John Bobowski and his partners are on a mission to share life-changing stories.

“We’ve figured out that people’s lives have magic in them,” he said recently. “Everyone has a story that’s full of magic, some wonder, some incredible event that took place in their life that’s either changed them, or inspired them, and from that we can conclude that the world is full of abundance.

“There’s an abundance of joy,” he continued. “What needs to happen is people just need to be positive, and focus on the abundance, rather than the opposite.”

He isn’t naïve in saying that. He is fully aware that there are equally powerful events in life that bring sadness, and worse. The choice, he says, is how to go up.

Seated inside a work space within C.H. Booth Library recently, he offered an example.

“I have a friend who recently told me he was sick. I asked him, ‘Well how long have you been sick?’

“His response was, ‘Well in three weeks it’ll be a month,’” Bobowski said, waiting for the listener to realize what he has said. Then he laughs. “I mean, who thinks that way??!”

Bobowski thinks more people think like his friend — looking for the positive more than the negative —and he and his partners are on a quest to find those people and get them to share their stories.

Heart Speak is a project designed to share positive thoughts and feelings around the world. Its partners are Bobowski, Cindy Miller, Richard Teasdale and Bruce Zboray.

The project invites people to share their stories, many of them collected and released as two-minute GEMs, or Great Energy Moments, via heartspeak.life. The website hosts hundreds of GEMs for anyone who would like to listen to them. It also invites people to share their GEMs, to help build the ever-growing collection.

“That type of thinking, it’s in our society,” Bobowski said. “Cindy and I and the others got together and said, ‘What influence can we have, what role do we play to make this world a better place?’

“What you feed your mind makes a difference in your action and your behavior,” he added. “What we’ve noticed in human nature is people love to talk. They love to talk about their lives, what happened with their kids, at school, at work.”

Bobowski and Miller believe people want their stories told. They also believe people want to hear the stories of others.

Heart Speak is filled with true stories, “ready to pick people up,” Bobowski said. “They’re like a daily fortune cookie.”

GEMs, according to the Heart Speak website, are meant to be uplifting, positive and well-intentioned. The person who authors the GEM is usually the one who records them, although Bobowski, Miller and others have done recordings for those who really do not like the sound of their own voice or are simply not comfortable with the recording process.

There are several kinds of GEMs: Try-Me, or a personal story of something that was experienced; Fond Memory; Inspirational; and Visualization, in which a listener will be immersed in imagery being shared.

“We share things on food, why seeing a rainbow is good, pets, hiking, meditation — it’s all things we think are positive, uplifting and a helpful resource for people to plug into and connect with,” Miller said.

There are nearly 400 GEMs already filed, according to Bobowski.

A Powerful Legacy

The collection of Heart Speak stories also leaves a legacy of people’s voices.

“We have a person here in town who passed away. Everyone knew this person, and at his funeral Cindy and I met some of his brothers and sisters,” Bobowski said. “He had some phenomenal stories, and his children and family can still hear him thanks to these stories that he recorded.

“That’s a powerful thing, to hear someone you love,” he added.

Heart Speak is much larger than Connecticut. Stories have been recorded by people across the country and around the globe. Bobowski and Miller can and have visited many people to collect their stories, but technology also means someone can record their story anywhere on the globe, and the Heart Speak team can access it, and then share it on the website.

“We teach people how to record, or we meet people and record them,” Miller said. “You can be in California and we can still get a recording of you here in Connecticut. We make it very accessible, so peoples’ voices can be heard.”

For one family, those recordings have led to more direct conversations.

“We have one gentleman who lives in Virginia, with grandchildren all over the country,” Bobowski said. “Kids these days don’t usually want to talk. They want to text and be done with it. They don’t want to pick up the phone and call Grandpa.

“But Clive recorded some stories for us, and now his grandchildren are calling him, asking him about those stories,” Bobowski said. Heart Speak, he said, “is a way to connect with your kids and grandkids.”

Miller said sharing and/or listening to stories can reach across generations.

“We really have something for wherever you are in life,” she said. “There are things that people go through, all kinds of things, that we can all relate to.

“Some people,” she added, “call us oral historians.”

Listening, Subscription Options

There are many ways to listen to Heart Speak GEMs. Visitors to HeartSpeak.life can choose them at random or by searching categories. The website has tags, everything ranging from animals, children, dogs and entertainment to gardening, music, science, technology, and many others, to help visitors find something specific.

The website can be visited as often as one would like to. There are also options to have email and/or audio items delivered.

To cover the technology needed to host the website and its growing collection of stories, subscriptions are also available. People can pay to receive a GEM of the Day call for varying lengths (one month, three months, one year, etc), or even to make GEM calls for a specific period.

Website visitors can also listen to or sign up for Well Wishes, which are very short messages. During the interview at the library that served as the basis for this story, Bobowski played one Well Wish: “Good things will come your way,” said a female voice.

“It’s like a fortune cookie,” he said. “We have people who get a phone call every day with just a short message.”

Subscribers can have one or both options sent to the phone number of their choice. They can also dictate the time of day the call or text should arrive.

Most options also offer free trials. A Heart Speak Android app is also available; an iPhone app is planned.

Bobowski and Miller both say the funding side of the project is not where their intent lies.

“It’s a very heartfelt project,” Miller said. “We feel funding will come. That’s not what the focus is on.”

Heart Speak is also working on sending Well Wishes via text. The team has also launched a YouTube channel.

“While 90% of what we do is audio, we now are going to YouTube with some short videos,” Bobowski said. On March 11, Bobowski and Miller debuted something new during their monthly visit to Newtown Senior Center.

“We just did our first TikTok video,” Bobowski said March 12, “and it was unbelievably delightful.”

GEMs are also being shared on WPKN radio (89.5 FM) by Icon, who produces “The Soca Showcase” from 8-10 pm the first Saturday of each month and “In the Domain” on occasional Saturday afternoons from 4 to 7 pm.

“He does a show that is dedicated to a theme, and he’s been incorporating one or two gems into each program,” Bobowski said.

The key comes back to one thing, Bobowski believes.

“Everyone likes to tell their story. We’re story tellers, and we share them,” he said.

Visit heartspeak.life to begin listening to brief, uplifting stories. To share a story for the project, click on Submit A GEM.

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.