I have found that a simple distinction appears to lie at the heart of whether athletes are able to rise to the occasion and perform their best when it really counts or crumble under the weight of expectations and tough conditions on the day of a competition: Do they view...

To give you a sense of the scope of the effect of technology on the psychological and emotional health of young people, I want to describe the results of an international study involving more than 1000 students from ten countries across five continents that asked students to disconnect...

It's a wonder that good decisions are ever made by the species known as Homo sapiens. The reality is that the cards are stacked against us whenever we are faced with choices, especially when the decisions are of consequence. Think about all the horrendously bad decisions that have been made...

Worry is a natural part of the human condition. It has historically played a vital role in our survival and it helps us cope with many of the challenges we face today. At the same time, worry that is too intense, too frequent, and too unrelenting can definitely cut down...

Your children's physical health is the foundation for everything they become and do. As corporeal beings, they, like the rest of humanity, are at the mercy of the fitness of their bodies to handle the ordinary challenges and extraordinary demands that are placed on them during childhood and beyond.

Let's be honest. America may be the most competitive country in the world (though China is rapidly catching up). Competitiveness lies at the heart of what has driven our country to become the best on Earth at so many things. Whether the space race, the arms race, the human genome...

Technology, such as the Internet, smartphones and social media, can have great benefits in helping your children form and maintain relationships. At the same time, if not used with limits and guidance by your children, such use may prevent them from developing the essential relationship qualities and skills that have...

As your children develop and enter the social world outside of your home, their peers' importance to them will grow. In fact, as your children progress through high school, their peer group will exert a sometimes dismayingly great influence over them as you feel your own relationship with them diminish....

Over the last few decades, I have worked with many athletes, from juniors to weekend warriors to pros and Olympians. One thing I have noticed is that the most powerful work I do with them isn't your typical mental training where I teach them about positive thinking, mental imagery, routines,...

Nowhere is the impact of popular culture and technology on children's relationships more noticeable than in families. Both influences have contributed to a growing divide between the traditional roles that children and their parents play while, at the same time, blurring those same lines between parents and children. Over the...

Selflessness and empathy are two of the most important ingredients for children to develop healthy relationships. Selflessness involves the capacity for children to place the concerns of others appropriately ahead of their own. It allows others to sense that, whatever children do, their interests will be considered. Empathy is the...

More and more these days, young people are establishing and maintaining relationships online. These "cyber" relationships often arise because parents, out of fear for their children's safety, no longer allow them to be "free range" to congregate in local parks, at malls, and on street corners. The only place that...

Popular culture and technology are redefining the meaning of relationships; what relationships are, how they develop and are maintained and how many relationships we can have. Popular culture, for example, suggests that love can be found in a few weeks on shows like "The Bachelor"; real family's lives mirror shows...

I was recently asked to write a chapter on the benefits and costs of sports participation among youth for a new parenting book. It got me thinking about all of the different sports that I have competed in over the years including competing internationally in ski racing (okay, I'm a...

In a previous post, I asked the question: "Is technology making your children mindless instead of mindful?" I think it's safe to say that it is incredibly difficult for children to be mindful, present and calm in our culture that is now dominated by the constant flow of...

Let's be honest, any kind of change, much less corporate change, is difficult, really difficult. Whether a startup experiencing growing pains, a company faced with increased competition, a floundering company trying to stay afloat, or a successful business attempting to expand into global markets, the path toward change can often...

I'm no Zen master and I don't expect you to teach your children to meditate all day. At the same time, the notion of mindfulness has much broader meaning than as an Eastern philosophy or for practitioners of Buddhism. In fact, it has tremendous significance for your children growing up...

Good decision making is one of the most powerful skills your children need to learn to as they progress through childhood and transition into adulthood. But I promise you, it is not a skill that will develop readily on its own, particularly in the digital world in which they are...

Decision making is another aspect of children's thinking that seems to be suffering as a result of the latest technology. This poor decision making is illustrated by events over the last few years involving young people making egregiously bad decisions that involve technology (not to mention the frequent examples occurring...

Like many digital natives, your children are probably on their way to becoming lifelong multitaskers (or so you think). As the research indicates, children these days spend about seven-and-a-half hours a day interacting with technology unrelated to school and when multitasking is counted, that number jumps to an...