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Via Wikipedia:”describes an ability, capacity, or skill to perceive, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others, and of groups. As a relatively new area of psychological research, the definition of EI is constantly changing.”

I think the basics of human psychology and emotional intelligence should be required course work for every high school and college student in the world. It’s really unfortunate that although Algebra and English literature are standard fare, the basic tools to understand ourselves are not provided to young people who need it more than anything else.

I had been aware of this field and the associated text since the mid nineties when it first emerged, but really had yet to pursue the concept actively in my life until my early thirties. Someone close to me gave me the book after witnessing me struggle with my emotions, and I’m extremely grateful…especially since that person directly experienced the negative affects of my emotional immaturity. Like anything self-help related, and much like Buddhist practice, it’s an ongoing process that is never complete. Hopefully some day I can pass the book on to someone else who will benefit from it as much as I have.

Emotional Intelligence Blog

Conflict in a relationship is virtually inevitable. In itself, conflict isn’t a problem; how it’s handled, however, can bring people together or tear them apart. Poor communication, disagreements and misunderstandings can be a source of anger and distance, or a springboard to a stronger relationship and happier future. Next time you’re dealing with conflict, keep these effective communication tips in mind and you can create a more positive outcome. more»

Have you ever looked at super creative or innovative people, and felt they are special beings blessed with gifts? Creativity is actually more psychology than intellect.

The great paradox of “social networking” is that it uses narcissism as the glue for “community.” -Nicholas Carr

In March Nicholas Carr posted a humorous post on the topic of Twitter, the online service that allows you to text your every minute thought or action to all your friends. In it, he wrote the above quote. The social web is all about community, but strangely enough – at its core seems to be narcissism. Twitter is all about “What are you doing?”, right? (Note, I don’t think Twitter is bad, I think it has some uses.)

The social web is letting people expose themselves like no other services in the history of the world. And, people are participating in large numbers.

You can tell other people all about yourself in new ways:

* All your thoughts on Typepad or Blogger.
* All about yourself on mySpace
* All your photos on flickr
* All your thoughts moment to moment on Twitter
* Where you are all the time on Plazes
* Put videos of yourself on YouTube

But, are people sharing in order to edify the larger group – or are they sharing in order to say “look at me”? This leads me into a new study that shows that today’s college students are very narcissistic.

Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could harm personal relationships and American society.

…
Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop today in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.

The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place,” “I think I am a special person” and “I can live my life any way I want to.”

The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students’ NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.

See: Think you’re ’special’? That’s not necessarily a good thing.

So, could part of the success of the new “social” web be based on the fact that it has a booming narcissistic market to use its services? If this is accurate, then entrepreneurs should look at their new social web services not as how they can serve the group – but how the service can promote the individual to others in the group.

Please note that I am not saying that self-promotion is always bad. Actually it is a natural part of life and success, especially when it comes to business. mySpace started getting popular when bands used it to promote themselves. The community took off, but the growth was facilitated in the early days by people promoting themselves. LinkedIn has an element of self–promotion as well as community. So, maybe we should think about the features that benefit the individual first, then the group features second. Future markets for social web services may be better identified by looking for people who want or need to promote themselves. Via: Tomorrows Trends

Brainwashing 101 - Break them down, then build them back up again. Rinse and repeat. Cults and Religion have been doing this for years to amass their loyal following.

Ian Newby-Clark, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada who studies habit change.

I’m shocked by the intellectual insight into this subject I found in of all things, a hip-hop forum, but nevertheless it’s insightful. Via Rapmusic.com, some excerpts from a thread about the objectification of women in society:

The original post:
Are men objectifying women or are women objectifying themselves?
Playboy magazine is run by Heffner’s wife and daughter. Most porn companies are owned and/or ran by women. Tyra Banks is the executive producer of America’s Next Top Model. An overwhelming majority of fashion designers who choose these skinny, malnourished girls to model their clothes are female. Women line up by the thousands eager to show off their secrets and get paid for it. Girls are way more critical of another female’s physical appearance than men are. They judge everything from the hair down to the toenail polish… and honeydip is automatically dismissed if her shoes don’t match her purse.

Ongoing responses:
I can’t say who is doing the most damage because the relationship is dialectical.

Men create the physical expectations for women, but women shape them by constantly reproducing them in many of the ways you’ve already mentioned.

It takes two.

Now I’m not diverting attention away from the original question, so yes I believe women objectify themselves. But I understand why. My mother was not taught how to work. She wasn’t told to go to college and the value of an education wasn’t stressed to her. When she was in high school her only ambition was to be a mother – because that is what she was taught to do. By the age of 16 she did that. It’s an understatement to say that most women or girls were/are ill prepared for todays status quo.

I say that to say this: a lot of people, when in positions where they have few options, use whatever is at their disposal to survive. And the easiest among those when you’re a woman is your sexuality.

The ones who blame patriarchy for everything will tell you that it all started with men and that the reason women squabble amongst each other and judge one another harshly is because of their competition for men. I think there should come a time when people should start to take responsibility for their own actions. Men have to compete with one another to get women and most of us usually respect a code of not hatin’ a brother who is successful at gettin’ his… MOST of us, mind you… but with women, the hating is far worse.

That is part of the reason ( but probably not even close to the entire reason) why women hate on other women, because they have a more intimate sense of what the criteria is supposed to be, there are things men can get away with among other men that women cannot get away with among other women, from the standpoint of superficial judgement. Because some women try so hard to make themselves look presentable on a daily basis.. sometimes even in spite of themselves.. when they see another woman who is making less of an effort, the natural thing to do is to critique

self esteem and competition. the girl that you may think is just beneath you, looks wise, is the same girl that can walk away with the guy you want.

for example, when i was with my ex, i had a problem with him being cool with his ex. under normal circumstances i know im bad. but while everything was going on i felt he was attracted to her, therefore her being more desirous than me, or me being inadequate. omg and she was white so my world was rocked (you guys already know i had some issues with that shit lol). so it ate away at me for a time, and i wanted to pin point what it was about her that just made her so special. and i couldn’t. which then made me more mad because i couldn’t understand why he liked her more.

now in hindsight, maybe he didn’t like her more. maybe they really were just friends. i’ll never know the truth. but i made my brain play out every possible negative scenario as to why or how she could have been better than me.

females have a lot of untapped power. a lot of women don’t feel beautiful unless a man tells them they are. a lot of women don’t feel like they’re worth anything unless they have boyfriends. that’s why i think some women objectify themselves because that’s one of the ways they have or can manipulate their power (sex appeal).

True. The ironic part in the first sentence is that if a woman does feel beautiful without having to have a man tell her so then it sometimes gets considered being concieted.. Funny how things get twisted. You can feel sexy when, where, and how he says…lol Riiiight.

men arent so one tracked to pick women just because of looks so its sometimes pointless to think about it in that way when wondering why he wasnt into you. having said that, many men will overlook bad character traits if she is a dime.

I met a beautiful looking girl once, we went on a date but her attitude put me right off.

Exactly… and sometimes, people’s personalities clash and they just aren’t compatible… it’s hardly ever just about looks… if I had a woman who was decent-looking and a wonderful person who was extremely good to me, I’m not gonna leave her for some beautiful chickenhead… some guys might do that, but they might not be completely in tuned with themselves to know what they need vs what they want, so they chase every superficiality…. there are a lot of women who do the same… those people don’t know themselves… I think all of those things should be judged and evaluated before you decide to commit to someone, but we tend to lose our heads in love and make careless decisions… which is I always believe that it takes two to make or break a relationship.

In the animal kingdom peacocks have pretty feathers. deers have huge antlers. lions have roars.

Among us, women have their looks. That is what we use. If men were attracted to intelligence alone a lot of women would walk around with books in their hand and would sit in libraries for hours at a time. But women know that if you want to attract a male, it’s going to take more than that, and you’re going to have to have some attractive assets. So you spend hours on top of hours plucking eyebrows, and finding the right bra, and shaving, and applying eye shadow just to gain the attention on a male, which will hopefully lead to him being attracted.

Again, many women base their worth off of how much male attention they get. if they work hard to get that attention, only to have it showered on a female that is of a lower caliber (looks wise) is just another blow to their self esteem. obviously women feel as if looks are that important to males.

for example, my ex used to (and still has) Vida Guerra as his AIM icon – and it just so happened to be an ass shot lol – i do not have a big booty, so for a minute, that made me self conscious…he likes ass and i don’t have one. LoL i mean i got over it, but trivial things like that can really bother a woman and make her feel less secure.

women have much more power than they realize…and the women that recognize the power simply don’t know how to use it.

when women do that, they got one specific type of dude in they mind.. they might want a good man, but deep down they want a thug n shit.. so when a good man comes around “oh im not interested..”

sometimes when women look for good men, they are right under they nose. some women might have a good male friend thats real compatible with the girl, so when that dude asks her on a date, she sez “noo i dont think so.. i dont want to break this great friendship we got!” then they go out and find some dude so completely opposite from them and think its love when theres a large chance that it may end up in breakin up.

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I’ve seen some of these films before, and they never fail to elicit an intense emotional response. If you’ve never seen them, you’re in for an uncomfortable reality check. So without further ado…

Life’s primary purpose before anything else is to pass on the blueprint that makes it possible – that thing we call DNA. Whether you’re protozoan or a sentient hominid, that unavoidable reality is what leads to sexual competition. The inescapable nature of life to propagate in order to survive, and the inherent competition for passing on that blueprint we call DNA seems to be at the root, so I see no way out of it. If the discrimination wasn’t aesthetic it would be something else. As long as there is sexual competition, there will be those with advantage and those without. No matter how hard I try to imagine a scenario that frees us of these realities, it escapes me.

update: Someone(a woman) just made a really good point after listening to me vent on this topic. Without realizing it she illuminated a unique perspective, which is a good point. She simply made me think about the fact that the true escape perhaps, for women, is a healthy perspective and a healthy self image that does not fall prey to the negative influences of society. Kudos Kelley.