Happy Holidays: A gift list from The Optimist Daily
“True giving from the heart is an expression of love.” Cara Stein With the holiday season in full swing, it can be difficult to navigate gifting in a way that celebrates loved ones while upholding our environmental and ethical values. Choosing gifts that are thoughtful, sustainable, and Read More...
The Optimist View: Keen on Kelp
“The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.” - Jacques Yves Cousteau On a sunny Saturday morning, I drive about 30 minutes north of my home in Santa Barbara to an area called Refugio Beach. Aptly Read More...
The Optimist View: Knocking down the negative news bias
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” - Victor Frankel The old news mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads” has long steered traditional media outlets towards the violent, the Read More...
Optimist View: Finding our footing in a post-pandemic world
“Life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance, you must keep moving.” - Albert Einstein This past year has created challenges and cataclysmic life shifts for everyone, and while every person’s pandemic experience is unique, what we do have in common is the changed perspective that Read More...
The Optimist View: The power of investing in inclusion
“When we listen and celebrate what is both common and different, we become wiser, more inclusive, and better as an organization.” — Pat Wadors As we start off the new year with back to back celebratory months of Black History and Women’s History, we are reminded of the long journey Read More...
The Optimist View: Chaos as a catalyst for breakthroughs in medicine
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust BY: Amelia Buckley Among other threadbare patches in the social fabric, the pandemic has exposed the shortfalls in public health funding that have plagued many countries for years. Read More...
The Optimist View: Reflections on activism from Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons
“If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children's birthright.” - Amanda Gorman BY: AMELIA BUCKLEY As we celebrated the life and works of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this week, many Americans contemplated the profound impact of his Read More...
The Optimist View: Best of 2020
"Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else." - Fred Rogers While 2020 has felt like a long, strange “fever dream”, to quote one of our staff members, there were lots of positive solutions to be found. Whether it was advances in medicine, Read More...
The Optimist View: A holiday solutions guide for the strangest year ever
The Norweigian city of Tromsø sits 200 miles north of the Arctic circle, yet for the large part, the residents don’t experience the sort of seasonal depression you might expect with so many months of darkness. A big part of this successful wintertime living is what psychologist Kari Leibowitz Read More...