Ramblings of a Mami of Two

Most of us are at war with ourselves — and we don’t even know it. We’re raised to believe that being tough on ourselves is necessary for success and happiness in life. Like the army drill sergeant hurling insults at their “soft” recruits, we grow up believing that we’ll always be weak unless we “get tough” with ourselves. And so we develop habits of harshness: We actively criticize ourselves for everything but the highest levels of performance or achievement. We endlessly ruminate of past mistakes, assuming that with enough self-punishment we’ll be motivated to never make them again in the future. We judge ourselves for feeling afraid or embarrassed or just plain tired because it seems like a sign of weakness or poor character. There are two problems with this belief in the necessity of harshness: 1) It doesn’t work. 2) It makes you miserable. I’ve never met a genuinely happy person who was constantly mean to themselves. And most of the successful people I know achieve...

Most people think about emotional intelligence as a skill, something you can build and train with practice. And while this is partly true, there’s a deeper truth about emotional intelligence that most of us miss: Improving your emotional intelligence is often about what you do less of, not more of. As a psychologist, I work with many people who look like though they don’t have much emotional intelligence: They blame other people for their problems They trap themselves in cycles of stress and anxiety They self-sabotage as soon as they start to make progress But it’s my experience that most people don’t actually lack the capacity for emotional intelligence. In fact, I think most people already have a high degree of emotional intelligence. Unfortunately, many people are held back from using their innate emotional intelligence by a collection of bad habits that get in the way. If you’d like to improve your emotional intelligence, learn to identify these habits in y...