Dalai Lama Foundation Study Circle Montreal

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. — Amy Lowell

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Good News of the Day:
Every Tuesday volunteers serve more than 100 Chicago homeless people with food from fine dining restuarants — all with dignity and grace. Here they are not faceless and referred to as “Guests,” and sometimes even as “Artists:” for the last eight years, some of them have received inexpensive disposable cameras and have gone about the adventure of capturing their lives. This work culminates with a one-night-only exhibition, “After Supper: Visions of My Life.” The photos sell for $100, with $75 of that going to the photographers, some of whom have used the money to buy their own cameras. And perhaps most importantly, as the founders of this project say, “They are proud of their work. They share their joy.” http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=4575

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Be The Change:
Share a compassionate moment with the next homeless person you come across.

**Share A Reflection**
http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?qid=4575

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself. — Desiderius Erasmus

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Good News of the Day:
Plastic bottles jut from the roofs in a Manila slum neighborhood. But these bottles have an important purpose: they contain bleach and water and are placed snugly into a purpose-built hole in the roof. Designed by students at MIT, they reflect sunlight, spreading 360 degrees of 55-watt-light through the room beneath. Using the simplest of technologies, these bottles brighten dim and dreary shanties, emitting clear light for about five years. The invention is part of a project called “Isang Litrong Liwanag,” which means A Litre of Light, and helps some of the poorest Philippines residents save money and live better — in a renewable way. http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=4692

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Be The Change:
Check out the website for the project, which aims to bring these Solar Bottle Bulbs to communities around the Phillipines. http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=4692a

**Share A Reflection**
http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?qid=4692

Turn your wounds into wisdom. — Oprah Winfrey

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Good News of the Day:
Lisa Wrightsman used soccer to turn her life around, and now she’s using it to help others do the same. Wrightsman was in a semipro league, but later succumbed to drugs, alcohol, homelessness and jail. Last year, however, she entered a Volunteers of America recovery program and discovered their street soccer program. With soccer as her pivot, she made a big shift in her own life, and then saw the potential of street soccer as a movement to help others also get off the street. “I saw she changed. I wanted what worked for her to work for me,” said Christina Sanchez, 31, who is now part of the team. With Wrightman’s leadership, for the first time, Sacramento will send a women’s Mohawks homeless soccer team to the national tournament this summer. http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=4625

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Be The Change:
Consider challenges you’ve gone through which position you uniquely to serve others.

**Share A Reflection**
http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?qid=4625

Indecision may or may not be my problem. — Jimmy Buffett

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Good News of the Day:
“Why do I squander so much mental energy on the mundane purchases of everyday life? I think I’ve found a good answer. Although I know that every floss will work well enough, sometimes I still can’t help waste an embarrassing amount of time on the decision. What I believe happens is that instead of realizing that picking a floss is an easy decision, I confuse the array of options and excess of information with importance, which then leads my brain to conclude that this decision is worth lots of time and attention. Call it the drug store heuristic: A cluttered store shelf leads us to automatically assume that a choice must really matter, even if it doesn’t.” Jonah Lehrer, the author of “How We Decide” further describes some clever experiments that expose the cognitive illusion of seemingly important choices. http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=4610

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Be The Change:
Observe your own decision making today. What factors contribute to hard decisions? What factors contribute to easy ones?

**Share A Reflection**
http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?qid=4610

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice. — Mary Oliver

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Good News of the Day:
Three years ago, Beth Terry, like many other Americans chose double plastic bags, threw the plastic bottles in the trash and ate frozen dinners — generating about 100 lbs of plastic waste a year. But after seeing a photo of the sea being filled with plastic products, she resolved to live a plastic free life. From January to November 2010, she generated less than 2 pounds of plastic waste. And she went further. Beth discovered that Clorox’s US Brita water filters are recycled in Europe. 7 months, 16,000 signatures and 600 filters later, Beth successfully petitioned Clorox. Beth asks, “What difference can one person make?” Most of all, one person who reduces their plastic waste is motivated to drive for systemic change. As Beth states in this TEDx video, “We have the power to change the menu that’s offered to us.” http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=4663

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Be The Change:
Apply these 5 strategies for reducing plastic’s environmental impact, and check out the 7 misconceptions about plastic recycling. http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=4663a

**Share A Reflection**
http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?qid=4663

Time = Life. Therefore, waste your time and waste your life, or master your time and master your life. — Alan Lakein

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Inspiration of the Day:
Author Shannon Hayes turns her computer off every morning around 9 am, once her workday is complete. Then she tunes out the rest of the world and tunes into her family, home, and farm. Very often the telephone gets turned off, too. So does the radio. “I shut out the wide world to tend to my immediate world.” Hayes continues: “Radical homemakers are not one-person wonders, single-handedly capable of heroic feats of self-reliance. Rather, we have some meta-skills that work the real magic: savvy functioning within a life-serving economy, an ability to self-teach and overcome fears, realistic expectations, an understanding of what gives us deep pleasure, and, most importantly, relationship skills. I don’t do it all. I am in an interdependent relationship with my family and my closest friends, and together, we get stuff done.” http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=4673

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Be The Change:
Try an experiment of turning off your technology for a set period of time each day for a week.

**Share A Reflection**
http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?qid=4673

Patience is the companion of wisdom. — St. Augustine

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Tip of the Day:
“Consider this powerful quote by Lao Tzu: ‘Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles, and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?’ We might think of “waiting” as taking time, but it’s actually less about clock time and more about inner space. Of course, there are moments when our immediate gut-level response to a situation is a flash of intuition that can be trusted, moments when it’s crystal clear what needs to be done. But at other times, an experience stirs up some of that inner mud, and at those times, patience engages us in the process of becoming still. An unclear mind, one in which right action isn’t obvious, isn’t a “bad” thing. Wisdom, after all, develops at the edges of our understanding.” A deep reflection on why patience pays off: http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=4685

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Be The Change:
Withhold an immediate response to a question. Instead, practice patience and allow the answer to become clearer.

**Share A Reflection**
http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?qid=4685