The first time that I had heard the term"EQ"was in the fall of 1995 when the book Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman, was widely covered by the American press. The widespread research presented in the book supported my own observations and doubts about life and emotions, and told me that I was on the right track to go after happiness. The research continues to confirm what I had concluded on my own: These feelings are extremely important to individual health, happiness, and social harmony. This might seem a bit obvious, but it was not always obvious to me. I grew up in a family where we didn't talk about feelings. We talked about ideas, concepts and principles. As a result, I could tell you what I thought about everything, but I couldn't tell you how I felt about anything. After several failed relationships, I took time off to reflect on my life and realized I had made many decisions which resulted in unhappiness for myself and others. After studying the literature on emotions and feelings, I concluded that most of my poor decisions could be directly due to what is now called low emotional intelligence, or low EQ, for short. Previously, I struggled to find happiness through the traditional routes--material success. Now, however, I realize that: There's not much point having either wealth or relationships if you aren't happy. It is hard to be happy with others if you aren't happy yourself. It is hard to be happy alone if you don't feel good about yourself, i.e. have high selfesteem and selfconfidence. It is hard to have good feelings about yourself if you don't have good emotional management skills.  Emotional management skills, the main subject of EQ, are, therefore, one of the most basic elements of happiness. Before reading the book, the author thought he could have happiness   _  .
if he could earn a lot of money if he could avoid poor decisions if he took time off to reflect on his life if he ignored the traditional routes