“Many people have an incomplete sense of how to learn from books. They make the mistake of reading a book and deciding they know the information in it, but put the book down before they have actually mastered the information – as it applies to their life – and poof! The knowledge they gained – and the benefit they could have derived – from reading the book is gone. It didn’t have anywhere to stick, and so the potential wisdom fades away.” Angela E. Lauria
This paragraph comes from a book I’m reading called “The Difference”. It’s a book that outlines how to go about writing a book. This particular paragraph caught my attention because I’ve heard people tell me many times that they’ve read books on Strengths or they’ve read books on Emotional Intelligence.
These are the people who don’t usually see any value in strengths coaching or emotional intelligence coaching because they have already learned everything there is to learn about strengths and emotional intelligence.
The other reason that the quoted paragraph caught my attention was a personal experience I had. In the 1995 timeframe, just after I started my business at the age of 27, I read a book called “The E Myth”. Since I was young and I hadn’t had time to make many entrepreneurial mistakes yet, the book didn’t mean much to me.
Twenty years later in 2015, I picked up “The E Myth” again. This time, I had 20 years of experience with both mistakes and successes. This time around, I highlighted half of the book because it made sense to me. If you have read a book on Strengths or Emotional Intelligence, great job for taking the first step. You know what both topics are about.
I encourage you to take the next step to gain an understanding of how your unique personal strengths impact your life and how your personal emotional intelligence impacts your life and the lives of those around you. It is after this second step that you might be in a position to learn to leverage your unique personal strengths and your unique emotional intelligence.
