Emotional intelligence is about being aware of feelings, both yours and those around you, understanding them, and managing their impact. Moreover, it’s about being in control of your emotions, responding (instead of reacting) carefully and thoughtfully to the situation at hand.

While stress itself is not inherently negative, prolonged or chronic stress can have detrimental effects on our physical, emotional, and mental well-being.

I have probably read at least 50 self-help books in the last couple of years and have at least a dozen more on my bookshelf. Something about reading a person’s a-ha moments and success stories is inspiring and makes me think I can be a better communicator, a better parent, a better listener, a better employee, a better coach, a better thinker, a better human being.

If you’ve studied the Enneagram, you know that each of us views the world in 9 different ways and that our personalities are not only made up of what we are born with, but also shaped by how we were raised. The messages we received in childhood, whether conscious or unconscious, became central to how we viewed the environment around us.

The concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI) began to explode in the 1995 when Daniel Goleman’s book “Emotional Intelligence” introduced the concept that an individual’s EI is just as, if not more important than their Intelligence Quotient (IQ).