Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

by Marc Brackett

Prologue

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Our emotions are a big part—maybe the biggest part—of what makes us human.

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Too often we do our best to deny them or hide them—even from ourselves.

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Because of that we’re unable to name it, so we can’t express it, either, in terms the people around us would understand. And when we can’t recognize, understand, or put into words what we feel, it’s impossible for us to do anything about it: to master our feelings—not to deny them but to accept them all, even embrace them—and learn to make our emotions work for us, not against us.

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PART ONE PERMISSION TO FEEL

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1 Permission to Feel

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HOW ARE YOU FEELING?

They either missed or ignored all the signals I was sending, which doesn’t really come as a surprise. Maybe they felt safer not asking too many questions about my life at school or in our neighborhood. Maybe they were afraid of what they’d find out—afraid that once they knew, they’d have to do something about it.

Here’s how I responded: I became numb to how I felt. I was under emotional lockdown. Survival mode.

It wasn’t just what he said, it was the way he said it. Truly wanting to hear the answer. Not judging me for what I felt. He just listened, openly and with empathy, to what I was expressing. He didn’t try to interpret me or explain me.

Our center’s goal is to use the power of emotions to create a healthier and more equitable, innovative, and compassionate society.

My message for everyone is the same: that if we can learn to identify, express, and harness our feelings, even the most challenging ones, we can use those emotions to help us create positive, satisfying lives.

It’s one of the great paradoxes of the human condition—we ask some variation of the question “How are you feeling?” over and over, which would lead one to assume that we attach some importance to it. And yet we never expect or desire—or provide—an honest answer.

The irony, though, is that when we ignore our feelings, or suppress them, they only become stronger. The really powerful emotions build up inside us, like a dark force that inevitably poisons everything we do, whether we like it or not. Hurt feelings don’t vanish on their own. They don’t heal themselves. If we don’t express our emotions, they pile up like a debt that will eventually come due.

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If we don’t understand emotions and find strategies to deal with them, they will take over our lives, as they did for me as a child. Fear and anxiety made it impossible for me to try to deal with my problems. I was paralyzed.

Feelings are a form of information. They’re like news reports from inside our psyches, sending messages about what’s going on inside the unique person that is each of us in response to whatever internal or external events we’re experiencing. We need to access that information and then figure out what it’s telling us. That way we can make the most informed decisions.

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Anger can sometimes seem unprovoked or inexplicable, but in almost every case it’s a response to what we perceive as unfair treatment. We’ve suffered an injustice of some kind, big or small, and it makes us mad.

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regulate emotions, rather than let them regulate us, by finding practical strategies for dealing with what we and others feel.

Perpetual happiness can’t be our goal—it’s just not how real life works. We need the ability to experience and express all emotions, to down- or up-regulate both pleasant and unpleasant emotions in order to achieve greater well-being, make the most informed decisions, build and maintain meaningful relationships, and realize our potential.

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It starts with the permission to feel, the first step of the process.

2 Emotions Are Information

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Our emotional lives are a roller coaster, climbing high one moment and plunging the next.

All emotions are an important source of information about what’s going on inside us. Our multiple senses bring us news from our bodies, our minds, and the outside world, and then our brains process and analyze it and formulate our experience. We call that a feeling.

“the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”

The cognitive revolution was in full force and people viewed emotions as ‘noise.’ The idea was that we had emotions, but they didn’t predict anything important. I just couldn’t believe that was true, so I got very motivated to study emotions to show they mattered in a positive way. I wanted to show that we had an emotion system for a reason. We had an emotion system that helped us get through life.”

First was the rediscovery of Charles Darwin’s functional view of emotion. Back in the nineteenth century, he pioneered the idea that emotions signal valuable information and energize adaptive behavior central to survival.

Research showed that emotions give purpose, priority, and focus to our thinking. They tell us what to do with the knowledge that our senses deliver. They motivate us to act.

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Psychologists proposed the idea of a “cognitive loop” that connects mood to judgment. For example, when a person is in a good mood, they’re more likely to have positive thoughts and memories, which in turn keep the person thinking about positive things (the loop).

Guidance system

“social intelligence”—the ability to accumulate knowledge about the social world, understand people, and act wisely in social relations.

I’ve championed five areas where our feelings matter most—the aspects of our everyday lives that are most influenced by our emotions. First, our emotional state determines where we direct our attention, what we remember, and what we learn. Second is decision making: when we’re in the grip of any strong emotion—such as anger or sadness, but also elation or joy—we perceive the world differently, and the choices we make at that moment are influenced, for better or for worse. Third is our social relations. What we feel—and how we interpret other people’s feelings—sends signals to approach or avoid, to affiliate with someone or distance ourselves, to reward or punish. Fourth is the influence of emotions on our health. Positive and negative emotions cause different physiological reactions within our bodies and brains, releasing powerful chemicals that, in turn, affect our physical and mental well-being. And the fifth has to do with creativity, effectiveness, and performance. In order to achieve big goals, get good grades, and thrive in our collaborations at work, we have to use our emotions as though they were tools. Which, of course, they are—or can be.

EMOTIONS AND ATTENTION, MEMORY, AND LEARNING

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All learning has an emotional base.—PLATO

Think about it: emotions determine what you care about in the moment.

As we’ve seen, feelings are highly impervious to cold logic. When we anticipate an unfavorable outcome under any circumstances, we’re inhibited from thinking about much else.

Strong, negative emotions (fear, anger, anxiety, hopelessness) tend to narrow our minds—it’s as though our peripheral vision has been cut off because we’re so focused on the peril that’s front and center.

When these negative feelings are present, our brains respond by secreting cortisol, the stress hormone. This inhibits the prefrontal cortex from effectively processing information, so even at a neurocognitive level our ability to focus and learn is impaired. To be sure, moderate levels of stress—feeling challenged—can enhance our focus. It’s chronic stress that’s toxic and makes it biologically challenging to learning.

Joy and exuberance are as powerful as any other emotion when it comes to our ability to direct our thoughts where we want them to go. Instead of stimulating the production of cortisol, positive emotions are generally associated with the excretion of serotonin, dopamine, and other “feel-good” neurochemicals that exert their influence on thinking and behavior.

If we need to engage our critical faculties—if, for instance, we have to edit a letter we’ve written and want to seek out flaws and correct any mistakes—a negative frame of mind might serve us better than its opposite. Pessimism can make it easier for us to anticipate things that could go wrong and then take the proper actions to prevent them.

Anxiety keeps us trying to improve things that a more generous mood might be willing to accept.

Negative emotions have a constructive function: they help narrow and focus our attention. It’s sadness, not happiness, that can help us work through a difficult problem. It’s excitement that stimulates lots of ideas. But too much enthusiasm won’t bring needed consensus to a group—it will disperse the energy necessary for reasoning through the problem at hand, whether mathematical or interpersonal.

Whenever we notice that we’re suddenly having difficulty paying attention, or focusing, or remembering, we should ask ourselves: What emotion information is there, just beneath the surface of our thoughts? And what if anything can we do to regain a handle on our minds?

EMOTIONS AND DECISION MAKING

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In reality, our emotions largely determine our actions. If we’re feeling something positive—confidence, optimism, contentment—we’ll come to one conclusion about what we ought to do. If our emotions are negative—anxiety, anger, sadness—our decision may be quite different, even though we’re working with the same set of facts.

anxiety narrows our attention and improves our focus on details.

Negative emotions make us weigh facts carefully and err on the side of caution.

Judgments that entail a greater degree of subjectivity, such as grading a creative essay, are generally at a heightened risk of emotional bias compared with judgments that are more objective, such as grading a math test.

In fact, with greater emotional awareness, just the opposite may be true: our feelings can serve as another form of information, telling us important things about how we’re responding to any given situation. When we are faced with a decision, anxiety may tell us one thing, enthusiasm something completely different. Knowing this, we can take our emotional state into account before choosing a course of action.

EMOTION AND RELATIONSHIPS

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Human relations are infinitely complex because we ourselves are, but the basic dynamic is rather simple: approach or avoid.

The purpose of relationships can be seen in all societies, even among animals: being surrounded by allies is a form of protection that can mean the difference between life and death.