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.
Amazon says it will start accepting food stamps soon
Starting this summer, seven online food retailers, including Amazon and FreshDirect, will start accepting food stamps from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Other participating retailers include Safeway, ShopRite, Hy-Vee, Hart's Local Grocers, and Dash's Market. The two-year Read More...
This social enterprise is creating a 'new generation of readers' in Brazil
Literacy in Brazil is a major problem. Of the 28 million students enrolled, 50 percent scored below the basic proficiency level in the 2012 PISA international assessment tests. According to the Instituto Paulo Montenegro, 27 percent of Brazilian adults are functionally illiterate. Text Read More...
Why the Dutch raise the world’s happiest children
Unicef has rated Dutch children the happiest in the world. According to researchers, Dutch kids are ahead of their peers in childhood well-being when compared with 29 of the world’s richest industrialized countries. Two American moms living in the Netherlands have been finding out why and wrote a Read More...
Three ways to cultivate a sense of hope, even when times seem hopeless
All Souls Unitarian, a liberal church two miles north of the White House in Washington, has seen record attendance in the weeks after the election of Donald Trump. Congregants have filled the pews, bringing fears and disillusionment about what the next four years could mean for them and for Read More...
Changing the way you think
Many of us may already be struggling with our New Year’s resolutions, but at least we can take comfort in modern neuroscience. Forty years ago, we’d have been less hopeful. Back then neuroscience would say that the brain was fixed after early childhood. One famous experiment in the 1960s showed Read More...
The Kurdish woman building a feminist democracy while fighting Isis
Asya Abdullah is not a polished politician. She speaks slowly and deliberately in Kurmanji in a tone which suggests she has had to practise her material many times. But despite the reserved and careful exterior, Abdullah is one of the most radical and effective revolutionaries in the world today. Read More...
Hundreds of professors from 176 US law schools oppose Trump’s attorney-general pick
The president-elect’s decision to choose Alabama senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general is less than reassuring for forward-thinking Americans. Sessions is known for his objection to women’s and LGBT rights legislation, his complete opposition against illegal immigration, and for his many Read More...
How to break your addiction to work
For many of us, working simply feels good. But just because it feeds your ego or makes you feel important, that doesn’t mean it’s actually good for you. How do you break the cycle of working long hours at the office and constantly checking email at home? How do you persuade those around you Read More...
You can’t reach your goals if you can’t forgive yourself for failing at them
Many of us will start out the New Year by making a list of resolutions—changes we want to make to be happier, such as eating better, volunteering more often, being a more attentive spouse, and so on. But, as we know, we will often fail. After a few failures we will typically give up and go back Read More...
This app helps the world’s largest minority group to communicate
In 2007, Carlos and Aline Pereira welcomed their daughter, Clara, into the world in Recife, Brazil, but their world would never be the same. “The day my daughter was born, a medical mistake induced her with cerebral palsy,” Carlos says. “She wouldn’t walk or speak. From the Read More...