Quotes from Travis Bradberry

You can be a leader in your workplace, your neighborhood, or your family, all without having a title.

Gossipers derive pleasure from other people's misfortunes. It might be fun to peer into somebody else's personal or professional faux pas at first, but over time, it gets tiring, makes you feel gross, and hurts other people.

Regardless of the magnitude of the decision, our brains make it hard for us to keep the perspective we need to make good choices.

'What if?' statements throw fuel on the fire of stress and worry. Things can go in a million different directions, and the more time you spend worrying about the possibilities, the less time you'll spend focusing on taking action that will calm you down and keep your stress under control.

As important as it is to learn how to deal with different kinds of people, truly toxic people will never be worth your time and energy - and they take a lot of each. Toxic people create unnecessary complexity, strife, and, worst of all, stress.

There are a ton of qualities that can help you succeed, and the more carefully a quality has been studied, the more you know it's worth your time and energy.

When you ask someone a question and they're slow to respond, don't feel pressure to move the conversation forward. Remaining silent plays to your advantage. Moments of silence make people feel as though they should speak, especially when the ball is in their court. This is a great tool to use in negotiations and other difficult conversations.

Exercising first thing in the morning ensures that you'll have the time for it, and it improves your self-control and energy levels all day long.

Common sense would suggest that having ability, like being smart, inspires confidence. It does, but only while the going is easy. The deciding factor in life is how you handle setbacks and challenges. People with a growth mindset welcome setbacks with open arms.

Most people believe that their listening skills are where they need to be, even though they aren't. A study at Wright State University surveyed more than 8,000 people from different verticals, and almost all rated themselves as listening as well as or better than their co-workers. We know intuitively that many of them are wrong.

It's often said that you're the product of the five people you spend the most time with. If you allow even one of those five people to be toxic, you'll soon find out how capable he or she is of holding you back.

We lack social awareness because we're so focused on what we're going to say next - and how what other people are saying affects us - that we completely lose sight of other people. This is a problem because people are complicated. You can't hope to understand someone until you focus all of your attention in his or her direction.

Liars hate silence, so they often try to fill it up by talking more than they need to. They provide far more information than was needed or asked for.

If you struggle with putting things into perspective, just ask yourself two simple questions: What's the worst thing that could happen as a result of this? Will this matter in five years? Your answers should put a stop to cataclysmic thinking.

Exceptional employees don't possess God-given personality traits; they rely on simple, everyday EQ skills that anyone can incorporate into their repertoire.

Personality traits form at an early age and are fixed by early adulthood. Many important things about you change over the course of your lifetime, but your personality isn't one of them.

Confident people tend to challenge themselves and compete, even when their efforts yield small victories. Small victories build new androgen receptors in the areas of the brain responsible for reward and motivation.

People with a growth mindset believe that they can improve with effort. They outperform those with a fixed mindset, even when they have a lower IQ, because they embrace challenges, treating them as opportunities to learn something new.

Influential people aren't buffeted by the latest trend or by public opinion. They form their opinions carefully, based on the facts. They're more than willing to change their mind when the facts support it, but they aren't influenced by what other people think - only by what they know.

In most cases, it's slight and often unintentional gaps in integrity that hold leaders, their employees, and their companies back. Despite their potential, these leaders harm their employees and themselves.

More than half of people who leave their jobs do so because of their relationship with their boss. Smart companies make certain their managers know how to balance being professional with being human. These are the bosses who celebrate an employee's success, empathize with those going through hard times, and challenge people, even when it hurts.

Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.

Humans are creatures of habit. If you quit when things get tough, it gets that much easier to quit the next time. On the other hand, if you force yourself to push through it, the grit begins to grow in you.

People lie in everyday conversation to appear more likeable and competent. While men and women lie equally as often, they tend to lie for different reasons.