Posts Tagged ‘Zoe Weil’
New Year, New You: The Top 10 Books to Help You Ring in the New Year Right!
As the earth completes its annual rotation around the sun, some things come to an end but others begin. For me, the New Year always implies new beginnings, new opportunities, and the chance to create real change in my life. It’s a time when the world collectively takes a moment to reflect, re-center, and reconnect with the life we want.
Here in the Beyond Words office, we’ve been sharing some of our favorite books to help invoke a New You for the New Year. Whether you’re looking to change your body, mind, or soul, we’ve got a book designed just for you.
Here are our top 10 books to help you ring in the New Year right! (more…)
What’s next month’s book?
Are you in a book club? I have been a card-carrying member for about 6 months and have enjoyed all of our talks. But what if book club wasn’t just once a month, what if it was every day? I don’t mean reading a book a day, but if you were to read a book that didn’t stop at the discussion. What if it was a book that could change how you lead your day-to-day life? And your book club could act as a sort of support group. (more…)
A Gift that Lasts All Year
I love December. Amidst the festivities, the sparkling lights and candles to brighten the darkest month, the singing and celebrating, the craft fairs and concerts, the spirit of generosity (albeit too commercialized, but that’s another blog), the gatherings with friends and family, there is also another opportunity I relish: the opportunity to dive into myself and reflect upon the year that has passed and the new one before me.
At the Institute for Humane Education (www.HumaneEducation.org), January is when we offer our online course, “A Better World, A Meaningful Life,” based on my book Most Good, Least Harm. We offer this course in January because it’s a perfect way to begin a new year, providing, as it does, the opportunity to reflect upon one’s deepest values, build community with others who want to align their choices and lives more deeply with what is most important to them, and start the year by putting intentions into action. It take new year’s resolutions and grounds them in practice.
In the dark of winter, such a course is a wonderful opportunity to introspect, to inquire about what is most important to us and make our goals real in order to live with greater integrity and purpose. We know many people who not only decide to take this course themselves, but give it as a holiday gift to a friend or family member, creating the chance to share themselves, their values, their vision and their dreams with someone they love.
Here’s to the joyful, meaningful lives we can create for ourselves and the humane and healthy world we can build together. Happy Holidays!
Holiday Wishes
The Holidays are the perfect time to reflect on your blessings and at Beyond Words we wanted to take this opportunity to thank our community of inspired readers by offering some thoughts from some of our favorite authors. If you get our newsletter, you have already gotten a taste of their holiday inspiration, if not, go here to read what Mike Dooley, Zoe Weil, and many of our other authors think about at this time of year.
Following this post will be several posts from our authors who had even more holiday thoughts to share. We hope you enjoy, and don’t forget to visit our site to get some great last minute deals. Happy Holidays from us at Beyond Words!
Meeting a 70-Year-Old Woman Finishing the Appalachian Trail
I love this exuberant and inspirational blog post from author of Most Good Least Harm, Zoe Weil. Zoe is the co-founder and President of the Institute for Humane Education (IHE). IHE works to create a world in which we all live humanely, sustainably, and peaceably.
Yesterday I hiked the last leg of the Appalachian Trail (AT) up Katahdin Mountain in Maine with my good friend and fellow humane educator, Freeman Wicklund. Freeman began the AT in Georgia in March and hiked more than 1,300 miles to Connecticut before a stress fracture in his foot laid him up for a month of healing. He hitchhiked up to Maine on Labor Day to resume the trail, this time heading south. (more…)
Action is the Antidote to Despair
We’ll thrilled to have a new blog post to share with you from the delightful Zoe Weil, author of Most Good, Least Harm.
You’re making all the right choices. You’re an organic locavore. Whenever possible, you bike, take public transportation, or walk instead of drive, and when you drive it’s a hybrid. You choose cruelty-free, toxin-free personal care products. You’re a member of a dozen different organizations all with missions you wholeheartedly support. Compact fluorescents? Of course. Bottled water? Never. Yoga and exercise? Regularly. A positive attitude? Absolutely.
But perhaps you, like me, have those dark nights of the despairing soul when you worry whether we really can turn things around on our beleaguered planet. You present a sunny disposition, but deep inside, you sometimes struggle with your own hopelessness. And then you head to your Zumba or Pilates class to sweat away your anxieties and have a shot of wheatgrass to give yourself a boost. You focus on your good choices to stave off any bad feelings lurking below the surface. (more…)
My Favorite Part of Traveling
Here is a new blog post from one of my favorite authors, Zoe Weil, author of Most Good, Least Harm. You can learn more about Zoe and the excellent work that she does at www.zoeweil.com
I love traveling, even though I’m well aware of the carbon footprint I leave when I fly far from home. Traveling is one of my less-than-MOGO (most good) choices, although I do try to minimize my impact, stay in eco-friendly places, and take some comfort knowing that I am positively affecting those who rely on tourism for their livelihoods. Where I live near Acadia National Park I’m reminded all the time that, without tourism, many of my friends and neighbors would have little income, so I try to be a “good traveler” when I leave Maine and support local economies even as I leave my own for awhile.
I went on vacation to Belize a few weeks ago, because for years I’ve wanted to explore the coral reefs to see the incredible undersea life that abounds there. What I didn’t expect, or plan for, was the amazing day I spent with two Mayan brothers in a jungle preserve. (more…)
Save and Savor: Reflections on Sy Safransky’s Notebook #1
From Zoe Weil, co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education and the author of Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life. Humane Education is more than just ethics and environmentalism. It’s about choosing the Most Good—MOGO—for every interaction you do. Here is Zoe’s most recent blog post from her Humane Connection website.
I was reading Sy Safransky’s Notebook in The Sun magazine this morning. I love this page of my favorite magazine, in which the editor, Sy Safransky, shares short thoughts through individual paragraphs about a range of ideas and experiences. Sy’s writing is always thought-provoking and often moving, and today’s page was so much so that three of his paragraphs will serve as the topics for this week’s blog posts. (more…)
What Was MOGO on Flight 250
From Zoe Weil, co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education and the author of Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life. Humane Education is more than just ethics and environmentalism. It’s about choosing the Most Good—MOGO—for every interaction you do. Here is Zoe’s most recent blog post from her Humane Connection website.
Flying home from Portland, Oregon, on October 12, I sat diagonally across from a woman who became increasingly disruptive, belligerent, and aggressive. I’d missed the initial altercation between her and the man sitting in the chair in front of her, only tuning in when the flight attendant attempted to get her attention (she was masked and hooded with eyes closed and head down) to ask her to move her legs from pushing against the back of his seat. Apparently, she’d been kicking his seat incessantly.
