Some thoughts from David Brooks on making careful decisions and adding in emotional intelligence:

For thousands of years, it was common in Western thought to imagine that there was an eternal war between reason and our emotions. In this way of thinking, reason is cool, rational and sophisticated. Emotions are primitive, impulsive and likely to lead you astray. A wise person uses reason to override and control the primitive passions. A scientist, business executive or any good thinker should try to be objective and emotionally detached, kind of like a walking computer that cautiously weighs evidence and calculates the smartest way forward.

Modern neuroscience has delivered a body blow to this way of thinking. If people thought before that passions were primitive and destructive, now we understand that they are often wise. Most of the time emotions guide reason and make us more rational.

At to the point:

My core point here is that you need to be a great emotional athlete in order to make the great decisions in life. You need to be ardent enough to feel and astute enough to understand your feelings. Life is not a series of calculus problems. Life is about movement — moving through different terrains and circumstances. Emotions guide the navigation system. As Mlodinow writes in “Emotional,” “While I.Q. scores may correlate to cognitive abilities, control over and knowledge of one’s emotional state is what is most important for professional and personal success.”

The piece is well worth your time.