Dreamcatchers hang in the wind in Monument Valley, Arizona.

Photograph by CuboImages srl/Alamy

By George W. Stone

Every travel tale needs a plot twist—a fluke, a folly, a fortunate turn that leads to new worlds. In 1754 Horace Walpole gave name to these happy accidents: He called them “serendipities,” a term derived from the ancient Persian name for Sri Lanka. To Arab traders, Serendip was an isle of enchantment. To modern travelers, serendipity is the one thing every trip needs—but that no one can plan. Maybe you can’t go out and find serendipity, but you can develop a mind-set that embraces daring, openness, and whimsy. Here are ten around-the-world ways to pack awe into your next trip.
1. Acquire a Talisman
Big sky, broad vistas, clean air, and solitude: I needed them all, so I flew to Arizona and set out on a solo road trip to the Four Corners. Giddy with new freedom and blasting Neil Young, I resisted dozens of photo ops before finally pulling over to a red rock-valley vista in the Painted Desert. A lone woman was selling handmade silver and stone jewelry—modest pieces, her own creations. We chatted; she was Navajo and from the region. I chose a small carved-green-stone turtle necklace and bought it, not knowing why. I wore it the entire trip. Nothing but happiness came my way. I kept it on for years, always remembering my road trip, the promise of new beginnings, and the woman who made my talisman.
Lesson: A perfect storm of impulse shopping and magical thinking? Not to me. The power of my talisman comes from positive feelings, personal engagement, and happy memories of a specific time and place.
2. Encounter a Mystic
It was a hot day in Hue, Vietnam. At the end of a dusty walk I bumped into a man in a nón lá (conical hat), a cigarette stuck to his lower lip. He asked me something—for money perhaps?—and I waved him away. I walked a few steps farther and he asked again. Something clicked. I stopped in my tracks. Did this man just ask if I’d like a poem? I turned around. He repeated: “Can I read you my poem?” From memory he recited “Mộng Vàng” (Gold Dream), first in Vietnamese and then in English. I was stunned—his poem was a lamentation on love and loss, an elegy to the river that feeds his town.

The boat of the moon carrying dream,

Sinking in the clear, quiet air.

Oh, the river of lights,

Lets gold dreams drift ...

We spoke haltingly and he told me about his life along Hue’s Perfume River. I thanked him, shook his hand, and gave him a bit of money. He smiled and gave me a copy of his poem—he wrote, “Have a good holiday. Many thanks, Hoài Lê Công”—and continued his way down the road. Was it all a dream?
Lesson: Be open—to people, to engagement, to whatever the road delivers. And listen to what’s happening around you. Enlightenment could be just around the corner.
3. Go Far to Find Home
Marriner’s Lookout is a grassy plateau that provides a spectacular view over Apollo Bay, a retro-cool surf town on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road, and into the swells of the Bass Strait. In the off-season cold winds scare away most sunset seekers, and I found myself blissfully alone here. Just as I started to walk down the hill, a couple headed up the trail. We all said hello and kept walking, but our accents caused us all to stop. In the haystack of travel we were three needles from Washington. We quickly discovered how much we had in common—we all lived in D.C., worked in media, loved to travel, and chose to end the day gazing at the sea. We headed off to dinner together, where Jack talked me into a kangaroo steak, I talked him into Prickly Moses Spotted Ale, and Mindy kept us in stitches. We would never have met back home—and yet there we were, breaking bread halfway around the world.
Lesson: Travel is full of surprises—one of which is having the chance to reflect on home. You may travel to the ends of the Earth and finally befriend someone from your own town.
4. Stay Home to Go Far
With one of the largest populations of Ghanaian Americans in the nation, Washington, D.C., is a cultural convergence point between. So when my friend Eric Ofori Asamoah invited me to an “outdooring” I thought, Why not? I like the outdoors. Turns out that the event is also known as a naming ceremony—it’s the first day a newborn is taken outdoors, given a name to mark its social identity, and welcomed into its ancestral community. For one night, an empty warehouse off the Beltway in Virginia was transformed into a village party near Kumasi, Ghana. Polyrhythmic music pounded, conversations in the Twi language soared, men in gold-embroidered robes and women in kente fabric and pastel-colored gowns made their rounds. Kids nibbled at mountains of cassava, plantain, and tilapia while old guys sipped Guinness and people of all ages danced. A village chief appeared, visiting from Ghana, and paraded through the masses under the shade of gilded parasols. We all partied until dawn and Eric said to me, “See? I knew you would like Ghana!”
Lesson: You don’t have to go very far to see the world.
5. Embrace the Distance
One day while lunching at the Serra Cafema safari camp in northern Namibia’s remote Kaokoland, I had the chance to observe a camp manager instructing a pair of trainees. The day’s lesson: filling glasses with ice and water. It seemed like a simple task until I saw the trainees fumble ice and spill water as if they were serving martinis on the Titanic—post-iceberg. The manager explained that the young employees were Himba women who had lived pastoral lives before entering a modern workforce. In the nomadic realm of the Himba, handling ice is a foreign practice, just as building a mud-and-mopane hut would prove impossible to me. Since ice has been noticeably absent in West Africa for thousands of years, it’s no surprise that these new hires need a how-to. Turns out the incongruous part of the picture was not the ice-cube training program—it was my own need to drink ice water in the Namib desert.
Lesson: No matter how far you’ve traveled to get somewhere, many of the locals have traveled even farther in their own way to show you hospitality.
6. Follow a Whim
When I visited New Orleans seven years ago, I wanted to check out 632 Elysian Fields, the fictive home of Stella and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Like Blanche DuBois, I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers and could not overcome my desire to knock on the screen door. An old man shuffled from the darkness and said hello. He knew why I was there: I was a pilgrim, like many before me. He’d lived in the faded white shotgun—which is nothing like the tenement in the play—for years and had weathered Hurricane Katrina there. A tide of gentrification was forcing him out, but he was equivocal. He would miss the odd visitors and his home’s mysterious allure. But in art as in life, “the show must go on,” he said.
Lesson: To paraphrase Blanche, sometimes you don’t want realism—you want magic! Follow your travel desires and who knows what memories you’ll make? By the way, the house’s current tenant is A Bicycle Named Desire, a bike rental company.
7. RSVP Yes
A few years ago my friend turned 70. He embraced it as a milestone and an opportunity to revisit a place he loved. His wife planned the party and issued the invitation. She promised that anyone who could get to Altaussee, a serene lakeside village in the Salzkammergut region of Austria, would have a room with a view and a time to remember. Who could say no? Then again, saying yes meant scheduling time away from work, clearing the calendar, buying an expensive ticket, finding a dog sitter, budgeting expenses, and—the hardest part—accepting that my summer vacation was determined by someone else ... And a senior citizen at that! I eventually said yes. The upshot: one of the best trips of my life, loaded with laughter, food, togetherness, and mountain air memories. The birthday was someone else’s but the present was mine.
Lesson: Just say yes. Rise above saying no all the time. Embrace someone else’s travel ideas and you may discover that the thing you needed was something you never would have looked for.
8. Make a Wish
About 15 years ago I made a strange trip to Bali. The local spirits had their way with me, and my vacation was bedeviled by un-paradisical ills, including spooky weather, botched plans, personal squabbles, and food sickness. Everyone has had a trip like that. It ended with a stay at Tugu Bali, a lovely small hotel on Canggu Beach. I remember floating in the pool and thinking to myself, Someday I’ll return here with someone I love and the trip will be perfect. Then I forgot all about it—until a year ago. My partner planned a surprise weekend in Bali and kept the details to himself. We landed at night and drove to the hotel. Bali’s tourism had boomed in the intervening years, with a motley horde of hotels glowing everywhere. We drove for an hour and pulled into a driveway. I got goosebumps before I read the sign: Tugu Bali. I’d never told Chris my story, yet from a thousand hotels, he chose the one where I’d made a wish so long ago.
Lesson: Leave a bit of yourself wherever you go—in the form of a wish, a sight unseen, a stone unturned. And don’t give up on a destination—you may return to love it all another time.
9. Holiday With the Locals
One man’s holiday is another man’s workday. A year ago we decided to sidestep the reindeer and spend Christmas in Sri Lanka. The roads are abysmal, and you need a driver if you hope to travel from coastal Galle to Nuwara Eliya’s tea plantations to the sacred city of Kandy and the cave temple of Dambulla. Our driver, Nuwan Amila, guided us with humor and expertise. In a nation of Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims, Nuwan was a Christian, married with kids. When we realized that our holiday would take him away from his family on Christmas Eve, we tried to send him home with cash—but he would have none of it. So we all enjoyed a yuletide feast, Sri Lanka-style, with spicy curry, grated coconut, and beer. Nuwan told us about growing up during the Sri Lankan Civil War, a 26-year conflict that ended in 2009. Massacres and bombings were so common that when Nuwan’s family traveled by bus they took separate lines so that if one bus exploded, the rest of the family would survive. Santa’s gift to me, at the base of Sri Lanka’s Lion Rock, was a reminder of how mercurial life’s lottery can be, how precious our time together is, and how much you can learn by striking up a conversation.
Lesson: A world of experience can separate a traveler and a local, so go with a generous heart and find ways to engage with locals and hear their stories.
10. Remember to Laugh
Hiking the Inca Trail is a traveler’s dream, but it’s also hard work. Part of the meditative magic of mechanical movement is that it has the power to unlock the mind. But at the end of a long day on the trail toward Machu Picchu, such unbridled introspection can lead to unexpected events. This is how I found myself flat on my back in a near-frozen stream, icy rivulets of Andean water racing down my neck and back, my toothbrush sailing into the valley. As far as serendipitous moments go, this one was a cold snap. But before I could gather my wits and drag myself out of the water, I looked straight up to the heavens and noticed, for the first time, the constellations above me. I would never had seen the Southern Cross with such clarity had I not slipped on a stone and slid into a sudden stream of consciousness.
Lesson: Don’t lose yourself in your own thoughts. Travel is a chance to check yourself at the door and dive into the world around you. At the very least, you should watch where you’re walking.

=Testament of Youth' tells the story of Vera Brittain==. who postponed her studies at Oxford University during World War I to serve as a volunteer nurse in London, Malta and France. She later became a writer and a pacifist.

The film stars Swedish actress Alicia Vikander as Vera and Kit Harington as her fiancé Roland.

“It was a very emotional shoot,” said Vikander. “It was quite extraordinary. I’ve been looking back and realised that we did about eight, nine scenes a day, which is a lot. And it’s a heavy piece. There were a lot of things that you need to… I wanted to (give) justice to this woman. And it is a lot of motional scenes.”

Although the film deals with the harrowing effects of war, it steers away from showing too many battle scenes – sticking instead with the stories of those left at home.

“I can’t think of many films, if any, where it’s so clearly about not so much the men at the front but the women left behind,” said Kit Harington. “That’s what Vera Brittain’s book helps us see more than anything else, is that side of the war.”

‘Testament of Youth’ is director James Kent’s first feature film. Best known for documentaries, Kent wanted the look of his film to be different to other war dramas.

“The idea is that they had this wonderful Edwardian summer before catastrophe struck,” he explained. “And what you’ll notice when you watch the film is that the lens gets tighter and tighter on Vera. So, by the time she’s deep in the war and what happens after the war we’re right up close to her, psychologically in her head and the challenges that she now faces to move on. “

‘Testament of Youth’ is out now in the UK and Ireland.

Shaun the Sheep’ is the latest full length animated film from Aardman Studios.

The premiere was held in London and attended by celebrities including Ed Sheeran and Rizzle Kicks, who performed the theme song.

Jordan Stephens, one half of Rizzle Kicks, said he was delighted to be involved with the project: “The bottom line is, I’m a huge Aardman animation fan. I grew up watching Wallace and Gromit. ‘A Close Shave’ is my favorite.”

The film follows Shaun as he goes to the big city to find his shepherd, but contains other themes too, explained Richard Starzack, the co-director and writer of the film: “It’s about learning to appreciate what you’ve lost, or what you have. Learning to appreciate what you have.”

In the Aardman tradition, Nick Park, the executive director of the film, delights in the fact that ‘Shaun The Sheep’ contains lots of amusing references to other films: “Since the beginning we’ve always put this kind of reference to other movies in our work. The way the guys have done this with ‘Shaun The Sheep’, it’s carried on that Aardman thing.

“It’s not just modern references to obvious things, it’s quite often movie references that only movie-goers might know. It makes it slightly more esoteric and a bit more rewarding when you recognise it.”

Shaun the Sheep is on screens now.

The singer will not reveal much about her half-time performance but promises to try to avoid any wardrobe malfunctions.

 

Katy Perry has promised to bring "incredible joy" to Super Bowl viewers during the half-time show, along with a "lion and sharks".

The 12-and-a-half minute show has become a must-see event in the middle of the NFL's extravaganza.

Perry told reporters at a news conference that she feels blessed to perform on the stage "at such a young age".

"I look back at past performers I admire, like Beyonce who brings that incredible strength and Madonna who really brought some incredible graphic design and choreography, I think what I bring is just some light-heartedness," the 30-year-old said.

Lenny Kravitz will join the pop star at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona for the final between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots.

The Roar singer said her performance will also include an "old school" female singer but would reveal little else.

"I will tell you, I'm probably the only person in Super Bowl half-time history who will bring both a lion and sharks to the show."

Madonna with Nicki Minaj and MIA

Madonna with Nicki Minaj and MIA

Past shows have been marred by infamous nipple-baring "wardrobe malfunctions" or crude gestures that provoked anger from some of the 100 million-strong television audience.

"I am not a self-sabotager by nature," Perry said. "If there is news about my performance, I want it to be all about the music and female empowerment and that everybody just had a great time."

The 23-year-old told the operator he was the American rapper and claimed there was a poltergeist in his house.

Minaj is known for her extravagant stage performances

By David Blevins, Ireland Correspondent

A man has been banned from drinking alcohol after dialling 999 and saying he was pop star Nicki Minaj.

Steven Brown, 23, from Cairn Walk in Crumlin, Co Antrim, made two calls in breach of a previous ASBO banning him from using the emergency number.
Belfast High Court heard a man first called at 10.15 am on Christmas Day claiming two men were making threats to kill him but was too intoxicated to provide further information.
Five minutes later, the same man rang 999 again and told operators he wanted to cancel the first call, the prosecution said.
It was during this second call that the man claimed to be the rapper Minaj and said there was a poltergeist in his house.
When police arrested him, Brown did not deny making the calls and told officers he felt there really was an emergency when he dialled the number.
The prosecution said he had recently been released "after serving a sentence for offences of a similar nature" and that he was an alcoholic.
A defence barrister said Brown had just been released from hospital, was taking medication and had consumed alcohol, against the advice of doctors.
The judge released Brown on his own bail of £250, banned him from possessing and consuming alcohol and from dialling 999, except in an emergency.
Lord Justice Coghlin, who also imposed a 10pm-7am curfew, said: "This man is essentially a nuisance, which no doubt is a product of his alcoholism."

Have you ever been to a Tony Robbins event? Thousands of people are screaming “MAKE YOUR MOVE! SAY YES! SAY YES!” The crowd goes wild as the inspirational giant leads everyone into a peak state right before they walk across a bed of fiery, burning hot coals—a metaphorical experience for being unstoppable.

Some people may mistake Tony Robbins’s books, audio programs and seminars as motivational. Although they continue to uplift millions of people around the world, they are much more than merely motivational. But Tony is consulted even more often as a peak performance strategist and I’d say his results back up the title. He’s successfully coached athletes like Andre Agassi, who came from a slump back to #1 in the tennis world, as well as leaders in the financial world like Paul Tudor Jones, whom Tony has worked with for 21 years and who’s made money every single year no matter where the market has been. Tony has also been credited by many people with helping them transform and upgrade their health, psychology, relationships, business and finances—in other words, their lives.

Having attended several of Tony’s seminars and listened to almost every audio program he has, there are 10 amazing life lessons I’ve learned from the man himself. They can be implemented by anyone today to profoundly increase their quality of life.

1. Trade your expectations for appreciations

If you trade your expectations for appreciations, you’ll immediately feel grateful. And it’s when we’re grateful that we feel rich and wealthy, regardless of how our lives look financially or materialistically.

Last week I met my dad’s longtime friend and business partner and he’s got tons of energy despite being at an age where he’d be considered an elderly man. When I asked him what his secret was to having so much energy, he told me that he always counts his blessings. In other words, he cultivates gratitude.

What can you feel grateful for right now? This is a question I learned from Tony that I ask myself often.

2. Where focus goes, energy flows

What we focus on feels real to us in the moment, and whatever we pay more attention to in our lives grows. If we’re focused on how we can add more value to our clients, we’ll consistently find ways to add more value to their lives. If we’re focused on our excuses for why we can’t achieve something, we’ll empower that limiting belief more and more.

Tony’s excellent at guiding the focus of a room full of thousands of people in his seminars, and you can be too. He does this most effectively by asking specific questions. It’s our questions that direct our focus. And when we get to the root of it, we all have at least one primary question that drives our lives, that drives our focus, that directs our energy, and that creates our story and our life.

Where’s your focus at right now? Where does it need to be to grow and contribute more in your life?

3. Be results-focused rather than activity-focused

When you know the result you’re after, you’ll come up with greater actions to take to get you your results more effectively, efficiently, and rapidly.

I used to be a huge to-do list guy. I’d make one every day when I’d wake up in the morning and cross out my to-dos as I’d progress through my day. I found the to-do list process unfulfilling over time and often overwhelming when I’d have many to-dos. Then I discovered the RPM plan (results-focused, purpose-driven, massive action plan). This planning method and mindset allowed me to increase my results and productivity up to 10 times faster each week. It worked because I knew what my result was, I knew why I wanted it, and I had a high quality massive action plan to get me my result.

What’s the result you’re after right now? What’s your outcome from reading this post? Is it to learn and implement 10 amazing life lessons that can help you grow more in your life? Is it to cure boredom in the moment?

4. A 2 mm change is sometimes all you need

In soccer, the difference between scoring a goal versus missing the goal is within 2 mm. It’s the difference between hitting the sweet spot on the ball rather than coming under the ball making the shot fly over the crossbar.

The same metaphor can be applied to our business, relationships, health, and finances. For example, maybe you get greater conversions from your sales copies when you highlight the benefits. Or maybe you feel more connected with the people you have relationships with when you hug them with a warmer and tighter squeeze. Or maybe you notice that your energy magnifies when you drink wheatgrass juice in the morning rather than a coffee.

What’s the 2 mm change that you can make in your body today to profoundly increase your health and vitality? Business? Relationships? Finances?

5. The Triad: physiology, focus and, language

We can master our emotional states with a specific recipe of how we use our body, focus, and language.

If you’re standing tall with your chest out, shoulders back, chin up and your fists in the air while you’re focused on an awesome victory and you’re shouting with total joy and pride “I am a champion!” then you will feel like a victorious champ.

If you’re sitting down with your shoulders slumped, your chin down to your chest with your head leaning forward while you’re focusing on how you’ve failed once again and your thinking, “Why am I such a failure?” then you’ll feel like a depressed failure.

Guess what? You can influence how you move your body, what you focus on, and the language you use to describe any moment. That means you can directly influence your emotions, and by being aware of your physiology, focus, and language, you can master your habitual emotions over time.

How’s your posture right now? What are you focusing on? What words are you using to describe your current experience? What can you do to upgrade your emotional state right now with your physiology, focus and language?

6. The 6 human needs

This was possibly one of the top three greatest things I’ve learned from Tony Robbins. No matter where you’re from, what your background or story is, Tony says that there are 6 fundamental human needs that we all share and that drive our lives. We generally value two out of the six needs most and we filter our life choices, decisions, and habits based on meeting these primary needs first. The 6 human needs are…

Certainty—assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure

Uncertainty/Variety—the need for the unknown, change, new stimuli

Significance—feeling unique, important, special or needed

Connection/Love—a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something

Growth—an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding

Contribution—a sense of service and focus on helping, giving to, and supporting others

One person might meet their needs on a strong level for certainty, variety, significance, and connection through smoking cigarettes. They can feel certain or comfortable from smoking cigarettes whether it’s a habit they’ve had for a long time or because they can feel like they can relax from having a deep exhale. They can feel variety because smoking a cigarette instantly changes your biochemistry and state. They can feel significant if they see smoking as a cool thing to do or being the guy or girl who offers someone a cigarette, and they can feel connection by smoking with others.

Another person can meet those same needs through daily exercise. They can feel certain that they’ll feel great and energized from exercising. They can experience variety through mixing up workouts, through the biochemical change that takes place in their body, and through training different muscle groups. They can experience significance by being someone who values their body and by having a ripped body. They can experience connection and love for themselves for taking great care of their body and by exercising with others.

Tony said that whenever we have a habit, emotion, or thought that meets at least three of our needs on at least a level of 6 out of 10, then we form an addiction. The fastest way to break an addiction is to replace the addiction with a vehicle that meets the needs or more needs in a better way.

Which two needs do you value most right now in your life?

7. Change your story, change your life

We all have stories for our lives. Most of the time, we tell them unconsciously to ourselves and to others. For example, how’s your day been so far? The answer you’re thinking of right now is a story, and the fun part is you have the ability to define your story. You might not be able to change the events and circumstances that happen in your life, but you can certainly choose the meaning for them.

8. Decisions lead to destiny

“It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” – Tony Robbins 

It is not our circumstances that define our destiny, rather the decisions we make, because each decision we make leads us to a destination in our lives. There are three decisions we’re always making consciously or subconsciously: what am I going to focus on, what does it mean to me, and what am I going to do about it?

What’s one of the greatest decisions you’ve made in your life? What would your life be like if you didn’t make that decision?

9. The 3 mandates of a leader

The three mandates of a leader start with seeing the situation as it is, not worse than it is. Then seeing it better than it is. And finally, making it the way you want to see it.

I remember when I was 13, I got super inspired to play soccer professionally. At the time, I hadn’t played soccer in years and most of my friends who did had been playing with a club team by then. I went out and played with some friends and realized that my skills at the time weren’t as good as the club players. Rather than give up or think less of myself, I was so inspired by the dream that I clearly asked coaches to give me an evaluation on where my skills stood and what I needed to improve on in order to play on a competitive level club team. Once I knew where I was and had a clear idea of where I wanted to be and how to get there, I took massive action to propel my skills and within a few short years I was playing with an MLS Academy team and invited to play college soccer.

In what area of your life can you practice the three mandates of a leader right now to live a more energy-rich and legendary life? In what area of your life have you been practicing the three mandates?

10. Success leaves clues

Want to accelerate the results you want in your life? Most probably, there’s someone alive who’s achieved what you want. All you need to do is model them and you’ll get the results they got in a much faster time than going through a trial-and-error process.

Tony promotes modeling and immersion training as one of the best and fastest ways to achieve mastery in a skill or area of life.

What’s a result you want in your life right now? Who’s accomplished it? How can you model them to get the result you want now?

And there we have it! That’s 10 amazing lessons I’ve learned from Tony Robbins that have profoundly increased the quality of my life and that I hope will benefit you and your loved ones.