emotional intelligence

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

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.

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

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