The document emphasizes the importance of emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and kindness as means to enhance personal and interpersonal growth. It discusses how attitudes toward failure can shape success and highlights the correlation between self-efficacy and work performance. Ultimately, it advocates for presence, listening, and goodness as essential practices that foster deeper connections and influence.

1. “[…] happiness is not something you pursue; it is something you allow.” (p. 33)

2. The aim of developing emotional intelligence is
to help you optimize yourself and function at an
ever higher level than what you are already
capable of. (p. 16)

3. Mindfulness is the skill that gives you the
faculty of voluntarily bringing back a
wondering attention over and over again,
and as William James said, it is “the
education par excellence”, the best thing
you can learn. (p. 52)

4. “And the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a
wondering attention over and over again is
the very root of judgement, character and will.
No one is compos sui if he have it not. An
education which should improve this faculty
would be the education par excellence.”
William James (pp. 51­52)

5. Thich Nhat Hanh put it most poetically: “The
most precious gift we can offer others is our
presence. When mindfulness embraces
those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”
If there are people in your life you care about,
be sure to give them a few minutes of your
full attention every day. They will bloom like
flowers. (p. 60)

6. Zen master Norman Fisher said, “Listening
is magic: it turns a person from an object
outside, opaque or dimly threatening, into
an intimate experience, and therefore into
a friend. In this way, listening softens and
transform the listener.” (pp. 59­60)

7. Failure is the building block of success.
Soichiro Honda famously said, “Success is 99
percent failure.” Thomas Watson said, “If you
want to increase your success rate, double your
failure rate.” […]
If you want to do something new and innovative,
you often need to feel stupid as well. (p. 152)

8. Everybody fails in some major way at some
point in their lives, even the greatest and most
successful among us, like Michael Jordan.
What distinguishes successful people is their
attitude towards failure, and specifically, how
they explain their own failure to themselves.
(pp. 152­153)

9. Also recognize that feeling bad about feeling
bad is an act of ego. It’s a reflection of our
ego’s image about itself, and the net result is
the creation of new distress for no good
reason at all. The antidote is to let the ego go,
with good humor whenever possible. (p. 112)

10. [...] a large meta­analysis of 114 studies shows
self­efficacy (a form of self­confidence) to
correlate positively with work performance and
suggest it may be even more effective than
strategies like goal setting, which are widely
known to improve work performance. (p. 85)

11. In my experience, the most important
quality of kindness is its healing effect.
Imagine taking a rough, spiky brush and
repeatedly brushing it hard and fast on an
area of your skin. Eventually, your skin will
become inflamed and painful to the touch.
Kindness is the quality of gently ceasing
that harmful brushing action. If you do that,
eventually, the skin will heal. (p. 113)

12. One study even suggests that performing
one kind act a day over just ten days can
measurably increase your happiness.
In other words, kindness is a sustainable
source of happiness (p.171)

13. You can make more friends in two months by
becoming really interested in other people
than you can in two years by trying to get
other people interested in you. Which is just
another way of saying that the way to make a
friend is to be one. – Dale Carnegie (p. 193)

14. If there is a single word that summarizes
all the practices that help expand your
influence, I think that would be goodness.
Goodness is very inspiring, and it inspires
in a way that changes people. That is why,
for example, Mahatma Gandhi was and
still is so influential. (p. 217)