Attention is a little-noticed and underrated mental asset.

Whenever we feel stressed out, that's a signal that our brain is pumping out stress hormones. If sustained over months and years, those hormones can ruin our health and make us a nervous wreck.

School success is not predicted by a child's fund of facts or a precocious ability to read as much as by emotional and social measures; being self-assured and interested: knowing what kind of behavior is expected and how to rein in the impulse to misbehave; being able to wait, to follow directions, and to turn to teachers for help; and expressing needs while getting along with other children.

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.

Our genetic heritage endows each of us with a series of emotional set-points that determines our temperament. But the brain circuitry involved is extraordinarily malleable; temperament is not destiny.

Overloading attention shrinks mental control. Life immersed in digital distractions creates a near constant cognitive overload. And that overload wears out self-control.

The amygdala in the emotional center sees and hears everything that occurs to us instantaneously and is the trigger point for the fight or flight response.