Quote of the Day: “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are, but does not leave us where it found us.” – Anne Lamott
Photo: Mclcbooks, CC
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
This woman may not have been able to live long enough to see her daughter grow up if it had not been for a compassionate stranger who saw a very specific magazine ad.
Back in November, 42-year-old Jennen Johnson was diagnosed with kidney failure. She was told that if she did not find a transplant soon, then she would not live longer than four years.
As a single mother, Johnson was determined to survive – and she was not willing to bet on the transplant list to find her a match.
Instead, the Toronto woman placed an ad in the classified section of the newspaper asking for help.
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The ad, which was placed in Now magazine, reads: “Mother of a 12-year-old daughter desperately looking for a generous O blood type willing to get tested and possibly donate a kidney to save my life. If seriously interested in helping me continue to be a mom to my daughter for the years to come, please contact [me].”
The plea for help went viral until it was eventually spotted by Christi Nolan – a 37-year-old yoga instructor who lives in Hamilton.
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Nolan felt compelled to reach out to Johnson, and luckily, the two women were a perfect match.
They are both currently recovering in the hospital following a successful surgery. Not only that, but Nolan and Johnson – whose shared experience has led them to becoming best friends – plan on staying in touch and spending Thanksgiving together with each other’s families.
(WATCH the video below)
Click To Share The Inspiring Story With Your Friends (Photo by Christi Nolan)
Fast food chain Taco Bell has just announced that they will be extending their educational benefits to include all 210,000 team member employees in their American restaurants.
The company made their decision after partnering with Guild Education for a pilot program in 2017.
“When we surveyed our employees, education support was one of the top three things they asked for,” said Frank Tucker, Global Chief People Officer at Taco Bell.
“The barriers to achieving their education goals were time, money and support. Our partnership with Guild delivers on all of these needs for our employees through access to online classes, financial aid guidance, tuition assistance and a personal counselor to support each student in real time.”
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The program offers numerous educational benefits, including access to Guild’s academic and financial aid coaches and discounts to Guild’s educational partners – a network of 80 online nonprofit universities that offer Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, programs for high school completion, English-as-a-second-language courses, and a wide selection of certificates. Not only that, but employees can also claim up to $5,250 per calendar year in tuition assistance and get college credit for on-the-job restaurant training.
The best part? Employees aren’t required to put in a minimum amount of time with the company before they can claim the benefits – they can literally just start on day one.
Click To Share The Delicious News With Your Friends (Photo by Taco Bell)
There is something very nostalgic about old-timey barbershops. For the older men whom Lenny White caters to, it’s even therapeutic.
White runs a mobile pop-up barbershop that he takes on the road to nursing homes across Ireland so he can cater exclusively to men with dementia.
According to the Belfast-based barber, everything from the lemon-scented cologne to the light-hearted conversation makes the men feel young again. He even started using an old jukebox to play tunes during his visits so the men could listen to Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra – the music that they heard when they were young.
White says that when he first set up the jukebox, he immediately noticed that the patients were more at ease.
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“We instantly saw a massive difference and knew we were onto something,” White told Love What Matters. “The men would relax, sing along to the music and tap away to the beat of the music. Those that were previously agitated going to the hairdresser were relaxing more.”
White wasn’t always doing such meaningful work, however; for 17 long years, he worked as a marketing consultant for the Yellow Pages before he knew that he wanted to “change his job and do something more worthwhile”.
In June 2016, White got a diploma in barbing and became the UK’s first dementia-friendly barber.
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“I feel really excited as I know these men are not only going to look better, but also feel better,” says the 37-year-old barber.
“As men get older, we have hair growing in all the wrong places: nose, eyebrows and especially the ears. It gives me huge satisfaction to get these men all groomed and looking fresher. I have so much compassion for my clients. I understand their struggles and I can feel their frustration at times. My job is to give these men time to enjoy and have good feelings through my music, set up and one-on-one time.”
“At the end of my day, I know I have given these men my all [and it] makes me feel happy that I have done something worthwhile.”
(WATCH the heartwarming video below)
Help Your Friends Cut Away The Negative News: Click To Share (Photo by Forty-Five Films)
A pod of dolphins may have been in deep trouble if it had not been for an entire community coming to their rescue last week.
The dolphins had been trapped in the shallow waters of Newfoundland’s Trinity Bay by a ring of ice that was spreading closer and closer to the shore. Surrounded by ice for several days, the dolphins had no way of escaping the harbor.
As concerned town members crowded the shores, someone asked local fire chief Stanley Legge if he could use some of his heavy machinery to clear a path for the dolphins.
Legge then moved an excavator up to the edge of the water and started digging out large chunks of ice from the harbor. Once a substantial amount of ice had been cleared, other rescuers took their boats into the water so they could continue cutting a path to the sea.
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Finally, after plenty of hard work, the dolphins were able to swim free. According to the CBC, the onlookers started cheering and honking their car horns in celebration of the successful rescue.
“It’s a mission accomplished,” Legge told CBC. “I guess we done something good today for the environment and I guess it gives a lot of people a lot of peace of mind that the dolphins got away freely.”
(WATCH the video below)
You Should Dolphinately Click To Share The Story With Your Friends – Photo by CBC
Quote of the Day: “Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!” – Anne Frank
Photo: via YouTube
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
The Lesson: If you’ve ever related to the phrase “nice guys finish last”, then Robin Sharma has some encouragement and lessons for good people who feel like they’re failing. From making your faith in winning larger than your fear of failing to shifting your focus from blaming to growing – here are five reasons why good people fail and how they can overcome those obstacles.
Notable Excerpt: “Look, every great hero was broken. If you were to study Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Shakespeare and Tolstoy; if you look at any great artist – a Picasso or a Jean-Michel Basquiat … they all out-suffered the majority. And what I’m suggesting to you is that pain can be transformed into power and that’s why good people often lose.”
The Speaker: Robin Sharma’s talks on business have attracted over 750,000 people seeking his unique insight on strategy, leadership, and entrepreneurial mastery – and those viewers are already starting to see results in their personal growth. A best-selling author and motivational speaker, Sharma’s has spent the last twenty years of his career delivering talks to thousands of people all over the world, as well as to the massive corporate workforces of Nike, Microsoft, and HP.
Books: The Canadian speaker has published 11 groundbreaking self-help books, the most notable of which include “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” and “The Leader Who Had No Title”.
Podcast: Sharma’s first two Mastery classes are totally free to view and you can also download his free Mastery Sessions podcast on iTunes and Soundcloud, or watch his talks on YouTube.
(LISTEN to the inspiring talk below)
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Most people are familiar with the unique excitement of becoming a legal adult – but imagine happily celebrating your 18th birthday only to find out that you’ve essentially become a millionaire.
That is exactly what happened to Charlie Lagarde when she turned 18 years old on March 14th.
The Quebec teenager was relishing her new freedoms as an adult by buying a bottle of champagne and her very first lottery ticket.
As fate would have it, the ticket wasn’t just significant because it was her first time playing the lotto – it was also significant because it was a winning ticket for the $1 million jackpot.
After consulting with a financial advisor, Lagarde opted to take $1,000 per week for the rest of her life rather than the $780,000 lump sum after taxes.
“It’s without taxes so it’s equivalent to a salary of more than $100,000 a year, so it’s a great start in life for that young lady,” a spokesman for the lottery corporation told the Canadian Press. “That was her first lottery ticket ever and she fell upon a winning ticket.”
Lagarde plans on using the money to travel and finance her education so she can pursue her dream of working for National Geographic.
Click To Share The Inspiring Story With Your Friends (Photo by Loto Quebec)
A new documentary that was released earlier this week will restore your hope in humanity by telling the inspiring stories of modern-day heroes who are saving the world – and they’re all kids.
The film Look To The Sky, which is streaming on iTunes, Amazon, and Hulu, is comprised of interviews with dozens of young change-makers, such as a teen who overcame homelessness, a boy who saved his friend’s life, and a young woman who turned her experiences of being bullied into a positive world-wide self-love movement.
Look To The Sky was screened in 50 cities with proceeds benefiting charitable initiatives.
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The movie was produced through filmmaker Brett Culp’s nonprofit organization The Rising Heroes Project. The organization creates uplifting and educational films to inspire personal growth, community service and positive engagement in viewers of all ages.
“For many of us, the world seems very dark,” says Culp. “It’s easy to feel that noble heroes like Superman have vanished from the earth. I believe this heroic spirit is most clearly seen in the hearts of the young people who are shaping the future. Our goal with Look To The Sky is to help renew our faith in tomorrow, for ourselves, and our communities.”
(WATCH the video below)
Pass On The Positive News To Your Friends
Cassie Warren and Jesse Jones have been busy getting ready for the big day on which they’ll finally tie the knot – so in the chaotic midst of planning the wedding, Cassie accidentally wrote the wrong address on a wedding invitation that was meant for her aunt and uncle.
Instead of being sent to the her relative’s home in Eugene, Oregon – twenty minutes away from where the couple lives in Portland – it arrived at the home of an older couple.
While the recipients could have simply thrown the letter away, they sent it back to Cassie and Jesse with a note inside.
The note read: “I wish I knew you – this is going to be a blast. Congratulations – go have dinner on me. I’ve been married for 40 years. It gets better with age.”
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Enclosed with the returned invitation was a $20 bill.
“I was at first annoyed that Jesse was so worried about opening mail and not focused on the conversation we were in the middle of, but after he opened it and saw the note, I was just grateful and felt so blessed,” Cassie told KOIN.
The happy couple ended up using the money to take their friend to dinner before he is deployed on active-duty.
Cassie also made sure to write a thank you note back to the mysterious couple so they know that their gesture was well-received.
“It was just a thank you card,” Cassie said. “I thought [they] should know [their] act of kindness was appreciated. Not many people would do that for a stranger.”
Click To Share The Sweet Surprise With Your Friends (Photos by Cassie Warren)
Quote of the Day: “To give voice to what lives inside is what keeps all things possible.” – Mark Nepo
Photo: by dandy_fsj, CC
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Good News Network has launched a new podcast, featuring good news, good talks, and inspiring people!
It features weekly updates of The Good News Guru radio shows that air every Friday on KOST-FM in Los Angeles (and syndicated on iHeart stations). Also, you can hear super-helpful video vodcasts from GNN co-owner, Anthony Samadani: Fight Your Fears and Find Your Balance In 4 minutes. and The Most Important Question to Ask a Life or Business Partner.
All the episodes can be found on GNN’s podcast page here, but please subscribe to get updates—and show some love by writing a review on iTunes.
Subscribe on iTunes or, for Android devices, on Podbean… (Google Play is giving me some upload difficulties, but I hope to have those sorted out soon.)
Thanks for being a fan!
xxoo, Geri Weis-Corbley
Founder and Managing Editor
The Lesson: We all know that eating nutritious foods and exercising regularly are both key elements to living longer, healthier lives – but what about loving yourself? Some bodies of research suggest that self-esteem is just as essential to our wellness as typical healthy lifestyles.
Notable Excerpt: “We know that one of the greatest challenges to health and wellness – and frankly one of the greatest causes of all disease – is something called systemic inflammation. And here’s what we know: simply raising our happiness, emotional positivity, and optimistic outlook on life through self-care is one of the greatest ways to affect systemic inflammation [so] you become more alive.”
The Speaker: Dr. James Rouse, is a naturopathic physician and functional medicine expert who has studied nutrition for over 25 years and believes that “food is medicine”. He created Healthy Skoop to provide convenient, healthy, nutritious foods that are plant-based, sustainable, ethical – and tasty. 3% of all sales provide grants that bring fresh produce to school lunchrooms.
Good Advice? SHARE It – And, CHECK Out More on our Good Talks Page…
A yellow Labrador is being hailed as a hero after he dove into chilly South Carolina waters so he could rescue an exhausted man from drowning.
24-year-old Mason Ringer was spending his lunch break drifting along the Okatie River with his friends when someone stood up at the wrong time and capsized the boat.
The group then had to swim against the current all the way back to shore. While Ringer’s friends were all able to make it to the docks, he had only managed to swim three-quarters of the way before his legs started to cramp up from being in the cold water for an hour.
“I rolled over on my back and I closed my eyes and said a prayer to God asking him to help me somehow,” Ringer told Inside Edition. “Then I heard the dog bark on the dock.”
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The dog belonged to the owner of the property on which Ringer works. Upon sensing the 24-year-old’s distress, it jumped into the water, swam up to Ringer, and towed him back to shore using his collar.
“When I saw that the dog was coming in, I was skeptical thinking ‘I am going to drown this dog while he is trying to save me’, [but] it was almost effortless for him to pull me in,” said the man.
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“I went home and kissed my babies. I was definitely overwhelmed with joy. I saw the dog the next day. He recognized me. He was staying close to me for a little while.”
Ringer also says he plans on rewarding the pup with a well-deserved steak the next chance he gets.
Click To Share The Pawesome Rescue Story With Your Friends (Photo by Mason Ringer)
While their smelly spray may not be the cutest thing in the world, this baby skunk and his playmate are sure to melt your heart.
A video that was uploaded to YouTube by Viral Hog last August shows a young house-trained skunk from Silver City, New Mexico trying to chase down a remote-controlled version of itself.
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Since the critter is still pretty small, he is barely able to keep up with his 4-wheeled counterpart – but he certainly seems to delight in the case.
While the video does not have an excessive amount of details about the skunk, they told ViralHog: “We have tons of dog and cat toys and we dug out this skunk kind of toy… He follows it a bit, but he’s too young to really play with it. This was a month ago and he can manhandle that little skunk now.”
(WATCH the video below)
Don’t Let This Cute Clip Get Away: Click To Share With Your Friends
In a couple of years time, people from all over the world will be able to judge the cleanliness of their water just by taking a picture of it with their smart phone.
The collaborative project, which is being developed by scientists and ecologists in six different countries, is aiming to create a simple piece of technology called the MONOCLE that can attach to a phone’s camera and measure the water’s levels of pollution in a single snapshot.
The technology is similar to that of the wildly successful iSPEX attachment that was released in 2015.
Astronomer Frans Snik, who is a developer on the MONOCLE project, says: “It is a spin-off of our astronomy technology that we use to measure whether there is water in liquid form and oxygen present on planets around other stars, which could be an indication of extraterrestrial life.”
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Dutch researchers at the University of Leiden believe that the MONOCLE technology will give citizen scientists in urban settings the ability to check their water for contaminants and use their measurements to help drive more environmentally-friendly legislation and policies. Additionally, fishermen in more rural parts of the world will be able to gauge the safety of their bounties and fishing grounds.
Snik says that the attachment is expected to be deployed for testing at three different locations in 2019: Baloton Lake in Hungary, Loch Leven in Scotland, and Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania.
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“These places have been chosen because the citizens taking part—fishermen and residents who want to have good, clean drinking water—benefit from having a simple and fast way of making measurements,” says Snik.
The researchers are even trying to develop the attachment so that its blueprints can be freely downloaded and 3D-printed by anyone in the world. The biggest hurdle that the team faces is being able to ensure that the MONOCLE will be compatible with smart phone cameras in the future.
Click To Share The Fascinating News With Your Friends
A Texas mother-of-two is praising a fellow mom for coming to her rescue during a grocery shopping trip earlier this week.
Rebecca Paterson was browsing the aisles of Target in Pearland last week when both her 2-month-old and her 2-year-old children started having meltdowns at the same time, which she described as the obvious signal for “It’s time to leave Target immediately.”
Instead of having to cut her shopping short, however, another shopper named Tiffany Jones-Guillory saw the mom in distress and offered to hold Paterson’s 2-year-old and walk with them through the aisles.
Grateful for the reprieve, Paterson accepted the woman’s offer to help. As Paterson calmed her infant and finished her shopping, Jones-Guillory soothed the toddler until he had sufficiently calmed down.
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Paterson was so touched by the woman’s compassion during her time of need, she snapped a photo of Jones-Guillory holding the toddler and posted it to a private Facebook group for Pearland moms.
“She walked with me while I got the essentials needed for the day and kept hold of my toddler while he calmed down,” Rebecca said in the Facebook post. “She saved me today, moms!!! I am so sleep deprived and was running on empty. A little kindness and understanding goes a long way.”
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According to Chron, Jones-Guillory said: “I was just trying to do something nice from mom to mom, because I’ve been in that situation before.
“I heard how frustrated she was, and I wanted to be her guardian angel on that day. I’m just hoping and praying that more people can be inspired by this story to do the same thing.”
Click To Share The Sweet Story With Your Friends (Photo by Rebecca Paterson)
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell met leaders from Kentucky’s hemp industry and the state’s Department of Agriculture Commissioner on Monday for a dialogue about the future of industrial hemp.
Following the meeting, Leader McConnell announced strong support for removing hemp from the Controlled Substances Act, a benchmark moment for the growing hemp economy and a hopeful bellwether of future national legislation.
“I will be introducing, when I go back to the Senate a week from Monday, a bipartisan bill in the Senate…the Hemp Farming Act of 2018,” Leader McConnell said at the press conference. “I believe we’re ready to take the next step, and build upon the success we’ve seen with Kentucky’s Hemp Pilot Program,”
Leader McConnell continued his clear and compelling support saying, “This bill (Hemp Farming Act of 2018) will finally legalize hemp as an agricultural commodity and remove it from the list of Controlled Substances.”
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The new status for hemp would help local tobacco farmers transition to the agriculture crop of the future, saying, “We all are so optimistic that industrial hemp can become, sometime in the future, what burley tobacco was in Kentucky’s past.”
There is already a production facility run by GenCanna on the Hemp Research Campus in Winchester, Kentucky, which is a re-purposed former tobacco research facility.
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As a champion of the hemp industry, McConnell recently successfully passed the 2018 Omnibus Spending Bill which included language that specifically approves the interstate and international transportation of hemp and hemp-derived products.
“Four years after GenCanna was Kentucky’s first CBD specific Industrial Hemp Research Pilot Program participant, (and) we are ecstatic,” said GenCanna President Steve Bevan, “As a company, GenCanna is extremely proud of our local job creation and $40M in economic impact over the last 4 years.”
Grow Some Positivity: Click To Share With Your Friends
Quote of the Day: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
The Lesson: Since Brian Johnson’s older brother Rick was diagnosed with cancer, it has been an emotionally tumultuous journey for him and his family. Spurred by a compulsion to help his sibling, Johnson started researching different methods and theories on how to fight and prevent cancer – and now, he wants to share his wealth of information with others who may be undergoing the same thing.
Notable Excerpt: “Our first big idea is the first myth we need to tackle: genes versus habits. Which one do you think is more influential? … Imagine you’re in Denmark and you’re researching 1,000 kids who were adopted at birth … do you think that the biological parents getting cancer before age 50 would have a bigger impact [on the kids] or their adopted parents getting cancer before age 50? Which do you think would have a bigger influence on the kids themselves experiencing cancer? Well, the research says that if the biological parent gets cancer before age 50, but they never lived with the adopted kid, there is 0% increased likelihood of the kid getting cancer. Zero. No correlation. But if the adopted parent gets cancer before age 50, the risk of the child developing cancer increases five-fold. Why is that? It’s because these parents passed on their habits – not their genes – to their kids.”
The Speaker: Brian Johnson is a philosopher and founder of Optimize.me, a website, app, and free video series that help people to optimize their lives so they can be their best selves. He studies self-improvement books, then breaks them down into bite-sized chunks and ‘Philosopher‘s Notes’ for busy people who want ‘more wisdom in less time’. He also offers Optimal Living classes and online training for your Hero’s Journey.
Podcast: Brian’s podcast, OPTIMIZE with Brian Johnson, features the best big ideas from the best optimal living books. More wisdom in less time (between 4-19 minutes each) to help you live your greatest life. Subscribe: Stitcher — iTunes — Podbean.
Books: In this talk, Johnson refers to a book by David Servan-Shreiber called “Anticancer: A New Way of Life”.
(LISTEN to the interesting talk below or check out Brian’s website for more information on his Conquering Cancer class)
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