Mark: Michelle, I've got a stat that will break your brain. Research shows 90% of top performers are high in emotional intelligence. Michelle: Okay, that makes sense. EQ is a superpower. We've been hearing that for years. It’s the difference between a boss who inspires you and one who makes you want to hide in the supply closet. Mark: Here's the twist. The same research shows only 36% of us can accurately identify our own emotions as they're happening. Michelle: Whoa. Hold on. So almost everyone at the top has it, but most of us can't even tell if we're feeling anxious or just need a sandwich? Mark: Exactly. There's a massive gap between knowing EQ is important and actually having it. And that gap is precisely what Dr. Travis Bradberry tackles in his book, Emotional Intelligence Habits: Change Your Habits, Change Your Life. Michelle: Bradberry... that name is familiar. Mark: It should be. This is a follow-up to his mega-bestseller Emotional Intelligence 2.0. He's one of the world's leading experts, and his whole mission is to turn this big, fuzzy concept of 'EQ' into something you can actually practice, like going to the gym for your brain. Michelle: I like that. So it's not about just knowing you should be calm when your boss sends a one-word email that just says "urgent." It's about having the habits to actually be calm. Mark: That's the foundational idea. He argues that emotional intelligence isn't some fixed trait you're born with. It's a skill. A muscle. And you can train it.

Michelle: A muscle, huh? That's a hopeful way to put it. Because some days my emotional 'muscle' feels like a wet noodle. How does he even define it? Mark: He breaks it down into four core skills. First, there's Self-Awareness—that's the 36% problem, just knowing what you're feeling. Then Self-Management, which is what you do with that feeling. Do you snap, or do you take a breath? Michelle: Okay, the internal stuff. Mark: Right. Then there's the external side: Social Awareness, which is reading the room and understanding others' emotions, and finally, Relationship Management, which is using all that awareness to interact successfully. Michelle: That all sounds great in theory. But what does it mean to say it's a physical, trainable thing? Is there proof that our brains are actually wired for this? Mark: There is, and the book opens with one of the most dramatic and frankly, gruesome, pieces of evidence in the history of neuroscience. It's the story of Phineas Gage. Michelle: Oh, I think I've heard of him. The railroad guy, right? Mark: The very same. It’s 1848. Gage is a foreman, known for being capable, well-liked, calm under pressure—a model of high EQ, you could say. One day, there's an accident. He's tamping blasting powder into a rock, and a spark ignites it. The tamping iron—a three-and-a-half-foot-long, thirteen-pound metal rod—shoots out of the hole like a missile. Michelle: Oh my god. Mark: It enters under his left cheekbone, goes straight through his brain, and exits out the top of his skull, landing eighty feet away. Michelle: And he survived? That's impossible. Mark: He not only survived, he was conscious and talking minutes later. His physical wounds healed. But Phineas Gage, the man, was gone. His doctor described him as "fitful, irreverent, impatient of restraint... devising many plans which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned." He became rude, unreliable, and prone to rage. He lost his job, his friends, everything. Michelle: That's horrifying. So you're saying his personality, his character, was literally blown out of his head? Mark: In a very real sense, yes. The iron destroyed a large part of his prefrontal cortex, the brain region right behind our foreheads. This is our center for rational thought and, crucially, for emotional regulation. It’s the part of the brain that talks to the emotional, limbic system and says, "Hey, let's not yell at our boss right now." Gage's story was the first real proof that our emotional intelligence has a physical home in the brain. Michelle: Okay, that's a powerful and terrifying example. If physical damage can break it, can we intentionally build it? Can we strengthen that connection between the rational and emotional brain without a tamping iron? Mark: That's the million-dollar question, and the answer is yes. It's a concept called neuroplasticity. Your brain's ability to change. Bradberry explains that every time you react to a trigger—say, you get a stressful email and you feel that flash of anger—you have a choice. Michelle: The choice being... fire off a nasty reply or go for a walk. Mark: Exactly. If you always fire off the nasty reply, you're strengthening a neural pathway. It's like walking the same path in a forest over and over. It becomes a well-worn road, your default reaction. But if you force yourself to choose a new response—to take a breath, to re-read the email, to assume good intent—you start forging a new path. Michelle: It's probably a tiny, overgrown trail at first. Mark: A very tiny trail. It feels unnatural and difficult. But the book's argument is that if you do it consistently, that new path gets wider and easier to travel. The old, angry path starts to grow over from disuse. You are literally rewiring your brain. That's the "habit" part of the title.

Michelle: Okay, so our brains can change. That's genuinely hopeful. But how? What does the book actually tell us to do? Is it just a list of things like 'be more grateful' and 'get more sleep'? Mark: It is, in a way, a list. Bradberry structures the book as a collection of dozens of specific, actionable habits. He calls them "micro-behaviors." It's designed like a customizable toolkit. You take an online EQ test that comes with the book, see where your weaknesses are, and then it points you to the habits that will give you the biggest bang for your buck. Michelle: I like that. It’s not a one-size-fits-all prescription. It’s more like a buffet. Mark: A habit buffet, exactly. And some of the dishes are incredibly nourishing and backed by solid research. For example, one habit is "Appreciate What You Have." It sounds simple, but a University of California study found that practicing gratitude for a few minutes a day literally reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%. Michelle: Wow, 23 percent? That's a real, physical change from just thinking about things you're thankful for. Mark: A huge change. Another one is "Practice Mindfulness." This isn't just a wellness trend. He points to Google's internal mindfulness course, which is wildly popular and has been shown to improve focus and lower stress for thousands of their employees. These are practical, evidence-based strategies. Michelle: I love the practical stuff. The buffet analogy is working for me. But I have to ask... looking through the chapters, some of the habits in here feel a bit... 2015 self-help? I'm seeing things like "Adopt a Power Pose." Didn't the science on that get a lot of pushback? Mark: That's a fair and incredibly important critique. And it's where the buffet analogy gets tricky. The book is highly rated, and it's sold a ton of copies, but some reviewers do point out that it mixes solid neuroscience with more pop-psychology ideas that have been questioned or even debunked in the years since they became popular. Michelle: So the "power pose" idea, for example. The original study suggested that standing in an expansive pose could change your hormone levels and make you feel more confident. But it's faced major replication issues. Mark: It has. And the book also talks about "grit" and other concepts that, while popular, are sometimes criticized for being oversimplified. This is the central challenge of the book. It's trying to be an ultra-practical guide, but in creating this huge buffet of habits, not every dish has the same nutritional value. Michelle: So as a reader, you have to be discerning. You can't just blindly accept every habit. It's like going to a real buffet—you load up on the fresh-cooked salmon and the salad, but maybe you're a little skeptical of the mystery Jell-O mold in the corner. Mark: That is the perfect analogy. The book's strength is its premise: you can change. Its structure is its potential weakness. You have to be an active participant, a smart consumer of the advice. You focus on the habits that resonate with you and have strong backing, like mindfulness, sleep hygiene, and managing your self-talk. Michelle: And maybe you treat the more questionable ones, like power-posing, as a placebo at best. If it makes you feel more confident before a meeting, great. But don't bank on it changing your testosterone levels. Mark: Precisely. The goal is to use the book as a launchpad for self-awareness, not as an infallible bible of habits.

Michelle: That actually brings it all together for me. The big idea isn't any single habit, whether it's gratitude or power-posing. It's the meta-habit of treating your emotional responses as something you can actively shape. The book's real value is that framework, even if you're skeptical of some of the specific menu items. Mark: Exactly. The core message is profound: your emotional life isn't something that just happens to you. It's a series of skills you can build. The book gives you a gym full of equipment. Some machines might be more effective than others, but the most important step is just showing up and recognizing that you can, in fact, get stronger. Michelle: And the starting point for all of this, as the book says, has to be self-awareness. You can't manage what you don't measure. You can't fix a reaction if you don't even notice you're having it. Mark: That's the 36% problem we started with. Most of us are on autopilot. We feel anger, or stress, or jealousy, and we just react. The first, most powerful habit is simply to notice. To create a tiny space between the trigger and the response. Michelle: I think that’s the perfect takeaway. Maybe the first step for listeners isn't to try and master all 60-plus habits in this book. Maybe it's just to spend one day practicing the habit of observation. Notice your emotional triggers without judgment. What makes you snap at your kids? What makes you shut down in a meeting? Just watch. Mark: That's a perfect start. It's the foundation for everything else. And we'd love to hear what you discover. Find us on our socials and share one emotional trigger you noticed this week. It's fascinating to see the patterns, both in ourselves and in others. Michelle: It’s about learning your own internal wiring before you try to rewire it. Mark: Beautifully put. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.