Quotes from Travis Bradberry

Turn off the computer at least two hours before bedtime. The light of a computer screen right in front of your face late at night is similar enough to sunlight that it tricks your brain, making it difficult to fall asleep and disruptive to the quality of your sleep.

finding: people with the highest levels of intelligence (IQ) outperform those with average IQs just 20 percent of the time, while people with average IQs outperform those with high IQs 70 percent of the time.

find the sources of your buttons and jot down a list.

Your self-awareness in times of stress should serve as your third ear to listen to your body's cries for help. Your body speaks volumes when you push it too hard. Take the time to recognize these signals and recharge your emotional battery before your stress causes permanent damage to your system. 6

Only 36 percent of the people we tested are able to accurately identify their emotions as they happen. This means that two thirds of us are typically controlled by our emotions and are not yet skilled at spotting them and using them to our benefit.

Since our brains are wired to make us emotional creatures, your first reaction to an event is always going to be an emotional one. You have no control over this part of the process. You do control the thoughts that follow an emotion, and you have a great deal of say in how you react to an emotion—as long as you are aware of it.

Approaching everyone you encounter as though they have something valuable to teach you—something that you will benefit from—is the best way to remain flexible, open-minded, and much less stressed.

Self-management is your ability to use your awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and direct your behavior positively.

The biggest challenge to developing self-awareness is objectivity.

Ask yourself, what are the values that I wish to live my life by?

Real results come from putting your momentary needs on hold to pursue larger, more important goals. The realization of such goals is often delayed, meaning that your commitment to self-management will be tested over and over again. Those who manage themselves the best are able to see things through without cracking. Success comes to those who can put their needs on hold and continually manage their tendencies.

Before long, you'll find yourself thinking of the list before you act, which will set the stage for making choices you can live with.

Taking a moment here and there to check yourself will allow you to understand your mood before it sets the tone for the rest of your day.

Personal competence is made up of your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focus more on you individually than on your interactions with other people. Personal competence is your ability to stay aware of your emotions and manage your behavior and tendencies.

Others' views can be a real eye-opener by showing you how other people experience you.

Social competence is made up of your social awareness and relationship management skills; social competence is your ability to understand other people's moods, behavior and motives in order to improve the quality of your relationships.

Since we're hard-wired to experience emotions before we can respond to them, it's the one-two punch of reading emotions effectively and then reacting to them that sets the best self-managers apart.

Your lungs are built to provide precisely the amount of air your body needs for all of your organs to function effectively.

Self-awareness is so important for job performance that 83 percent of people high in self-awareness are top performers, and just 2 percent of bottom performers are high in self-awareness.

When emotional intelligence was first discovered, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: people with the highest levels of intelligence (IQ) outperform those with average IQs just 20 percent of the time, while people with average IQs outperform those with high IQs 70 percent of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into what many people had always assumed was the source of success—IQ. Scientists

EQ is so critical to success that it accounts for 58 percent of performance in all types of jobs.

Social awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on with them. This often means perceiving what other people are thinking and feeling even if you do not feel the same way.

Only 36 percent of the people we tested are able to accurately identify their emotions as they happen. ADAPTED FROM AND REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION FROM JULIA WEST Triggers

Your EQ is greatly affected by your ability to keep this road well traveled. The more you think about what you are feeling—and do something productive with that feeling—the more developed this pathway becomes