For more about the Wisdom 2.0 conference in February 2013, click here.

WholeSchool Mindfulness Working with schools across the US to co-create an education system that advances well-being, community, and justice through mindfulness by establishing and supporting the position of a “Mindfulness Director” in schools. A Mindfulness Director is a school or district staff member whose role is to integrate mindfulness practices within their community. Mindful Life Project Working diligently to support the mental and emotional wellness of students, teachers, staff, leaders, and families through mindfulness programming....

In Carter’s experience, two things happen once you start practicing kindness and compassion. As you begin to do kind things for people, they start reciprocating. And because you’re more conscious of kindness—and more observant—you start noticing acts of kindness everywhere. 1) Try This Compassion Practice Here’s a simple way to shift your mind toward understanding and compassion. As little as 10 minutes a day can change your outlook. The Setup Sit in a comfortable position that allows you to be alert and relaxed at the same time....

How to Be at Home Here are just a few snippets of the poetic wisdom that Davis’s poem offers: 1. Go Inward Right from the start of the poem, Davis doesn’t mince words in addressing the perennial challenge of coping with anxious and fearful thoughts. “If you are, at first, really f*cking anxious, just wait. It’ll get worse. And then you’ll get the hang of it.” Our emotions are a journey, and no matter how bad we feel one moment, we can know they’ll always change....

We picture the dynamics of a workplace according to how much it values well-being and strong relationships. You can see how these influence workplace culture by laying them over a simple four-quadrant grid, with the x-axis representing the degree to which a culture values individual well-being, and the y-axis representing the degree to which it values relationships among employees. The interplay between these values—strong and weak on each axis—creates quadrants that represent workplace cultures familiar in organizational life....

The panic attacks would come like waves. They would start slowly and then build momentum until I was completely overtaken. I would experience physical symptoms, like blurred or tunnel vision, and would feel like the ground had disappeared beneath my feet. I had a hard time catching my breath. At the time I was not familiar with mindfulness and meditation and the significant benefits that could result from consistent practice....

This is what a friend of mine said when I told her how much time I’ve spent on silent meditation retreats. It’s a sentiment I’ve heard many times. I used to respond by talking about the benefits, but this time, my answer was much simpler: “You’re right. You would hate it, but you wouldn’t keep hating it for the whole week. Have you considered what might happen next?” As I write this, many of us have been stuck at home in quarantine for about two months....

Let me walk you through a simple curiosity exercise. Doing this 2-minute practice can work as a kind of panic button for when anxiety hits. Step 1: Find a quiet comfortable place. You can be sitting, lying down or standing up; you just need to be able to concentrate without being distracted. Step 2: Recall your most recent run-in or incident with a habit loop, which is any habit you find yourself returning to whenever you’re worried or anxious....

That said, when you practice this meditation, don’t try to force yourself to find the source or meaning of your anxiety. The crucial aspect of this meditation is forwarding your journey of discovery into yourself. Whatever you may find inside, simply acknowledging it will help you live with more ease. Then, rather than putting so much energy into fighting your anxiety, you can begin to change your relationship to it....

But am I using food (or, in this case, drink) to soothe my emotions? And is it okay to do that? Is it mindful? The answer is “yes” to all these questions. I brought awareness with kindness and curiosity to exploring what I wanted, why I was doing it, and how much of it I needed. I didn’t have the expectation that a cup of cocoa would take all the COVID blues or the winter away, but it would be a temporarily balm on a cold winter day So many people these days, from an increasingly young age, carry around a sense of shame and unworthiness about eating emotionally....

On a day like this you might see red, yellow, or green traffic lights reflected on wet pavement. You might see raindrops running down a window pane or hanging from a railing or overhead wire. You might see two people walking under a bright green umbrella. You might see a dull gray sky or a wet red truck. Inside, there will be soft shadows and muted colors. You might even look through the drops on a window and see the landscape distorted by odd-shaped raindrop lenses....

Last week I watched Arianna Huffington talking about mindfulness and business on CNBC’s Squawk Box, featuring moving first person accounts by Aetna CEO John Bertolini and Harvard Business School’s Bill George. That was followed by a HuffPost Live broadcast about mindfulness and work that included our friend and mindful.org contributor Janice Marturano, head of the Institute for Mindful Leadership. Apart from the occasional predictably snarky comments by the Squawk Box hosts, it all seemed so matter of fact and accepted....

He recently sat down with Wendy Behary, a founding fellow and consulting supervisor for The Academy of Cognitive Therapy (Aaron T. Beck Institute). Wendy has a specialty in treating narcissists and the people who live with and deal with them. In this episode Michael and Wendy discuss why so many elite performers are narcissists, and how we can be more effective with living and working with them. Michael Gervais: Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Master podcast, I’m Michael Gervais....

In September, the year of Our Lord 1954, a gifted young minister from Atlanta named Martin Luther King, Jr., accepted his first pastorate at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was 25 years old, and in the language of the Academy, he took his first job when he was ABD at Boston University’s School of Theology—All But Dissertation—which is a common and necessary practice for scholars who have completed their course work and have families to feed....

New research from Michigan State University suggests that trust as an element of the doctor-patient relationship could be more important than previously considered. In fact, it can change the brain’s response to stress and improve the patient’s ability to tolerate pain. Researchers assigned patients to one of two types of interviews with a doctor prior to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan. In the first group, the doctor asked the patient open-ended questions, addressed their concerns, and allowed patients to speak freely about their life and social factors influencing their stress....

“I’ll make the vet appointment.” “Are we out of sugar already?!” “I have to meet with that intern and might be late tonight.” “I love that dress on you.” “Did you notice the car is making that funny noise again?” If you’re like most people, only a tiny fraction of such an exchange will stay with you. According to neuropsychologists’ understanding of memory, the mundane experiences of our lives vanish into the mists of time unless they trigger one of three mental reactions: They strike an emotional chord (“are we out of sugar” sounds to you like the accusatory “didn’t you put it on the shopping list when you finished it?...

One of the practices is called “The Freedom Practice” and I wanted to share it with you because it can be so useful in gaining freedom from styles of thinking that don’t serve us and keep us stuck in stress, anxiety, depression, and even our addictive behaviors. Sometimes I call these styles of thinking “Mind Traps.” Mind traps are styles like catastrophizing, blaming, and exaggerating the negative and discounting the positive or just your most common negative thoughts....