About the Author

I'm Sharon Lipinski, and I'm the author of 365 Ways to Live Generously, founder of the non-profit Change Gangs: Virtual Giving Circles, and I maintain the largest repository of information documenting the tools, strategies, and accomplishments of some of America's eight hundred charitable giving circles.

365 Ways to Live Generously is the result of my own personal quest to live my best life. Several years ago, I was a mortgage broker working 60 hours or more a week in a high-pressure job I hated. I had zero work-life balance, because it was all work. I didn't exercise. I never cooked. If it didn't come from take out or from a box, I didn't eat.

But I saw that some people seemed to have it easier than I did in the sense that they were excelling at work and in their personal life. The secret was that they had better habits than I did. They were doing more of the right things unconsciously and automatically. I knew that if they could do it, I could do it too.

For years now, I've been trying to figure out which habits I should create, so I can live my best life. I wanted to have more time and energy. I wanted to feel good about my health and love my body. I wanted to have deep meaningful relationships. I wanted to have a big, positive impact on myself, my community, and the world.

Today, I am happily married. Today, I am physically healthy with a strong exercise habit. I wake up every morning with the physical energy to handle whatever life throws at me and the mental clarity to focus on what's most important to me. Today, I cook. That blows me away, and sometimes I still shake my head as I put dinner on the table and think, "Look at that. I can cook."

And you can do it, too. This story doesn't stop with me. Whatever your best life looks like to you, you can achieve it by gently, easily, and consistently practicing the right behaviors until they become a habit.

Change Gangs: Virtual Giving Circles is the non-profit I founded to make philanthropy a habit, and it is my labor of love! A Change Gang is a virtual giving circle, and we are a donation team. We pool our small donations ($25/month) with the donations of other people who care who also care about the same cause: helping pets, ending poverty, or supporting our veterans. So, instead of donating $25 alone, we're donating thousands of dollars together. But it gets better than that. Members suggest charities for us to consider, our donation committee researches those charities, and then members vote on which charity they think is going to make the biggest difference. As a result, we know that we're giving to the right charity, that our donation is going to be used in the right way and that it will make a big difference!

I founded it after I invited an elderly man I knew who was going to spend Thanksgiving alone to spend Thanksgiving dinner with me at a Chinese re