I have been reading “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” since last year and finally finished reading it this long weekend. This is not to say that there is no merit in reading this. In fact, I learnt quite a bit from Travis’ and Jean’s book. For one, I now know that our primary senses must travel through the limbic system (where emotions are experience) before arriving at the prefrontal contex. No wonder impulsive teenagers aren’t able to hold their temper.

As a language teacher, I also like the word cline of five emotions (happy, sad, angry, afraid, ashamed). It will enable me to increase my students’ emotional vocabulary, provided that I have the time to teach them how to distinguish between the intensity of these feeling words.

This book is clearly divided into 4 sections: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness & relationship management. It’s a systematic way of covering intrapersonal & interpersonal skills, and you can see how I shamelessly applied these sections in a poster I designed to teach my students about resilience. (Aside: I got sick and tired of NorthLight students telling me “Never Give Up” all the time. What does it mean to “never give up” anyway?)

Under each section, more than 10 strategies will be succinctly discussed to boost one’s proficiency in that particular domain of EQ. I picked up some interesting nuggets here. Like how one must be exposed to 20 mins of sunlight to facilitate a good night’s sleep. One should not drink coffee in the afternoon because it has a shelf-life of 6 hours (oops, and on some days, I have my 3rd cup of coffee before picking up my children). One could do positive visualisation right before he falls asleep - I think I will urge my students to do so even though I never visualise anything positively myself. I just charge like a bull in a china shop haha.

The authors include some interesting case studies to illustrate how various individuals are either adept or lacking in EQ. I enjoyed this aspect the most. I wonder how the authors would have described me and the number of marks I would have obtained. True blue Singaporean spirit - obsessed with the grade only!