June 2006                                                                                  Carol Adrienne, Ph.D.

    Do you have a dream, but are not sure what to do with it?   In the early 1980’s, Geri Weis-Corbley, started thinking about the idea of a good news network.  Her friends pooh-poohed it and said good news wouldn’t sell.  But it was always in the back of her mind. Geri, now forty-seven, remembers a day ten years ago when her oldest boy was five, and they were in the kitchen listening to national public radio.  “NPR is the “good” news network in my mind.  But they happened to be airing a very graphic story about a rape in Bosnia, and I didn’t want my son to hear all that, so I turned it off.  It was another moment when I thought about how the media keeps feeding us fear and negativity.”

    Geri Weis-Corbley knows a lot about media and public campaigns.   For ten years she worked in television news and video production in Washington, D.C, doing everything from camera work covering news in the White House to producing political media campaigns.  She also shot documentaries around the world in Guyana, Switzerland, and Canada, but gave it all up in 1990 when she married and had children. After five years of being a stay-at-home mom with her three kids--and enjoying her time with them--she found herself getting more and more irritated with little things.  She realized she needed to find another outlet for her PENT-UP creativity.

    “I came back to the idea of a good news network,” says Geri. “Time has been in my favor.  When I first got the idea, I would have had to raise money for a television show.  But since the Web came along, I realized I could publish good news on the internet and do it from my own home while raising kids.”

    In starting to bring an idea into being, we must overcome our own inertia, our inner perception of what others will think, and our natural desire to be assured that it will “work out.” 
Stepping Out Takes Courage
    Geri says, “I had lots of fear of failing.  I was particularly afraid that people wouldn’t approve or appreciate what I was trying to do.  The idea of bringing good news stories to people, oddly enough, is seen as non-conformist and unconventional.  I think what scared me the most was having to step out and be the first to do something.  Even though I had the success behind me of my former work in producing television programs and rolling out political campaigns, I was nervous about stepping out of the norm.  When I was hired in the old days, I was already accepted and approved of.  I wanted that same sense of confidence.”

    The turning point for Geri came when discussing her idea to a close girlfriend.  “I told her I was afraid it wouldn’t be good enough because I didn’t have a lot of time apart from the kids.  She said, ‘Why not just write up one issue a month?’  When I heard that, it clicked.  I thought, ‘I don’t have to pressure myself’.”

    Synchronistically, at the time, Geri was searching for a Sunday school for her son, and another mother suggested the Unity Church. The minister was leading a ten-week series based on the book by Mary Manin Morrisey, Building Your Field of Dreams.  While her son, Jack, didn’t take to Sunday school, Geri continued to go back each week for the series.  “The lessons were exactly the encouragement I needed to move ahead.  It reinforced principles like: Respond to your Divine Discontent. Build a bigger belief in yourself.  Participate in the constant flow of resources in the Universe, and Harvest the dream by being bold.

    “I started meditating,” says Geri.  “I found the best software available at that time to begin a website (Adobe Go Live,) and created all the graphics for each category of news. In 1997 I launched the website!   I remember clicking the “upload” button, and knowing that it was suddenly on the Web for everyone to see.  I was amazed.  Less than a year later, the magazine, Women’s World, did an article about me called “Fed Up with Bad News.”  They had a picture of me in front of the computer holding the three kids and our two cats.” 

Motivation Often Follows Action
    Success breeds more success.  Once we achieve something we set out to do, it builds momentum for increased creativity and courage to continue taking on new projects. Geri began to get up and meditate before the family awoke, and listened for what the Universe had in mind for her that day. “I would always hear an answer. Instead of monthly entries, I now started updating my site once a week.”

    Another step out into the unknown happened as Geri began wanting to write more articles focusing on spirituality.  “My husband, who was my editor, didn’t think this was such a great idea and advised me not to go that route.  But my intuition said to go for it.  I was meditating on my patio one day, and two crows swooped in close to me.  I had just been studying a book on Native-American animal spirits with a friend, and the meaning of Crow medicine is that Crow is in touch with the spirit world.  Crow seems almost cross-eyed because it keeps an eye on both the material and spiritual world.  The caw of Crow encourages us to ‘Caw it as you see it.’  That was my answer.”

    Geri feels her mission is to inspire others to go for their own dream. “I want to teach others that they don’t have to be afraid.  Mothers don’t have to be afraid that they can’t do something creative, even with a family to raise. In the beginning, you don’t need motivation so much as you just need to put your hand on the keyboard.  You get motivation after you’ve taken the first step. Passion and energy follow action.  It’s like yoga.  You start doing it and the energy is able to flow in.  You are unclogging the pipe.” 

    When Geri talked about launching a new website in March that allowed her to update easily every day--I had the urge to ask her what software she was using.  We discovered we both use the free Open Source program of Joomla! (my friend Robert found it for me,) and we both launched our sites within days of each other. It was a fun connection.

A Positive Outlook Fosters Good Health
    Geri is now convinced that good news is good for people’s health.  She often receives emails from readers who report all kinds of positive results after reading her stories. “This is the fulfillment of a nine-year dream to provide a daily dose of good news—like medicine!  One of my emails, for example, was from a police psychologist, who had a young boy come in for treatment.  The boy was crying, depressed, and suicidal.  He told the psychologist that the world was an awful place to live in.  He said, the evening news was proof of it, and he noted stuff he had read about sex slaves, war, murders, and so on.  The psychologist took him to my website and let him read some stories.  In a few minutes the boy was smiling and reaching for a hug. He said,’I guess there is hope.’ 

    Geri recalls what another person wrote, “‘When the Iraq war began, I went into a depression state. I felt constantly worried and agitated and it was hard to enjoy doing things I loved to do. Then I found your site. It lifted my spirits and helped get me out of the funk I was in. Now I’m going to school and enjoying the things I like to do’”

     Researching the connection between positive mindset and good health, Geri discovered a Harvard University lecturer, Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, who teaches positive psychology—a new field in behavioral science—and the most popular class with 855 enrolled.  She contacted Dr. Ben-Shahar, who wrote back complimenting her website as a very important initiative.  He told her that he has begun to recommend that people visit the site once a day.

    Today, nine years, later, Geri recognizes the deeper purpose behind her dream to provide good news.  She says, “I want to be known as the person who proved that good news sells—an idea that goes against the societal and media norm of the past fifty years.” 
Geri’s website is http://www.GoodNewsNetwork.org.  You can contact Geri at
GnN. goodnewsnetwork.org.
Happy June!
Carol Adrienne