If you’re interested in emotional intelligence but you’re not a big reader, you way want to listen to this extract from Daniel Goleman’s book from BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week’ series:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/bookof_thu
It’s a good quick way to get your head round some aspects of emotional intelligence. The reading is only available (as streaming audio) until Wednesday 10th January.
The Edge, an online magazine devoted to the Third Culture, asks a big question each New Year of its contributors, who read like a roll call of the brightest people on the planet. This year’s was:
"What are you optimistic about?"
One of the contributors, psychologist Steven Pinker, points out that sadism and violence in human beings has shown a steady decline (with a few zigzags along the way, obviously). Thiis is backed up by this statistic from another contributor, curator of the TED Conference Chris Anderson:
Percentage of males estimated to have died in violence in hunter gatherer societies? Approximately 30%. Percentage of males who died in violence in the 20th century complete with two world wars and a couple of nukes? Approximately 1%. Trends for violent deaths so far in the 21st century? Falling. Sharply.
I’ve singled out these two contributors, but really, the whole thing is worth reading. I will return to some of the other points raised in the responses in future – there’s so much there!
Warning – if you’re easily upset by cruelty you may want to give the Pinker article a miss, as he mentions (in the first paragraph) some rather distressing stuff that used to happen.
What Pinker’s optimistic about
What Anderson’s optimistic about
As you would expect, this is the biggest month for new gym signups, as millions of Brits resolve to exercise more and eat more healthily. But by February, 30% of the new year joiners will have dropped out, according to a report in The Guardian today, which goes on to estimate we waste £200 million in gym membership fees each year.
In general, our new year’s resolutions don’t come with a very high expectation of success. Many people go into them expecting to fail, even if they don’t admit this to themselves. And if you’re at all interested in personal development, no doubt your inbox this week will be awash with newsletters from life coaches telling you how to avoid this fate.
Now someone is actually doing some research on what works in resolutions. Professor Richard Wiseman, author of The Luck Factor, is conducting the study. No details on his web site yet, but he does give some tips in this article for increasing your chances of success. The tips iinclude:
… all of which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows about NLP.
