Guidelines and sources this guide follows
Play as the engine: Fredrickson and Levenson, 1998 (positive emotions speed recovery from the stress surge); Fredrickson's broaden and build theory; Gottman's 5 to 1 ratio and emotional bank account.
Regulation: Jill Bolte Taylor on the roughly 90 second surge (an approximation); Balban and colleagues, 2023, Cell Reports Medicine, Stanford, on the physiological sigh; Lieberman and colleagues, 2007, on naming feelings; Goleman on the amygdala hijack; Gollwitzer on if-then plans; Gross on reappraisal over suppression. Focused-attention practice trains attention by noticing the mind drift and returning it, the core mechanism in mindfulness research (for example, Amishi Jha).
The home: Wang and Kenny, 2014, Child Development, on harsh verbal discipline; Baumrind on authoritative parenting; developmental neuroscience on the prefrontal cortex maturing into the mid twenties; Siegel and Bryson's upstairs and downstairs brain.
Quotes verified. The disputed Babe Ruth "fear of striking out" line was left out on purpose.