Emotional Intelligence

by Daniel Goleman

You yourself are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don’t exist. I’ve experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching in a state of awe and wonderment. And it just flows out by itself.

“flow”

“the zone,”

Writing script or interviewing

Being able to enter flow is emotional intelligence at its best; flow represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performance and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand.

Have you had this experience or something close to it? If you had, what was it you were doing? If not, why don’t you think you can do it?

Attention becomes so focused that people are aware only of the narrow range of perception related to the immediate task, losing track of time and space.

Editing, writing, drawing example Michael

Flow is a state of self-forgetfulness, the opposite of rumination and worry: instead of being lost in nervous preoccupation, people in flow are so absorbed in the task at hand that they lose all self-consciousness, dropping the small preoccupations—health, bills, even doing well—of daily life.

And although people perform at their peak while in flow, they are unconcerned with how they are doing, with thoughts of success or failure—the sheer pleasure of the act itself is what motivates them.

Like my interview How to enter flow? Not to worry about success or failure

“People seem to concentrate best when the demands on them are a bit greater than usual, and they are able to give more than usual. If there is too little demand on them, people are bored. If there is too much for them to handle, they get anxious. Flow occurs in that delicate zone between boredom and anxiety.”28

Flow is between boredom and anxiety

flow induced by nothing more than intense concentration.

But a key to flow is that it occurs only within reach of the summit of ability, where skills are well-rehearsed and neural circuits are most efficient.

Well rehearsed like interview but it still requires skill 台上1分鐘台下10年工

A strained concentration—a focus fueled by worry—produces increased

cortical acti...

But the zone of flow and optimal performance seems to be an oasis of cortical efficiency, with a bare min...

In this state even hard work can seem refreshing or replenishing rather than draining.

Coming up with ideas and possibilities for new venture

Indeed, in a study of two hundred artists eighteen years after they left art school, Csikszentmihalyi found that it was those who in their student days had savored the sheer joy of painting itself who had become serious painters. Those who had been motivated in art school by dreams of fame and wealth for the most part drifted away from art after graduating.

People who enjoy doing what they do instead of worrying about money becomes successful Money or success is the by product of what you are passionate about Doing it for the right reason

Creative achievements depend on single-minded immersion.”

Not surprisingly, the low achievers spent only about fifteen hours a week studying at home, much less than the twenty-seven hours a week of homework done by their high-achieving peers.

The low achievers spent most of the hours during which they were not studying in socializing, hanging out with friends and family.

“We should use kids’ positive states to draw them into learning in the domains where they can develop competencies,”

Happy and learning Summer anxious can’t focus scattered brained Right amount of challenge and stress is important

natural competencies and playing to the strengths as well as trying to shore up the weaknesses. A child who is naturally talented in music or movement, for example, will enter flow more easily in that domain than in those where she is less able. Knowing a child’s profile can help a teacher fine-tune the way a topic is presented to a child and offer lessons at the level—from remedial to highly advanced—that is most likely to provide an optimal challenge.

Counter to previous statement of Asian students Reading is fostered encouraged provided by the parents Are kids naturally talented in some area always the case? Perhaps its parental attitudes and enthusiasm that help spark that interest! There are no accidental genius, there is always the parents who work to support their child

natural competencies and playing to the strengths as well as trying to shore up the weaknesses. A child who is naturally talented in music or movement, for example, will enter flow more easily in that domain than in those where she is less able. Knowing a child’s profile can help a teacher fine-tune the way a topic is presented to a child and offer lessons at the level—from remedial to highly advanced—that is most likely to provide an optimal challenge.

Yes yes yes Fine tuning myself to my students

More generally, the flow model suggests that achieving mastery of any skill or body of knowledge should ideally happen naturally, as the child is drawn to the areas that spontaneously engage her—that, in essence, she loves. That initial passion can be the seed for high levels of attainment, as the child comes to realize that pursuing the field—whether it be dance, math, or music—is a source of the joy of flow. And since it takes pushing the limits of one’s ability to sustain flow, that becomes a prime motivator for getting better and better; it makes the child happy.

Achievement is it’s own reward

Empathy builds on self-awareness; the more open we are to our own emotions, the more skilled we will be in reading feelings.1 Alexithymics like Gary, who have

The emotional notes and chords that weave through people’s words and actions—the telling tone of voice or shift in posture, the eloquent silence or telltale tremble—go by unnoted.

Emotion are mostly expressed through...

(Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity),

Empathy, it should be no surprise to learn, helps with romantic life.

Just as the mode of the rational mind is words, the mode of the emotions is nonverbal. Indeed, when a person’s words disagree with what is conveyed via his tone of voice, gesture, or other nonverbal channel, the emotional truth is in how he says something rather than in what he says.

Chloe’s example of speaking to NiNi’s mom

One rule of thumb used in communications research is that 90 percent or more of an emotional message is nonverbal.

How much of the emotional message is nonverbal?

The results of the study suggest that the roots of empathy can be traced to infancy.

the day they are born infants are upset when they hear another infant crying—a response some see as the earliest precursor of empathy.

Such motor mimicry,

empathy

sympathy,

Motor mimicry fades from toddlers’ repertoire at around two and a half years, at which point they realize that someone else’s pain is different from their own, and are better able to comfort them.

Children, they found, were more empathic when the discipline included calling strong attention to the distress their misbehavior caused someone else: “Look how sad you’ve made her feel” instead of “That was naughty.”

by imitating what they see, children develop a repertoire of empathic response, especially in helping other people who are distressed.

The twins and their mother were observed so minutely when they took part in research by Daniel Stern, a psychiatrist then at Cornell University School of Medicine.7 Stern is fascinated by the small, repeated exchanges that take place between parent and child; he believes that the most basic lessons of emotional life are laid down in these intimate moments. Of all such moments, the most critical are those that let the child know her emotions are met with empathy, accepted, and reciprocated, in a process Stern calls attunement. The twins’ mother was attuned with Mark, but out of emotional synch with Fred. Stern contends that the countlessly repeated moments of attunement or misattunement between parent and child shape the emotional expectations adults bring to their close relationships—perhaps far more than the more dramatic events of childhood.

He finds that through attunement mothers let their infants know they have a sense of what the infant is feeling.