Blinkist Summary Book

2021-10-02 06:39:54 Emotional Intelligence
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ntelligence makes you healthier and more successful.
What is the key to leading a successful and fulfilled life?
You may think it’s high IQ – that the brightest people will stand the best chance of leading happy lives. Yet emotional intelligence is just as important as high IQ in achieving this.
Evidence suggests that people with high levels of emotional intelligence are more likely to be successful.
For example studies show students with high levels of empathy get significantly better marks than less empathic pupils with comparable IQs.
Students who can control their impulses will also be more successful than their peers. One study conducted by Stanford University called “The Marshmallow Challenge” tested the ability of a group of four-year-olds to resist eating a treat. Years later it turned out that those who had been able to control their impulses at age four proved superior academically as well as socially throughout their youth.
This success continues into the adult world. Open / Comment

2021-10-02 06:39:54 Emotional Intelligence
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ngs of the feeling brain – a process essential for emotional self-regulation .
Emotional self-regulation works in the following way: stimuli such as a sudden loud bang will often send your emotional brain into overdrive. The feeling brain will automatically perceive the stimulus as a threat and so it will respond by putting your body into a state of alert.
We use our thinking brains to help regulate this process. After we hear the loud bang and while our emotional brain is sending alarm bells ringing around the body our thinking brain is checking the stimulus to see what threat is there. If it sees no danger then it calms down both the feeling brain and the body allowing you to think clearly again. This is why we aren’t constantly overacting to every sudden noise we hear.
If you break the link between the thinking and feeling brains this process isn’t possible. For example patients with severe damage to the thinking brain have difficulty regulating their feelings.
 
Emotional i Open / Comment

2021-10-02 06:39:53 Emotional Intelligence
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and the rational “thinking brain.”
The way that we think and feel are intertwined. This is because the thinking brain – where we develop our rational thoughts – and the feeling brain – the birthplace of our emotions – are linked. They are connected by strong neuronal pathways .
Our emotional intelligence is dependent on these connectors between the thinking and feeling brains and any damage to these neuronal pathways can elicit emotional intelligence deficits.
For example a person whose emotional brain is severed from their thinking brain will stop experiencing feelings. Their deficiencies in this area will include a loss of emotional self-awareness which is an important component of emotional intelligence. Evidence of this can be seen in lobotomized patients. After the connections between their two brains were severed they lost their emotional capacity.
Another example of the importance of the connections between our two brains is the thinking brain’s role in correcting the worki Open / Comment

2021-10-02 06:39:50 Emotional Intelligence
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What’s more you'll probably identify such cues automatically without any conscious effort.
Because it allows you to empathize with others emotional intelligence enables you to behave in ways which evoke favorable reactions from others.
For example imagine you are the manager of a company where one member of staff is constantly making the same mistakes. You’ll need to tell him about this and get him to change but you have to do it in the right way. If you hurt his feelings he may become angry or defensive and less likely to make the changes you desire. If you empathize with him and imagine how he will feel you can act in a way which makes him more willing to change.
In general people with emotional intelligence can develop social aptitudes such as the ability to teach others resolve conflicts or manage teams of staff. And these aptitudes help them to maintain relationships in the social environment.
Emotional intelligence requires a balance between the emotional "feeling brain" Open / Comment

2021-10-02 06:39:49 Emotional Intelligence
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tional intelligence is the capacity that helps you navigate the social world.
Unless you live on an island it is unlikely that you’ll develop a happy life just by managing your own mind. Other people play a large role in your existence and only by managing your social interactions with them can you hope to live a fulfilled life.
Once again emotional intelligence can help in achieving this.
Emotional intelligence fosters good social interactions because it helps you put yourself in other people’s shoes. Knowing how you’d feel in a certain situation helps you to gauge how others will feel in a similar environment.
Your emotional intelligence also helps you discover the emotions of others by analyzing their nonverbal signs. This means you can judge a person’s mood just by looking at cues like their facial expressions or body language.
For example if you see someone with a face as white as a sheet and with their mouth wide open you will probably conclude that they have been shocked. Open / Comment

2021-10-02 06:39:49 Emotional Intelligence
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stop to think why he failed to acknowledge you you might find other reasons that leave you less upset. The friend might for example not have seen you because they were lost in thought and weren’t concentrating on their surroundings.
When you begin to recognize and manage your feelings emotional intelligence can help you concentrate on achieving certain goals.
For example imagine that you need to write a paper for university. You don’t really like the subject matter and you’d much rather go to a film festival instead. Emotional intelligence can help you manage these various feelings.
Although the subject matter bores you you could try to look at it from another angle. Maybe there is one aspect of the subject that enthuses you. Also knowing how the film festival will make you feel you can defer the gratification and save your potential enjoyment until you have time for it.
Students who manage their workloads in this way tend to do well at school even if they have average IQs.
Emo Open / Comment

2021-10-02 06:39:48 Emotional Intelligence
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efore require something to help us manage them effectively.
 
Emotional intelligence enables you to manage your emotions and leverage them to reach your goals.
So how can you use the power of your emotions without them overwhelming you?
You need emotional intelligence (EI) as it allows you to recognize and manage your feelings without being controlled by them.
The first aspect of emotional intelligence is being able to recognize and name your feelings.
This step is vital to being able to manage your emotions. Studies show that people who aren’t able to recognize their own feelings are more prone to violent outbursts.
Once you are able to recognize your emotions you need to become aware of what causes them.
Often your feelings in a situation depend on how you think about it. For example if a friend of yours passes you on the street and doesn’t acknowledge you you might immediately think that they’re ignoring you on purpose. This may make you upset or even angry.
But if you Open / Comment

2021-10-02 06:39:48 Emotional Intelligence
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is when we act suddenly before we have the chance to judge a situation clearly. When information enters our brain a fraction of it bypasses the region responsible for rational thought – the neocortex – and directly enters the emotional brain. If it perceives this information to be a threat to us the emotional brain can trigger us to act suddenly without consulting our thinking brain.
This is why you may jump out of your skin when you’re in a dark forest and you see a strange figure out of the corner of your eye.
The final way our emotions can lead us to act irrationally is when we are affected by obsolete emotional responses.
Our emotional mind reacts to situations in the present based on past experiences even when the conditions have changed. For example a boy who was physically bullied at school may grow up to be a strong man but still feel threatened by his former bully.
So although emotions are important they can take control of our minds and disrupt rational thinking. We ther Open / Comment

2021-10-02 06:39:44 Emotional Intelligence
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result of the surgery was that patients lost their initiative and drive to act as well as much of their emotional capacity.
Sometimes our emotions can impede our judgment or make us act irrationally.
Our emotions are important tools for understanding and interacting with our environment. However they are also flawed and can lead us to make mistakes.
One such mistake occurs when we become overly emotional. In order to make sound judgments we need to think clearly. Like a juggler our minds can handle only so many items at once. And when we’re in a state of heightened emotion our minds are bombarded with alarming thoughts and disturbing images. Thus there is no room for rational thought and our judgment is clouded.
For example when you are frightened you may find yourself overreacting to situations thinking they’re more dangerous than they actually are. This is why when you’re scared you might mistake a sheet on the washing line for a ghost.
Another mistake caused by our emotions Open / Comment

2021-10-02 06:39:44 Emotional Intelligence
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alue of emotions is the way they help us to interpret the feelings of others which can aid in predicting their actions. For example imagine you’re faced with an angry man. From his body language – maybe his clenched fists or loud voice – you can tell his emotional state. Knowing this you can predict his future actions; he might for instance be ready to hit someone.
The final advantage that our emotions give us is the drive to act. We require them in order to react quickly to a situation. Take that angry man from the earlier example. If we feel that he may be close to a violent outburst our emotions will make us feel threatened or even angry thus preparing us to react quickly if he looked like he was about to attack.
People who have lost their capacity for emotion also lose this drive to act. For example in the previous century many psychiatric patients went through a brain surgery called a lobotomy which separated two regions of the brain that are vital for emotional processing. The Open / Comment