In a high-IQ job pool, soft skills like discipline, drive and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding.

I think the smartest thing for people to do to manage very distressing emotions is to take a medication if it helps, but don't do only that. You also need to train your mind.

I don't really follow meditation hype. But my impression is that poor studies are cited as "proof" of meditation's benefits, findings that apply to advanced meditators are sometimes touted as accruing to beginners, and, occasionally, some benefits are simply imagined. This may be most true in the business world, where many companies are bringing in teachers who are a bit loose in their use of research as evidence for the usefulness of the method.

Empathic, emotionally intelligent work environments have a good track record of increasing creativity, improving problem solving and raising productivity.

There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse. It is the root of all emotional self-control, since all emotions, by their very nature, lead to one or another impulse to act. The root meaning of the word emotion, remember, is "to move.

But there has also been a notable increase in recent years of these applications by a much wider slice of psychotherapists - far greater interest than ever before.

People learn what they want to learn. If learning is forced on us, even if we master it temporarily, it is soon forgotten.