Marshall Zweig of zant: Emotional Intelligence; What It Is, Why It Is So Essential, And How We Can Increase It

Understand that life contains pain. The more you can accept that reality, the more emotionally intelligent you instantly become. Accept that life contains pain. High-EQ people, when they feel pain, don’t run from it, deny it, or pretend that it doesn’t exist. They open to the pain — because they understand that it’s simply what’s so, what’s true inside them. Being open to pain means you can receive the meaning in the pain: potential messages, and wisdom. Pain is like quicksand: the more you push against it, the more you’ll sink in and get stuck. In experiencing pain when it’s present, there is freedom. Remember: the pain is not who you are; it’s simply part of the experience of being alive.

As a part of our series about “Emotional Intelligence, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marshall Zweig.

Marshall Zweig is a relationship and intimacy coach who, against psychologists’ warnings, radically transformed two gaslighting relationships in his own life, with his wife and with his mother, armed with nothing more than the truth. His method, “Truth Empowered Relationships,” provides a structure and rules — much like a board game — for creating deep, fulfilling, intimate relationships. Marshall is a graduate of five years of advanced leadership and coaching training with Personal Growth University, holds diplomas in coaching and organizational psychology from Austin Peay State University, and is experienced with NLP, NVC, PQ, and many more of the world’s most transformational personal growth technologies.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xhhFiUd-aphfkxbyL7z48BIDUKumnxYy/view?usp=share_link

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?

It is my honor. Sure, and I’ll tell it with a focus on emotional intelligence. I am what’s called an HSP — a Highly Sensitive Person. However, my emotions were only accepted in my childhood if they were happy ones. That includes immediately after I survived sexual abuse at a young age: I was told “don’t be sad, there are people in wheelchairs.” I got sent to my room whenever I was perceived to be in what was referred to as a ‘bad mood.’ I learned to create my feelings instead of experiencing them as they were. That led to challenges in intimate relationships, including the most important relationship: the one I had with myself. Whenever I was alone, I turned to addictive behavior because my own unhappy emotions seemed like threats to me.

What or who inspired you to pursue your career? We’d love to hear the story.

Personal growth is what saved me from a life of pretending. My personal development journey began when, one day, a co-worker named Lisa passed me on the stairway and asked, “How are you?” For the first time I can ever remember, I said something other than “fine” in answer to that question; I said, “I’m not doing well today.”

Lisa responded by telling me all about the personal growth class she was in, but I can only remember bits and pieces of what she shared. What I clearly remember was how inside, I was literally shaking from the idea of actually looking at my inner world. She invited me three times to the intro to her personal growth class, and three times I made up excuses so I didn’t have to go. The fourth time, I went, I ended up signing up for my first personal growth workshop. At the workshop, I said only one sentence, but telling the truth about my inner world truly set me free from a lifetime of pretending everything was fine while inside I was in near-constant suffering. I ended up spending five years in the coaching and leadership training program — and in fact, I led the program for several years.

In addition, though I did not like the way my parents treated me, it was clear that they truly and deeply loved each other. Since it wasn’t safe to feel my own feelings as a child, I focused on the loving relationship between my mom and dad — something precious few children get to experience. Watching that movie was by far the most pleasant part of my childhood for me. As I watched their love affair, though, I also saw ways where I would have done things differently to create more authentic intimacy. Many of those awarenesses I had as a child, I address now as a coach.

None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Was there a particular person who you feel gave you the most help or encouragement to be who you are today? Can you share a story about that?

There was and is. Without a doubt, the person I credit the most for my coaching career is my wife Heather. There was a time in our relationship when she was projecting her pain onto me, and I had to make her see it or it felt like it would destroy us both. It’s scary to trust someone else’s perception of life over your own, especially when it seems like you’re in a perpetual argument. She trusted me. And I valued her needs equal to my own, just as I do for every client, and for every person I interact with who trusts me enough to let me into their intimate reality.

I was forever altered and fueled by Heather’s faith in me, faith that the concepts I share can uplift humanity, as they’ve positively impacted her life, our life together, and the life we share with our son. I always tell people to be careful who they let coach them — choose a coach who is living what they want you to live. My wife, my son and I live a life of authenticity through sensitive and respectful communication. And what a relief it is for all of us that we can be who we really are around each other, unguarded and relaxed.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your career? What lesson or take away did you learn from that?

It took me a second, because I view them all as learning opportunities, so it’s tough to search my memory for mistakes. I absolutely love group coaching, because everyone learns from each other so it accelerates the energy of growth in the room. But it’s a different skill set to coach a group. The mistake I made early on was to focus on creating transformation for a person or a couple when I called on them. Sometimes I could feel myself losing the rest of the room, but I didn’t want to stop the interaction until I’d created some sort of shift. I remember one person going on and on about how her parents hadn’t “done their work.” I wanted her to pop out of that perspective, but she wouldn’t. I saw people getting up and going to the bathroom. I didn’t know how to stop them, but I didn’t know how to stop her either. Finally, I got up and went to the bathroom too, walking out while she was up there talking. When I came back in, she was still talking. I don’t think she noticed I even left.

What I realize now is it’s more like the whole room is all guests on my talk show: ready to be guided through sharing themselves. As the host, they trust me to stop an interaction if I sense that’s what would best serve the room. So that’s what I do now. I let the shifts happen naturally when they occur.

The road to success is hard and requires tremendous dedication. This question is obviously a big one, but what advice would you give to a young person who aspires to follow in your footsteps and emulate your success?

Notice. Successful relationships require you to notice what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, and what you’re observing, so you can express yourself and get a connection. And perhaps not coincidentally, consciousness, and mindfulness, require the same skill. I would say hone your skills at noticing, and at sharing what you notice.

And also, define success in a way that’s meaningful for you. I define it by: am I capable of adding value to the life of every person who asks me to, simply by being who I am and supporting them in being who they are?

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

It’s interesting, because I just talked about noticing, and the movie I’ll share is all about noticing. It’s called “12 Angry Men.” The only thing that’s dated about the movie is there is no diversity: no women, as you can tell by the title, no BIPOC representation. But interestingly, it’s about prejudice, and it resonated with me because the main character, Henry Fonda in the movie, is brilliant at noticing. It looked like an open-and-shut case, and the other 11 people stopped paying close attention. But this 12th juror notices his gut feeling and speaks to it. He notices inconsistencies, faulty assumptions, and like I said, prejudices, and he speaks to them, even though he gets resistance, sometimes fierce resistance. And his ability to notice finally persuades every person in that room to change their point of view. As an HSP, as someone who values and coaches emotional intelligence, to me, it’s a quintessential example of the astonishing power honing your powers of observation can have.

Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does that resonate with you so much?

Maya Angelou once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Again, it’s about noticing. Let’s say you share something vulnerable about yourself, and the other person says, “You’re too sensitive.” If you don’t notice the way you feel when you hear that phrase and notice what happens to the conversation after it’s said, you may find yourself in a relationship where your sensitivity doesn’t matter. I say a relationship where your sensitivity doesn’t matter is a relationship where you’re not safe to be who you really are. You have to notice the clues people put out about what they believe, how they treat people, and how they treat themselves, so you can evaluate if you want to be in this relationship. If you ignore the clues, you’re abandoning yourself, and then you wonder why your relationships don’t work — when you ignored all the red flags. That’s another quote I love: “When you’re wearing rose-colored glasses, all those red flags just look like flags.”

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

I’m working with Hay House on a book about my method, “Truth Empowered Relationships.” It’ll be published in 2024. It’s designed to be an actual book of love: a structure and rules couples can follow — families too — to create relationships that support everyone in being who they really are and getting what they really want in life.

OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview. Can you briefly tell our readers a bit about why you are an authority about Emotional Intelligence?

Yes, and let’s call it EQ for short if that’s okay. I invented resensitization therapy, which is now a recognized healing modality by the International Association of Therapists. I work with people to increase their EQ. Higher EQ correlates to more success professionally, because companies tend to promote employees with higher EQ. It also leads to more success in relationships, because people with higher EQ are more able to understand what their own needs are, and have more empathy to understand other people’s needs.

For the benefit of our readers, can you help to define what Emotional Intelligence is?

Daniel Goleman, who wrote the original text on emotional intelligence, defined EQ as “the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions.” It’s the skill to understand the many facets of emotions–like the relationship between your emotions and your thoughts–and to use that understanding to build a healthy relationship with yourself, and to interact with other people in a fair and empathetic way. Emotionally intelligent people use emotional information to guide their thinking and their behavior.

How is Emotional Intelligence different from what we normally refer to as intelligence?

Traditional intelligence helps us make calculations. It handles tasks. It learns skills. It connects the dots. It analyzes. It’s the language of logic and reason. Emotional intelligence is the language of, as the name indicates, emotion. How well do you speak the language of emotions? Can you identify and express your emotions? Can you perceive and understand others’ emotions? Can you understand emotional meanings?

Can you help explain a few reasons why Emotional Intelligence is such an important characteristic? Can you share a story or give some examples?

As children, we are both with heightened sensitivity to the world within us. Our sensitivity is heightened because we are open to what’s happening inside us. As we move through life, we learn the concept that some emotions are more painful than others, and we move away from them. We lose that heightened sensitivity because we close down parts of our inner world. Maybe because we’re taught to. Maybe because we had to teach ourselves, in a moment when we were less than capable of processing what was happening to us, like trauma or emotional neglect.

But emotional intelligence means understanding that emotions are like a box of crayons. You may like some colors more than others, but every color in the crayon box exists, just like every emotion exists. And even if you don’t like the color black, there will be a time and a reason when you and the color black will have to coexist. Just like you and every emotion will at one point or another in your lifetime have to coexist. Emotional intelligence is important because it allows you to open back up to life, like when we were children, and feel the gift of what it’s like to be fully alive.

Would you feel comfortable sharing a story or anecdote about how Emotional Intelligence has helped you in your life? We would love to hear about it.

The one that instantly came to mind was of my now-wife when we lived in a remote area in Georgia. I grew up with an anxious parent, and it affected my perception of nature. For example, when I was young, I remember being at ease lying in the grass in the summer sun, sometimes feeling tiny creatures moving below me or on me. Over the years, from the anxious input of skin cancer and grass stains and ticks carrying disease, I closed to nature, without even really noticing it.

One rainy Georgia evening, I was reading in bed, and my wife came in and said, “Come out on the deck and stand in the rain.” I remember looking at her like she was crazy — but also simultaneously feeling excitement. The old feeling from when I was open to nature was calling me, and I heard it. So I did what she said–she’s very wise when it comes to nature–and I remember cringing, tightening my body from the rain — but the rain was hitting me anyway. What did tightening from it do? Simply denied me the sensory experience of raindrops falling on me. I realized that in the moment, and I wanted the experience. The rain was falling on me, but I wasn’t feeling it.

Sometimes opening up to your senses requires motivation. I thought of the scene at the end of The Shawshank Redemption, of how open and happy and surrendered and at peace he seemed. So I slowed my breathing. I opened my arms. I relaxed, and let the rain hit me.

And suddenly, joyous feelings came back, of running in the mud, of splashing in puddles, of jumping into a pile of leaves. I reconnected with childhood through an experience of heightened sensitivity. That’s what in my reality will enhance all of our lives, to be able to experience life open again, fully again.

Can you share some specific examples of how Emotional Intelligence can help a person become more successful in the business world?

Sure. A person with high EQ will have a sense of what it’s like to be in each different department of a company: the different sets of challenges, accomplishments, touchstones, and emotions. So high-EQ employees will be most capable of writing and delivering a speech to the whole company because they’ll help every employee feel appreciated and valued to some degree. Who writes and delivers those kinds of speeches? C-suite execs.

If there’s a conflict at work, a high-EQ employee will likely be called on to settle it; they know how to have tough conversations with sensitivity and respect. If there’s a team to lead, a high-EQ employee will be asked to lead it because they can operate with empathy and understanding. If there’s a relationship to build, a high-EQ employee will be best suited to build it because studies show people greatly prefer dealing with someone they trust and like over someone they don’t.

Emotional intelligence is, quite simply, a predictor of leadership potential.

Can you share a few examples of how Emotional Intelligence can help people have better relationships?

In my reality, intimate relationships don’t function without some level of EQ from each party. To get what you want in a relationship, you have to be able to communicate what you’re feeling, so you can get empathy and understanding, and what you need, so that you can get your needs met. People who have not developed their EQ are often people who expect understanding without explaining themselves, or who expect their needs to be met without telling anyone else what their needs even are.

Relationships are about relating to each other. To relate, we have to share what it’s like to be us going through life, and understand what it’s like to be the other person going through life.

If I’m emotionally intelligent, I’m not going to confuse infatuation or lust with love. If I’m emotionally intelligent, I’ll recognize warning signs, not ignore them, and know what action to take if one needs to be taken. If I’m emotionally intelligent, it’s much less likely that I’ll superimpose a past hurt onto a present moment…and if I do, I’ll take responsibility for it. If I’m emotionally intelligent, I want to love you the way you want to be loved, not the way I want to love you, and I want the same from you.

Let’s take jealousy. Most people have had a partner who’s gotten jealous. Getting jealous is a low-EQ reaction. Saying I’m jealous is a higher EQ. Going into the feeling of jealousy and expressing where it’s coming from — ” I’m jealous, and underneath that I’m insecure” — is a high-EQ person who wants to master their emotions.

High-EQ people value sensitivity, communication, and respect for others and for themselves. Quite simply, these are essential characteristics of successful relationships.

Can you share a few examples of how Emotional Intelligence can help people have more optimal mental health?

It’s no coincidence that symptoms of different psychological conditions are expressed in feeling words: for example, ‘sadness’ to describe depression. Our feelings are linked to the way we think, behave, and interact with ourselves and with others. A high-EQ person can more easily self-regulate, and self-regulation is what maintains balance in mental health. Studies show low EQ is linked with an increased risk of mental health challenges.

Emotional intelligence can be taught and learned. Most people have not been taught these skills. So learning to raise your EQ can positively impact mental health.

Here’s an example: all states of being pass. But our nervous systems are tempted, when we are experiencing an emotional state we don’t like, to panic: “oh no…it’s going to be like this forever.” It’s that panic that actually creates the rigidity that makes an emotional state of any kind persist in our reality. When we believe something, we experience it. Believing “it’s going to stay like this forever” creates that experience.

So one of the most simple tactics we can do to increase our EQ as humans when we’re experiencing a challenging emotional state, is to tell ourselves, “This will pass. This will pass.” Emotions flow, and it’s up to us to understand that and to let them flow. If that concept is new to you, the experience of being with your emotions until they pass may feel easier said than done — that’s normal. Practice, as I tell my son, makes progress. Allowing flow can be mastered with practice.

Ok. Wonderful. Here is the main question of our interview. Can you recommend five things that anyone can do to develop a greater degree of Emotional Intelligence? Please share a story or example for each.

1. Understand that life contains pain. The more you can accept that reality, the more emotionally intelligent you instantly become. Accept that life contains pain. High-EQ people, when they feel pain, don’t run from it, deny it, or pretend that it doesn’t exist. They open to the pain — because they understand that it’s simply what’s so, what’s true inside them. Being open to pain means you can receive the meaning in the pain: potential messages, and wisdom. Pain is like quicksand: the more you push against it, the more you’ll sink in and get stuck. In experiencing pain when it’s present, there is freedom. Remember: the pain is not who you are; it’s simply part of the experience of being alive. A client of mine was resistant to the idea that her husband wanted to end their marriage. She was terrified at the prospect. She pushed against it, trying desperately to fix things, but they grew farther and farther apart. When she finally accepted her husband’s reality–by accepting the pain of her marriage ending — to her great surprise, her husband suddenly no longer wanted to end the marriage. Emotionally intelligent people understand that pain is a part of the rich tapestry of life in human form.
2. Avoid forced positivity. Forced positivity is a concept you won’t find emotionally intelligent people practicing. Remember the analogy of the box of crayons? You don’t try to change the color of a crayon you don’t like, by pretending the only colors in the crayon box are the ones you do like. No matter how hard you will that crayon to change color, the crayon you don’t like is the color it is, and that’s not going to change. I’ve tried to help a woman who’s in an unhappy marriage. She is so committed to forced positivity — in her case, telling everybody who will listen how grateful she is about her life — that she’s spent almost 70 years being mistreated. Now, when she talks about her gratitude, she virtually shouts it — which is a tell that someone is forcing positivity instead of feeling it. Natural gratitude feels like a relief, and no one uses effort to express relief. To develop a higher EQ, don’t create your emotions — experience them.
3. Make friends with your anger. Making friends with anger doesn’t mean blasting people. It means finding the reason why your anger exists and addressing that reason. You can start, as I tell many people I work with, by saying “I’m angry” when you’re feeling angry. The first time I did that was in a personal growth workshop. When I said out loud, “I’m angry,” I felt like I was pulling the pin out of a grenade and tossing it at that person. So imagine my surprise when the person I said it to was able to listen to me calmly. Anger might be indicating a past pain that’s calling for you to heal it, so you can experience the present moment with clarity. Anger might indicate dissatisfaction with a present situation, calling you to make a change. Whatever the reason, anger is a color in the crayon box, and it needs to be felt and experienced like every other emotion.
4. Ask curious questions. We often believe we know what someone else is feeling. The truth is, often we can intuit a category of emotion, but never do we know for sure what someone else is feeling if they don’t tell us. And sometimes, we believe our intuition is actually what I call “a story in our heads.” Rather than assuming you know what’s going on for another person, ask them, and ask with a sense of curiosity: in other words, a desire to actually know the other person, versus thinking you know them. By asking, you’re giving them room to tell you who they really are, and that’s real intimacy. Recently, an ex-fiancé of mine messaged me, saying simply, “I see clearly now. I’m sorry for everything.” I wrote back asking, “What specifically are you apologizing for?” The response I got helped me understand the challenging time she’d been going through that led her to apologize, and that opened up a friendly dialogue. Conversations are opportunities, for clarity, for growth, for connection — but it often takes cultivating that natural sense of curiosity that we all feel but often don’t follow.
5. Tell the truth. That means telling the truth to yourself, as well as others. Here’s one example: emotionally intelligent people say ‘yes’ when they mean ‘yes,’ and ‘no’ when they mean ‘no.’ So if you catch yourself agreeing to something you don’t really want to agree to, stop. If you need more time, say out loud, “Hold on. I need a minute to figure out what’s true for me.’ Then look inside, not for just your truth, but for why you wanted to say ‘yes’ when your real truth was ‘no.’ My wife and I have both used this process to heal from our sexual trauma, and we help others do the same. When the mechanisms that make you want to abandon yourself are activated, deactivating them means shining the light of truth on them. If you’re in a relationship, for instance, ask yourself, “Are you as happy as you used to be?” Low-EQ people avoid those kinds of questions because they’re simply too scary to face. Developing EQ means answering that question truthfully, because it may reveal many signals of change which will help you create more happiness.

Do you think our educational system can do a better job at cultivating Emotional Intelligence? What specific recommendations would you make for schools to help students cultivate Emotional Intelligence?

Well, to be honest, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see the kind of learning that’s happening in our son’s public school. He’s in the fifth grade, and part of the class’s ongoing curriculum is social-emotional learning, which for me is astounding and gratifying all at the same time. So I can see that it’s a part of mainstream awareness now, which it’s needed to be for a long time, and these kids are going to benefit from that societal increase in awareness of the essential nature of EQ. Now, I don’t always agree with the recommendations in the curriculum–I believe a lot of it is from thinkers trying to understand EQ when EQ has to be felt — but at least they’re having the conversations.

What would I recommend? Doing less teaching and more asking. Children are usually more naturally emotionally aware and adept, so all we need to be is a safe space for children to open up to their experiences. If you want another hack to increase your EQ, observe children, and get to understand the way children process information.

Ok, we are nearly done. You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

In essence, this is what we all are: human beings having a human experience. We all have that in common. All of us. If we all understand that, relationships instantly become easier, and make more sense.

The goal in every relationship, quite simply, is to understand and express the true nature of our own experience of life in human form and to develop the skillset of understanding other people’s experiences of life in human form. My goal is to give everyone all the tools they need to be our own and each other’s healers in relationships: one part therapist, one part coach, one part best friend, and in the case of couples, one part intimate partner. That’s the movement I want to see: people who are authentically satisfied with and fulfilled by their relationships.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them :-)

Anyone who is willing to give me a big platform to make the movement I just described a reality, I would be grateful, honored, and energized to have a private conversation with.

If it doesn’t have to be private, I’d love to have a meal with Drew Barrymore, while we talk about this very subject on her show. Well, this and 50 First Dates, which makes me cry every time. 🙂

How can our readers further follow your work online?

My Linktree is https://linktr.ee/marshallzweig. I’m behind on collecting all my podcast appearances and articles like this one on my website, but I’ll catch up, so you can also visit my media page on marshallzweig.com, my coaching website.

Thank you for these really excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success.

For me, this is a precious opportunity to positively impact more lives. I appreciate Authority for your space and this platform.