Fifteen years ago on Labor Day weekend I clicked the button for the first time that uploaded the Good News Network website, allowing anyone in the world to see it on the internet. To mark the anniversary, I am launching a contest called, What 'Good News' Means to Me. I've got some SUPER life-enhancing prizes to award for my four favorite entries.
They walk around the park together like they're in love, reports Steve Hartman. It all started when a gray goose named Maria started following Dominic every time he went to his local Los Angeles park.
After 3 1/2 days searching for his dog across the mountain trails in Santa Fe, N.M., camper Mike Stotts decided he had to accept what park rangers and fellow campers had been telling him: That no 15-year-old house dog with diminished hearing could survive that long without food or water among the coyotes and mid-August heat.
Happiness, or the lack thereof, lies at the root of what makes life meaningful. But it is sometimes hard to figure out what exactly constitutes happiness, especially in a culture like the Unites States that tends to conflate money with meaning. Roko Belic, the director of Happy, the documentary, offers four tips to develop a happiness skill set.
When he was 15, Thomas Beck escaped from a Nazi prison camp in Budapest - but he left behind his teenage sweetheart, Edith Greiman, 14. There seemed no chance of them ever seeing each other again, for Thomas eventually made his way to Australia and set up a new life. But fate stepped in.
In October, US consumer confidence hit the highest point since February 2008, and private sector businesses added more jobs than at any time in the last eight months. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the US economy added 171,000 jobs last month, 50,000 more than economists had expected.
At a petting zoo in Israel, a baboon has adopted a tiny kitten who recently strayed into its cage and then refused to leave. The baboon now cares for the kitten, checking it for fleas, and rarely lets the feline out of her sight.
Since Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan launched Method in 2000, to sell pretty bottles of eco-friendly soaps and cleaners in glowing pastel colors, the company has grown into a $100 million (£62.3m) company. Their company's culture of keeping it weird is a social mission that keeps employees happy. To stay focused on employee happiness and high-end innovative design is the business model.
Robert Emmons was shocked. The University of California psychologist found that after just ten weeks, people who kept a gratitude journal were 25 percent happier than people who didn't. People who were reminded to say thank you at least once a day were healthier and spent more time exercising. As he writes in an essay for the Greater Good Science Center, This is a massive difference. The gratitude group participants also experienced fewer symptoms of physical illness than those in either of the other two groups." This month the Center launched a web-based digital gratitude journal at Thnx4.org designed to track and promote the practice of gratitude worldwide while serving as an invaluable source of scientific data on gratitude.
Which comes first, happiness or money? A new study suggests that happier teenagers grow up to be richer adults.
A wealthy Missouri man posing as Secret Santa stunned New Yorkers, handing $100 bills to many in Staten Island who had lost everything to Superstorm Sandy.
Tony Tolbert, a Harvard-educated lawyer in Los Angeles, decided to move into his mother's home so he could offer his own fully-furnished house to a homeless family of five, and give it to them rent-free for a year.