“Proven Strategies, Profound Results.”

Emotional regulation and emotional intelligence are two of the most important skills for a happy, successful life. In Marc Brackett’s latest book, he makes the point that these skills are the cornerstones of our lives, key to career, friendship, love, etc. And yet, these are not skills that are often talked about at home or in schools, rather we pick them up via the osmosis of socialisation within our family, and so we are only as good at this as the people who raised us were. In this book, we learn the impacts of our ways of dealing with our feelings, and better ways that we can approach them.

Marc Brackett is the author of Permission To Feel, and is director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and Professor at the Yale Child Study Center. He’s the lead developer of RULER, and approach to social and emotional learning, which has been adopted at more than 5000 schools globally. He writes in a way that makes the academic very easy to read and accessible, which feels like a really good thing in a book about a subject like this one. He mostly shares with us from his research, but at times he shares small things about his own life and experience, and I found myself really liking him.

The book is a smooth read, the information logically organised into chapters. The early sections of the book explain concepts and research, and the back sections give practical steps and processes anyone can use, and advice on the best times and ways to use them. So the book is both very informative and also practical.

The author makes the very valid point that since COVID times, we now have a great social division, and a constant news cycle, and a world undergoing a lot of changes and upheaval, causing everyone to be pretty worried and stressed. In this environment, our ability to regulate our emotions is becoming vital. If you’re already fairly emotionally intelligent, you might find parts of this book interesting and learn some added ways to handle situations that arise (always handy) or perhaps learn how to be a more supportive person for those around you. If you feel like you could learn more or are looking for ways to handle your emotions and stress, then this book will be especially rewarding. An enjoyable and insightful read.

Read It If: I think this one could be for anyone. It’s very accessible, (though maybe a little dense for a teenage reader) and I think we could all learn something here, no matter where you are on your emotional regulation journey.

Thank you to Celadon for the ARC of this book for review.