2Expand 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.