Lexie Carroll’s Reviews > Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success > Status Update

There’s an idea, especially in kids, that happiness is the only acceptable feeling in public, and if we’re not happy at all times, we’ve failed.

We have a natural bias in favor of displaying positive emotions, especially in the US, which translates into a pressure on all of us to seem happy, no matter what. Which often backfires and makes us LESS happy.

RULER Skill to be a skilled emotion scientist:

R- Recognize occurrence of emotion (change in body, thoughts, energy, facial expressions)
U- Understand cause & impact of emotions (how they influence our thoughts & decisions)
L- Label our emotions with accuracy & granularity
E- Express our emotions (discerning how & when to do so)
R- Regulate, ie monitoring/tempering how we express emotions, to help us reach our goals

Emotional intelligence as defined by researchers Peter Salovey & John Mayer, in a landmark 1990 paper on the subject:
Emotional Intelligence is:
- ability to perceive accurately, appraise, & express emotion
-ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought
-ability to understand emotion & emotional knowledge
-ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth

Five areas of life that emotion impacts the most:

1. Attention/memory/learning
2. Decision-making
3. Social relations (ie affiliate or distance)
4. Physiology & Health
5. Creativity/effectiveness/performance