Emotional Wisdom and the Permission to Feel

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How do different emotions impact everyday life? And what are the kinds of experiences we want and need—in the classroom, at work, and in our own developmental trajectories—to be able to deepen our emotional wisdom so we can make better decisions and have healthier relationships? In this episode of Learning Through Experience, we dig deep into feelings with Dr. Marc Brackett.

As he underscored during our conversation, “We all have emotions, whether we want them or not, and they can either help us achieve our goals or derail us.” The founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and professor in the Child Study Center at Yale, Marc is on a mission to ensure everyone gets an education in emotion and learns to navigate emotion effectively. After all, emotions are not going away; we have to learn to work with them wisely.

Watch this episode on YouTube.

Key Topics

2:54 An Emotional Journey – Marc reflects on his childhood experiences, including bullying and abuse, and an uncle who came into his life “at the right time, at the right place, with the right context,” greatly impacting his professional trajectory.

5:55 Learning Emotion Across the Lifespan – There’s a need for emotional education at every stage of life.

9:47 Emotions in the Workplace: A New Perspective – Organizations can create spaces for emotional expression. And they must; emotions influence performance and satisfaction at work.

20:51 The RULER Framework for Emotional Intelligence – Helping people develop emotional intelligence and fosters healthier emotional interactions in relationships and workplaces

32:29 Building Connection Through Listening – Getting to know people's stories to build true emotional understanding is paramount.

34:05 Cultivating Emotional Well-being – Practical strategies for enhancing emotional well-being at work, including intentional scheduling and creating spaces where people feel appreciated and heard.

39:45 The Future of Tech and Emotional Intelligence: There’s an app for that. AI can help us track our emotions and receive personalized suggestions for emotional regulation.

Additional Resources from Marc

About Learning Through Experience

We all want work—and life—to be better. So how do we make it happen? How can we learn from the experience we have to create a future that we want? This is the realm that much of Dr. Heidi Brooks’ work explores. As we navigate the everyday, she invites us to cultivate the capacity to learn through experience, and to apply the wisdom gained to co-create a future that is worth fighting for.

Almost all adults work and experience organizational life. Work is the common connector; it dominates where we engage with the world and where the world engages with us. And for Dr. Brooks, it’s a canvas for the great re-imagining of our humanity. So, what can we do every day to help create an experience of work that people want to be part of? This everyday leadership invitation goes beyond deliverables and tasks into thinking of work as a space that we co-create.

Season Three of the Learning Through Experience podcast echos Dr. Brooks’ course structure, centered on interpersonal and group dynamics. Even at Yale, there is a place for learning through experience—not just books. The answer you seek is not on page 4. Watch and listen as Dr. Brooks meets with colleagues and authorities in their fields about transformative experiences that shape and shift how we learn and listen, feel and connect, reinforcing that experience precedes thinking that challenges our paradigms and assumptions.

In order to challenge the status quo, we need to have experiences that open us up to learning. Are you ready? Join us for Season Three of Learning Through Experience.

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