Happy Tuesday, and happy first week of August. Can you believe we're over halfway done with 2024? Now is a great time to revisit the New Year resolutions you gave up on a couple of months ago (😉) so we can finish out the second half of the year strong.

We have a great edition for you this week full of all things good. Let me know which sections and stories are your favorites; I love hearing from you! 

- Kailyn

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today's newsletter takes ~3.16 minutes to read (842 words).

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I trust the journey and am at peace with where I am.

Kitty Tait was only 14 when she battled her first major bout of depression. Her mental health plummeted, leading the UK teen to question "what it was all for." According to the now 21-year-old: "I became a shell, [I would] just lay in bed and wouldn't leave the house. I almost couldn't form sentences.” 

Kitty's therapist suggested she find a hobby to help bring some purpose and joy back into her life. She tried gardening, knitting, and drawing.... but none of them stuck. 

Then she tried baking. 

Her bread and butter: Kitty became fascinated with baking bread after watching her dad, Alex, successfully bake a simple, no-knead bread recipe in the family's oven. Wanting to give it a shot, she rolled up her sleeves and gathered some ingredients. 

The rest, as they say, is history❤️.

Baking bread soon took over Kitty's life in the best way; the teen found a new sense of purpose in her daily bakes. 

• “Baking filled my time and put me in a really calm state, but it also gave me a huge sense of purpose when all I really felt like was a burden,” she shared. 
• “I’m naturally quite a people pleaser, and the lovely thing was I could make a loaf, and then give it to someone to enjoy.”

Word started to spread throughout Kitty's UK town about her delicious bakes. She then started charging for her homemade loaves. Less than a year later, in 2019, Kitty and her dad opened their own brick-and-mortar location.

• Kitty also founded Breaducating Britain, a social project with the mission to "demysify baking, and share with everyone what she knows to be the many benefits of great quality bread." 

🍞 Bottom line: The storefront has since closed, but Kitty has no plans of ending her career with bread any time soon. More than anything, she's grateful for how her passion has helped her mentally. 

"Bread has given me so much joy," she told Positive News. "It’s a joy to make, eat, and teach. What I’d love is for all kids and adults to understand that bread is something really simple that we can all make at home."

Take your love of game shows to a new level of fun with FREE online games at The Game Show Network.

You can play interactive versions of…

• ⛓️ Chain Reaction
• 🎙️ America Says
• 🔀 Switch
• 🧩 People Puzzler

And a whole lot more, including other classic games like Sudoku, Mahjong, and Solitaire.

Play FREE online games on Game Show Network.

On top of earning his fifth Olympic medal this week, 30-year-old UK diver Tom Daley accomplished another feat – knitting his own Paris-themed sweater.

• The Olympic swimmer picked up knitting in 2020 during Covid lockdowns, and hasn't put the needles down since. 
• He was spotted working on his sweater at every spare moment during the Games, and also shared his progress on a knitting Instagram account @madewithlovebytomdaley, which boasts 1+ million followers.

💬 What he's saying: “I don’t know how to just do nothing,” he said during an interview with CNN. “It was my husband who said that lots of people knit squares while they are waiting on film sets so I thought I’d give that a go. I went on to the ‘university of YouTube’ and taught myself how to knit and never looked back!”

🇧🇷 Hope for Brazil... The 2024 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, an annual report from the UN, indicates that severe food insecurity dropped by 85% in Brazil last year. The number of food-insecure people decreased from 17.2 million in 2022 to only 2.5 million in 2023, per the report. Analysts attribute the drop to social and governmental efforts set forth by new president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

📸 The power of a selfie... When athletes from North Korea and South Korea snapped a selfie together on the Olympic medal podium, they got the whole world talking. Some are hailing it as a show of rare cross-border harmony. 

🐱 A Quiet Place (with cats)... The "Quiet Place Challenge" is taking over social media, with pet owners running around with their cats to test if they would survive in the popular sci-fi thriller universe where humans are forced to live in total silence. From most of the hilarious videos, it seems like the kitties wouldn't make it very far (maybe why they have nine lives?). 

Box breathing is a simple meditation technique that involves breathing in a four-part "boxed" rhythm. It can be done anytime, anywhere, and will help you ground yourself and come back to your center of breath.

👍 Anyone can do it... Give it a try if you feel like you could use a bit of re-centering. This simple video (3 mins) will explain exactly how😌. 

Enjoy!  

P.S. Don't have time to watch the video? Try breathing purposefully for a few moments with the GIF above.

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... because every small accomplishment is truly worth celebrating 🎉. Check out this week's win submissions! 

✈️ Caroline O. from Westchester, New York, is exploring new places...

• "Last week, I went on a trip with my fiance to Reno, Nevada. He was going for a work conference, and I wanted to go with for a vacation of my own. It was so wonderful to see a new state that I had never been to before. Though I was on my own for most of the time while we were there, I found the alone time in the hotel, or out and about, to be so relaxing and recharging! If you had asked me a few years ago to go on a trip with someone and be mostly alone, I might've been too afraid. This was a very sucessful growth moment for me!"

🎌 Brennan L. from Oklahoma is jetting to Japan...

• "My husband and I finally get to visit Japan this next week after years of dreaming about going together! Bonus, we have a Japanese friend we made in college that we get to see for the first time since then! We are so excited!"

💍 Lauren R. from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the ultimate bridesmaid...

• "I am not great at planning, and I planned my best friends’ bachelorette trip and bridal shower successfully! It was so nice to see everything come to life and the big smile on her face. This feels like a huge win for me, while it might be small for someone else!!"

❤️ Faith T. from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, is seeing progress in the little things...

• "I work at a dayhab facility for adults with mental and physical disabilities. Today I made a young man who has never spoken a word laugh out loud for the first time!! He was beautiful!! I am blessed!!"

Whether you had an energizing conversation with a friend, beat a sickness, met a milestone at work, or even just booked a dream trip, we want to hear about it.

There is always something to be grateful for, and no win too small. And who knows? Sharing a bit of positivity from your own life could inspire someone else to recognize the good in theirs🥰.

Submit your wins here for a chance to be featured in next week's newsletter. We want to celebrate you!

Share your accomplishments – big and small – here.

It's trivia time. General knowledge today. How many can you get right? 

1. What is the sign directly opposite Scorpio in the Zodiac?
2. What element does the chemical symbol "Au" stand for?
3. What is the highest-grossing Broadway show of all time?
4. What year was the first iPhone released?
5. How many bones do sharks have?

👆 Check out the referral prizes you can get, just for introducing people you know to little old us. 

What to do: Copy your unique link below, then send it to anyone who you think would like Positive DONUT. Once you hit each milestone, you'll get an email with a link to claim your prize.

Start referring.👇

1. Taurus ♉️
2. Gold 👑 
3. The Lion King 🦁
4. 2007 📱
5. 0 😳

Hit that reply button and let me know, I read every response. Have a great week!🥰

–Kailyn

P.S. Enjoying this newsletter and want to support my work? It'd mean the world if you told a friend or two about Positive DONUT. You can even win sweet, sweet prizes for each person you refer using your unique link (found two sections above).