Learning Early How to Overcome Failure

Emotional intelligence lessons from the youngest billionaire entrepreneur.

Sara Blakely, the overnight billionaire creator of Spanx, learned at an early age how not to be intimidated by failure.  Her father was a natural mentor in one of the key emotional intelligence skills necessary for young entrepreneurs.  As she told the story to Fareed Zakaria, her father encouraged both her and her brother to report daily any failures they had experienced.  And he rewarded them with praise for being willing and able to recognize and talk about the problems they had faced. 

Continue reading .....

Exercise Your Left Prefrontal Lobe for Emotional Fitness

If we can be motivated to exercise our bodies and our minds, why not try Emotional Fitness as well?

We know that exercising specific muscles causes them to grow stronger and that practicing physical skills like tennis or golf can help us improve those skills and make some of the movements familiar enough to be automatic.   We also know that regular practice of cognitive skills such as reading, writing, arithmetic or languages make us more proficient at those skills and "smarter" in terms of those valued abilities.  When it comes to emotions, however, we don't usually think of practice leading to proficiency despite the fact that such practices have been around for thousands of years in the form of yoga, meditation, and various forms of prayer.

Continue reading....