Teachers need to be comfortable talking about feelings.

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

There is a newly coined word in the English language for the moment when the person we're with whips out their BlackBerry or answers that cell phone, and all of a sudden we don't exist. The word is 'pizzled': it's a combination of puzzled and pissed off.

The near cousin of optimism is hope: knowing the steps needed to get to a goal and having the energy to pursue those steps. It is a primal motivating force, and its absence is paralyzing.

For the high achievers, studying gave them the pleasing, absorbing challenge of flow 40 percent of the hours they spent at it. But for low achievers, studying produced flow only 16 percent of the time; more often that not, it yielded anxiety, with the demands outreaching their abilities...The low achievers found pleasure and flow in socializing, not in studying.

Our passions, when well exercised, have wisdom; they guide our thinking, our values, our survival.

Making choices that improve things for all of us on the planet is an act of compassion, a simple act we can do any time we go shopping.