emotional intelligence

A leading indicator of personal growth is how curious you are able to be with all your emotions - especially the ones you weren't allowed to feel as a kid.

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.

When boys are showing care and concern and support for other people, celebrate it in the same way that you might celebrate more traditional things that are celebrated for boys, like sports victories or catching a big fish. You want to celebrate when they care for friends or family, too

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 short version is that you definitely have emotions…and not understanding them makes it very hard to understand your own behaviour.