Image by illryion via Flickr The thing I liked best about Susan Skog’s Beliefnet Gallery, 10 Ways to Bring Peace to the World, is the structure of her title. So often our thoughts about peace are about how to bring the world to peace. Instead, she flips that on its head. How can we bring peace...

Image by arimoore via Flickr When I was about twenty years old, I was walking near the edge of a rough part of Des Moines, Iowa and I saw something that’s stuck with me ever since. There was a young boy there, about six years old, and he was climbing out of a dumpster behind an apartment building....

Image by Swamibu via Flickr Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. – George Burns Money can’t buy you love. It can’t buy you happiness either. Today’s materialistic world often urges us to buy the coolest gadgets, the trendiest clothes, bigger...

Image via Wikipedia Do you have dreams you want to pursue, but never seem to have the time because of the twin demands of work and family? Recently a reader asked: “I will appreciate if you could post some perspective on lifestyle of people who work in office with lot of peer pressure, pressure...

Image by incurable_hippie via Flickr Give away what you got. It’s not that complicated, really. But let’s think for a minute; what do a great number of people do instead? When someone has a great idea, they hoard that idea.  They don’t give it away.  They shelter and protect it.  They...

Image via Wikipedia The one absolute requirement of a money manager is emotional maturity. If you don’t know who you are, the stock market is an expensive place to find out. - Adam Smith I ran across that amazing quote from Adam Smith (an 18th century economist that’s often seen as the father...

Image by Mariangela Petrizzo via Flickr “Fear grows in darkness; if you think there’s a bogeyman around, turn on the light.” - Dorothy Thompson I was reading Confessions of a Shopaholic recently and ran across a passage that struck a chord with me … the main character is avoiding thinking...

Image by (Erik) via Flickr Sure, we all know how to do nothing. We all know how to lay around and waste time. But many of us are too busy to do it much, and when we do it, our minds are often on other things. We cannot relax and enjoy the nothingness. Doing nothing can be a waste of time, or...

Image via Wikipedia A long time reader that I’ll call “Samantha” wrote to me with the following question: I’m a senior in college and will be graduating in May. I’m extremely blessed in that I will be graduating with no debt – a scholarship provided all of my tuition expenses,...

Image by Lillou Merlin via Flickr When we see a wilting plant, we know what to do, right? We water it. But when we are exhausted and stressed, it’s often difficult to recover. The problem is that the exhaustion many of us suffer from can’t be fixed by a holiday at the beach, or a visit to...