The other thing is that if you rely solely on medication to manage depression or anxiety, for example, you have done nothing to train the mind, so that when you come off the medication, you are just as vulnerable to a relapse as though you had never taken the medication.
However, I began meditating at about that time and have continued on and off over the years.
If you are doing mindfulness meditation, you are doing it with your ability to attend to the moment.
In a high-IQ job pool, soft skills like discipline, drive and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding.
I don't think focus is in itself ever a bad thing. But focus of the wrong kind, or managed poorly, can be.
The basic premise that children must learn about emotions is that all feelings are okay to have; however, only some reactions are okay.
A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain.
Scheduling down time as part of your routine is hard but worth it, personally, even professionally.
True compassion means not only feeling another's pain but also being moved to help relieve it.
The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.
Making choices that improve things for all of us on the planet is an act of compassion, a simple act we can do any time we go shopping.
Social distance makes it all the easier to focus on small differences between groups and to put a negative spin on the ways of others and a positive spin on our own.
Societies can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness.
