Compassion begins with attention.

There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse.

Scheduling down time as part of your routine is hard but worth it, personally, even professionally.

A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain.

But once you are in that field, emotional intelligence emerges as a much stronger predictor of who will be most successful, because it is how we handle ourselves in our relationships that determines how well we do once we are in a given job.

There are a host of surprises among longer-term meditators, like a boost in the immune system from a day of practice, which is not seen in beginners, and a rapid recovery from stress or pain. At the "Olympic level" we find there is no anticipatory anxiety when the stress of pain is certain to come, and no lingering aftereffects - unlike the stress reactions in ordinary folk.

However, I began meditating at about that time and have continued on and off over the years.