Amazing Children Remember Past Lives, Chocolate Consumption Linked to Nobel Prizes
Inspiring News Articles
April 3, 2015

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Below are key excerpts of inspiring news articles with great information on amazing children who remember past lives, and astonishing link between chocolate consumption and Nobel prizes, the key to happiness, and more.

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Special note: Watch a great three-minute video on changing the world one love note at a time. Read about how responsibly grazing livestock can save the world from some of the worst effects of climate change. Watch a profound, inspiring video titled "The Lie We Live."

Quote of the Week:"I raise up my voice not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard."  ~~  Malala Yousefsai

Video of the Week: Watch one of the most profound and inspiring video documentaries ever made on how a group of teenagers powerfully transformed their lives. This piece on the amazing Challenge Day program won the Emmy award for its category. If you can find the 90 minutes to watch it, you won't be disappointed.

'Return To Life': How some children have memories of reincarnation
March 16, 2015, Today
http://www.today.com/news/return-life-how-some-children-have-memories...

Ryan's stories were truly legendary. His mother Cyndi said [that] when he was 5 years old, he confided in her one evening before bed. He said, "mom, I have something I need to tell you. I used to be somebody else." The preschooler would then talk about "going home" to Hollywood. "His stories were so detailed and they were so extensive, that it just wasn't like a child could have made it up," she said. Cyndi said she ... had never really thought about reincarnation. She checked out books about Hollywood from the local library, hoping something inside would help her son make sense of his strange memories. "Then we found the picture," she said. That photo ... was a publicity shot from the 1932 movie. "She turns to the page in the book, and I say 'that's me, that's who I was,'" Ryan remembers. Finally she had a face to match to her son's strange "memories," giving her the courage to ask someone for help. That someone was Dr. Jim Tucker ... at the University of Virginia. [Tucker] has spent more than a decade studying the cases of children ... who say they remember a past life. [His] office contains the files of more than 2,500 children– cases accumulated from all over the world by his predecessor, Ian Stevenson. Tucker has [discovered some] intriguing patterns. For instance, 70 percent of the children say they died violent or unexpected deaths in their previous lives, and males account for 73 percent of those deaths– mirroring the statistics of those who die of unnatural causes in the general population. "There'd be no way to orchestrate that statistic with over 2,000 cases," Tucker said.

Note: Don't miss the fascinating video of Ryan's story at the link above. His family and Dr. Tucker were able to confirm amazing details five-year-old Ryan described from his past life. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

The strange world of felt presences
March 5, 2015, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/05/the-strange-world-of-felt...

On 20 May 1916, Ernest Shackleton, Frank Worsley, and Tom Crean reached Stromness, a whaling station on the north coast of South Georgia. They had been walking for 36 hours, in life-threatening conditions. They did not talk about it at the time, but weeks later all three men reported an uncanny experience during their trek: a feeling that "often there were four, not three" men on their journey. The "fourth" that accompanied them had the silent presence of a real person, someone walking with them by their side. Encounters such as these are common in extreme survival situations: guardian angels, guides, or even Christ-like figures have often been reported. We know them now as "third man" experiences, following a line in TS Eliot's poem, The Wasteland: "Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together. But when I look ahead up the white road, there is always another one walking beside you." In his book The Third Man Factor, John Geiger collects together a wide range of third man stories, including accounts from mountaineers, sailors, and survivors of terrorist attacks. They all involve a strong impression of a felt presence ... which will often feel as if it has a spiritual or guiding purpose.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

Chocolate consumption and Nobel Prizes: A bizarre juxtaposition if there ever was one
November 20, 2012, Scientific American Blog
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2012/11/20/...

What makes a Nobel Prize winner? There's several suggested factors: Perseverance? Good luck? Good mentors and students? Here's one possible factor that I would have never imagined in my wildest dreams; chocolate consumption. Chocolate consumption tracks well with the number of Nobel Laureates produced by a country. At least that's what a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine - one of the world's premier journals of medical research - claims. The paper starts by assuming ... that winning a Nobel Prize must somehow be related to cognitive ability. It then goes on to describe a link between flavanols - organic molecules found among other foods in chocolate, green tea and red wine - and cognitive ability. From this idea the author basically jumps to the dubious and frankly bizarre question of whether chocolate consumption could possibly account for Nobel Prize winning ability. The hypothesis is testable, so the author decides to simply plot the number of Nobel prize winners per 10 million people in different countries counted from 1900-2011 vs the chocolate consumption in those countries. A plot of chocolate consumption vs number of Nobel Prizes reveals a strong correlation of 0.79. The most likely explanation for that correlation is that it's caused by a third factor.

Note: Check out the fascinating chart mentioned above. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

The key to our happiness is connection, not competition
March 20, 2015, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/20/key-to-happiness...

Charles Darwin is normally associated with the "survival of the fittest" theory. He also ... wrote that the communities most likely to flourish were "those with the most sympathetic members", an observation backed up by research that we are wired to care about each other. But we have such a strong cultural narrative about the selfish side of humanity that we adopt systems and behaviours that undermine our natural co-operative tendencies. This starts in schools, where the relentless focus on exams and attainment instills in young people the idea that success is about doing better than others. It continues in our marketing culture, which encourages conspicuous displays of consumption and rivalry. It's found at the heart of our workplaces, where employees compete with each other for performance-related rewards. This "get ahead or lose out" ethos [is] deeply flawed. In schools, helping young people to develop social and emotional skills [has] been shown to boost their performance. In workplaces, research ... shows that "givers" - people who help others without seeking anything in return - are more successful in the long term than "takers" - who try to maximise benefits for themselves, rather than others. For society as a whole, the World Happiness Report 2013, a major global study, found that two of the strongest explanatory factors for national wellbeing are levels of social support and generosity.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

Indian comic creates female superhero to tackle rape
December 18, 2014, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/18/india-comic-superhero-tackle-rape...

The rape by six men of the 23-year-old Delhi medical student who later died of her injuries sparked national protests and changes to India's rape laws. For film-maker Ram Devineni, founder of the publisher and film production company Rattapallax, it also led to Priya's Shakti, a new comic for teenagers which Rattapallax says is "rooted in ancient matriarchal traditions that have been displaced in modern representations of Hindu culture", and which is intended to support "the movement against patriarchy, misogyny and indifference through love, creativity and solidarity". Illustrated by Dan Goldman, the comic is about to be unveiled at Mumbai Comic-Con. It tells the story of Priya, devoted to the goddess Parvati, and as a young girl, full of dreams of becoming a teacher. But she is told by her father to stop going to school, and to stay home and take care of the house. As she grows up, she is the victim of increasing sexual violence, until she is raped - and then thrown out of the family home. Parvati is horrified to discover what women on earth go through, and inspires Priya to speak out and spread a new message to the world: to treat women with respect, educate all children, and speak out when a woman is being mistreated. Priya, riding on a tiger, returns to her village. She is, said Devineni, "a new hero for a modern India". Priya's Shakti – Shakti is "the female principle of divine energy" – is available free online, and Rattapallax has printed 6,000 copies in Hindi and English for the convention and for educational distribution.

Note: For more, read this inspiring article in the Christian Science Monitor.

American Wins International Children's Peace Prize
November 18, 2014, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/american-teen-makes-history-wins-international...

Neha Gupta became the first ever American today to be awarded the Children's International Peace Prize in The Hague, Netherlands. The prize is awarded annually to a child, anywhere in the world, for his or her dedication to children's rights. Gupta began her astounding work when she was just a child herself, visiting her parents' native India nine years ago. Carrying out a family tradition of celebrating birthdays by delivering gifts to orphans, she was struck by the condition these children were living in. "The place was just really in shambles," Gupta told Saulny. "I didn't want to accept these things. These are things I wanted to fix." She moved to fix them quickly, any way that she could. Back home in Pennsylvania, she made a bold move, deciding to sell all of her toys to raise money for the orphans she had met in India. "We just put it out on our driveway and people came, bought things and it turned out to be such a successful event," Gupta said. "From that one event we raised $700 and I've wanted to keep going." Gupta kept going, selling crafts door to door and collecting corporate donations in her dad's SUV. Nine years later, now an 18-year-old college student, she runs Empower Orphans, a global charity that has raised $1.3 million. The organization reaches orphans in the U.S. and abroad, helping to build classrooms, buy books, equip computer labs, pay for health exams, supply water and buy sewing machines to empower other young women to start their own businesses. Despite all of her extraordinary successes, Gupta describes herself as just an ordinary teenager who found her calling early in life. That bit of serendipity has touched the lives of more than 25,000 children so far.

Note: Don't miss an inspiring video on this beautiful woman and the way she is changing the world.

How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Spoiled
February 4, 2015, Greater Good
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_raise_kids_are_not_spoiled

All parents want their kids to have the skills they need to thrive in the world. But, while most parents feel comfortable talking about the importance of safety, health, schoolwork, and relationships, when it comes to the importance of money, many fall silent. Perhaps that's because money can bring up extremely strong emotions. How much we have or don't have, and how our income compares to that of others, can be a source of shame–whether we perceive ourselves as having too much or too little. Parents often find themselves fighting over finances, leaving the impression on kids that money causes conflict. In my role as the personal finance columnist for The New York Times, parents often ask me for advice. Here are some tips: 1. Talk about money and your values around money. 2. Give children money to manage on their own. 3. Teach kids to spend wisely. 4. Put kids to work. 5. Teach kids the importance of giving. 6. Practice gratitude. While these tips aren't foolproof, parents who follow them have a better chance of raising children with a wise relationship to money. It's up to all of us to make sure our children understand our values and know how to save, spend, or give away money in a way that is consistent with those values. If we all approached the topic with more honesty and openness, we might avoid a future where children end up either crippled by debt or thinking that everything should come to them on a silver platter.

Note: The above was written by Ron Lieber, whose new book, The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money, is about how parents can do a better job of teaching their kids about money. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

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