Category: Uncategorized
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Legacy Planning is an Act of Love
Before Dr. Gary Chapman was a bestselling author, he was a husband in a struggling marriage. His wife was frustrated that he didn’t help around the house. He was disappointed she didn’t respond to his words of encouragement. “One night she said to me, ‘You keep saying “I love you,” but if you love me,…
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3 Ways to Give in Every Season of Life
In 2018, a sculpture caught the eye of a Texas woman perusing the aisles of her local thrift store and she bought it for $34.99. She was curious about the piece and started to do some research. Several years later, a fine arts consultant identified it as an ancient Roman bust that once belonged to…
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4 Ways to Share Your Story This Christmas
One of Dave Isay’s earliest memories involves capturing the stories of his grandparents and great-aunts on a small cassette recorder (remember those?). He turned his love of stories into a vocation as founder of StoryCorps. This organization has recorded stories from more than 600,000 people and preserved them at the Library of Congress. Many of…
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The 90,000 Hour Investment
It’s estimated that the average person spends about 90,000 hours at work during their lifetime. And throughout those 90,000 hours, that average person will change jobs about 12 times. As you reflect on your working life, how did you invest your 90,000 hours? Behind a desk or on an assembly line? Maybe you’re one of…
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The Lifeline for Your Estate Plan
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was an instant hit when it premiered in 1999. The game show featured contestants answering 15 increasingly difficult trivia questions, with the goal of winning one million dollars. If you’ve said, “Is that your final answer?” in the last 20 years, you probably have this show to thank. Contestants…
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A Treasure You’d Never Want to Hunt
In 1982, New York publisher Byron Preiss released a book containing 12 puzzles, each consisting of a cryptic verse that had to be paired with a mysterious painting. If solved correctly, each puzzle would lead to a different park in a North American city where he’d buried a small container and key that could be…
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Your Creativity Can Change the World
Fred Barley was a driven, intelligent 19-year-old. He was also homeless. When the police found him living in a tent on the campus of Gordon College in Georgia, he explained he had traveled six hours by bicycle in 100-degree weather to attend his second year of college. He was two weeks early, hoping to get…
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Creative Giving Creates Greater Impact
Certain posts on Twitter go viral because they’re so relatable, like this one from a mom in North Carolina: “My 8-year-old daughter met a girl at summer camp last year named ‘Internet.’ I said no way, that can’t be her name, but my daughter has been adamant. For almost a year we’ve been having this…
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Do Generous People Live Longer?
We’ve all heard “it’s more blessed to give than to receive,” but did you know there’s scientific data to back it up? Over the past 20 years experts have found that giving creates a “warm glow” of dopamine in the body; lighting up the same parts of the brain as eating dessert or receiving money.…
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Tap into Iceberg-Sized Generosity
In the early 1800s, British citizens were obsessed with Arctic exploration. Some historians even refer to the time as “polar mania.” To satisfy intrigue, polar explorers frequently published their journals and Victorians bought them up. They also sang polar-themed songs, threw Arctic-themed parties, and attended theatrical re-creations of polar expeditions in gardens and parks. Our…