What We’ve Learned from 5 Years of Curating the Web

Did you know there is a “Conspiracy of Goodness” well underway in our world? People are popping up all over the globe with ingenious solutions to our most vexing problems, and succeeding!

Yes, while it may not look this way on the surface, after 5 years of writing about insights and innovations that prove “it’s still an amazing world”, we can confidently say we are primed to head into a better future!

So, let’s get you so confident of this that you start seeing the wave of goodness all around you too. Get ready for a celebration of possibility!

Source: Pexels

Every day, more and more people are visiting Ever Widening Circles and helping us change the negative dialogue about our times. Sounds like a heavy lift, I know. But because we’ve been curating the web for 5 years now (Woohooo!) and pointing people to newsworthy content that proves it is still an amazing world, we’ve got a unique vantage point on the uplifting news in our world.

And every day we are seeing the strangest, almost magical, transformations taking place! We see:

• Scarcity forcing radical ingenuity
• Divisiveness prompting conversations between enemies
• Waste becoming art
• Disabilities becoming superpowers
• Old cell phones protecting the rain forest
• Games creating leaders
• Plants talking to each other

In other words, countless people are turning hardship and impossibility into remarkable opportunities for all of humanity.

This same positive impulse, that has gotten us through hundreds of thousands of years of human progress, is alive and well! And we’re here to tell you all about it.

In March of 2014, we wrote the first of over a thousand articles about all the insight and innovation being missed by most in the chaos of mass media. And today, on our 5th anniversary, we are bringing you an article all about some of our team’s absolute favorites.

We’ll start with a video we created for this occasion. Meet the team behind the nicest place on the web and learn about 3 concepts we’ve written about that have stayed with us every day!

So, that’s the team! Now you have a feel for our passion for all of this wonder and knowledge around us. You can read more articles from Dr. Lynda, Liesl, and Sam by clicking each of our names respectively!

It wasn’t easy to narrow down, but we’ve collected a few more of our favorites into 6 other fun, rather unusual, categories below:

The Articles that Stayed with Us!

You can’t do the work we do without being changed for the better. That said, here are the articles we mentioned in our video that stay fresh and we are constantly reminded of their importance.

Prove It’s Still An Amazing World

We’ve researched and written about hundreds of projects that are making the world a better place. And while every one of them proves it’s still an amazing word, here are three that have truly stood out.

Innovations Almost No One Knows About!

The Amazing Places We’ve Been!

Every other Saturday we make a point to take our visitors on a journey to some remarkable place in the world. Here are three of our favorites from our Saturday’s Around the World category:

Unexpected Wonders!

Part of the fun at Ever Widening Circles is discovering things you may never have thought you’d be interested in. Here are some wonderful hidden gems from the archive that may surprise you:

Random Fun!

Of course, one of the main things you’ll find around the globe is a whole lot of fun. From surprising characteristics of creatures we share this planet with, to people crashing cars through mud and rolling wheels of cheese down hills, here are three of the articles that have brought us the most joy to write!

Circle back to this list over time when you visit us! There’s so much more to explore, but this gives you a great start.

What We’ve Learned over 5 Years of Writing about this Amazing World.

Did you know that we are not digital media experts? Far from it, actually, we barely have a handle on social media.

Dr. Lynda Ulrich and Liesl Ulrich-Verderber

We are a mother/daughter team who decided that if we could not find a reliable place on the internet for newsworthy information, without the biases of politics and ads, then we were up to creating it.

Then our amazing head-writer, Samantha, joined us for the journey – and we were off to the races!

For myself, coming into this digital landscape has opened my eyes to so much about the world. It’s so easy to be carried away by the negativity of our algorithms on the web, but there is a better way and a better day.  Now I speak a lot about the coming of a “light web” and a “gratitude economy.”

And how could I not? After seeing thousands of stories of all of wonder and progress happening under our noses, and getting to know many of the thought leaders we write about, my appreciation for what’s happening outside our screens is now limitless.

There is a world waiting for us where fear and anger are merely the background noise at our tattered edges. And in that world, inspired thinking and goodwill make up the fabric of the future.

Here are some things I’ve learned over the past five years:

• The natural world is, in fact, so ingenious in design that if we only searched there for solutions, we could probably solve every problem we humans have created. And when we learn more about its fascinating intricacies, we will want to protect it better.

• Although we humans have quite a knack for finding ourselves in hot water, we are ridiculously ingenious and generous while getting ourselves out of it. And either one of those 2 traits is at the start of every new age of great progress, that “Conspiracy of Goodness” that I referred to at the start.
• Just when we say something is “impossible” there is probably someone ready and able to push us past that self-imposed limitation.
• And very often, the people doing that are ordinary folks just like you and me, who joined two things—courage and serendipity—in their favor. They usually were brave enough to ignore all the naysayers and are self-assured enough to solve the problem in front of them.
• Almost none of these people have the support they need to save the world  Most are toiling away in obscurity against the worst odds. Most importantly, I know that if we knew they were there, they would find people who would join them in the effort.

So why should you visit EWC daily?

What if inspiring ingenuity, good intention, beauty, and trustworthiness are all around us and we don’t realize we each have the power to see it and personally be a multiplier for it all?

It’s that old saying, “We can’t pour from an empty cup!”

Ever Widening Circles will fill that cup. We are an oasis on the web where you can quickly and easily learn about the light in the world without having to be wary of political or commercial biases.

It’s an enormous life-hack if you have goals and people counting on you!

Visit us once and you may sleep a little better at night. Visit daily, and you will do a lot better every day.

How much light do you think you need to survive a long stretch of darkness in your relationships or finances? To raise hopeful, happy children? Be the one people count on at work? Or to be a wise, dependable friend?

How much light do you need to avoid succumbing to a moment of ruinous anger or fear? And how much do you think it will take to keep you from telling yourself negatives stories about yourself and others?

You can’t pour from an empty cup.

Over the past five years, we have meticulously curated the very best of the web for the goodness all around us. And every other day, our team publishes a carefully cited article highlighting one of these new discoveries, an ingenious person, wonder of nature, or cultural gem.

Join us regularly for a glimpse at the amazing world we live in. We’ve published nearly over 1,000 articles that point us all to these meaningful concepts that will at the very least delight you, and often leave you in awe—and we have so much more to show you.

An expanded worldview brings an expanded future.

Learn more about our mission with Ever Widening Circles by clicking here!

“Who you are tomorrow begins with what you do today.”
― Tim Fargo

Cheers,

-Dr. Lynda, Founder of Ever Widening Circles