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.
Denmark has figured out how to teach kids empathy and make them happier adults
Empathy, or the ability to read another person’s emotions, is a critical life skill. Many fear children are losing it—and that they’ll be less happy as adults as a result. A University of Michigan study of nearly 14,000 college students found that students today have about 40% Read More...
Germany's plans for the successful integration of refugees
As one prominent Canadian journalist put it, cities that have experienced a large influx of refugees can be “where the new creative and commercial class will be born, or where the next wave of tension and violence will erupt.” Germany wants to make sure it’s not the latter. In a new Read More...
Paris is redesigning its major intersections for pedestrians, not cars
Right now, the Place de la Bastille in Paris is basically a traffic island: A huge memorial sits in the middle of a road packed with cars. There's no way to easily cross the street on foot. But that will soon change. The square is one of seven major sites that Paris is redesigning for pedestrians Read More...
Locating and fighting poverty with satellite data
One of the biggest challenges in providing relief to people living in poverty is locating them. The availability of accurate and reliable information on the location of impoverished zones is surprisingly lacking for much of the world. Stanford researchers have found a way to use satellite Read More...
How to use color to improve nearly every aspect of your life
Color is an unspoken language that successfully communicates with our conscious and subconscious minds. Understanding how color affects each aspect of our routines can help us live more fulfilling lives. Here's a primer on all the different ways color can move you: The colors we use at home can Read More...
How to squeeze in meditation when you have absolutely no time
For eight years, I lived in a quiet, peaceful neighborhood surrounded by nature. I lived right by the beach in California and went on silent meditation retreats three times per year in the San Bernardino Mountains. On my first four-day meditation retreat, I was given the task of cleaning the dishes Read More...
How San Francisco’s hippy explosion shaped the modern world
On 12 July 1967, Florida newspaper the St Petersburg Times had an eye-catching front-page headline: “Dame Margot, Nureyev seized in hippie raid.” Police had busted a party in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, and unexpectedly ensnared two world-famous gatecrashers: Margot Fonteyn and Read More...
Twitter analysis shows that most Americans welcome refugees
The U.S. is a country built on immigrants—many of them, at some point in time, were refugees of some kind. That’s why the anti-refugee rhetoric that has entered American politics doesn’t fit. But an interesting analysis of Twitter tweets shows that a majority of Americans still support Read More...
Signs of pure altruism converge in the brain and increase with age
Combining insights from psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience, University of Oregon researchers have found converging signs of pure altruism and behavior that increase with age in the brain. People give to charity for numerous non-altruistic reasons, such as showing off their generosity Read More...
30,000 Muslims just marched against Isis and extremism
Thousands of Muslims from around the world converged on the UK for a convention where they rejected extremism and violence of terror groups such as Isis. More than 30,000 members of the Ahmadiyya Islamic movement met at Oakland Farm in Hampshire for a three-day convention, the 50th time the annual Read More...