Defining Emotional Intelligence: A Journey through two Hearts
In the following interviews, you will read about sparking joy, sitting with sadness, knowing oneself, honoring oneself, taking deep breaths, and feeling all the feels. These stories define emotional intelligence through the use of narrative–a human approach to understanding the human minds by examining the feelings of their hearts.
I completed this self-interview and interviewed by dear friend Claire as part of my final assignment in my emotional intelligence general education course this spring (ENGL174 for any USC friends getting an idea. GE B ;).)
Write on my Tombstone: “Loved big. Felt deeply. Lived wholeheartedly, with her heart open to the world.”
Fiona
That’s me!
[Sophomore studying Business Administration in USC’s Marshall School of Business. She pivoted to business after a year of pre-medical studies. She is the president of her sorority, and equally honored to serve her chapter as she is hesitant to admit her position to her classmates and professors. She is known for her excitement and love of life. She steadily walks at a brisk pace–as if she is always in a rush–but manages to look peaceful as she does it. She likes donning brightly-colored, high-waisted flared pants, and is often told she simultaneously embodies the energy of a doting grandmother and a rambunctious six-year-old. It is joked that she’s been around forever; her soul is years older than her newly-twenty-year-old self. She has big, inquisitive eyes that she swears are hazel, not brown. She loves spending a few minutes outside in the sun before and after class so that her innumerable freckles are kept on display.]
Emotional intelligence is the most important form of intelligence.
It encapsulates the intelligence needed to pursue meaningful relationships.
I develop my EQ by pushing myself to experience as much as I can,
To discover parts of myself that I have not yet encountered.
Emotional intelligence suggests,
To me,
An understanding of our shared human experience.
A respect for the ferociousness of our emotional experiences,
And a desire to not only understand our own tumultuous emotional rollercoasters,
But also to witness the wild rides our peers embark upon.
We should learn more about emotional intelligence in our classrooms,
But the essence of emotional intelligence cannot be taught in a classroom.
It is not to be lectured;
It is to be lived.
Our classrooms must be kinder,
Offering more space for the vastness of our human experience,
Encapsulating lessons not just of the head,
But also of the heart.
EQ begs us to live life’s questions;
It is an adventure without a roadmap.
I am most curious about the emotion
Grief.
How it intersects with
Fear,
Joy,
And, anger.
It is so poorly understood,
Yet so integral to the human experience.
As I am coming of age,
Grief trails behind me at every corner.
Grief lines the way, oftentimes in hand with joy.
There is something invigorating and nostalgic about each day that passes in college.
This time in my life is a twilight zone of sorts.
I am walking a tightrope,
Crossing over from childhood to adulthood.
Each day represents death
And rebirth.
I will never go back to the days I have left behind,
But each day I enter is a new world,
If I let it be.
I feel anger
When People try to control me,
When I see injustice–
Worse when I also see apathy to injustice,
When I feel like I am not being the version of myself that I am meant to be.
I feel joy
When I step outside into the sunshine,
When I can see, smell, and feel the ocean,
When I am dancing with my friends and laughing alongside them.
My favorite aspect of anger is how it moves me to act,
To rectify and to repair.
I appreciate sadness for distilling for me what it is that I care about.
I love the feeling of recognizing and releasing sadness,
College has taught me that big girls do cry.
Dealing with anger means letting it run its course,
Sometimes I physically run it off,
Other times I call my mom,
Other times I say, out-loud, to myself,
“Wow, I feel really mad right now.”
Revealing it,
Feeling it,
Healing it.
That is a framework of emotional intelligence in my life.
I discern if my feelings are twenty-year-old Fiona’s emotions,
Or if they’re from my inner child.
If it’s young Fi, I put my hand on my heart.
“It’s okay to feel angry,
It will pass,
I hear you,”
I say to myself. Guilt never helps.
When I feel sadness, I like to take a few deeps breaths,
Identifying where in my body I am feeling sadness.
Is it a heavy heart?
A sensitive stomach?
A lump in my throat?
I have found that when i don’t allow myself to slow down,
Tending to my sadness,
I carry it with me.
So, I don’t rush myself.
If I need to show up as a human for classes or other commitments,
I let myself show up a bit more tenderly.
Sometimes, I cry in public now.
Oftentimes, when i push off sadness for too long,
In hopes of human-ing more productively,
I will experience a flood.
The flood begins with a trigger of sorts–
A snide comment, a joke, someone asking me if I’m okay–
And I cry for a while.
The real kicker with the flood, though,
Is the leaking I experience thereafter.
Sometimes I’m tender for the rest of the week,
Weeping at big and small things.
I see those moments as strong, now,
Signifying how deeply I can feel all things, all emotions.
It is beautiful to feel deeply,
It signifies a life spent paying good attention.
My favorite movie about love is It’s a Wonderful Life.
I watch it each Christmas with my family.
My Dad once wrote me a letter,
In it, he used a line from the movie, saying,
“Fiona, you were born older.”
My high EQ is a gift I have had for a long time,
And I appreciate this language surrounding the wisdom I have felt my whole life.
I love this movie, furthermore,
For its final reminder:
“No man is a failure who has friends.”
EQ places higher weight on what we can take with us when we go:
Love,
Family,
Joy,
Lessons learnt,
Shoulders cried on,
Hands held,
Hearts broken,
Souls held.
IQ emphasizes worldly, material goals.
It is important,
But my tombstone will not read,
“B.S. Business Administration, Cum Laude. Killer internship Summer 2022.”
I hope it will read,
“Loved BIG. Felt deeply. Lived wholeheartedly, with her heart open to the world.”
A Gerontologist’s Healthy Heart Diet
Claire
An unconventional pre-medical student studying Gerontology at the University of Southern California.
[She is sitting beside me on a wooden black bench in front of our sorority house. Its warm red door is in view as I face her. The sun sneaks its way through the tree in front of us in order to frame her ever-glowing, angelic features. Her eyes hold flecks of yellow and green as she intently looks into mine. She is radiant, with wisdom far beyond her soon-to-be twenty-two years. She wears a plain black outfit, yet her appearance emits color and joy. She is like a brightly-colored front door; she is as warm and sunny as her hometown, Dana Point, California. This is her final semester as an undergraduate at USC, after spending her first year in Rome studying abroad. She will be obtaining her Masters in Gerontology following graduation.]
I definitely value emotional intelligence the most
Yes, there is a threshold,
of IQ needed.
But EQ
Is where we can excel.
Developing emotional intelligence necessitates grit;
Grit is a catalyst for development.
It encompasses all of the values of emotional intelligence.
I have been resilient in the face of failure,
And I think that has made my EQ grow vastly throughout college.
Looking back to freshman year,
The best thing I have gotten out of college–
It’s not even the knowledge I have learned–
It’s how my emotional intelligence has evolved.
Being surrounded by this pre-med culture,
I had to overcome a great hurdle of imposter syndrome
And I have overcome it.
I know who I am,
And I so comfortable with all that I am now,
And I don’t feel one bit of imposter syndrome anymore.
Emotional intelligence is:
Awareness of oneself
Ability to control how I respond
And, how I deal with people,
And myself, consequently.
My favorite movie about happiness and love is Life is Beautiful.
It outlines a family in a concentration camp,
And a father who almost unthinkably is resolved to helping his family find joy each day,
Even in as joyless a place as a concentration camp.
This movie is a grit testimony.
I am reminded that life is beautiful,
There are endless opportunities to spark joy.
I would love if emotional intelligence were taught in more classrooms,
Why the hell not?
It would be an amazing supplement,
Starting in preschool, including lessons of emotional intelligence,
Opportunities to cultivate mindfulness, to check-in.
Hard times,
Periods of hard times,
Have been my periods of biggest growth.
When my paradigm shifted,
When my paradigm shattered,
When my heart was broken,
I found an opportunity to build it back better.
Shattering your belief system at one point in your life is important.
There is no better way to shatter your paradigm than to get your heart broken.
I only had my thoughts,
No distractions.
Sitting with my emotions has transformed my life.
My biggest takeaway from my freshman year in Rome
Was the cadence.
Italy’s slower cadence set the tone for my college experience,
Affecting how I move through USC.
I catch myself going fast here,
And I remind myself to slow back down,
Remembering my cadence.
My pre-med struggles have taught me true resilience and grit,
I have failed a lot.
That’s good,
I’ve always gotten back up.
Getting my heart broken taught me that I am home in myself
It is always important to curate a wonderful home in yourself,
One with a brightly-painted front door
I started buying myself tulips every Monday– my favorite flower–
One way of caring for the wonderful home I have within me.
Over the past four years,
I have continued to learn that it is the journey that I cherish so much.
Looking ahead to graduation, it is evident that the journey is more important than the destination.
Looking back to freshman year Claire,
I applaud her for cultivating a lifestyle conducive to herself, not just what everyone else is doing.
I would tell myself that you can have jomo (Joy of Missing Out).
And, to protect your yes’s and your peace; beware of the energy vampires.
Most importantly, I want her to relax and open her heart,
Her best is enough, even as it varies from time to time.
One of the biggest shifts in my mindset occurred when I internalized the understanding:
I don’t have to do everything the way everyone else does.
There is no timeline; everything is as is.
I am carving my own path in divine timing,
Balance is vital.
This is my most valuable learning experience in college,
It is how I know I will go forth to attend medical school,
I know that I don’t (and I won’t) do medical school just like everyone else.
I love what I am studying,
I trusted the universe and it led me to exactly what I am interested in.
I am anti-anti-aging,
I believe in the beauty and the radiance that comes with aging.
I think that I can serve,
Combining care for the spirit and the body.
I have a passion for articulating research,
I love sharing what I learn with the world,
Changing the narrative surrounding aging and medicine,
Blending the heart and the mind; IQ and EQ; science and intuition.
Less mind, more heart (and gut)
My favorite assignment thus far has been my Honors Program in Gerontology,
Completing my thesis.
My passion is researching how nutrients affect our longevity,
Discovering and defining what makes a heart healthy diet,
Finding the ways that I can infuse my life with plentiful nutrients,
Ones in food and ones found in meaningful connections,
Fueling my brain, body, and heart best.
To someone entering USC,
I encourage them to find ways to spark joy each day,
Not to put too much pressure on the outcome.
Savor each damn day.
We are in our YOLO era,
Face each day with awe and childlike wonder.
College is so fast paced; settle into your own cadence.
To spark joy,
I like to turn rituals in to routines,
And connect with others on a deeper level,
And appreciate the small joys like eating a delicious tangerine.
I love feeling things on the full spectrum, I accept full sadness as an invitation to feel full joy.
Sunshine and rain.
In essence:
Sunshine and rain,
Relax and open your heart,
Let yourself be excited,
Dare to fail,
Cherish the journey,
Let your paradigm be shattered,
Mend your own heart,
And–when in doubt–a brightly-colored door never hurts.
I love you C, thank you for sharing your light with me. This project is so special to me and I wanted to share it with our lovely Free2Be community. 💌