"When I say manage emotions, I only mean the really distressing, incapacitating emotions. Feeling emotions is what makes life rich. You need your passions"
About this Quote
Goleman is doing a quiet but crucial rebrand of the whole “emotional intelligence” project: it’s not about sanding yourself down into a calm, corporate pebble. It’s triage. By carving out “really distressing, incapacitating emotions” as the target, he dodges the most common fear people have about self-regulation-that it’s a euphemism for suppression, politeness, or productivity theater. The line draws a boundary between emotions that inform life and emotions that hijack it.
The phrasing matters. “Manage” is deliberately managerial and modern, a word that fits boardrooms and self-help alike, but he immediately softens it with a kind of permission slip: “Feeling emotions is what makes life rich.” That’s not sentimental; it’s strategic. He’s telling skeptics (and likely his own readers) that intensity isn’t the enemy. Dysregulation is. The subtext: if you try to eliminate anger, grief, desire, or fear, you don’t become enlightened-you become less human, and probably less functional.
“You need your passions” is the keystone, because it reframes passion as a resource rather than a liability. In the emotional-intelligence boom of the 1990s and after, EI often got marketed as a career advantage, a way to “perform” maturity. Goleman pushes back against that cynical use. He’s arguing for regulation in service of vitality: the goal isn’t to feel less, it’s to keep feeling from collapsing into paralysis. That’s a more demanding message than it sounds-it asks for discernment, not numbness.
The phrasing matters. “Manage” is deliberately managerial and modern, a word that fits boardrooms and self-help alike, but he immediately softens it with a kind of permission slip: “Feeling emotions is what makes life rich.” That’s not sentimental; it’s strategic. He’s telling skeptics (and likely his own readers) that intensity isn’t the enemy. Dysregulation is. The subtext: if you try to eliminate anger, grief, desire, or fear, you don’t become enlightened-you become less human, and probably less functional.
“You need your passions” is the keystone, because it reframes passion as a resource rather than a liability. In the emotional-intelligence boom of the 1990s and after, EI often got marketed as a career advantage, a way to “perform” maturity. Goleman pushes back against that cynical use. He’s arguing for regulation in service of vitality: the goal isn’t to feel less, it’s to keep feeling from collapsing into paralysis. That’s a more demanding message than it sounds-it asks for discernment, not numbness.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mental Health |
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