A University of Pennsylvania-led study in which training was provided to a high-stress U.S. military group preparing for deployment to Iraq has demonstrated a positive link between mindfulness training, or MT, and improvements in mood and working memory. Mindfulness is the ability to be aware and attentive of the present moment without emotional reactivity or volatility. The study found that the more time participants spent engaging in daily mindfulness exercises the better their mood and working memory, the cognitive term for complex thought, problem solving and cognitive control of emotions.

In order for you to live an authentic, meaningful life, which is the principal remedy for the depression creative people experience, you must feel that 1) the plan of your life is meaningful, 2) the work you do is meaningful, and 3) the way your spend your time is meaningful. These are three separate but related tasks, each with its own logic, demands, and obstacles.

By Matt Cardin.  We all know the old saw, usually attributed to Thomas Edison, that "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." The problem with this ubiquitous speck of folk wisdom is not just that it provides a catchall cliché for scoffing at those who dare to suggest that inspiration plays a crucial role in creative work, but that it plainly and grossly misrepresents the relationship in creative work between inspiration and effort. So let it be said once and for all: inspiration and effort are not contradictory but complementary. Their relationship is mutually enhancing.

By Allen Frances, LA Times/Opinion.  As chairman of the task force that created the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), which came out in 1994, I learned from painful experience how small changes in the definition of mental disorders can create huge, unintended consequences. Defining the elusive line between mental disorder and normality is not simply a scientific question that can be left in the hands of the experts.

By Shelley Berc.  Leonardo da Vinci claimed he saw all his paintings in the humidity stains on his walls before ever lifting his brush. Herman Melville stared at Mount Greylock every day until one day it became that devilish cetacean Moby Dick. Children look up at the clouds and see houses, alligators, and dinosaurs rather than cumulus, nimbus, and cirrus. According to biologists, man can no longer be defined as different from other animals by virtue of speech or tool making. But we are absolutely unique in our dazzling ability to make metaphors. Creativity is the art of living metaphorically. We are all born creative, curious, and hungry to explore the world around and within us.

You have a companion. One that never, ever leaves you. It sticks with you, staying even closer than your shadow. It is like a leech sucking your blood, and you cannot shake it loose. This constant companion is your mental chatter... an unending stream of noise. But you will also discover that much of it is putting you down, either directly or, more subtly, by having you compare yourself unfavorably to others. And it is exhausting you by telling you all the things you have to do that you probably will not be able to.

By essayist, novelist Dani Shapiro.  Editor and founder of New American Review, Ted Solotaroff, said only a few writers had flourished. "Some, he speculated, had ended up teaching, publishing occasionally in small journals. But most had just... given up. “It doesn’t appear to be a matter of talent itself,” he wrote. “Some of the most natural writers, the ones who seemed to shake their prose or poetry out of their sleeves, are among the disappeared. As far as I can tell, the decisive factor is what I call endurability: that is, the ability to deal effectively with uncertainty, rejection, and disappointment, from within as well as from without.”