A book, that explains the concept of "emotional intelligence"...

In 1990, while working as a science news reporter for The New York Times, the author found an article, written by two university psychologists in a science publication and they were first to develop the concept, what they called emotional intelligence.

At the time, IQ was unquestionably the basis for a successful life, and the debate was only on whether it was heritable or learnable.

Since then, the author has summarized the threads of numerous researches and gives an overview of many exciting developments in science, including the first fruits of neuroscience of emotions, that deal with the regulation of emotions in the brain.

By now, the term EQ has spread throughout the world and is considered one of the most important grounds for a successful life, unlike IQ, which plays a much smaller role in achieving and maintaining success.

While in 1995 there were only a fiew learning programs teaching children social and emotional learning (SEL), ten years later, tens of thousands of schools around the world were already teaching these skills. There is a fixed level of social and emotional skills for every level of the school, from kindergarten through to the final grade. For example, in primary school, students need to recognize and name their emotions and know, how they make people behave. In elementary school, they need to understand, through non-verbal signals, how someone is feeling and be able to analyze, what is causing them stress and what motivates them to behave better. In high school, SEL's skills include listening to others and resolving conflicts, finding compromises.

In 2002, UNESCO sent the SEL's 10 fundamental principles to 140 ministries of education, and many countries are now engaged in character-shaping, prevention of violence and bullying, and drug prevention.

Since then, numerous studies have shown, that classes of social and emotional development also significantly improve academic achievements. Much of the good learning can be attributed to the improvement of attention and working memory - the main functions of the prefrontal cortex.

The impact of the EI on the business world, where one of the forms of adult learning is about leadership and employees development, is particularly surprising.

While a high IQ is good for academia, high EQ is also good for health, love or friendship, and athletic achievements.

A senior analyst at a company, who dealed with searching the executives for companies, said, that CEOs are hired on the basis of their intelligence and business experience and fired for lack of emotional intelligence.

The author brings a number of illustrative examples of the so-called flow state, which makes us completely focus on something and forget everything around us. It is the opposite of worrying and contemplating. There are several ways to get into the stream. First, deliberately focusing on the task, which requires some self-discipline, and the hardest part is getting started and the beginning. As soon as we have reached a certain level of concentration, this state takes control, relieving us of both emotional anxiety and the need to exert effort. At work, people are best placed to get to that state when they have to do a little more difficult work than usual. When they do their usual routine work, they become bored and the focus dissipates. But when the task is too difficult or overwhelming, disturbing fears arise. A state of flux, where a person does something with self-awareness and with maximum concentration, occurs in this narrow passage between boredom and fear. The focus of the flow is calm but concentrated, which is very different from focusing when we are tired or bored and having negative emotions.

One would expect such weighty tasks to require more cerebral cortex activity, but in reality, on the contrary, the most difficult tasks seem to be solved with minimal mental energy expenditure. When people are engaged in activities, that effortlessly conquer and hold their attention, their brain calms down, which means, that the excitement of the cortex is reduced and the work does not seem tiring, but refreshing and enriching.

At the same time, the intense focus, that comes with worrying thoughts, causes increased activity in the cortex and the person becomes tired and makes mistakes.

As the flow state occurs, when a person is making the maximum effort, then by increasing the skill levels, more difficult tasks will be needed to trigger the flow.

The author pointed out the study of 200 artists, 18 years after finishing art school - those, who enjoyed painting during school, became serious artists afterwards, but those, motivated by wealth and fame, later moved on to other jobs. When an artist starts to think about how much money he receives for painting or what critics think, he does not capture original ideas.

I recommend reading this book with your eyes rather than listening to it in audio, because the information is concentrated and scientific, so you lose a lot when you listen and it can even seem boring.