December 23, 2023--Volume 4 Number 11 | |
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JUST WHO DO WE THINK WE ARE?
Exploring Past Life Stories, The Power of Our Thoughts, and What Happens When We Die
Shari Harris, Certified Infinite Possibilities Trainer
www.shari-harris.com
We are more than our current physical bodies and circumstances!
GOOD NEWS STORIES FROM 2023
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"A lot of things went right this year.
Almost none of them made the news."
www.futurecrunch.com/goodnews2023/
"The American journalist Krista Tippett says that we're all fluent in the language of catastrophe and dysfunction, and what's needed are more of what she calls 'generative narratives.'"
"This year, we found over 2,000 of those kinds of stories, ...genuine, world changing stuff, and crammed them into a final list of 66 about
- how millions of lives are improving,
- about human rights victories,
- diseases being eliminated,
- falling emissions,
- how vast swathes of our planet are being protected and
- how entire species have been saved.
We think many of the stories will surprise you, and a few might just change the way you think about the world. It's been a difficult year, but in so many ways and in so many places, we've made progress too."
Future Crunch subscribers' weekly email, December 19, 2023
About Future Crunch: "We are a team of science communicators based in Melbourne, Australia. We curate stories of good news, mind-blowing science, human progress, and we support small charities using science and technology to make the world a better place. More than 40,000 people subscribe to our free, fortnightly email newsletter." (https://futurecrun.ch/). There is also an in-depth subscription newsletter.
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I love the FUTURE CRUNCH newsletter! I love hearing the good news that the Australian news staff gathers from around the world and publishes in a free weekly email. Frequent readers will recognize this good news group as a regular feature in my monthly newsletters.
I think most will agree that the news we have heard over and over this year has been much more negative than positive. This negativity can weigh on us and affect our psyche and the psyche of the country.
That's one reason I teach positive thinking and promote positive affirmations. Positive thoughts lift us. Negative thoughts pull us down. And if you believe in the Law of Attraction like I do, you understand that besides affecting our moods, our thoughts also bring us more of whatever we think about.
- Esther Hicks teaches that "We get what we think about whether we want it or not."
- I've quoted Mike Dooley frequently who says, "Thoughts become things. Choose the good ones!"
- Louise Hay said, "The key to my creativity is knowing that my thinking creates my experience."
- Buddha taught, "The Mind is everything. What you think you become."
Many other teachers, Rhonda Byrne (author of The Secret) for instance, and even scientists researching Quantum Physics, proclaim the same news: that our thoughts are more powerful than has been widely understood in the past.
I say all this to highlight how important it is for us to monitor our thinking and seek to maintain positive attitudes. And that is why I love FUTURE CRUNCH! Their publications of good news can serve to lift us up and could help to "turn the tide" of the country, as well, if we concentrate on and spread the good news stories that happen but don't often make the news.
Each December, FUTURE CRUNCH publishes their best stories of the year. This is the fourth year that I have highlighted their annual good news list in this newsletter.
Hope you enjoy this sample! If you would like to read all 66 Good News Stories You Didn't Hear About in 2023, you can find them at this link: www.futurecrunch.com/goodnews2023/.
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Happy Holidays! Happy New Year!
Be well and enjoy your amazing life!
Sending my love,
Shari
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GOOD NEWS STORIES
YOU DIDN'T HEAR ABOUT IN 2023
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GOOD NEWS STORIES ABOUT GLOBAL HEALTH | |
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1. A record number of countries eliminated diseases this year.
Egypt became the first country to eliminate hepatitis C, (which is crazy given that it used to have the highest burden in the world), the Maldives became the first country to eliminate leprosy, Bangladesh became the first country to eliminate black fever, and also eliminated elephantiasis, Niger became the first African country to eliminate river blindness, Benin, Mali and Iraq eliminated trachoma, Timor-Leste, Bhutan, and North Korea eliminated rubella, Ghana eliminated sleeping sickness, and Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Belize eliminated malaria.
4. New therapies reshaped how obesity is treated.
Obesity is a public health crisis. In the United States, around 70% of adults are affected by excess weight, and in Europe it's more than half. This year however, a new class of therapies, most notably Ozempic and Wegovy, proved that not only could they induce significant weight loss, but drastically reduce symptoms of heart failure and the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Could this class of drugs actually safeguard health in people with obesity? This year brought an answer: yes.
11. Breakthroughs on new medicines:
Two powerful new drugs, Donanemab and Lecanemab, heralded a turning point in the fight against Alzheimer’s, the decades-long campaign to make insulin less expensive scored a major victory when the world's three biggest manufacturers lowered their prices, a new meningitis vaccine raised hopes for a disease that kills about 250,000 people a year, and Australia became the first country in the world to classify psychedelics as medicines, approving their use to treat some mental health conditions.
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GOOD NEWS STORIES ABOUT CLEAN ENERGY | |
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14. The greatest year ever for clean energy
Thanks to the staggering uptake of wind and solar, energy researchers had to tear up all their old forecasts, including the International Energy Agency (IEA), which announced in October that global fossil fuel use may peak this year, two years earlier than predicted just 12 months ago. More than 120 countries, including the world's two largest carbon emitters, China and the United States, also agreed to aim to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030 - a target that if met, would keep the world on track for 1.5°C.
17. A green manufacturing boom in America
The Inflation Reduction Act is the single largest commitment any government has yet made to vie for leadership in the next energy economy, and has resulted in the largest manufacturing drive in the United States since WW2. The legislation has already yielded commitments of more than $300 billion in new battery, solar and hydrogen electrolyzer plants, with Georgia, Michigan, Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky in the lead. This year a record 33 GW of solar was installed across the country, carbon emissions are set to fall by around 3%, Texas is undergoing the fastest pace of clean energy expansion anywhere in the world outside China, California's battery storage capacity has surged tenfold in just three years, and 12 states have now passed laws requiring a shift to 100% clean electricity.
27. Finance fled from coal, gas and oil:
Over three quarters of coal-fired electricity in the OECD is now on track to close by 2030, and the IEA's estimates for fossil gas deployment have halved in the last five years. Danske, the second-largest bank in the Nordic region, declared an end to fossil fuel financing, SMBC Group, Japan's second largest bank, said it will phase out all exposure to coal mining by 2040, CBA, Australia’s largest bank, ruled out finance for new oil and gas extraction, HSBC and BNP Parabis said they would no longer provide finance for metallurgical coal, Citi, the world's second-largest funder of fossil fuels, committed to cut lending to the thermal coal mining sector by 90% by 2030, and Chubb, the world's biggest property and casualty insurer, said it would no longer provide coverage for oil and gas projects without a plan to reduce methane emissions, or if they are located in any of the world’s 284,122 protected areas.
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GOOD NEWS STORIES ABOUT
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
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29. Global poverty reduction is back on track:
After the setbacks of the pandemic, the World Bank said that a majority of low and middle income countries will see poverty decline in 2023, and more than half will reach a lower poverty rate than in 2019. The two standouts are India, which has lifted hundreds of millions of people out poverty in the last two decades, and Indonesia, which has reduced its share of people living on less than $3.20 a day from 61% in 2002 to 16% in 2022. Bangladesh also reported it has lifted almost ten million people out of poverty since 2016, Cambodia has halved its number of poor from 5.6 million to 2.8 million since 2015, the number of people living in poverty in Mexico has declined by 8.9 million since 2020, over 1.5 million people in Uganda have joined the middle class since 2017, and Togo expanded its social safety net this year to provide cash transfers to all 1.8 million of its extreme poor.
35. Progress on water, sanitation and hygiene
In July, the WHO released new data on access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, highlighting one of the least known success stories in global development. Between 2000 and 2022, 2.1 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water, 2.5 billion have gained access to safely managed sanitation, the number of people using unimproved facilities has been halved, from 1.1 billion to 545 million, and the number practising open defecation has fallen by more than two thirds, from 1.3 billion to 419 million.
46. Other, uncelebrated human rights victories:
Malaysia and Ghana banned the death penalty, Mexico implemented a National Civil and Family Procedure Code, empowering older persons and people with disabilities to make decisions by themselves, Peru passed a law cancelling unjust fines accrued by Venezuelan refugees who had overstayed their visas, Nigeria became the 13th African state to ratify the the Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Older Persons, and Bangladesh reported that its clothing industry has been completely transformed thanks to labor laws passed after the Rana Plaza tragedy ten years ago.
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GOOD NEWS STORIES ABOUT CONSERVATION | |
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48. The greatest conservation victory of all time:
In March this year, 193 countries reached a landmark deal to protect the world's oceans, in what Greenpeace called "the greatest conservation victory of all time." The UN High Seas Treaty is the first international agreement on ocean protection since 1982, providing for the common governance of half the Earth’s surface, and paving the way for conservation on the high seas, with the aim of protecting at least 30% of the planet by 2030. Only about 1% of the high seas is currently protected.
54. Europe passed new laws to protect the environment:
In January, the continent's regulators put an end to the use of exceptions for bee-killing pesticides, in May, they implemented a new rule to stop the import of any products that destroy forests, in July, the EU passed the Nature Restoration Act, the first major piece of legislation to protect biodiversity in 30 years, and in November became the first international body to criminalize wide-scale environmental damage “comparable to ecocide." Not bad for a year's work.
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AFIRMATIONS
Seeds for Growth
"If I haven't deliberately programmed my mind to think positively, my mind will constantly throw up negative thoughts that belittle and limit me."
Rhonda Byrne, The Greatest Secret, p. 85
"For my own health and wellbeing, I will now be relentlessly positive about everything!"
The Secret Super Phone App
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Just Who Do We Think We Are?
Shari Says...
I believe we are eternal spiritual beings who are currently
living one of our many lives on Earth and who are the co-creators
of our experiences through our thoughts, beliefs, and pre-birth planning.
Shari Harris
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Previous Issues of
"Just Who Do We Think We Are?"
2023 Newsletters
Click on the link to view.
January 29, 2023: Vol. 4 #1/The Top Ten Things Dead People Want to Tell YOU/Mike Dooley
February 15. 2023: Vol. 4 #2/From the Archives--Brian Weiss, M.D./Reincarnation
March 26, 2003: Vol. 4 #3/Improve Your Life with Affirmations/Louise Hay
April 30, 2023: Vol. 4 #4/Archived-Children Who Remember Past Lives/Carol Bowman
June 10, 2023: Vol. 4 #5/Bob Olson: What Determines How and When We Die?
July 14, 2023: Vol. 4 #6/From the Archives: Edgar Cayce on Reincarnation
August 19, 2023: Vol. 4 #7/The Greatest Secret by Rhonda Byrne
September 11, 2023: Vol. 4 #8/Messages from 9/11 Victims
October 26, 2023: Vol. 4 #9/Hacking the Afterlife by Richard Martini
November 30, 2023: Vol. 4 #10/Children Who Remember Past Lives/Jim B. Tucker
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If this "Good-News-Letter" inspires anyone to look into the law of attraction or past lives or what happens when we die, I will be satisfied. I am convinced that these are all profound truths: that our thoughts and beliefs influence the things and events of our lives, that we live many lives, that we never die--our consciousness continues on, and that in-between our lives, we rest, study, learn, and plan our purpose for our next life.
For me, these ideas are "good news" and help to answer universal questions about why we are here. Please take what resonates with you and leave the rest. Shari
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