Author: jflier
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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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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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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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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…
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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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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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3 Surprising Benefits of Generosity
Most parents would agree their children are one of the main reasons they have joy in their lives and gray hairs on their heads. But as wonderful as every child is, there’s something different about the ones who are “yours.” Our kids and grandkids burrow into our hearts in a special, deep way. It’s our…
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6 Ways to Experience More Peace Today
“A study showed that in 1968 it took 15 hours to record one hour of pure nature without the ambient sounds of airplanes, cars, and other manufactured reverberations. As of the year 2005, it took more than 2,000 hours of recorded time to yield the same hour of pure nature sounds.” * Can you even…
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3 Ways to Transfer Your Values to the Next Generation
A famous actor once observed, “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” As humans, our emotions and motivations are largely connected to the way we spend money. A recent study from the University of Warwick in the U.K. revealed people feel happier…
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Go Beyond “Good Vibes” to Create Real Impact
A year after Mara Soriano’s mother died, the Vancouver resident lost another thing close to her heart – a teddy bear that played a sweet, recorded message in her mom’s voice. When word of the bear’s disappearance reached Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds on social media, he offered $5,000 to anyone who returned the bear, no…