Book Review: Emotional Intelligence 2.0

The days are short, dark, and cold here in the Mid­west. This means my usu­al after work activ­i­ties like bask­ing on the porch, play­ing fris­bee golf, and talk­ing to the neigh­bors are now off the table.

I’ve had to find oth­er things to fill my time! This means writ­ing posts, dream­ing up ideas for side hus­tles, and read­ing books are now the main ways I spend my non-work hours.

One of the books I read recent­ly was Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence 2.0 by Travis Brad­ber­ry. It was so good I read it in one night!

This book is packed with action­able tips. So much so that I can see myself going back and ref­er­enc­ing dif­fer­ent sec­tions at var­i­ous times. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I bor­rowed it from the library so I had to give it back.

I’m real­ly glad I start­ed out bor­row­ing it from the library because books can be expen­sive. How­ev­er, I feel this one is wor­thy of buy­ing and hang­ing on to for the long haul.

In the book there is a code for their quiz that mea­sures where your EQ is. It tells you what you’re strong in and what areas need work. I don’t know what they think my EQ is, because I could­n’t take the quiz. I did take note of the exer­cis­es you’re sup­posed to do and they look real­ly help­ful for my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life.

Lessons from the book

Mod­er­at­ing Excite­ment: For those of you who have known me for a long time, you know just how much work I’ve put into mod­er­at­ing my excite­ment for life. I recent­ly described my teenaged self as some­one who act­ed like I’d drank 4 liters of Mt. Dew and ate can­dy every day. I was excitable. I had a true pas­sion for life and bound­less ener­gy. If I had been a dog, I would’ve been a Gold­en Retriev­er puppy.

 

Turns out, that over­whelms the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion of Earth and turns strangers into ene­mies. Who knew? Well, I cer­tain­ly did­n’t until a few peo­ple helped show me how I was com­ing across to oth­ers. That got me think­ing and I made a con­scious effort after that to tone me down.

Now, that’s not to say I changed entire­ly and became a super chill ver­sion of myself, dude. Now I’m bet­ter at know­ing when to unleash that side of me and when to keep it constrained.

To all the peo­ple who have met me in the last few years, yes, this is me being con­strained. Hard to believe, I know 🙂

Ton­ing Down Reac­tions: In the book, Brad­ber­ry talks about giv­ing your­self a 10 sec­ond win­dow to pause before you react to some­thing. He lit­er­al­ly says to count to 10. If it works for 5 year olds, it can work on adults.

One of those adults it helps is me. I’ve been incor­po­rat­ing this into life and I did­n’t even know it was a thing. I was able to see how effec­tive this one is on sev­er­al recent trips to fam­i­ly. Nobody knows how to push all your but­tons like fam­i­ly. I love my fam­i­ly to death but some­times deal­ing with them makes me want to pull my hair out. We are not great communicators.

So, by incor­po­rat­ing this lit­tle gap between what they said and my reac­tion, I was able to stay a bit calmer and explain what I was feeling/thinking with­out get­ting too mad/stressed/angry/stompy. I am the youngest of my fam­i­ly and can act like it on occa­sion. The 10 sec­ond gap helped a ton!

Hap­py Thoughts: Even though I lean toward the art­sy fart­sy side of life, I am no Bob Ross. I do not cre­ate hap­py lit­tle trees and hap­py lit­tle clouds on canvas.

 

How­ev­er, I do cre­ate hap­py thoughts. Brad­ber­ry had some things to say about peo­ple’s inner thoughts vary­ing. Some peo­ple have neg­a­tive self-talk. Some peo­ple have pos­i­tive self-talk.

I build myself up in my head. I don’t tend to dwell on mis­takes made. I go back over the sit­u­a­tion, fig­ure out what went wrong where and when, lay a plan to do things dif­fer­ent­ly next time, chalk it up a les­son learned, and move on.

I tend to tell myself every­thing will be fine. Some things suck longer than oth­er things, but even­tu­al­ly it stops and I move on with life. Usu­al­ly, every­thing does end up fine! Or, some­times, things end up bet­ter than if I’d stayed with the first path.

Sleep Mat­ters: There’s a sec­tion of the book that talks about the impact of get­ting a good night’s sleep. It goes over things like not using screens in the 2 hours before you go to bed and the neg­a­tive effect drink­ing caf­feine has on your sleep.

Now, I sleep just fine. I’ve nev­er real­ly had any issues falling asleep or stay­ing asleep. I do use elec­tron­ics in that 2 hour before bed­time win­dow, but I don’t use them with­out blue light fil­ters. Blue light fil­ters are apps or pro­grams on your elec­tron­ics that fil­ter out the blue light. Shock­ing, I know! If you can deal with your screens hav­ing a weird orang‑y hue, it’s real­ly help­ful at min­i­miz­ing the effect the light has on your brain and sleep cycle.

I use Twi­light on my Android phone, f.lux on my com­put­er, and the Twi­light option on my iPhone.

The oth­er major impact to sleep qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty was caf­feine. This one isn’t real­ly an issue for me, as I tend to not drink a lot of caf­feine. I have the odd caf­feinat­ed cof­fee or tea every once in awhile (or soda in a blue moon), but I like to stick to decaf beverages.

At Fin­Con this year, this was a major plus for me. No need to stand in the ginor­mous line to wait for cof­fee in the morn­ing, and I was­n’t at risk of bit­ing any­one’s head off if I did­n’t get some STAT in the morn­ing. Some of my fel­low blog­gers and friends found it dif­fi­cult to believe I was­n’t caf­feinat­ed when I bright­ly wished them a hap­py morn­ing at 730 am but it’s true! It goes back to that whole mod­er­at­ing excite­ment thing I was talk­ing about earlier.

If you do drink caf­feine, it’s best to do so only in the morn­ing as caf­feine has a lot longer life than most peo­ple are led to believe. The half-life of caf­feine is 3–7 hours, so remem­ber that if you’re strug­gling to stay awake in your cube at 2 in the afternoon.

Focus­ing on Free­dom: This is the sec­tion I prob­a­bly got the most from out of the whole book in light of my big move com­ing up. (You know, the one where I quit my job and move to a dif­fer­ent state in a few months? Not ring­ing a bell? Read this!)

Brad­ber­ry talks about focus­ing on pos­i­tive out­comes in sce­nar­ios rather than focus­ing on the things that could go wrong. This is what I’m cur­rent­ly doing. There are a mil­lion things that could go wrong with my upcom­ing lifestyle change. We could break up. I could get preg­nant and then break up. We could get mar­ried and then divorce in the future. If we broke up, I’d have to get a full-time job again and move into a new place. What if I could­n’t find a job? What if I did­n’t have enough mon­ey to move out? What if my car died and I had to get a new one?

OR.

Or I could focus on all the ways things could go right. I could move up there, live in wed­ded bliss, and become a suc­cess­ful freelancer/stained glass artist. If we broke up, I’d have the free­dom to move absolute­ly any­where in the world to take a job. I’m not wor­ried about being unhire­able if I need to rejoin the work­force. I have plen­ty of peo­ple to rec­om­mend me, and if worst comes to shove I could always come back to this com­pa­ny (pro­vid­ed I don’t burn any bridges which I’m doing my best not to on the way out).

Summary

I think Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence 2.0 is incred­i­bly use­ful to just about every­one. I am look­ing for­ward to buy­ing the book to ref­er­ence in the future and see what my EQ score is! This will pro­vide a more focused path for my self-improve­ment in the future, which can only ben­e­fit me and every­one around me!

My rec­om­men­da­tion: 5 stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Have you read the book? What did you think? What changes have you made in your life in regard to per­son­al devel­op­ment? Sound off in the com­ments below!