know that whatever I set my mind on achieving will happen."...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1214791 ... us_pageone (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121479169997914947.html?mod=hpp_us_pageone)

[Deva]

Here come the goosepimples again! Thanks Osho!

[Steph]

Great stories!

My favorite "good news" site is http://www.darynkagan.com/index.html "Show the world what's possible"
Every day she has a different short feel good video news story. You can go thru the site and look over the old stories too.

It makes me feel good every time I go there!
For news stories to read: http://www.happynews.com/ " Real news - compelling stories - always positive" is their tag line.

In joy, Steph

[Osho Rewa]

Accessing Internet at 640 Gb/s?

University of Sydney physicists have developed an optical chip that could potentially improve ‘Internet speeds to up to 100 times faster without costing the consumer any more.’

...He adds that these chips could be scaled to operate at data rates approaching 640 Gb/s — the equivalent to transmitting approximately 17 complete DVDs per second! These chips could be commercially available in 5 years...

http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=977

[Osho Rewa]

Hug Nation is a weekly, world-wide, Group Hug - started in 2001.

(Lani thanks for the youtube link)

Those pesky oceans keep us from doing the weekly hug physically, so we do it virtually. Thousands of people around the world gather in front of computers to hug themselves and the people around them at a set time. Rather than a shared physical space, it is a shared mental space.

Regardless of where you are on Tuesday at 1-pm PST (PST = -7 hours from GMT), you can join the Group Hug.

Squeeze yourself in your car or in the supermarket. Hug your spouse or co-worker. Just visualize the thousands worldwide who are joining you at that moment.

We need to connect. We need to be able to reach out and feel that there are people out there who care and love and feel like we do.

For the first time in the history, we have the tools to connect the entire world. The Internet may be a nifty place to buy your books online, but at its core, it is a way for ALL of us to connect to one another.

CNN features HugNation
YouTube- HugNation on the news!

[Osho Rewa]

Starbucks Backs Young Social Entrepreneurs With Thousands in Grants
Posted by geri
Wednesday, 03 December 2008

young people from 17 countries will receive between $5,000 and $15,000 to enhance their work as social entrepreneurs, awarded through a 2008 competition launched by Starbucks and the International Youth Foundation (IYF).

An organization in the Philippines that provides small loans to unemployed youth to start their own businesses and a program in Pakistan that combats violence against women by changing the behaviors of men are two of 25 programs to win grants helping the young social entrepreneurs leading the way. All programs have been selected by Starbucks and (IYF) to receive grants through the Starbucks Social Entrepreneurs Fund.


The grantees announced yesterday were chosen through a competition in early 2008 by IYF and the Starbucks Foundation.

"Today's young social entrepreneurs work tirelessly in support of their social change visions, yet struggle to access the financial resources to take their important work to scale," said IYF President and CEO William S. Reese. "Starbucks has provided much-needed support to expand the impact of their efforts."

"We are proud to support the amazing efforts of these young leaders who have the passion to create positive solutions to real needs," said Ben Packard, Starbucks vice president, global responsibility. "Through their hard work and dedication, we hope to see measurable change in local communities and help them inspire others to act."

All the young leaders have completed IYF's YouthActionNet Global Fellowship. The Fellowship is a program that aims to develop a new generation of socially conscious global citizens who create positive change in their communities, their countries and the world.

Among the 25 projects to receive a total of over $300,000 are:

* Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Australia: Launched by Anna Rose, AYCC seeks to build a generation-wide movement to help solve climate change. The grant will be used to educate 25,000 high school students about climate change and solutions at the local, national and global level.
* Emmanuel Youth Empowerment Program, Kenya: Started by Daniel Nduati, the Emmanuel Program will expand its computer literacy and life skills training in an effort to reach 850 disadvantaged youth living in the Dagoretti slums of Nairobi.
* MuJeres por la Justicia, Educacion y el Reconocimeiento (MuJER), Guatemala: Founded by Ana Moraga, MuJER will create a community center where 250 women sex workers in Guatemala City can participate in educational and vocational programs.
* Unite for Sight, United States: Representatives of 24 villages in Ghana will receive training through Unite for Sight, a global nonprofit launched by Jennifer Staple, to serve as community eye health workers who will aim to reach more than 86,000 patients annually.

A committee comprised of IYF staff and Starbucks employees selected the final grant recipients.

-
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/

[Dorothee]

Hi Alex,

well stated!

You know, there's a great part of Marci Shimoff's new book "Happy for No Reason" where she talks about the "Velcro"-"teflon" characteristics of our brain.

What this means is just that - be it evolutionary or just a habit of thought - negative news get much more attention and stay much longer in the brain as positive ones. So our brain (always wary of danger) tends to react much stronger about bad news than about wonderful news, which explains why the papers and magazines are full with all kinds of horrible stuff even in good times.

Hardly anybody would be tempted to read a thoroughly positive magazine (I have to confess, most of the time I don't bother to do so, too) but if there is a real shocker, even the hardest-wired Abers risk a look.

So the art is to retrain the brain so that it can be a bit more velcro-like with good news and a bit more teflon-like with bad news. :lol:

And what's more, the media tends to put a spotlight on all this shitty stuff, its like putting it under a microscope and most people believe that's just how it is. For example the event with the man trampled to death at a shopping mall. In a proper perspective, it would have been only fair to say that at the same day millions of people all over the US spent a very nice day at a shopping mall, with the greatest excitement being the question if they'd find a nice parking spot or if the crowd at the check-out was too long. But as it is, you see pictures of this one, single event, over and over and over again, until you all think, by Gosh, it is really dangerous to go to a mall these days!
:drum: :drum: :drum:

I love the analogy Abraham uses for bad news with the one-second flash on the TV-screen that's like some static in order to show how far bad stuff is outweighed by good stuff in this world. Its just that we have to look these exceptions 25 times in one evening, in full color, with music and grave commentaries, that lets us think that this world (at least where we live) is not a safe place.

But it is! :dance:


:heart: Dorothee

[Dorothee]

My brain does so too, Alex, but I think it has at least in part to do with a conscious decision of myself to focus more on the light and bright side of things and to react differently than before.

I think this teflon-velcro thing is partly innate (resulting from our ancestors who had to quickly react on life-threatening dangers, while today 95% of the dangers are more of a virtual kind, and not really related to our immediate well-being) and partly habitual, and at least the habitual part of it we can override.

And it also explains why it is so difficult for many people to come around to this point of view, due to their different wiring of the brain. I think it has also to do with which brain half is the more dominant one and how the connection between the different parts of the brain is.

But I'm also aware that our physical body is just the materialization of what is going on in the mind, so I wouldn't want to argue against being utterly free in our perception.

:heart: Dorothee