Emotional Intelligence: 10th Anniversary Edition

emotions—root impulses to act—

In short, we too often confront postmodern dilemmas with an emotional repertoire tailored to the urgencies of the Pleistocene.

or better or for worse, our appraisal of every personal encounter and our responses to it are shaped not just by our rational judgments or our personal history, but also by our distant ancestral past.

One emotional legacy of evolution is the fear that mobilizes us to protect our family from danger;

Seen from the perspective of evolutionary biologists, such parental self-sacrifice is in the service of “reproductive success” in passing on one’s genes to future generations. But from the perspective of a parent making a desperate decision in a moment of crisis, it is about nothing other than love.

As I once heard Chog-yam Trungpa, a Tibetan teacher, reply when asked how best to handle anger: “Don’t suppress it. But don’t act on it

chronic worry works in some ways, but not in other, more consequential ones: it eases some anxiety, but never solves the problem

emotional aptitude is a meta-ability, determining how well we can use whatever other skills we have

including raw intellect

We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts, and cultivate those