Aristotle’s Challenge
Anyone can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – this is not easy. – Aristotle
The Golden Mean
Aristotle’s advises developing the habit of finding a golden mean between the extremes of character traits (as opposed to an excess or deficiency). This golden mean lies in a different place for each individual. It is the point between the extremes where character traits act as virtues instead of vices. Virtues enhance one’s quality of life and vices degrade one’s quality of life. Learn more about the Golden Mean.
Excerpts from Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
I have had to wait until now before the scientific harvest was full enough to write this book. These insights are so late in coming largely because the place of feeling in mental life has been surprisingly slighted by research over the years. Into this void has rushed a welter of self-help books, well-intentioned advice at best on clinical opinion but lacking much, if any, scientific basis. Now science is finally able to speak with authority to these urgent and perplexing questions of the psyche at its most irrational, to map with some precision the human heart. Goleman, Emotional Intelligence
Our genetic heritage endows each of us with a series of emotional set-points that determines our temperament. But the brain circuitry involved is extraordinarily malleable; temperament is not destiny. …the emotional lessons we learn as children at home and in school shape the emotional circuits, making us more adept – or inept – at the basics of emotional intelligence. This mean that childhood and adolescence are critical for setting down the essential emotional habits that will govern our lives. Goleman, Emotional Intelligence