Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman | Free Book Summary

Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence explains the importance of emotions in your life and how they help and hurt your ability to navigate the world, followed by practical advice on how to improve your own emotional intelligence and why that is the key to leading a successful life.

Emotions Overpowering Our Thinking

We are programmed to act the way our brain has been trained. There are moments in our lives when our emotions overpower our rational thinking. This happens because our brain is divided into two parts: rational and emotional. When the emotions are intense, they hijack the rational part of the brain and trigger a reaction that could be seen in the form of the following emotions: anger, fear, happiness, love, surprise, disgust, and sadness.

EQ vs IQ

IQ is a genetic characteristic that can’t be changed by life experiences. Whereas EI can be taught to children & instilled in them at a young age so that they can utilize their full intellectual potential.

The traditional meaning of success is having a better IQ. But Daniel Goleman says that those who have enough IQ to just get into a decent university but a stellar EQ make more money than those who have a higher IQ but lack EQ.

Research shows that a high EI is actually more important than IQ for success. An individual’s success at work is 80% dependent on EQ and only 20% dependent on IQ.

The 5 Domains of Emotional Intelligence

1. Self Awareness
2. Managing Emotions
3. Motivating Oneself
4. Recognizing Emotions in Others
5. Handling relationships

1. Self Awareness

Developing a better understanding of your own nature is the first step towards learning emotional intelligence. Self-awareness is the ability to recognize your emotions and how they affect your thoughts and behaviour.

Being aware of oneself means knowing your strengths and weaknesses. It includes having self-confidence and an accurate self-assessment of knowing how and why you behave in certain situations.

If you can know your emotions as they happen, you can make better decisions.

2. Managing Emotions

The ability to control impulsive feelings and behaviors and manage them in an effective way by being optimistic, taking initiatives, and adapting to the conditions in challenging situations

You cannot avoid emotions from arising. However, you can control them when they appear.

The ventilation fallacy applies to the most experienced emotion: anger.

The Ventilation Fallacy

An impatient cab driver honks, signaling a young man to move out of the way. The young man makes an offensive gesture, further adding to the cab driver’s agitation. He revved his engine loudly and said, “You have to yell back as it makes you feel better.”

Venting when you are angry prolongs your mood rather than ends it. Anger only breeds more anger. Venting when you are sad is a good way to validate your feelings. So you have to keep a check on your feelings.

Recover from Bad Mood

Follow these simple tricks to relieve your bad mood:

• Take deep breaths
• Reframe your thoughts and try to avoid overindulging in negative thoughts
• Go for a walk

3. Motivating Oneself

Emotional traits like enthusiasm and persistence play an important role in mastering aptitude.

The reason most Asian students have better aptitude than their counterparts is not because of their IQ, but because of their endurance to improve their shortcomings.

Self-motivation is also affected by delayed gratification. Goleman shares the famous marshmallow test, wherein some 4-year-olds were given a marshmallow. They were asked to wait for 15 minutes before eating the marshmallow. They will be given another marshmallow if they do so. But if they ate it before that time, they will not get another one.

Years later, the children who did not eat the marshmallow immediately were found to perform better in life than those who did eat the marshmallow immediately.

4. Recognizing Emotions in Others

People express far more through non-verbal cues like facial expressions, gestures than they express their feelings with words. Understanding others through non-verbal communication and feeling empathy for others helps you connect with them more comfortably.

Recognizing Emotions: Example

Suppose someone at work messes up with some task. If you provide them with a harsh and sarcastic tone, it does not lead to a solution. Instead, you should try to provide constructive criticism with specifics and suggestions to face the problem face-to-face. This gives them hope and motivation to do things better.

5. Handling Relationships

The ability to develop and maintain good relationships, communicate clearly and manage conflict in stressful situations.

Emotions are highly contagious. If someone talks to you in an angry tone and you can keep your calm, it is highly likely that the other person will start to calm down.

The ability to develop and maintain good relationships, communicate clearly and manage conflict in stressful situations.

Emotions are highly contagious. If someone talks to you in an angry tone and you can keep your calm, it is highly likely that the other person will start to calm down.