emotional intelligence

This may seem like a dumb question, but have you ever thought about how it is that people can feel their emotions? The answer is that they pay attention to their body. Experiencing an emotion is primarily noticeable based on bodily sensations. People don’t always consciously notice that this is what they’re doing because it’s become so automatic,... See more

Schools are good at teaching and measuring intelligence, so that’s what people tend to value and aspire to. But in almost any field, smarts is what gets rewarded long term.

You cannot measure empathy like you can SAT scores, so it’s not surprising that one is given more weight on resumes. But who is more likely to succeed in life – a person whose... See more

Let’s say someone has both a high-functioning theory of mind and an overflowing well of compassion. What then? Well, this is what Hoffman calls “empathic over-arousal.” A person will feel so worn down by the intensity of other people’s emotions that it wears them down — it turns their distress into my actual distress. This might not seem like a bad... See more

The most competent people I know are pretty good at basically anything they put their minds to, because they just design a process and run it. I think this is largely mental and emotional—the hardest part isn’t figuring out the steps, it’s enduring the psychological discomfort of doing them and then adapting.