It’s All About Emotions
We started off this March networking event with a 10-minute member presentation by Anna Molnár of Blossom Empowering Events. Anna empowers ambitious female entrepreneurs and shared with us three important pillars of her approach which aims to stimulate resilience in difficult times. The first was the importance of having an (exciting) plan. The second is to take things a quarter at a time, using the image of a four leaf clover. The third tip was to believe in your gut feeling and to check whether this gut feeling came from a place of love or fear! Wonderful tips from Anna to stimulate us in these challenging times.
We then moved to the main content of the evening: A Session on Emotional Intelligence by Sukai Ceesay. Dymphna Elsink introduced Sukai to us in a very memorable way as someone who “always opens conversations with her heart”.
Sukai made a lasting impression by delivering a powerful session, without the use of a single PowerPoint slide! Right off the bat, we were asked what we think of when referring to Emotional Intelligence. As someone who hasn’t read anything official on the topic, my first thought on the topic was that it had something to do with us being “connected with ourselves”. This turned out to be pretty on target!
In essence, to increase our EQ, we need to learn to recognize patterns. It all begins with becoming emotionally literate – having a name for the things you are feeling. From naming the feeling we can progress to figuring out where in the body we feel it and identifying where it starts. Once this happens, we are much more in tune with our feelings and can better direct our own responses to others.
Sukai told us we can peel emotions like an onion, removing the layers of preconceived notions, experiences and expectations of a situation to get to our root ability to engage and relate with one another. Kids are a blank canvas (or the core layer of the onion) as when it comes to emotions and feelings they haven’t yet learned to mask their feelings.
This however, is just the tip of the iceberg as we were told that there are 12 elements to measuring EQ!
A fascinating part of Sukai’s presentation which sparked much discussion was looking at faces (on photo cards she showed us) and interpreting their expressions to the best of our ability. Funnily enough, I was chosen to be the guinea pig for this session. It was insightful to hear how many different interpretations of what someone could be feeling or going through and this sparked a lot of reactions and questions.
A book recommendation for those who want to learn more about Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman!
All in all, Sukai’s session was very engaging and sparked (at least for myself) a keen interest in learning more about the topic!
Rounding off the evening we got the yearly report from WBII President Charlene Lambert who shared with us all the amazing things that we, as the WBII, have done this past year. The 2020 Annual Report is available online for those of you who would like more details. I’m sure we will move onto great things in 2021!
Johanne Bade, Parent Coach
Johanne Bade Coaching
