When I went on to write my next book, Working With Emotional Intelligence, I wanted to make a business case that the best performers were those people strong in these skills.

Mindful meditation has been discovered to foster the ability to inhibit those very quick emotional impulses.

When the darkness is seen as a necessary prelude to the creative light, one is less likely to ascribe frustration to personal inadequacy or label it as bad.

We learn best with focused attention. As we focus on what we're learning, the brain maps that information on what we already know making new neural connections

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.

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

The industrial processes in use today were developed at a time when no one had to consider what the environmental impact was. Who cared? But making ecological concerns matter to a company's bottom line will help it do the research and development that will reinvent everything we buy.