Quotes from Daniel Goleman

Simple neglect, studies find, can be more damaging than outright abuse. A survey of maltreated children found the neglected youngsters doing the worst of all: they were the most anxious, inattentive, and apathetic, alternately aggressive and withdrawn.

Brain studies find that having a champion athlete start pondering technique during a performance offers a sure recipe for a screwup.

The first three or four years of life are a period when the toddler's brain grows to about two thirds its full size, and evolves in complexity at a greater rate than it ever will again. During this period key kinds of learning take place more readily than later in life—emotional learning foremost among them. During this time severe stress can impair the brain's learning centers.

Não é a tagarelice das pessoas à nossa volta que constitui a fonte mais poderosa das distrações, mas antes a tagarelice das nossas próprias mentes. A concentração absoluta exige que estas vozes interiores sejam silenciadas.

A child's play both demands and creates its own safe space, one in which she can confront threats, fears, and dangers—but always come through whole. In this sense, play can be therapeutic. In play everything that goes on gets suspended in an "as if" reality.

Sobrecarregar a atenção diminui o domínio mental. É no momento em que estamos mais tensos que esquecemos os nomes das pessoas que conhecemos bem, já para não falar nas datas dos seus aniversários, dos nossos aniversários de casamento e de outros dados socialmente cruciais.

En una empresa todo el mundo forma parte del sistema, de modo que las reacciones de los demás son el alma del conjunto: el intercambio de información permite a los individuos saber si el trabajo que hacen va bien o necesita ajustes, mejoras o un cambio total de dirección.

That capacity, for example, allows a teen who feels pressured by his friends to take drugs to tell them "No," and still keep them as friends. Students tend to

the difference quite often lies in the abilities called here emotional intelligence, which include self-control, zeal and persistence, and the ability to motivate oneself.

Silence is another barometer of timidity. A timid silence in the face of novelty or a perceived threat is a sign of the activity of a neural circuit running between the forebrain, the amygdala, and nearby limbic structures that control the ability to vocalize. These same circuits make us choke up under stress. These sensitive children are at high risk for developing an anxiety disorder such as panic attacks, starting as early as sixth or seventh grade.

We seem by temperament primed to respond to life in either a negative or a positive emotional register. The tendency toward a melancholy or upbeat temperament, like that toward timidity or boldness, emerges within the first year of life, a fact that strongly suggests it too is genetically determined.

A sobrecarga cognitiva crónica que caracteriza tantas das nossas vidas parece diminuir o nosso nível de domínio de nós mesmos. Quanto maiores as exigências sobre a nossa atenção, ao que parece, mais fracos somos a resistir às tentações.

The dimension of time is a huge problem—if the pace of global warming were accelerated to a few years instead of over centuries, people would pay more attention. But it's like the national debt: I'll leave it to my grandchildren—I'm sure they'll think of some solution.

There is growing evidence that fundamental ethical stances in life stem from underlying emotional capacities

complexity—to reason—plummeted.

Muchos grandes encestadores de baloncesto, como Hank Aaron, por ejemplo, visionan una y otra vez vídeos de los pívots del equipo al que están a punto de enfrentarse para descubrir, en el juego de sus adversarios, indicios que pueden resultarle de alguna utilidad.

The neocortex is the seat of thought; it contains the centers that put together and comprehend what the senses perceive. It adds to a feeling what we think about it—and allows us to have feelings about ideas, art, symbols, imaginings

As Aristotle saw, the problem is not with emotionality, but with the appropriateness of emotion and its expression.

When people feel good, they work at their best. Feeling good lubricates mental efficiency, making people better at understanding information and using decision rules in complex judgments, as well as more flexible in their thinking.38

The aptitudes you need to succeed start with intellectual horsepower—but people need emotional competence, too, to get the full potential of their talents.

Lo pequeño es hermoso: economía como si la gente importase.

Os estudos sobre o cérebro verificam que um atleta campeão começar a ponderar sobre a sua técnica durante um desempenho é receita certa para o fracasso.

Our journey begins in Part One with new discoveries about the brain's emotional architecture that offer an explanation of those most baffling moments in our lives when feeling overwhelms all rationality.

In terms of biological design for the basic neural circuitry of emotion, what we are born with is what worked best for the last 50,000 human generations, not the last 500 generations—and certainly not the last five.