I love this video from two years ago by John Green on how to be motivated in hard times. Just three and a half minutes long.
Watch it and bookmark it for when you could use the encouragement.
My brother once told me a story about for a job he was pursuing that led to him having dinner with the CEO. The dinner went well, and my brother was hired soon after. In a later conversation, the CEO confessed that the main reason for the dinner was to see how my brother treated the restaurant staff. If he hadn’t given them eye-contact and thanked them, he wouldn’t have been hired.
I’m typically suspicious of using brief moments to judge a person’s character, but this is a pretty good list.
“I wish somebody had told me these things when I was younger. I now practice them when I need to get a fast assessment of people I don’t know well.”
It’s amazing how much improvement the world has seen in childhood and maternal health. Worth celebrating, especially as the trend continues.
“The worldwide mortality rate for kids younger than 5 years old was slashed in half in 2022 compared to the turn of the century. Child mortality was even higher in 1990, when 13 million children under 5 died. By 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, that number hovered around 4.9 million.”
The mortality rate among the world’s children has reached an all-time low - Vox
An absolutely lovely post by Maria Popova. Just read the whole thing.
"Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness. - Leo Tolstoy”
Leo Tolstoy on Kindness and the Measure of Love – The Marginalian