A high IQ and good grades are not the only things kids need for success at work and in life. “Once you are in a given job—say a manager—you are competing with people as smart as you. That’s when IQ loses its power to predict success, which starts to depend more on ‘non-cognitive’ factors like persistence in pursuing your goals or social intelligence,” writes Daniel Goleman, author of international bestsellers Emotional Intelligence and Focus....

Elaine Smookler: Hi Pat, thanks for coming to talk with us today. Patricia Rockman: Hi, Elaine. Elaine: So I would love to know, What do you recall about your first moments after hearing your diagnosis of cancer? Patricia: Well I already had a pretty good idea that I had breast cancer because I’d had some symptoms that made me suspicious. But getting the actual diagnosis — Elaine: Do you want to tell us what those symptoms were just since you mentioned them?...

Cultivating good health education by understanding the very real threats we face is very important for preventing the virus’ spread. But as we educate ourselves we’re also creating understandable fear, worry, and anxiety. This is a double-edged sword that on the one side creates an appropriate call to action and on the other can create panic, reactivity and additional problems. Clearly we need an international coordinated public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic....

Veterans practiced MBCT, which combines cognitive therapy with a meditative approach using mindfulness and focuses on acceptance of thoughts and emotions. While previous studies have shown stress reduction and mindfulness meditation can benefit those with a history of exposure to trauma, this is the first study to examine the effect of mindfulness-based psychotherapy for PTSD veterans in a PTSD clinic. As Anthony King, lead author of the study, told The Pacific Standard, mindfulness helps veterans end the cycle of ruminating on traumatic memories by getting them to practice being in the present: “Very often, depression can be about the past,” King explains, “ruminating over and over about losses or other terrible things that happened in the past....

Mirabai Bush is Senior Fellow and the founding Director of The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, a non-profit organization that encourages contemplative awareness in American life in order to create a more just, compassionate, and reflective society. She has designed and led contemplative trainings for corporations from Monsanto to Google, led a national survey of contemplative practice, and directed a Contemplative Practice Fellowship awards program with the American Council of Learned Societies to explore such practices in academic courses in more than 100 colleges and universities....

Our goal wasn’t just to launch a media operation, but rather to use our journalistic capabilities to curate the field and create the best content to help make this grand experiment successful. We’re proud of the contribution Mindful magazine and Mindful.org have made, particularly in view of how hard the small, talented, impassioned staff has worked, often with limited resources. With the success of these media efforts, we now have the bandwidth to expand the ways the Foundation fulfills our mission....

I didn’t need a psychologist to deconstruct how these episodes were indicative of stress occurring during my conscious hours. My life was hectic and harried, not an uncommon state to find oneself in. Like many urbanites, I was frantically active in a way that swallowed up the existence of a meaningful inner life, almost as if I had been afraid to have one. By keeping myself busy, I could be safely sealed in a pseudo-collective trance alongside my fellow commuters and neighbors, all of us escaping our own demons on some level, gliding along on a wash of adrenaline and trying to make ends meet....

In the moment before we fall into any kind of negative addictive behavior, like procrastination, stress eating, isolation, or endlessly scrolling through our phones, here’s a thought. The thought, whether fully formed or not, is usually something like, I need to get away from this uncomfortable feeling, or even, I want this good feeling that’s here to last. It’s human nature to want to distance ourselves from what’s uncomfortable and seek more of what feels good....

I hope that made you laugh, just a little. And you can feel grateful for actually having a sense of humor. In fact, why not be grateful for all the small and large wonders that you trip over every day? You don’t have to like everything you encounter, but that doesn’t mean that life is not a marvel. And yet often, our lives are full of sadness and madness. So, what are we supposed to feel grateful for?...

Unlike anger, sadness, or happiness, there’s no “universal expression” or firm definition for gratitude, says Vanessa Hill. In this video from PBS science series Braincraft, she explores how we can express gratitude, and all the benefits that come with it: What Is Gratitude? Robert Emmons, psychology professor and gratitude researcher at the University of California, Davis, explains that there are two key components of practicing gratitude: It’s only in the past few decades that researchers have started to investigate how we benefit from expressing gratitude and paying it forward....

Elisha: Welcome Shamash! Shamash: Great to be here with you. Elisha: Mindfulness is enjoying quite a boon. Where do you see mindfulness currently in our culture and where is it going? Shamash: I think mindfulness is still very much in its infancy in our culture. The general public hears about it from time to time, but I don’t think it’s fully accepted yet. But we’re certainly on the path toward that happening....

But the deeper question is, where does it reside in the brain and how do we overcome it? I don’t believe anyone has conducted a brain scan specifically on resistance, but one thing we do know is that the right side of the prefrontal region that lies behind your forehead lights up when we’re trying to avoid something. This same region also lights up with negative emotions. One thing we’re wanting to do is intentionally practice and repeat shifting the activity to the left prefrontal region that is more associated with approaching things in life and with resiliency....

Just a few days before the retreat, one participant, Major General Gale Pollock (ret), was on her way to work when she found herself stopping and getting out of her car to join a group of people gathered on the street. What they witnessed was indeed quite unusual—the space shuttle Discovery was making a circle around Washington DC to thank the leadership for its support. Gale snapped a picture of this amazing sight and then sent it to me with the title “Mindfulness....

So often, we’re in such a rush, when we’re in conversation, we don’t give others time to formulate a response. And when they do, we jump right on it with our response. Feeling the pressure to get through lessons, teachers often fall prey to this habit as well. Research shows, though, that allowing wait time increases student responses, raises student’s confidence, and improves achievement. Adding a little mindfulness to this proven educational technique is a great way to help consciously create pauses during classroom discussion....

According to experts, mindfulness training provides women, especially those who want to avoid pills, with a good option for treating moderate to severe hot flashes that disrupt their quality of life. The eight-week trial included a group of 110 women, mostly white, with at least five bothersome hot flashes a day. Results indicated that mindfulness training (including meditation and stretching exercises) not only enhanced sleep quality but also helped ease stress and anxiety in women during menopause....

1) THE SILENT SIGH A sigh can mean many things—relief, exasperation, pleasure, exhaustion, even sadness. Physiologically, sighing regulates and resets our breathing rate. Kids and adults sigh unconsciously, and we can unintentionally offend others when we do so. The Silent Sigh is a deliberate and respectful way of sighing. I learned it from Irene McHenry, an educator and fellow board member at the Mindfulness in Education Network. This practice allows us to let out excess emotion and reset our body and breath....

That’s just a sample of what Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan has to say about mindfulness in this book trailer for his book A Mindful Nation. (We’ve included a transcription, below, as well.) Ryan also talks about his own experience with mindfulness and how the practice has the potential of making a tremendous difference for our society. Transcription: “Growing up I spent about 12 years in Catholic school — Our Lady of Mount Carmel grade school, and John F....