By Stephen Dinan, founder and CEO of The Shift Network

On a day in which gifts are flying to loved ones, we wanted to gift you with a special edition of Catalyst featuring our “Best of 2018!” More on that below after some reflections.

My beloved wife, Devaa Haley Mitchell, and I love this time of year, especially with our magical little daughter Sienna lighting up the days with her joyful silliness.

We are enjoying some family time at our gorgeous new property in Nevada City, which we’re calling the Sierra Jewel. With the rain coming down and the forest very quiet, it’s a beautiful place to restore and renew and celebrate the holidays.

We always find that December offers a particularly good time to reflect on the past year — what inspired us, what progress did we make on our vision, how did we grow?

And then to open to even more possibilities in the year ahead. For me, I’m sensing that this year is a lot about empowering other visionary leaders — a wider network of 100+ leaders who are doing game-changing work (for info on our Shift Mentorship program, which is open for application this week, click here).

As the founders of The Shift Network, we also are delighted by the ever-expanding positive role that our company and extended community are playing in the world. It makes us proud to offer so many life-changing programs that illuminate positive new pathways as an alternative to all the negativity we witness in the news.

You are an important part of our Shift Network family and we appreciate you taking part in leading the world towards a new dawn. Please know how much we value you — and take to heart that we are walking this path together, each of us evolving our inner lives so we can take action in grounded, practical, and effective ways to create a better world that works for all, starting with the people closest to us.

Click here to watch a 5-minute video that’s a tangible expression of our deep commitment to supporting a collective shift in consciousness.

In this “Best of 2018” issue of The Shift Catalyst, we selected a number of Featured Media, Featured Articles, and Member Profiles to share with you once more, ones that our team finds inspiring and thought- and feeling-provoking. We hope you enjoy this edition as we look back on 2018.

Also, before the calendar turns to 2019, we’re excited to announce our first-ever Gifts of Wisdom for the New Year sale. As a thank you for being a valued member of the Shift community, we’re offering four popular courses that were originally offered for $297 to $597 — for just $98 each! Click here for details. This limited-time offer ends at Midnight Pacific on January 1.

Finally, we would love to hear your answer to the question, What changes did you make in 2018 that most improved your life and the lives of others? To share your thoughts in our Facebook Page community, click here.

It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.
— C. W. Leadbeater

Joy Beyond Reason
By Yeye Luisah Teish

As an African American woman, I know that the great wealth of my life is the inheritance of Okan. Okan is a Yoruba word that can be translated as “the heart” and may be likened unto the qualities associated with the Heart chakra in the traditions of the East. But the word Okan also means first.

One could say that this word advises us to move in the world “heart first.” It is our preference for Okan that impels us to be optimistic, to make a way out of no way.

Click here to read more.

Holocaust Survivor Dr. Robert Fisch on Bridging the Gap Between “We” and “They”

Dr. Robert O. Fisch, a retired University of Minnesota professor of pediatrics and an international expert on the metabolic disease PKU (phenylketonuria), survived the two most oppressive totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. A Holocaust survivor, he has been knighted in Hungary for his role in the 1956 revolution against communism.

What are you finding meaning and purpose in today?

What I try to do is pass along what I learned from the Holocaust, which is probably the most incredible mass murder in the history of the world. Most of the people who are telling their story about the Holocaust talk about those who were killed and all the suffering they went through. For me, that is not my purpose.

For me, the purpose is to convey that even in the worst of circumstances, the goodness of people still shone through. For example, there were Germans who sacrificed their lives in order to help us. The Germans are just as good people and just as bad people as the French, or the Hungarians, or the Norwegians. Everyone in every country needs to understand that they are not separate and isolated from everyone else; we are all a part of a big unit.

To read more of this powerful interview, click here.

“I Grew Up in a War Zone”: Black Lives Matter's Patrisse Khan-Cullors on Racism in America
Published on Yahoo.com

In this Q&A interview on Yahoo, the creator of #BlackLivesMatter shares her thoughts on the challenges of being African American in the U.S. Her recently published bestselling memoir, which she wrote with journalist Asha Bandele, is titled, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.

An excerpt:

What did you learn, through your writing, about yourself, your own personal experience, and the general experience of Black Americans?

I think there was a certain point in the book when I realized I grew up in a war zone — that the experience of being in a neighborhood that was consistently patrolled by law enforcement and consistently hyper criminalized…wasn’t normal. It wasn’t healthy, and so many of us experienced the impact of state violence in our communities. I had to really come to terms… with the idea that my family deserved dignity and deserved care and they deserved for their humanity to be really seen and that it wasn’t. In fact, our poverty was weaponized against us.

To read more, click here.

The Night a Spirit Walked Into Madison Square Garden
By Trent Tucker

In 1983, my second year in the NBA with the New York Knicks, there was a month-long stretch where I wasn’t playing. Players always want to play so I was looking for an opportunity to get in the game somehow, someway. Remember, we’re talking about a kid who was 23 years old who thought basketball meant everything.

I’m not the most religious guy in the world but I have a strong faith and I believe in God. You know how you hear people talk sometimes about a spirit that came and uplifted them and moved them in the right direction? Well, one night, a spirit walked into Madison Square Garden and gave me an opportunity to play basketball again.

Click here to read more.

Know: You Are More Than You Think
By Christopher Gibney, LAc, DHom

The tsunami is building now. Have you noticed? I am not referring to the geo-political and planetary turmoil happening all around us. I am talking about the grassroots shift in consciousness that is being accelerated by the turmoil (which is its only purpose, by the way).

When I first started meditating in the 70s, I was the weird one in my family and amongst my peers. Now there are meditation rooms in corporate offices and mindfulness classes taught at elementary schools. Really big changes in just 40 years!

To read more, click here.

Edith Eva Eger: The Choice
Video interview with Phil Bolsta

This exclusive 45-minute video interview for Catalyst features the wisdom of clinical psychologist Dr. Edith Eva Eger, author of The Choice, a powerful and beautiful memoir about her experiences during the Holocaust, and how her own traumatic experiences enabled her to help her clients heal from trauma of their own.

An excerpt:

I was interviewed by Larry King, and he mentioned that most people were very unkind, and I told him that in April 1945, we were slave laborers. They took us from one place to another, and we were in a German village in a kind of a community hall, and we were told if we dared to leave the premises, we're going to be shot right away, but my sister Magda told me, if I don't get some food, she'll die.

So I didn't pay any attention to the, you know, what I am going to perhaps pay for this. I went outside, and I saw some carrots in the next garden, and I still, being a gymnast, I jumped like a cat, and I put the carrots wherever I could. I climbed up that wall, and there was a guard with a gun, and I never heard a gun in my life, but I heard the clicking, and I began to pray for him, so he won't shoot me. I heard the clicking about three times; he picked it up, put it down, and then he turned the gun around and pushed me inside. I had the carrots.

So the following morning, he comes in: "Who dared to break the rules?" And I got so scared, I crawled to him. This is April 1945, when the German people are starving too, and he gave me a little loaf of bread, and said, "You must have been hungry to do what you did."

To watch the video and read the text, click here.

Lori Schneider: Empowerment Through Adventure
Video interview with Phil Bolsta

In this exclusive 33-minute video interview for Catalyst, Lori Schneider talks about the unforgettable day that she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Terrified, she quit her job and ended her marriage, expecting to end up in a wheelchair. Yet one year later, she was standing on top of the highest peak in South America.

An excerpt:

It was a real defining moment in my life. I was getting ready to get up in the morning, get out of bed, and get on a treadmill to start my exercising, because secretly I was training to climb another mountain… and swung my legs out of bed and I was numb on one entire side of my body, as if someone had drawn a line. One side was numb and the other wasn't. I called the doctor and I explained what happened and they said, "Well, if it's still like that tomorrow, come into the emergency room and we'll check you out."

So I tried not to worry. Next morning, the whole day and following morning I was still numb. And my vision was really blurry. I was having trouble with motor activities. I just felt out of sorts. I went in and eventually they told me that I had multiple sclerosis. And when they told me that, fear set in terribly, and I ran away from my whole life. I had been a teacher for 20 years, I'd been married for 22 years... I sold my house, I left everything behind in fear that I wouldn't be able to walk soon.

To watch the video and read the text, click here.

The Language of Plants and People
Irma Caisamo

Irma Caisamo was interviewed live at the Indigenous Summit of the Americas (Cumbre de Abya Yala) in Panama City, Panama, in 2015 for the Global Indigenous Wisdom Summit.

An accomplished Emberá healer and mother of 10 from the jungle of Panama, Irma learned about healing from her mother and grandparents. They taught her to talk to the Creator and talk to the plants — and listen to them! In this wonderful 37-minute talk, she shares many details about what it means to be Emberá and about her healing work. She also shares an important message for the world: that we’re all children of the Creator without distinction of race, and that we need to love ourselves and all of nature. Indigenous people, she says, are the ones who will save the rest of the world by teaching people how to live in harmony with nature.

To listen to Irma Caisamo’s interview, click here.

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Before the start of the new year, choose a particular book to read or class to take that promises to deepen your personal and spiritual growth in 2019.

Courting the Dream: Cultivate Belonging & Rekindle Magic Through the Sacred Practice of Dreamwork — With Author, Teacher, and Dreamworker Toko-pa Turner. Discover how to engage in a courtship with your dreams as a potent practice for personal growth and connection. New 7-week Live Audio Training Starts Thursday, January 3

Threshold to Freedom: A 7-Step Journey of Mindful Self-Renewal, Fierce Compassion & Conscious Intentions — With Zen Buddhist Meditation Teacher and Author Deborah Eden Tull. Discover how to bring graceful closure to a whole year of life and set mindful, powerful intentions for 2019. New 7-week Live Audio Training Starts Tuesday, January 8

Liberating Your Authentic Writing Voice: 7 Essential Steps From Creation to Completion — With Bestselling Author and Teacher Mark Matousek. Discover how to bring your unique story to fruition... and share your core message of empowerment with others. New 7-week Live Audio Training Starts Wednesday, January 9

Upcoming Events: (all subject to change)

January
• Winter of Wellness
• Sharla Jacobs 7-week course
• Shift Mentorship Program
• Grandmother Flordemayo 7-week course
• Daisy Lee 10-week course

February
• Margaret Paul 7-week course
• Miranda Macpherson 7-week course
• Shiloh Sophia 7-week course
• Daniel Foor course
• Roger Jahnke course
• Raja Choudhury 9-week course
• David Crow 7-week course

Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

We are named after Ella Baker, a brilliant black hero of the civil rights movement. Following in her footsteps, we organize with Black, Brown, and low-income people to shift resources away from prisons and punishment, and towards opportunities that make our communities safe, healthy, and strong. In a world where resources are invested in growth and support instead of punishment and prisons, we will all be able to reach our full potential. Communities with more opportunity for everyone are safer, healthier, and more just for all.

Click here to visit the website. Click here to make a donation.

SevaChild, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is saving tens of thousands of impoverished children in India from Vitamin A deficiency, the leading cause of preventable childhood blindness. SevaChild’s network of over 2,000 volunteers travel to remote areas throughout 18 of India’s 29 states identifying and registering at-risk children. They educate parents on the benefits of Vitamin A and administer the vital nutrient, twice a year, to thousands of children. All of this relief is delivered at an annual cost of less than one dollar per child.To find out more and make a donation, click here.

Kiva

Kiva is an international nonprofit, founded in 2005 and based in San Francisco, with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. We celebrate and support people looking to create a better future for themselves, their families, and their communities.

By lending as little as $25 on Kiva, anyone can help a borrower start or grow a business, go to school, access clean energy, or realize their potential. For some, it’s a matter of survival, for others it’s the fuel for a lifelong ambition.

100 percent of every dollar you lend on Kiva goes to funding loans. Kiva covers costs primarily through optional donations, as well as through support from grants and sponsors.

We envision a world where all people hold the power to create opportunity for themselves and others.

Click here to visit the website.

Indigenous Environmental Network

IEN is an alliance of Indigenous peoples whose mission is to protect the sacredness of Earth Mother from contamination and exploitation while maintaining and respecting Indigenous teachings and natural laws. Click here for more information. Click here to make a donation.

Solar Action Alliance

Peace Through Commerce

Evolutionary Leaders

The Foundation for Conscious Evolution

The Shift Movie

Humanity's Team

Green America

The National Peace Academy

Sacred Centers

Center for Sacred Studies

International Cities of Peace

Agape International Spiritual Center

Gaiafield Project

Click here to apply for inclusion above.