I’ve had a few conversations recently with friends where intelligence was discussed and then emotional intelligence was cited as really essential to overall intelligence. The abilities to effectively communicate, socialize, control your emotions, and read social cues are just as important if not more so as a person’s IQ in his or her pursuit of success and even happiness. In one of my latter conversations about intelligence, I brought up EQ (emotional quotient) and my colleague perked up and said she was in a class solely about emotional intelligence and the next time I saw her, she brought me this book.
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, kind of overlapped a couple of books I’ve read in the past and a book I just started last week. One of which I recently wrote about, Outliers, had a chapter on whether IQ was an indicator for success. (Outliers contends that mostly, it does not.) The other book I just started last week, How We Decide, is about how our emotions guide very decision we make.
Overall, I really enjoyed Emotional Intelligence and found it informative, however it was VERY dense so you kind of hack through all the information. In sum, Daniel Goleman contends that emotion is tightly correlated to success in life and that it is not merely just IQ that is an indicator of how ‘smart’ you are. He walks us through the domains of Emotional Intelligence: knowing your emotions, managing your emotions, motivating yourself, recognizing emotions in others, and handling relationships. There’s plenty of scientific evidence that he provides ranging from anatomical studies and psychological studies. He also offers advice on how to hone your emotional intelligence.
Some bullet points I managed to walk away with after reading this heavy book. Some of these points I already figured and it was nice to have reinforcement.
- When trying to diffuse anger, exercise, books, and movies are effective. However, shopping and eating are NOT effective. You can still vent your anger and therefore fuel the rage with further stewing as you shop or eat.
- Women are far more advanced emotionally due to early emotional preening from parents.
- Emotional development starts very early. As teachers and parents, we can really screw up children.
- Just like an entire chapter of Outliers, it mentions that experts put in 10,000 hours easy, perfecting their craft.
- Memory and learning are deeply impaired when you’re depressed or anxious.
Excerpts
When grievances simmer, they build and build in intensity until there’s an explosion, when they are aired and worked out, it takes the pressure off. But husbands need to realize that anger or discontent is not synonymous with personal attack- their wives’ emotions are often simply underliners, emphasizing the strength of her feelings about the matter… Husbands who are able to stay with their wives through the heat of anger, rather than dismissing their complaints as petty, help their wives feel heard and respected. Most especially, wives want to have their feelings acknowledged and respected as valid, even if their husband disagrees.
Girls become more adept than boys at artful aggressive tactics like ostracism, vicious gossip, and indirect vendettas. Boys, by the large, simply continue being confrontational when angered, oblivious to these more covert strategies. This is just one of many ways that boys – and later, men- are less sophisticated than the opposite sex in the byways of emotional life.
That last excerpt underscores what I’ve noticed a lot in my own experiences and my friends’ experiences. Men and boys tend to be tone deaf to female “indirect vendettas.” I think that’s actually the source of a lot of jealousy fights in relationships. The female in the relationship will recognize clues of an indirect vendetta from another female (a snide remark, a false tear, etc) and the male would be completely oblivious. Threatened by the indirect vendetta, she tries to point it out to her significant other and more often than not, her man will discount her concerns as either: overreaction of jealousy or “that other girl is just like that.”
Remember that scene in Juno?
Juno MacGuff:
Your little girlfriend gave me the stinkeye in art class yesterday.
Paulie Bleeker:
Katrina’s not my girlfriend alright? And I doubt she gave you the stinkeye that’s just how her face looks, you know? That’s just her face.
Who should read this book?
Teachers, parents, medical professionals, leaders, people in relationships, people with Parkinson’s… Okay fine, everyone. But really anyone who works with young children especially. I feel like we screw up a lot of our youth not knowing the full repercussions we have on them when we don’t foster their emotional intelligence. Oh. People who are interested in how the brain works should also read.
Some overlapping books: