Daniel Goleman

“But the rational mind usually doesn't decide what emotions we "should" have !”

“أننا لا شعورياً نقلد الانفعالات التي يظهرها أمامنا شخص آخر عن طريق محاكاة حركية لا واعية لتعبيرات الوجه وإيماءاته ونبرات صوته والمحددات غير اللفظية الأخرى للانفاعلات، وبهذه المحاكاة يعيد الأشخاص في داخلهم خلق هذه الحالات المزاجية للشخص الآخر. وهي صورة مبسطة من طريقة ستانيسلافسكي والذي كان يطلب من الممثلين أن يتذكروا الإماءات والحركات والتعبيرات الأخرى لانفعال أثر فيهم بقوة في الماضي من أجل استثارة هذه المشاعر مرة أخرى.”

“When the eyes of a woman that a man finds attractive look directly at him, his brain secretes the pleasure-inducing chemical dopamine - but not when she looks elsewhere.”

“A belligerent samurai, an old Japanese tale goes, once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. The monk replied with scorn, "You're nothing but a lout - I can't waste my time with the likes of you!"His very honor attacked, the samurai flew into a rage and, pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled "I could kill you for your impertinence.""That," the monk calmly replied, "is hell."Startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword, and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight."And that,"said the monk "is heaven."The sudden awakening of the samurai to his own agitated state illustrates the crucial difference between being caught up in a feeling and becoming aware that you are being swept away by it. Socrates's injunction "Know thyself" speaks to the keystone of emotional intelligence: awareness of one's own feelings as they occur.”

“Threats to our standing in the eyes of others are remarkably potent biologically, almost as powerful as those to our very survival.”

“Fear, in evolution, has a special prominence: perhaps more than any other emotion it is crucial for survival.”

“When we are in the grip of craving or fury, head-over-heals in love our recoiling in dread, it is the limbic system that has us in its grip.”

“Our emotional mind will harness the rational mind to its purposes, for our feelings and reactions-- rationalizations-- justifying them in terms of the present moment, without realizing the influence of our emotional memory.”

“Feelings are self-justifying, with a set of perceptions and "proofs" all their own.”

“In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels”

“Los pensamientos obsesivos son la leña que alimenta el fuego de la ira, un fuego que sólo podrá extinguirse contemplando las cosas desde un punto de vista diferente”

“[Sharmayne Williams:]...puoi avere tutte le emozioni possibili, ma non devi permettere che siano loro a manovrarti.”

“Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.”

“The argument has long been made that we humans are by nature compassionate and empathic despite the occasional streak of meanness, but torrents of bad news throughout history have contradicted that claim, and little sound science has backed it. But try this thought experiment. Imagine the number of opportunities people around the world today might have to commit an antisocial act, from rape or murder to simple rudeness and dishonesty. Make that number the bottom of a fraction. Now for the top value you put the number of such antisocial acts that will actually occur today. That ratio of potential to enacted meanness holds at close to zero any day of the year. And if for the top value you put the number of benevolent acts performed in a given day, the ratio of kindness to cruelty will always be positive. (The news, however, comes to us as though that ratio was reversed.)Harvard's Jerome Kagan proposes this mental exercise to make a simple point about human nature: the sum total of goodness vastly outweighs that of meanness. 'Although humans inherit a biological bias that permits them to feel anger, jealousy, selfishness and envy, and to be rude, aggressive or violent,' Kagan notes, 'they inherit an even stronger biological bias for kindness, compassion, cooperation, love and nurture – especially toward those in need.' This inbuilt ethical sense, he adds, 'is a biological feature of our species.”

“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”