Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Self-motivation

Studies of Olympic athletes, world-class musicians, and chess grand masters find their unifying trait is the ability to motivate themselves to pursue relentless training routines.

worries

_________ are almost always expressed in the mind's ear, not its eye—that is, in words, not images—a fact that has significance for controlling worry.

praying

__________, if you're very religious, works for all moods, especially depression.

metamood

____________ to mean awareness of one's own emotions.

metacognition

____________ to refer to an awareness of thought process

Self-awareness

___________—recognizing a feeling as it happens —is the keystone of emotional intelligence.

Women

Diener finds that _______, in general, feel both positive and negative emotions more strongly than do men. And, sex differences aside, emotional life is richer for those who notice more.

trust

Erik Erikson put it in terms of whether a child comes to feel a "basic _______" or a basic mistrust.

immune

A network of researchers is finding that the chemical messengers that operate most extensively in both brain and ________ system are those that are most dense in neural areas that regulate emotion

develop

As Williams told me, "The antidote to hostility is to __________ a more trusting heart."

environment

As behavioral geneticists observe, genes alone do not determine behavior; our ___________, especially what we experience and learn as we grow, shapes how a temperamental predisposition expresses itself as life unfolds.

long

As we have seen, the design of the brain means that we very often have little or no control over when we are swept by emotion, nor over what emotion it will be. But we can have some say in how _____ an emotion will last.

approval

Babies like these have gotten a goodly dose of __________ and encouragement from the adults in their lives; they expect to succeed in life's little challenges.

good

Because flow feels so ______, it is intrinsically rewarding. It is a state in which people become utterly absorbed in what they are doing, paying undivided attention to the task, 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.

flow

Being able to enter (attention) ______ is emotional intelligence at its best

anger

Benjamin Franklin put it well: "______ is never without a reason, but seldom a good one."

key

But a ___ 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.

Self-control

But others, more impulsive, grabbed the one marshmallow, almost always within seconds of the experimenter's leaving the room on his "errand."

mood

By the same token, being in a foul _____ biases memory in a negative direction, making us more likely to contract into a fearful, overly cautious decision.

Skills

Developing a competency of any kind strengthens the sense of self-efficacy, making a person more willing to take risks and seek out more demanding challenges.

identity

Emotions are impulses to act according to your ___________

Chocolate

Everything from reading a novel or watching television to the activities and companions we choose can be a way to make ourselves feel better.

static

Flow is a state devoid of emotional ______, save for a compelling, highly motivating feeling of mild ecstasy. That ecstasy seems to be a by-product of the attentional focus that

optimism

From the standpoint of emotional intelligence, __________ is an attitude that buffers people against falling into apathy, hopelessness, or depression in the face of tough going.

task

If a ____ is too simple, it is boring; if too challenging, the result is anxiety rather than flow.

Reaction

In the neocortex a cascading series of circuits registers and analyzes that information, comprehends it, and, through the prefrontal lobes, orchestrates a ___________.

Past identity

Its method of comparison is associative: when one key element of a present situation is similar to the past, it can call it a "match"—which is why this circuit is sloppy: it acts before there is full confirmation. It frantically commands that we react to the present in ways that were imprinted long ago, with thoughts, emotions, reactions learned in response to events perhaps only dimly similar.

connection

Men and women want and expect very different things out of a conversation, with men content to talk about "things," while women seek emotional ______________.

Working memory

Neuroscientists use the term "working memory" for the capacity of attention that holds in mind the facts essential for completing a given task or problem, The prefrontal cortex is the brain region responsible for working memory.

Well-being

Of course, on any two mornings someone can have very different moods; but when people's moods are averaged over weeks or months, they tend to reflect that person's overall sense of well-being.

stonewalling

Once flooded, husbands secrete more adrenaline into their bloodstream, and the adrenaline flow is triggered by lower levels of negativity on their wife's part; it takes husbands longer to recover physiologically from flooding.

thumb

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

Emotional identity

Our emotions have a mind of their own, one which can hold views quite independently of our rational mind.

neglect

Simple ________, studies find, can be more damaging than outright abuse

tension

Since feeling heard is often exactly what the aggrieved partner really is after, emotionally an act of empathy is a masterly _________ reducer.

Art

Some of us are naturally more attuned to the emotional mind's special symbolic modes: metaphor and simile, along with poetry, song, and fable, are all cast in the language of the heart.

learning

That is how emotional ___________ becomes ingrained; as experiences are repeated over and over, the brain reflects them as strengthened pathways, neural habits to apply in times of duress, frustration, hurt.

Emotional distress

That is why when we are emotionally upset we say we "just can't think straight"—and why continual _____________ can create deficits in a child's intellectual abilities, crippling the capacity to learn.

amygdala

The _________ acts as a storehouse of emotional memory

Memory

The amygdala is the main site in the brain where these signals go; they activate neurons within the amygdala to signal other brain regions to strengthen memory for what is happening.

balance

The goal is __________, not emotional suppression: every feeling has its value and significance.

Emotional management

The left prefrontal lobe, in short, seems to be part of a neural circuit that can switch off, or at least dampen down, all but the strongest negative surges of emotion.

distraction

The power of ____________ is that it stops that angry train of thought.

meaning

The root __________ of the word emotion, remember, is "to move." The capacity to resist that impulse to act, to squelch the incipient movement, most likely translates at the level of brain function into inhibition of limbic signals to the motor cortex,

Emotional identity

This discovery overthrows the notion that the amygdala must depend entirely on signals from the neocortex to formulate its emotional reactions.

fear triggers

When ______ ________ the emotional brain, part of the resulting anxiety fixates attention on the threat at hand, forcing the mind to obsess about how to handle it and ignore anything else for the time being.

people

When two _________ interact, the direction of mood transfer is from the one who is more forceful in expressing feelings to the one who is more passive.

stress

_______ of all sorts creates adrenocortical arousal, lowering the threshold for what provokes anger. Thus someone who has had a hard day at work is especially vulnerable to becoming enraged later at home by something

Impulse

_________ (trigger experience) is the medium of Emotions.