Amidst all the noise within mainstream and social media--all the polarized discussions and venting of frustration--it is easy to lose sight of the fact that people are doing amazing things online. Some of these offerings enhance our understandings of financial markets. Others provide a fresh perspective on life and all its opportunities. I am dedicating this post to several online writers who, for years, have put their ideas out there, enriching those of us seeking personal and professional development. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must add that none of these sources requested their inclusion in this article. This is solely my way of giving back to readers and acknowledging the great contributions of others.

1. Dash of Insight - Jeff Miller describes his blog as "an eclectic approach to better trading and investing", but that's not the half of it. In the blog, Jeff routinely synthesizes market and economic data to provide a bigger picture for the investment landscape. Portfolio managers recognize that the heart of their work is idea generation: finding opportunities underappreciated by others. That is fundamentally a creative process, where new data--and fresh perspectives on existing data--can be assembled into unique views. By assembling both data and analyst perspectives on those data, Dash serves as a vital creativity tool--and a damned good information source. Check out posts where characters representing different trading and investment horizons carry out a conversation. That is exactly how fresh insights are generated.
2. Meir Kay - This guy has nothing to do with financial markets--and yet everything to do with them. Meir describes himself as a "27-year-old director, producer, and motivational speaker," but again that does not do his work 
3. justice. In the Jewish tradition that informs and inspires his efforts, I would describe Meir as a spiritual warrior. Joy--and staying positive--is a large part of his message, as captured in his viral video high-fiving New Yorkers hailing cabs. Check out his video of a young boy who leaves the house to find God, armed with Twinkies and drinks. The idea is that divinity is to be found within each of us and can be powerfully accessed when we experience the world joyfully. When I reached out to Meir, he provided a vivid metaphor of "dancing through life". The important thing, he emphasized, is to be on the dance floor and not simply present as a wallflower. I have written on the topic of spirituality and participation in financial markets, activities that seem as though they would be opposites. As Meir vividly portrays, even the eating of a Twinkie can become a spiritual experience.
4. Abnormal Returns - Just one year before I started my TraderFeed blog, Tadas Viskanta began an unusual financial site that curated content from the financial world, but that didn't tell people how to trade or invest. His unusual ability to scour the Web for fresh, valuable perspectives eventually took him outside finance and into the curation of broad content, including podcasts. As he points out on the site, what began as a hobby and passion morphed into a career as Director of Client Education for Ritholtz Wealth Management. Readers will recognize Barry Ritholtz from his incredibly informative Masters in Business podcast series for Bloomberg and his longstanding blog about finance and more, The Big Picture. A unique weekly feature of Abnormal Returns is a compendium of the most clicked items from each day--a crowdsourcing of already well-curated material. The result is a rich array of musings from the online world and a living example of the good things that happen when we pursue our passions.
5. David Bryce Yaden - I learned about David's unique research from Emilia Lahti, who has researched and written on the concept of sisu, a Finnish construct that pertains to unusually high levels of striving, perseverance, and overcoming. David describes himself as a "research scientist," but his research focus is far from a traditional one. He explores spiritual and self-transcendent experiences: what some of us know as peak experiences. His research draws upon self-reported data as well as neuropsychological evidence, elaborating an intimate connection between self-transcendence and mental health. There are few professions more ego-involved than money management, and yet David's work suggests that we perform at our best when we connect with broader realities in non-self-focused states of awareness. An important implication of this work is that, beyond traditional psychology's focus on improving ourselves, is the distinct possibility of expanding our selves.