What does it mean to be smart? Street smart? Book smart? People smart? After a mere glance at the title Emotional Intelligence, I was taken back to my early years in the educational system. Since I can remember, testing has been a constant and those scores dictated my future academic career. 

While reading this book, I was immediately brought back to the eighth grade where a high school entrance exam was going to “determine” if I was smart enough to attend a prestigious all-girls high school. Turn the clock forward about two years and as a sophomore in that high school, I was taken aback by the hours of testing that diagnosed me with numerous learning disabilities. I was distraught. I felt stupid. About twelve months later, I would be studying for a college entrance exam that I ended up taking twice. The months following the exam were as slow as molasses and anxiety filled my mind. Earlier than I expected, I received a letter from my top college choice. As I sat outside the library of the College of Charleston, I beam with the same exuberance that high school senior me had almost four years ago when I learned that I would be a student at the College of Charleston. 

After reading Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, I feel even more confident and proud to be a neurodiverse individual who is not afraid to further her emotional intelligence. Academic testing does not define you. You define you. Daniel Goleman validates the importance of embracing the neurodiverse leader and encourages his audience to explore and embrace their emotional intelligence.

All three hundred fifty-two pages were filled with riveting stories and explanations that made the book hard to put down. Since emotional intelligence is linked through neural pathways in the brain, there are some psychological and scientific concepts that can take a moment to comprehend if you are a Communication major like me. I have taken psychology classes in the past so I do have some background knowledge regarding the topic itself. Even though I am familiar with psychology, it took a little extra effort to read and understand certain topics that were discussed because of their complexity. This did not discourage my want to turn the page but encouraged me to want to learn more. Overall, Goleman does an exceptional job guiding the reader through the emotional intelligence journey by sharing stories with explanations that will have you smiling and nodding your head in agreement while you whispering to yourself, “How did he know that about me” or “that makes WAY too much sense”. 

Not only could I relate to the author and his credibility, but this book also validated my own emotional intelligence journey and experience. I found myself making sense of the information because it was so well-written and applicable to just about every aspect of my life. Goleman’s writing style was well-balanced because he incorporated psychological definitions/concepts, vivid stories, and thoughtful words of encouragement and advice. 

Per Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, here are ten (10) lessons I learned and strategies that I took away from the book:

1. There are individuals in the world who are diagnosed or show signs of alexithymia, which is essentially the lack of emotion and/or the inability to express emotion. Do not dismiss these individuals, for they are capable of learning new strategies to help navigate their emotions. 

2. Emotions are like common colds, incredibly contagious. There is a direct transfer from someone who is forceful in expressing their emotions to the individual who is more passive. 

3. There is a difference between a complaint and personal criticism. A complaint addresses what emotion is being felt due to a given action action while personal criticism is an attack on the individual rather than the action itself.  

4. There is zero tolerance for intolerance.

5. Major depressive disorder and depression in general puts life in a paralyzing hold. Aerobic exercise, completing a small triumph, engineering a small success, and/or helping others in need are all effective depression relievers.

6. Individuals who are emotionally upset tend to not absorb as much information in a conversation and they tend to not remember, attend, learn, or even make decisions clearly. 

7. If and when you are in an argument that is spiraling, take twenty minutes of alone time to step away from the situation and collect yourself. Additionally, If you are in need of more alone time away from this person, allow yourself to use that space. It is better to continue the conversation another day when both parties are calm, cool, and collected. 

8. The relationship between anxiety and performance can be explained in terms of an upside-down U. The far left side represents too little anxiety which brings about little motivation. The far right side brings too much anxiety that will deliberately destroy any opportunity to better yourself. At the peak of the upside U is the “hypomania” state that is the best of both worlds. 

9. A successful leader is self-aware, meaning being “aware of both our mood and our thoughts about that mood” (Goleman, p. 42). A leader maintains self-awareness even amid chaos and overwhelming emotions.

10.  The seven ingredients needed to master your emotional intelligence: 

    1. Confidence

    2. Curiosity

    3. Intentionality

    4. Self-Control

    5. Relatedness

    6. Capacity to communicate

    7. Cooperativeness

Overall, I believe the book was extremely informative and intriguing due to the fact that Goleman provided so many examples and stories. He provides multiple perspectives about emotional intelligence that range from abuse victims to child aggression to marital situations to an educational and academic environment. To Goleman's credit, the information was perfectly balanced within each chapter and section. I would highly recommend this book to an audience who is interested in mental health, navigating emotions, or the science within the human brain. This book deserves a 5-star rating and I encourage you to take the time to start learning ways to enhance your own emotional intelligence. 

Below are some quotes from Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ that are worth remembering:

• “The hippocampus is crucial in recognizing a face as that of your cousin. But it is the amygdala that adds you don’t really like her” (Goleman, p. 18).

• “One reason we can be so baffled by our emotional outbursts, then, is that they often date from a time early in our lives when things were bewildering and we did not yet have words for comprehending events” (Goleman, p. 20). 

• “Emotional intelligence: abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one’s moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope” (Goleman, p. 30). 

• “The key to sounder personal decision-making, in short: being attuned to our feelings” (Goleman, p. 48).

• “Benjamin Franklin put it well: “Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one” (Goleman, p. 53).

• “... people who are already depressed need to make a special effort to get their attention on something that is completely upbeat, being careful not to inadvertently choose something - a tearjerker movie, a tragic novel- that will drag their mood down again” (Goleman, p. 64).

• “Optimism, like hope, means having a strong expectation that, in general, things will turn out all right in life, despite setbacks and frustrations. From the standpoint of emotional intelligence, optimism is an attitude that buffers people against falling into apathy, hopelessness, or depression in the face of tough going” (Goleman, p. 79). 

• “Painters must want to paint above all else. If the artist in front of the canvas begins to wonder how much he will sell it for, or what the critics will think of it, he won’t be able to pursue original avenues” (Goleman, p. 84).

• “Every strong emotion has at its root an impulse to action; managing those impulses is basic to emotional intelligence” (Goleman, p. 128).

• “The single most important element in group intelligence, it turns out, is not the average IQ in the academic sense, but rather in terms of emotional intelligence. The key to a high group IQ is social harmony” (Goleman, p. 143). 

• “Every siren need not bring a floor of fear; every sound in the night need not compel a flashback of terror” (Goleman, p. 188).