Emotional Intelligence Quotes

“You are ‘in love’ with your partner. This is at first a deeply satisfying state. You feel intensely alive. Your existence has suddenly become meaningful because someone needs you, wants you, and makes you feel special, and you do the same for him or her. When you are together you feel whole. The feeling can become so intense that the rest of the world fades into insignificance. However, you may also have noticed that there is a neediness and a clinging quality to that intensity. You become addicted to the other person. He or she acts on you like a drug. You are on a high when the drug is available, but even the possibility or the thought that he or she might no longer be there for you can lead to jealousy, possessiveness, attempts at manipulation through emotional blackmail, blaming and accusing—fear of loss. If the other person does leave you, this can give rise to the most intense hostility or the most profound grief and despair. In an instant, loving tenderness can turn into a savage attack or dreadful grief. Where is the love now? Can love change into its opposite in an instant? Was it love in the first place, or just an addictive grasping and clinging?”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 149)

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Quote on Revealing Inner Beauty When The Darkness Sets In

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Beyond the Quote (156/365)

Matching your moods to the weather of the day is easy—happy when it’s sunny, gloomy when it’s overcast. It’s a very natural response to the sort of feelings each type of weather encourages. How could you not be in a better mood when the sun is shining bright versus when it’s dark and gloomy? And so it is for most of us. But, what if you didn’t have to be in a dark and gloomy mood when it was dark and gloomy outside? What if you could learn to maintain a peak state that was independent of the weather? This is the art of nurturing the light within.

Susan David Quote on Having Emotional Agility and Staying Balanced in the Face of Complexity

“How we deal with our inner world drives everything. Every aspect of how we love, how we live, how we parent and how we lead. The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. And rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic. We need greater levels of emotional agility for true resilience and thriving.”
Susan David, Ph.D, Mindful

Beyond the Quote (127/365)

As a result of people being in quarantine because of COVID-19, there have been two conversations that have been happening at large. One group has been pushing for productivity. The idea is to use all of this extra time to do more of that you felt you never had time to do before. Start that blog; write that book; lose that weight; create that website; become that person. The other group has been pushing for conscientious recovery. The idea is that this global pandemic has radically affected all of our lives and has redefined “normal.” We need to be taking this time to mindfully cope with all of new unknowns and pay close attention to our mental health during this global crisis. Both of these schools of thought should be carefully considered by everybody.

“Most of us would be seized with fear if our bodies went numb, and would do everything possible to avoid it, yet we take no interest at all in the numbing of our souls.”
Epictetus, via Stillness is the Key (Page 83)

Set yourself free.

Osho Quote on Sadness and How To Relax Into It, Change Its Form, and Look Deeper Into It

“Whenever you feel sad, sit by the side of a tree, by the side of the river, by the side of a rock, and just relax into your sadness without any fear. The more you relax, the more you will become acquainted with the beauties of sadness. Then sadness will start changing its form; it will become a silent joy, uncaused by anybody outside you. That will not be shallow happiness, which can be taken away very easily. And getting deeper into your aloneness, one day you will find not only joy – joy is only midway. Happiness is very superficial, depends on others; joy is in the middles, does not depend on anyone. But going deeper you will come to the state of bliss – that’s what I call enlightenment.”
Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

Beyond the Quote (93/365)

Whenever you are feeling a deep emotion—sit with it. Do not rush to do anything else. Do not turn on the TV; do not turn on a podcast; do not log into your social media accounts; do not pour a glass of wine; do not conduct busywork; do not go shopping; do not experiment with drugs; do not call your ex. Just, sit with it.

“Look into yourself and try to figure out the big stress that is magnetically attracting all the tiny stresses to feed your volcano. When we address the big ones, the small ones can slide off our shoulders instead of building up into something they don’t need to be. If something minor is setting you off more than normal, it may be a sign that the big one is not far behind. Find a quiet place, get comfortable, and ask the uncomfortable question: “What’s really bugging me?” Whatever it is, it’s important to be the archaeologist and start digging inward to discover what’s down there. You’ll quickly realize that problems have layers, and many of them don’t have other people’s names attached to them. This practice of digging deeper and peeling away layers is important as it’ll help us find the root of many of our problems—which is usually about fear.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 252)

Eckhart Tolle Quote on Taking Responsibility and Making the Present Moment Your Ally

“Maybe you are being taken advantage of, maybe the activity you are engaged in is tedious, maybe someone close to you is dishonest, irritating, or unconscious, but all this is irrelevant. Whether your thoughts and emotions about this situation are justified or not makes no difference. The fact is that you are resisting what is. You are making the present moment into an enemy. You are creating unhappiness, conflict between the inner and the outer. Your unhappiness is polluting not only your own inner being and those around you but also the collective human psyche of which you are an inseparable part. The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner psychic pollution: millions of unconscious individuals not taking responsibility for their inner space.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 77)

Beyond the Quote (82/365)

It’s easy to point fingers, to yell at a screen, to identify all of the faults in other people’s decisions and actions—it’s hard to take responsibility and make positive decisions yourself. What’s makes this harder is that you might even be right. The mess of the world might very well be the fault of another—or the fault of many others. But as Tolle points out, whether your thoughts and emotions about a given situation are justified or not makes no difference.

“Be confused, it’s where you begin to learn new things. Be broken, it’s where you begin to heal. Be frustrated, it’s where you start to make more authentic decisions. Be sad, because if we are brave enough we can hear our heart’s wisdom through it. Be whatever you are right now. No more hiding. You are worthy, always.”
S. C. Lourie

Beyond the Quote (80/365)

Life doesn’t always have to be sunshine and rainbows. And it certainly runs deeper than smiles and ease. But you already know this. You’ve felt it: the confusion, the sadness, the frustration, the brokenness, the misery, the pain—it’s all a part of the experience of life. What you need to know is that it’s okay to feel these emotions. It doesn’t make you any less human to feel the breadth and depth of the emotional spectrum—if anything, it makes you more human.

“All of our emotions have value, and as unpleasant as some are, they’re reminders that we’re alive and have a whole lot going on inside. Why not approach life with curiosity and wonder, instead of dread and fear. We don’t avoid movies because we know they’ll end. We enjoy the journey they take us on. Our journey is life, and no one makes it out alive; the finish is death, so let’s enjoy life while we can, with those we love, while they’re still here.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 46)

Emotions do be like that.

Eckhart Tolle Quote on Monitoring Your Mental-Emotional State To Keep Your Inside Right

“Make it a habit to monitor your mental-emotional state through self-observation. ‘Am I at ease at this moment?’ is a good question to ask yourself frequently. Or you can ask: ‘What’s going on inside me at this moment?’ Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 77)

Beyond the Quote (38/365)

For so many of us, the gap between an outside stimulus and our response is immediate and reflexive. We react with the immediate feelings and emotions that arise without really knowing what those feelings and emotions even are—until after the fact. Acting and then thinking has it’s time and it’s place, but so does thinking and then acting. Get it wrong and things could get far more complicated and challenging than they need to.

“When we push aside difficult emotions in order to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop deep skills to help us deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”
Susan David, Ph.D, Mindful

Beyond the Quote (27/365)

This is the problem with positive thinking from a superficial standpoint. If something sad happens and you try to cover it up with happy thoughts, like a kind of mask, you get an un-dealt-with-sadness that lies suppressed inside. When something really upsets you and you try to distract your mind from confronting that “upset-ness,” those feelings will get pushed down and will continue to broil from deep within.

“Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 40)

“If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion, or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth. Not the ultimate truth of who you are, but the relative truth of your state of mind at that time.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 26)

“If you cannot feel your emotions, if you are cut off from them, you will eventually experience them on a purely physical level, as a physical problem or symptom.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 25)

It’s not about suppressing emotions—it’s about not becoming them.

Let feelings reveal their truth before you act.

Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜