The other thing is that if you rely solely on medication to manage depression or anxiety, for example, you have done nothing to train the mind, so that when you come off the medication, you are just as vulnerable to a relapse as though you had never taken the medication.

Like secondhand smoke, the leakage of emotions can make a bystander an innocent casualty of someone else's toxic state.

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.

Cognitive skills such as big-picture thinking and long-term vision were particularly important. But when I calculated the ratio of technical skills, IQ, and emotional intelligence as ingredients of excellent performance, emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as the others for jobs at all levels.

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

Sheree Conrad and Michael Milburn bring a much-needed sanity to that confusing and unruly terrain, our sexual lives/

Simple inattention kills empathy, let alone compassion. So the first step in compassion is to notice the other's need. It all begins with the simple act of attention.