Leading an Emotionally Intelligent Life: Expanding Your Ei to Make Courageous Decisions and Transform Your Life

Expand your EI to make courageous decisions and transform your life based on Patrick Kilcarr's EQ-I 2.0 tool and his 'Master Trainer' status.

Our emotional intelligence (EI) is an intensely personal inner landscape. It is an intricate interplay of self-regard, empathy, resilience, and other key competencies essential to leading a fulfilled and balanced personal and professional life. While it is unique for each one of us, taking into account our formative experience growing up and the myriad of others experiences we encountered up to this moment in time, there are specific emotions and behaviors that suggest we either are, or are not, socially and emotionally balanced. Our personal history is inescapable; what is not is our ability to direct the life we want from this point forward.

Yet the measure of emotional intelligence largely has been the province of educators, CEOs, entrepreneurs, and human resources professionals. They are keenly interested in how the concept plays out in educational and professional settings, and their assessments aim at maximizing organization integration and performance.

The problem is clear. If emotional intelligence is rooted in the individual, how can we use its assessment as a map for self-understanding and as leverage to immediate and future growth? A strong hunger exists among ordinary people to harness the extraordinary power of emotional intelligence as a pathway to personal transformation. Guides to accomplish this vital task in personal growth are few. While there is a great deal written "about" emotional intelligence, a gap exists demonstrating what it looks and feels like to achieve and maintain emotional intelligence, especially if our formative years were paved with drama, trauma and disappointment. This book brings to the reader how an emotionally intelligent life can be achieved if there is a desire for it.

Patrick J. Kilcarr, PhD is a writer and therapist, with a strong interest in investigating emotional intelligence and its therapeutic uses. He is a professor at Georgetown University, where he is director of the university's Center for Personal Development. Kilcarr is also a noted expert on the complications associated with ADHD and addiction. Kilcarr has become an in-demand speaker and consultant for a wide range of organizations and institutions, including professional sports franchises (Atlanta Braves), nonprofit organizations (Wounded Warrior Project, the National Association of County and City Health Officials), and an array of government agencies, including the Veterans Administration, USAID's Office of Transition Initiative, the Organization of American States (OAS), and The Inter-American Development Bank. Kilcarr is a go-to resource for journalists seeking to better understand emotional intelligence. He has been quoted as a commentator on these issue and others in publications including Time, The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA Today, and The Observer. Kilcarr is the co-author of Voices From Fatherhood: Fathers, Sons and ADHD (with Patricia Quinn), which received accolades from major players in the field of ADHD. A former college football and rugby player, Kilcarr lives in Washington, DC with his family. He is licensed in the District of Columbia and offers certification trainings at Georgetown University.