9 surprisingly positive real-life 'cheat codes' that people swear actually work

Some seriously solid life lessons here.

By Annie Reneau

When you ask people for life lessons, sometimes the responses can feel quite negative. Adages like "Good guys always finish last," and "Always look out for number one," and "There's no such thing as a free lunch" may be reactionary responses to bad experiences, but they're also just fuel for cynicism, which ultimately doesn't serve people well in life.

So when someone asked for real-life "cheat codes" that actually work, it was refreshing to see how positive the vast majority of responses were. These "cheat codes" show that lessons in life don't need to be harsh or pessimistic—in fact, more often than not, the most effective life hacks are those that encourage us to live in our highest values and become our best selves.

5 ways people are going “All In” this week

By Sarah Watts

This week, we've found a handful of hilarious and heart-warming videos that perfectly capture what it's like to go "All In"—moments where passion, creativity, and commitment take center stage and something truly special happens as a result. Here are five of our favorite examples.

The kids are alright.

💬 Man shares the tell-tale texting style that immediately identified him as classic Gen X

"Grammar and punctuation will pierce our clever disguises."

By Emily Shiffer

Every generation has different texting habits. For example, Boomers insist on using ellipses when they text, according to a Harvard linguist.

And Gen X has its own texting style, too. In the Reddit forum r/GenX, one man shared a funny interaction he had with one of his Millennial students that "gave away" his Gen X identity.

"Grammar is my 'tell.' Who knew?" he wrote, before sharing a text exchange he had with one of his students from the younger generation.

​🏫 School threatens mom with CPS after missed calls when child was sick. They never called dad.

Other parents echo the mom's frustration and offer support.

By Jacalyn Wetzel

Being the default parent can be tough all on its own, but society places an additional burden on mothers to be the default parent. One of the places this shows up is in phone calls home from school. One mom claims that the school threatened to call Child Protective Services (CPS) on her if she did not answer her phone and retrieve her child from school. But the mother works a job where she is not permitted to have her phone on her person, which is why she has the child's father listed as the first contact.

Every year parents register their children for school, they fill out a form for emergency contacts and people permitted to pick up your child in the event a parent can't be there. Parents generally take great pains to fill this information out as accurately as possible, with the preferred parent at the top. This is to ensure the child is never stranded on school grounds if a parent cannot be reached.