If You Tend to Piss People Off

The World’s Shortest Course on Emotional Intelligence

Professional and personal success usually requires both cognitive and emotional intelligence, the ability to say and do things that get others to like you or do you what you'd like.

Too often, emotional intelligence is seen as an ineffability that's suffused through lucky people’s DNA. Or emotional intelligence is the subject of a long course.

My Psychology Today article today attempts to distill emotional intelligence's essence into a blog-length post.

5 Warnings to People Who Are Too Trusting

Going through life is easier when you trust that most people’s motives are good. Whether or not that's true, it’s unarguable that some people have paid a huge price for being too trusting. Being aware of five things should help. I describe them in my Psychology Today article today.

Making People Feel Good About Themselves

This is the third  in a series on under-discussed keys to success and contentment. The first was about titration: the skill of consciously decide how intense, intellectual, or perfectionistic to be in a given situation situation. The second installment was on becoming more resilient.

Here, I turn to the art of making others feel good about themselves. Some people naturally do that. My PsychologyToday.com article today is for the rest of us.

Ways of BeingTactful...and When Not to Use Them

As today's PsychologyToday.com contribution, I list times when it's wise to be direct but opine that various degrees of sugar-coating are more often wise. I list a number of such tactics.

Stories of Seclusion: A Rejected Man

Today's installment in my PsychologyToday.com series, Stories of Seclusion, tells of Jerry who has spent most of his life getting rejected.

What I'm Learning About Being Tactful and Acquiring More Emotional Intelligence

My PsychologyToday.com article today is on what I'm learning about how to be tactful, acquiring more emotional intelligence.

How to Be Smart in a Less Smart World

My PsychologyToday.com article today: How to Be Smart in a Less Smart World.

It will be re-published in the next issue of the Mensa publication, The Intelligencer.

The World's Shortest Course in Success

I wish I could say that ethics is paramount but if I am to be honest, nothing is more important than intelligence and drive. 

Balance is overrated. Most people of accomplishment work 50, 60, even 80 hours a week. And that imbalance need not be deleterious to their health. A person who works slow and steady on work he or she is good at will be far less stressed than someone who's annoyed by their children's or spouse's shenanigans or who get frustrated with every bad golf shot.

Also key to success: As long as it's ethical, ask for what you want. People who don't ask--for fear of rejection, failure, imposing, etc.--usually doom themselves to far less success than they otherwise could achieve.