Jonah Lehrer Quotes

There's no doubt I'm emotional.

I guess I'm pretty emotional.

People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness. They always have the power to think, and to think about their thinking, and to think about thinking about their thinking, which the goddamn dolphin, as far as we know, can't do. Therefore they have much greater ability to change themselves than any other animal has.

To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.

I have pitfalls. I have emotional responses to things that are really not about me. They're about other people.

People just tell me I'm supposed to be sensitive, and I'm not. But I think I'm very emotional. I'm very caring.

A great part of the disaster of contemporary life lies in the fact that it is organized around feelings. People nearly always act on their feelings, and think it only right. The will is then left at the mercy of circumstances that evoke feelings. Christian spiritual formation today must squarely confront this fact and overcome it.

IQ and technical skills are important, but emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership.

You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control.

Emotional intelligence grows through perception. Look around at your present situation and observe it through the level of feeling.

If human emotions largely result from thinking, then one may appreciably control one's feelings by controlling one's thoughts - or by changing the internalized sentences, or self-talk, with which one largely created the feeling in the first place.

I really can't tell other people how to live their life or how to approach different things. What I can tell them - and I truly believe this, I don't think it's being naïve and I don't think it's being in denial - I really believe that the way you think influences the way you feel, and the way you feel influences the way you act.

If you're aware when it's going on, you can deal with it and change it. If you're not aware of it, you'll be mystified at the states that come and go seemingly without reason.

Obviously, circumstances alone do not make us happy or unhappy. It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is within you. That is where the kingdom of hell is, too.

Emotional Literacy means being able to recognise what you are feeling, so that it doesn't interfere with thinking. It becomes another dimension to draw upon when making decisions or encountering situations. Emotional expression by contrast can mean being driven by emotions, so that it isn't possible to think. These two things are often confused, because we are still uncomfortable with the idea of the validity of feelings.

When people learn to master their feelings, they can soon learn to master their reflections and thoughts in the degree requisite for attaining the objects they are seeking. But while they yield to a feeling or spirit that distracts their minds from a subject they wish to study and learn, so long they will never gain the mastery of their minds.

Feeling irritated, restless, afraid, and hopeless is a reminder to listen more carefully.

Emotional intelligence, more than any other factor, more than I.Q. or expertise, accounts for 85% to 90% of success at work... I.Q. is a threshold competence. You need it, but it doesn't make you a star. Emotional intelligence can.

Emotional self-awareness is the building block of the next fundamental emotional intelligence: being able to shake off a bad mood.

Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

Anger begins as an inner twinge. We sense something long before it blossoms (explodes?) into an emotional tirade. If we listen to this twinge -- and follow its advice -- the emotional outburst (or in burst) is not needed.

By choosing your thoughts, and by selecting which emotional currents you will release and which you will reinforce, you determine the quality of your Light. You determine the effects that you will have upon others, and the nature of the experiences of your life.

Emotional makeup is more important than technical skill

If people stopped looking on their emotions as ethereal, almost inhuman processes, and realistically viewed them as being largely composed of perceptions, thoughts, evaluations, and internalized sentences, they would find it quite possible to work calmly and concertedly at changing them.

Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it. If you choose a mix of contradictions, it will clog your motor, corrode your transmission and wreck you on your first attempt to move with a machine which you, the driver, have corrupted.