He was already there when I arrived. I saw him turning his head to welcome me. Another day on the same bench, in El Retiro Park. And another great conversation awaiting.

“Sorry, I’m late.” I apologized. We used to go there at 5 pm every other afternoon. It was past 6 pm. He looked at me, smiling. “It’s okay, man!” He stretched his shoulders and looked at the sky. “Nice day, huh? You don’t get this all the time.”

I looked up. The bright sun of Madrid was there. Not a single cloud in sight. Those were the days I…

Let me start with a disclaimer: we don’t know how the brain works exactly and we probably won’t know in the foreseeable future. We don’t know how the brain goes from neuronal activity to the diversity of human behavior. The methods that we have to study the brain provide tons of data but a unified theory of the brain doesn’t seem to be near.

But we do know some things about the brain.

We know how neurons and synapses work. We know about the brain’s functional and structural hierarchical organization. We know that it does parallel processing. …

My most awkward date after 3 years on Tinder

She was interesting. She was funny. She was beautiful. What could go wrong?

Online dating can be great. It offers some possibilities that usually are not available through traditional dating. You can talk to many people at the same time. You can meet people from different places, even from places far away from you. You can choose people depending on your hobbies and likes, and so on.

But it also has drawbacks. Sometimes it’s difficult to truly get to know someone by texting. “Ghosting” and other similar behaviors have become so…

Let’s play a game.

This is the story of Anne and Sally. They are friends and they have a box and a basket. They also have a marble to play with. One day, Sally and Anne were playing. Sally decided to put the marble in the box and went outside, where she could not see or hear anything from inside. A moment later, Anne decided to take the marble from the box and put it in the basket.

Now I ask you: When Sally comes back, where will she go look to take the marble, the box or the basket?

…

We stopped before the sea. It was a nice spot to just hear the waves die in the shore. The Moon was there, silently witnessing our conversation.

I met emotional intelligence two years ago, around mid-2018.

I was spending a summer night at the beach with my friend Diana. We were talking about her time in Norway. She had been gone for a year or so and had just come back a few days before.

She was looking at the waves while my fingers played with the sand. It was one of those moments that stop time. She had a…

Outline

• Early relationships: The hegemony of my parents
• The power of reading: A very special kind of relationship
• Diversifying my influences: Freedom of being

Early relationships: The hegemony of my parents

Jim Rohn famously said:

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

It’s certainly difficult to measure the “average of people” but I have no doubt that I am influenced by the people who surround me. Who I am depends a lot on my relationships.

While I grew up, my parents were my primary relationship. They taught me how to play, speak and walk. They taught me their beliefs and they…

There are a lot of good articles out there about the features of emotionally intelligent people, but most of them focus on the same good, desirable qualities. Here I’ll talk about 4 unexpected features of the emotionally intelligent that are also good to have.

So without further ado, let’s get into it!

1. They know sincerity is not always the best choice

“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”

― Oscar Wilde

If you ask someone if they would rather know something that may hurt them, many people would say yes without hesitation. They would say they want to know the…

Excerpts are taken from the original article here.

I looked down at the paper. Only a few words in it, but they meant so much to me: I had decided my path and I was 100% committed to following it.

The place I’d rather be

It was mid-2017, my last year in college. I had been studying aerospace engineering for 5 years already and I didn’t like what my foreseeable future looked like. You may think that finishing the degree would provide me a nice job with a nice income. And you would be right.

My problem was that I hated what I was studying.

…