Today’s Solutions: December 20, 2025

Lifestyle

Alongside taking care of other people and the planet, make sure you take good care of yourself. The Lifestyle section at the Optimist Daily has solutions for everyday wellbeing on topics like food, beauty, fashion, and the latest trends. Curious about caring for houseplants, eating plant-based, or parenting tips? It’s all in there.

American Express is offering c

American Express is offering credits for shopping at small businesses

American Express’ “Small Business Saturday” initiative helped generate a reported $19.6 billion in spending in one day in 2019. Now, the company is back to encourage cardholders to support small businesses facing challenges due to the pandemic. The company is offering its small business Read More...

Meet the woman who has saved 7

Meet the woman who has saved 72,000 human trafficking victims

Meet Hasina Kharbhih. When she was just a schoolgirl in Shillong, India, she started supporting the social development of vulnerable communities in the northeast of the country. Now at the age of 49, Kharbhih and her Impulse NGO Network have rescued 72,000 women and children trafficked across Read More...

Why surfing is an incredible w

Why surfing is an incredible way to practice mindfulness

The practice of mindfulness can take on many shapes. You can do it while sitting still, walking through nature, or even surfing! Surfing may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of mindfulness, but really, it holds the essence of mindfulness. Like yoga, surfing takes strength, Read More...

Study: Kids are happier when t

Study: Kids are happier when they feel connected to nature

There is plenty of research demonstrating a positive correlation between people’s exposure to the natural world and how happy they are, but most of the studies have focused on adults. To fill this research gap, social scientists in Mexico have recently conducted a study to see if kids reap the Read More...

Add these steps to your bedtim

Add these steps to your bedtime routine to soothe your gut

Your nighttime routine can have a big impact on many aspects of your health. Putting your phone away before sleep, setting a regular bedtime, and limiting evening caffeine intake are all solutions we have covered for better sleep, but today we are looking at steps to take before bed to boost your Read More...

Dan Pink: Three ways to stop f

Dan Pink: Three ways to stop feeling overwhelmed in the workplace

If social distancing and the current events of the world have you feeling a bit restless or even frantic, you’re not alone. But by making only a few adjustments to your routine and mindset, you can stop feeling overwhelmed and recapture your focus. With that in mind, here are three tips Read More...

How to heal while fighting for

How to heal while fighting for social justice

In a time of deep, civil unrest (not to mention a pandemic), self-care has perhaps never been so important. You might brush off a morning meditation or virtual get-together with a simple thought: There are more important things to be focusing on right now. And you're right—there are. But that Read More...

Two people having a serious conversation

How to change people’s minds without triggering a negative response

People don’t like being told what to do. There’s even a word for it: reactance. “Psychological reactance is a negative emotional state that we feel when we’re not in control of our behavior,” says Jonah Berger, author of The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind. “Anytime we feel like Read More...

Why the coronavirus recovery i

Why the coronavirus recovery is the perfect opportunity to enact change

As cities reopen even while global COVID-19 cases continue to grow, most people are wondering when things will truly get back to normal. In a TED2020 talk on Monday, economist Mariana Mazzucato said that it’s the wrong question to ask. “Really, my view is that we need to do everything we Read More...

Laughing couple eating sandwiches. Close-up.

Study: Eating dinner early can help you lower blood sugar and burn fat

Conventional wisdom is that a calorie is a calorie, no matter when you eat it, and that weight gain is caused by eating more calories than you use. Nutritionists call this the calories in, calories out theory of weight control. But it might not be as simple as that. New research discovers that Read More...