Introverts are offered keys to private gardens full of riches. To possess sucha key is to tumble like Alice down her rabbit hole. She didn't choose t… - Susan Cain

Even multitasking, that prized feat of modern-day office warriors, turns out to be a myth. Scientists now know that the brain is incapable of paying attention to two things at the same time. What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.

Poignancy, she told me, is the richest feeling humans experience, one that gives meaning to life — and it happens when you feel happy and sad at the same time. It’s the state you enter when you cry tears of joy — which tend to come during precious moments suffused with their imminent ending. When we tear up at that beloved child splashing in a rain puddle, she explains, we aren’t simply happy: “We’re also appreciating, even if it’s not explicit, that this time of life will end; that good times pass as well as bad ones; that we’re all going to die in the end. I think that being comfortable with this is adaptive. That’s emotional development.

as Jazaieri observes, “There’s no empirical evidence to suggest that beating ourselves up will actually help us change our behavior; in fact, some data suggests that this type of criticism can move us away from our goals rather than towards them.” Conversely, the more gently we speak to ourselves, the more we’ll do the same for others. So the next time you hear that harsh internal voice, pause, take a breath — and try again. Speak to yourself with the same tenderness you’d extend to a beloved child — literally using the same terms of endearment and amount of reassurance that you’d shower on an adorable three-year-old.