broaden our notion of the spectrum of talents

The guiding visionary behind Project Spectrum is Howard Gardner, a psychologist at the Harvard School of Education. “The time has come,” Gardner told me, “to broaden our notion of the spectrum of talents. The single most important contribution education can make to a child’s development will be satisfied and competent. We’ve completely lost sight of that. Instead we subject everyone to an education where, if you succeed, you will be best suited to be a college professor. And we evaluate everyone along the way according to whether they meet that narrow standard of success. We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts, and cultivate those. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways to succeed, and many, many different abilities that will help you get there.

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages, p.37

two brains, two minds

In a sense we have two brains, two minds – and two different kinds of intelligence: rational and emotional. How we do in life is determined by intelligence: rational and emotional. How we do in life is determined by both – it is not just IQ, but emotional intelligence that matters. Indeed, intellect cannot work at its best without emotional intelligence. Ordinarily, the complementarity of limbic system and neocortex, amygdala and prefrontal lobes, means each is a full partner in mental life. When these partners interact well, emotional intelligence rises – as does intellectual ability. 

This turns the old understanding of the tension between reason and feeling on its head: it is not that we want to do away with emotion and put reason in its place, as Erasmus had it, but instead find the intelligent balance of the two. The old paradigm held an ideal of reason freed of the pull of emotion. The new paradigm urges us to harmonize head and heart. To do that well in our lives means we must first understand more exactly what it means to use emotion intelligently.

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages p.28, 29

habits = 40% of all actions

One paper published by a Duke University researcher in 2006 found that more than 40 percent of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. Random House. 2012.

everyone is important

Feeling entirely at home with persons of high or lowly rank [George Albert Smith] rejected the idea of class distinctions. When his friends urged him to meet someone because he was ‘a very important person’, George had a standard reply. “Of course he is,” he would say, “Everyone is important. I don’t think you can classify human beings on the basis of their importance. Some people may be more influential than others; some may be more capable, some more prominent, and some may have greater responsibilities than others, but no one is more important than anyone else.”

Against the Odds: The Life of George Albert Smith by Mary Jane Woodger. 2011. Covenant Communications.

the psychological muscle

Character, writes Amitai Etzoni, the George Washington University social theorist, is “the psychological muscle that moral conduct requires.”

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages, p.285