Summary

Our rational and emotional brain shapes our personalities and our decisions. Emotional skills are often overlooked when compared to what is typically thought of as intelligence but is every bit as important. By combining the rational and emotional, we can improve our performance in every facet of life.

Key Takeaways

Resisting impulse is the root of all self-control. This was stressed a dozen different ways and those who have better impulse control tend to be emotionally more stable, smarter, more successful...marshmallow test

People who are optimistic see a failure as due to something that can be changed so that they can succeed next time around, while pessimists take the blame for failure, ascribing it to some lasting characteristic they are helpless to change.

Coordination of moods is the essence of rapport

Those who had a dependable web of intimacy showed no relationship whatsoever between high stress levels and death rates

Fundamentals of EI (can be summed up with competency)

Self-awareness - know what you are feeling and why

Self-management (ability to motivate oneself/persistence)

Social awareness

Ability to manage relationships

5 key abilities of emotional intelligence

Knowing one's emotions - have a better sense of how they really feel about something

Managing emotions

Motivating oneself - delaying gratification and pushing off impulses

Recognizing emotions in others

Handling relationships - often simply handling other's emotions

XYZ method - When you did X, it made me feel Y, and I wish you did Z instead

Cannot decide when we have our emotional outbreaks but can decide how long they last, a sign of emotional maturity

Key to impulse control is knowing the difference between feelings and actions

What I got out of it

Very interesting book which highlights the importance emotion plays in our everyday lives, our personalities, our decisions and our relationships. He makes great points but I found that he reiterated them so many times that it became redundant.

Intro

Improving Emotional Intelligence (EI) also helps academically

3 models for EI

Based on original work on IQ (Salovey and Mayar)

Based on well-being (Reuven Bar-On)

Performance at work and organizational leadership (Goleman)

EI is definitely not more important than IQ in all realms but for relationships, health, top level of competitive endeavors/sports

EI helps predict who will be able to lead most ably amongst a talented/intelligent pool of people

IQ and technical expertise are much better predictors of excellence in lower rung jobs

"The ability to control impulse is the base of will and character. By the same token, the root of altruism lies in empathy, the ability to read emotions in others; lacking a sense of another’s need or despair, there is no caring. And if there are any two moral stances that our times call for, they are precisely these, self-restraint and compassion."

Part One - The Emotional Brain

Brain's emotional architecture which helps explain when emotion overwhelms rationality

All emotions are in essence impulses to act

Have 2 minds - thinking brain and feeling brain

Often in balance but when passion hits the balance tips with the emotional brain often winning

Limbic system in charge of learning and memory - automatic reactions

Emotional brain retains great control over rational brain as rational brain built on top of emotional brain

​Amygdala acts as storehouse of emotional memory

Amygdala allows us to act before neocortex fully absorbs all information and makes a "rational" decision

Brain has 2 memory systems - one for ordinary facts and one for emotionally charged ones

Interactions between caretaker and infant during early years creates an emotional blueprint they will use the rest of their life

Feelings/emotions necessary to make rational decisions

Part Two - The Nature of Emotional Intelligence

How to control emotional impulses, handle relationships, read other's feelings

Emotional intelligence is often linked to happiness as people can effectively determine what makes them happy and take steps to get there

​Howard Gardner first argued that IQ is only one type of intelligence and that there are many others

Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand other people: what motivates them, how they work, how to work cooperatively with them.

Gardner noted that the core of interpersonal intelligence includes the capacities to discern and respond appropriately to the moods, temperaments, motivations, and desires of other people.

Intrapersonal intelligence is a correlative ability, turned inward. It is a capacity to form an accurate, veridical model of oneself and to be able to use that model to operate effectively in life. access to one’s own feelings and the ability to discriminate among them and draw upon them to guide behavior.

Being self-aware extremely important - know when feeling an emotion, be like an unbiased bystander when classifying your emotions

Those who are aware and notice their emotions tend to live a richer life

Self-mastery, not falling prey to one's passions/emotions, has long been considered a virtue (temperance, emotional balance)

Emotions often build on themselves and escalate - often what happens when we lose control and get enraged

Resisting impulse is the root of all self-control

Anxiety has a disastrous and measurable effect on any task/test

Hope has shown to be a better predictor of first semester grades than one's SAT score

People who are optimistic see a failure as due to something that can be changed so that they can succeed next time around, while pessimists take the blame for failure, ascribing it to some lasting characteristic they are helpless to change.

Speaks to "flow' and how this is the ultimate form of emotional intelligence

Scolding kids by saying - look how badly you made her feel, is more effective than that was bad. (playing on their empathy)

Empathy is biologically ingrained

Different cultures have different "display rules" - how much/what emotions can be shown depending on what one is trying to accomplish and the audience

The more synchrony (feeling similar emotions as your partner/friend/etc.) shows how close they are

Setting the emotional tone of a conversation is a sign of dominance

Interpersonal intelligence

Organizing Groups

Negotiating solutions

Personal connection

Social Analysis

Social chameleon's exist and everyone likes them but often have few intimate and lasting friendships

Part Three - Emotional Intelligence Applied

How EI helps to preserve some of our most cherished things - relationships, health, and well-being

Speaks a lot to how couples handle their emotions in relationships

How criticism is given and received is extremely important for a relationship

Make them something that can be worked on as opposed to a personal attack

People often complain/criticize once it is too late and they are angry - try to give constant feedback

An artful critique focuses on what a person has done and can do rather than reading a mark of character into a job poorly done.

Be very specific with criticism

The highest performing teams are not the ones with the highest IQ but the ones with the highest emotional intelligence

Stars in work tend to have a rapport with key people (made up of conversation, expertise and trust webs)

Much more connection and interaction between brain, cardiovascular and immune systems than originally thought - stress has a very strong and negative effect on our health (anger, anxiety, loneliness, pessimism, depression worst of all)

In people with cancer, depression is a better predictor of death than any medical sign

Social isolation doubles the chance of sickness or death

Found it interesting that social isolation had a more dramatic effect on men than women - making men more susceptible to death compared to social men

Those who had a dependable web of intimacy showed no relationship whatsoever between high stress levels and death rates

Writing down your most traumatic events, even if don't share it with anyone, has shown to have tremendous positive effects on one's health

Part Four - Windows of Opportunity

Emotional lessons we learn as children shape our emotional circuitry for life

Common parenting mistakes - ignoring feelings altogether, too laissez-faire (thinking pretty much any reaction is fine), not showing respect for how child feels

People need certain characteristics in order to learn well - confidence, curiosity, intentionality, self control, relatedness, capacity to communicate, cooperativeness

A child is extremely impressionable the first couple years of life and their "emotional diet" at this time will shape their personalities and relationships of the future

Severe traumas and scary situations can biologically change the brain but it is possible to relearn through games and reliving the memory which desensitizes the traumatic situation

Temperament is given at birth but how we are treated by our parents and the experiences we have can play a big role too

There are 4 main categories - timid, melancholy, bold and upbeat and are due to different patterns of brain activity

Timid people tend to have more fears and react more easily to novelty

Parents of timid children can help them overcome their shyness by not protecting them so much and learning to adapt

It is critical for babies to learn how to soothe themselves

Part Five - Emotional Literacy

Shows hazards which await those who do not develop their EI

Drugs, depression, violence, pregnancy have all increased substantially the last 30 years

While poorer kids are worse off to begin with, as a whole the rate of deterioration in these areas is the same

Early signs of bullying often lead to violent crimes. they have lower thresholds for getting upset and this appears in every facet of their life

One of the best skills for anger control is recognizing and verbalizing your feelings

Depression is spreading drastically and starting at younger ages

Feeling like you can change your outcome (studying harder leading to better grades) or that you have no control are big indicators of whether or not you will get depressed (optimist vs pessimist)

Some obese people cannot tell the difference emotionally between hunger, fear, or anger and end up lumping them all into hunger

Alcoholism develops a lot as a form of self-medication - alcoholics tend to be very anxious people and can only relax when they drink