Rating: 
Summary: Getting To Know Me, Again
Review:
I'm amazed at how one little book (246 pages), can make such a big difference! Dr. Jeanne Segal is brilliant. Her program, "Raising Your Emotional Intelligence, A Practical Guide" consists of simple techniques, easy to follow processes and quizzes. At first, I thought, "will these quizzes ever stop?" After doing a few of them, I realized the quizzes were integral because they are ideal warm ups for getting in touch with how one feels. Here are two of the quizzes' titles; "Home Is Where the Heart Is - Or Is It?" and "Can You Fit in Without Falling Apart?" Just to give you a clue, this is a compelling and provocative book.
Other parts of the program work on the body and mind connection. There's a big emphasis on becoming attuned to the messages that our bodies deliver. I came to realize how my body had become a hostage to my own suppressed feelings. There are breathing and focusing exercises aimed to reacquaint one with parts of the body. I found that by doing these simple breathing exercises daily, I experienced a brighter focus in my work!
By following her techniques I was able to identify and release some deeply held feelings of abandonment and sadness. I'm astounded at how much energy I've had as a result! How does one place a value on that?
This is a book that I'll keep handy for a long time. As Dr. Segal writes, it takes time for new behaviors to become healthy habits. It's been well worth my time and effort. What a wonderful book. Thank you Dr. Segal. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: MUST READ !!!
Review: An excellent book! After having gone through emotional trauma myself this book has helped me understand my feelings better. It showed me a way to work with my emotions rather than fighting or trying to suppress them. I found the easy to follow exercises very effective.I say this book is a MUST READ.
Rating:
Summary: Simple to understand but very effective
Review: Emotions impact everything we do. In an office setting, emotions canlead to team camaraderie and increase productivity. Likewise, emotions canalso prove destructive. Emotions can make or break a family. They can enhance or end a loving relationship. It is the individuals' emotional quotients (EQ) that dictate interpersonal relationships. Dr. Segal lays out an argument that individuals must raise their emotional intelligence if they are to be contented individuals. Dr. Segal lays out simple steps that the lay person can easily apply to improve their own well being.RAISING YOUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE is an excellent practical guide to inner peace. What makes this nonfiction work so good and worthwhile is its ease of application, starting with a personal assessment test that provides the reader with their current EQ level. Chapters are devoted to help the individual at work, at home, and in any relationship (including a loved one). This is a great self-help book that can assist anyone with relationships. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Waste of time
Review: I bought this booking after reading Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. I really liked the majority of his book and hoped this one would be similar and more relative to everyday life. The First one or two chapters are interesting and deal with real world emotional encounters. Unfortunately from there the book takes a dramatic turn for the worse. The more you read the more quizzes you begin to take, and the more ridiculous they get. You will get overwhelmed with arbitrary exercises and rules for becoming the author's version of an emotionally intelligent person. After the halfway point I got the feeling Segal was desperately trying fill space on the page. Most likely she got some help from some psychology 101 students. If you are looking for a book with real content try Goleman's.
Rating:
Summary: Great book that helped change my life
Review: I thought this was a brilliant book. It gave me great insight! It is an excellent read with substantial payoffs. The exercises were wonderful and therapeutic. Practicing the excercises helped me to know my feelings and to honor them. Something I have not been able to do in a long time! I highly recommend this book!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Psychotherapist Finds Book Practical and Sees Results
Review: Increasingly psychotherapists are discovering the utility of cognitive approaches (using our thoughts constructively) to support improved functioning, relationships and moods. Dr. Segal's book offers a "missing link" by explicitly offering readers methods to see, feel and honor their feelings as well as their thoughts, boosting improvements I have seen in functioning, relationships and moods. I would recommend it to professionals and their clients alike.
Rating:
Summary: BEWARE the Iron Fist inside the Velvet Glove
Review: It didn't take long to realise that the apparently mild-mannered tone of this book has a highly coercive undertone. The proverbial iron fist inside the velvet glove. It took only a little while longer to realise that the book is NOT about emotional intelligence, either in practice or as the title of a specific branch of psychology, as described by Mayer and Salovey, Goleman, Bar-On, et al. But it was only when I got about halfway through the book that I realised just where it was coming from.
I quote from a section ironically headed "Standing Firm": ' "I was at a dinner party the other day when an elderly man started making racial jokes," says Gene. "A few months ago I would have thought that I had two choices: Do something about it or like it. But this time I realized a third choice was right in this particular case: dislike the behaviour without making a stink over it. I didn't *have* to try to change the man, and I didn't have to worry about how my inaction looked to anyone." '
(page 116) So does the book point out that "Gene" had the option to speak out/"stand firm" against racism without having to go to the extreme of "making a stink"? Does it explain that we can openly and thoughtfully express disagreement over anti-social "behaviour" without having to play psychiatrist with the person concerned?
In fact does it give any guidance at all on how to constructively deal with a touchy situation like the one Gene encountered? You might expect so, in a book that ALLEGEDLY teaches people how to develop emotional intelligence. But you'd be wrong. On the contrary, all we get is support for Gene's inaction: "When a decision *feels* right, it *is* right. Don't think you have to justify it."
(page 116, emphasis as in the book) Well, here's a couple of quotes from people who had a somewhat different point of view: "It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph."
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it."
Martin Luther King (1929-1968) I guess it depends on whether you agree with "Gene" or with Edmund Burke and Martin Luther King, as to whether you choose the kind of ersatz "emotional intelligence" on offer in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: So I'm reading through this book when I find this sentence that says 'so you shouldn't expect to feel emotion fully with an unfit body, any more than you would expect to play chopin on an untuned piano' and I think oh wow, what does that do for everyone who isnt like absolutely perfect like the 'beautiful people' out in California? I mean if your unlucky enough to be born with something not physically regular, like Stephen Hawkins, then you wont feel emotion fully? or if your suffer some permanent physical injury during your life then you wont feel emotion fully after that happens? or if you have a weight problem, like the majority of Americans! then you wont feel emotion fully? And this is a book about emotional INTELLIGENCE? I dont think so, bro!
More like 'Emotional Dumb and Dumber' My advice is like the reviewer from New York - don't waste your time or your money on this manual for airheads.
Rating:
Summary: I want my money back! Don't waste yours!
Review: This book is NOT about emotional intelligence- it is about learning to get in touch with your bodily feelings. The author confuses intelligence with learned skills. You can't raise your IQ nor your EQ but you can improve your maths skills and your self-control and interpersonal skills- none of which she addresses. I was so disappointed and truly want to ask Amazon to refund my money!
Rating:
Summary: Great book that helped change my life
Review: This is a fabulous book for anyone interested in the subject.
| 
