Quotes from Daniel Goleman

Forthrightness is the brain's default response: our neural wiring transmits our every minor mood onto the muscles of our face, making our feelings instantly visible. The display of emotion is automatic and unconscious, and so its suppression demands conscious effort. Being devious about what we feel—trying to hide our fear or anger—demands active effort and rarely succeeds perfectly.22

As Marcus Aurelius said millennia ago, pain "is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it, and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Directing attention toward where it needs to go is a primal task of leadership.

many people with IQs of 160 work for people with IQs of 100, if the former have poor intrapersonal intelligence and the latter have a high one.

If there is a remedy, I feel it must lie in how we prepare our young for life.

Mindfulness helps especially for those of us for whom every setback, hurt or dissapointment creates endless cascades of rumination

Though they are quick to put others down, unhealthy narcissists view themselves in absolutely positive terms.

Sadness] enforces a kind of reflective retreat from life's busy pursuits, and leaves us in a suspended state to mourn the loss, mull over its meaning, and, finally, make the psychological adjustments and new plans that will allow our lives to continue

channeling emotions toward a productive end is a master aptitude. Whether it be in controlling impulse and putting off gratification, regulating our moods so they facilitate rather than impede thinking, motivating ourselves to persist and try, try again in the face of setbacks, or finding ways to enter flow and so perform more effectively—all bespeak the power of emotion to guide effective effort.

1. Knowing one's emotions. Self-awareness—recognizing a feeling as it happens—is the keystone of emotional intelligence. As

Once when I was about 13, in an angry fit, I walked out of the house vowing I would never return. It was a beautiful summer day, and I walked far along lovely lanes, till gradually the stillness and beauty calmed and soothed me, and after some hours I returned repentant and almost melted. Since then when I am angry, I do this if I can, and find it the best cure.

For leaders to get results they need all three kinds of focus. Inner focus attunes us to our intuitions, guiding values, and better decisions. Other focus smooths our connections to the people in our lives. And outer focus lets us navigate in the larger world. A leader tuned out of his internal world will be rudderless; one blind to the world of others will be clueless; those indifferent to the larger systems within which they operate will be blindsided.

when we hope to be a You, being treated like an It, as though we do not matter, carries a particularly harsh sting.

As Erasmus, the great Renaissance thinker, reminds us, "The best hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth.

Others point to data showing that even as toddlers, 40 percent of American two-year-olds watch TV for at least three hours a day—hours they are not interacting with people who can help them learn to get along better. The more TV they watch, the more unruly they are by school age.

Stress makes people stupid." On

You see it in jazz musicians, who never rehearse exactly what they do, but just seem to know when to take center stage, when to fade into the background. When jazz artists were compared with classical musicians in brain function, they showed more neural indicators of self-awareness.15 As one jazz artist put it, "In jazz you have to tune in to how your body is feeling so you know when to riff.

This harkens back to Freud's famous question, "What does woman want?" As Epstein answers, "She wants a partner who cares what she wants.

Indeed, laughter may be the shortest distance between two brains, an unstoppable infectious spread that builds an instant social bond.

The most powerful form of nondefensive listening, of course, is empathy: actually hearing the feelings behind what is being said.

The neocortex allows for the subtlety and complexity of emotional life, such as the ability to have feelings about our feelings.

A Persian fairy tale tells of the Three Princes of Serendip, who "were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of."7 Creativity in the wild operates much like that.

Other research has shown that in the first few milliseconds of our perceiving something we not only unconsciously comprehend what it is, but decide whether we like it or not; the "cognitive unconscious" presents our awareness with not just the identity of what we see, but an opinion about it.7 Our emotions have a mind of their own, one which can hold views quite independently of our rational mind.

Emotional aptitude is a meta-ability , determining how well we can use whatever other skills we have , including raw inellect .