The Power of Emotional Intelligence

When psychologist Marc Brackett was a young child, he was subject to intense bullying, and in his emotional intelligence talk, he asks why no one ever took the time to ask him how he was feeling during those struggles. On a recent visit to his elementary school, Brackett found that he couldn't remember very much about his friends, his teachers, or his lessons, but he could remember the intense fear he'd always felt — emotions and feelings can play a deep role in people's lives.

That said, many people have trouble describing their emotions. Brackett has developed a matrix that he uses as a baseline to help people determine how they're feeling at a given moment. Along the x-axis is pleasantness, and the y-axis measures energy level. These axes divide the grid into quadrants, and each of these has a color. Though the concept is straightforward enough, people have a lot of trouble pinning those colored quadrants to words. Simply put, people have trouble describing their emotions.