The Power of Emotion
Volume 1, Issue 7: The Power of Emotion
(Originally Published March 10, 2019)
What’s New This Week
Welcome back and thanks for joining us again in the Winter Hearth Epic Life Playbook, where each week we explore the human experience through different mediums, gleaning useful and practical insights to become socially and emotionally powerful.
Following last week’s digest on Perspective, the theme of this week’s content is The Power of Emotion, with a brief introduction to Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). Many of you have indicated that you would like to learn more about emotional intelligence, so the content of this weekly publication going forward is going to focus more on engaging you with content in this area. Social and emotional learning is something that is often overlooked, especially in the development stages of youth. In light of the increasing publicity and awareness of issues pertaining to mental health around the world, educators are beginning to recognize how important it is to deliberately teach children and adults explicitly how to control, develop, and take ownership of their emotions and social interactions. This is the basis of Social and Emotional Learning.
Social and Emotional Learning is defined as:
“the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. In other words: It’s how students learn the skills of emotional intelligence.” (6 Seconds, The Emotional Intelligence Network)
As you can tell, it’s a pretty massive topic, but as we work through its elements and nuances in this and future playbook editions, you’ll notice a stark contrast in the way you see the world (a positive one, of course). Humans, their actions, their feelings, and their thoughts will begin to make more sense to you. You’ll be able to understand why certain things make you feel a certain way and, perhaps more importantly, you’ll be equipped with the tools to address and conquer those things that may currently have the ability to hold you back from living your best life. This ability to control the self and effectively manage social interactions is true power, and if you keep up with the Epic Life Playbook, that power will soon be yours.
Listen
This week, we’re going to check out a podcast episode called “Decoding Our Emotions” from TED Radio Hour. The episode features four different sets of ideas from four different speakers, and the first speaker is none other than John Koening. In his talk “What If There Were A Word For Every Emotion In The World?”, he opens our minds briefly to the idea that there is a certain power in being able to precisely express a feeling. He notes how there is a sense of relief that comes over you when you are able to understand and communicate your emotions accurately and effectively, both to yourself and to others (check out tip number 5 in this article for more insights about the language of emotion).
In case you haven’t heard of him yet, Koenig is the author of “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”, a collection of words that he himself has created to identify precise emotions that people may feel but don’t currently have the vocabulary to fully express. His ideas are pretty remarkable, and in this talk (about 7 minutes long), he highlights some of the major ideas underlying the ability to communicate emotions effectively. For me personally, I actually use some of Koening’s words in my daily life and work. For example, “sonder” is the word he created to describe “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own”. I used this word as the title to my first poem, Sonder, to capture the essence of my ideas about society and how broken it is at the moment.
The handle for my recently launched artist Instagram account (@adronite 😉) is inspired by Koenig’s word “adronitis”, which is defined as “frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone”. I like to skip the small talk and ask the deep, big-picture questions to get to know people on a foundational level, and so his creation of this word allowed me to capture, understand, and validate that sentiment in a way that I can now use to express myself more precisely.
Learn
In this week’s Learn section, I want to dive into another segment from the same podcast episode as above, but this time tuning in to the talk “Can We Really Tell How People Are Feeling?” (about 10 minutes) By Lisa Feldman Barrett PhD. Dr.Barrett is a huge player in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and psychiatry, and she holds a number of esteemed positions at Northeastern University, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Barrett’s research focuses on the nature of emotion from both psychological and neuroscience perspectives and takes inspiration from anthropology, philosophy, and linguistics (MGH, CLLB).
In this talk, Dr. Barrett outlines the idea that when we attempt to understand what others are feeling (a primary component of empathy), we are really just guessing. Sure, we can learn empathy to the point that our guesses are usually right and fairly well-informed, but the point is that we cannot be absolutely certain about what someone else is feeling. In case you missed last week’s article on empathy, check out tip #1 from the list to understand more about why this is the case.
She further discusses the inherent bias that we have even when trying to understand the emotions of another. Our perception of someone else’s emotions are necessarily colored by our own perspectives of the world and how people and emotions work. Learn more about these topics in the talk by clicking the button below.
Level Up
This week’s Level Up section is all about laying the foundation for your journey to emotional power, and if you’re planning to achieve it anytime soon, one thing you’ll need to understand is something called the “Growth Mindset”, which was pioneered by Dr. Carol Dweck. There are plenty of great resources to get you started, so I’ll keep my commentary brief.
The first is an overview article of Dr. Dweck’s work that explains what a growth mindset is and how it can be used to put the aforementioned emotional ideas into practice and unlock your emotional power. The second resource is this talk given by Dr. Dweck that covers more ground and gives you more insight as to who she is and why you should listen to what she has to say. You can also check out this video for a nicely animated derivative of Dr. Dweck’s idea.
Fireside Spotlight
In last week’s Fireside Spotlight, we saw a piece called “The Pain of a Name” by E. Stanley, one of the Epic Life Playbook community members. This week we’ll see a poem out of Winter Hearth Studios entitled “Quietude”. Quietude is defined as a state of stillness or calmness in a person or place. Let your mind be transported to the setting of this piece. Who is speaking? Where are they? What might they be feeling? Keep these questions in mind as you check out the piece:
Quietude
Playing the rhythms of the emerald grass
As it stretches toward the heavens,
I find my separate peace.
Watching patiently as the dawn sinks to dusk
Each night,
I sing the moon my sweet lullaby.
Can you hear me,
Underneath the subtle hum of
Your busy mind?
Flowing weightlessly on nature’s outstretched hand,
Above the treetops,
Between the birdsongs,
Beside your heartbeats,
Around the stars,
Amid the multitudes of thoughts,
Diving deep into the chasms of treasures
Yet unbeknownst to man,
My dark eyes sing stories unforetold.
My words are too loud in your head.
Hiding between each note,
Each breath, each lustrous drop of sound —
I am the maestro of the sounds,
The orchestrator of the celestial symphony,
The sound of wisdom.
- Elgin Davis
Walk It, Talk it
Thanks again for joining us this week in the Winter Hearth Epic Life Playbook! In the words of Dale Carnegie, “Knowledge isn’t power until it is applied.” How can you apply the ideas in this digest to your life? How can you use it to gain power in living a more epic story? Talk to your friends and family this week about something you found interesting in the digest.
This weekly personal development playbook is a labor of love, so if you enjoy reading it each week, please share it with your friends to assist us in reaching our goal of helping the world achieve a better human experience :)
Your Greatest Chapter Awaits
Until next time,
Elgin
Hey, I’m Elgin, and I love to create. I’m the creator of Winter Hearth Studios and the Winter Hearth Creative Journal, a space where we explore the depths of the human experience, discovering the keys to crafting a better life and inspiring you to Live An Epic Story.
I’m currently a 4th year student at Harvard University studying computer science and design, and in my free time I love to travel, draw, read, and pursue bold, exciting adventures.
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