A teacher in New York decided to honour all of her high school seniors by telling each of them how much of a difference they made. Using the Who I Am Makes A Difference Ceremony, she called each student to the front of the class, one at a time. First, she told the class how that student made a difference to her. Then, she presented each of them with a Who I Am Makes A Difference Blue Ribbon. Afterwards the teacher decided to do a class project to see what kind of impact acknowledgement would have on their community. She gave each of the students three more ribbons and instructed…

A certain young woman one day said something that hurt her best friend of many years. She regretted it immediately and would have done anything to take the words back. But they were said, impulsively, in a moment of thoughtlessness, and as close as she and her friend were, she did not consider the effects of her words beforehand. What she said hurt the friend so much that this good woman was herself hurt for the pain she had caused. In her effort to undo what she had done, she went to the wise woman who lived in the village. Explaining her situation, she asked for advice. The wise woman…

I love this piece which was sent to me by a friend many years ago. I came across it again yesterday when I was browsing through some of my files and thought it would be a great story to share …especially when so many of us have yet to learn the lesson of self-appreciation…and may not yet recognise that Life is offering us this lesson over and over…   You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period of this time around. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called ‘Life’. Each day…

One day a teacher asked her students to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name. Then she told them to think of the nicest thing that they could say about each of their classmates and write it down. It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment and as the students left the room, each one handed in the papers. That Saturday, the teacher wrote down the name of each student on a separate piece of paper and listed what everyone else had said about that individual. On Monday, she gave each student…

Some of you may have heard this story before; it’s a golden oldie that still holds true today. Especially as we come to terms with a world forever changed by the current pandemic, where it is all too easy to feel insignificant… A man was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked along, he began to see another man in the distance. As he grew nearer, he noticed that the other man kept leaning down, picking something up and throwing it out into the water. Time and again he kept hurling things out into the ocean. As the first man approached even closer, he noticed that…

The gifted storyteller Jack Canfield tells this story about Monty Roberts, the world-famous horse trainer who has shown the world that it is possible to train a horse without ever using force or hitting the horse. His is a truly remarkable story in itself. This is my version of Jack and Monty’s story… My friend Monty Roberts, lets me use his house, which is situated on a magnificent horse ranch, to run fund-raising events for youth at risk. Monty passionately believes in the power of our dreams, as well as the importance of following them. He is also deeply committed to sharing this message of hope to youth who are…

Many years ago, when I read through the inspiring stories that Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen had gathered together in their very first serving of Chicken Soup for The Soul and came across a story entitled ‘Start with Yourself’. I have never forgotten this story. I think perhaps it has something to do with the sadness of regret because you spent too long looking for your dream in the wrong places. Only to find out, far too late, that your dream was inside you all the time. Today, I’d like to share this story… According to the anonymous story, these words were inscribed on the tomb of one of…

  So here we are, working from home during the Coronavirus lockdown. No more daily commuting in grid-locked traffic, no more tedious late-afternoon meetings in the office. We have been force-marched into an unfamiliar virtual world. One of our lead trainers at Change Dynamics is new to Zoom videoconferencing. Her performance anxiety peaked just before her very first ‘virtual’ training session, right at the beginning of lockdown. When she started introducing her lecture she said, afterwards, that she was “worried her voice was sounding shaky”. After a few minutes of the call, one of the delegates piped up “you’re on mute”! Laughter erupted. The ice had broken. Everyone in the…

.                                                                                 By Monique Stock   Back in 1957, a group of monks from a monastery in Bangkok, Thailand had to relocate a ten-and-a half-foot tall clay Buddha from their temple to a new location. The reason? The monastery was to be relocated to make room for the development of a highway through Bangkok. This highway would run right through the existing location of the monastery. The monks called in a crane…