Emotions Make Sense - When You Know the Rules: From Emotional Intelligence to Emotional Wisdom

I wrote this book because of a moment I couldn't explain. I've been working on emotional intelligence for a long time, teaching, coaching, researching, writing, and I've seen that this work changes people's lives, including my own. But recently, I discovered something new, something I wasn't expecting. And I want to share it with you, too. Because if you've been on this path, I think it's going to help you. Let me start with a story of a moment in China. I was teaching an advanced coaching course and I was doing a coaching demo and my client was getting caught up in the story and my translator Rachel was whispering in my ear telling me what was happening. And with translation, it's always just a tiny bit behind. So, I'm watching and seeing what I'm seeing and I'm hearing this voice and something's not quite lining up. And I asked Rachel to stop for a second and I reached out and I touched my client on the hand and I said, "Are you feeling afraid? " Rachel translated. And my client burst into tears. And afterwards the people in the class were saying, "How did you know what to ask? " And the truth is I didn't know. And in the moment I thought, "Oh, I need to be able to answer that. explain. " But I've been grappling with this and trying to understand why did I need to explain that and how did I know? And one of the conclusions that I've come to is that when you know you're not coaching, but there's something going on. There was something that I was picking up. And I didn't need to make sense of it rationally. know exactly what was happening for me to feel the truth of it. I can learn to understand not just cognitively. There are things my body knows. heart knows. I can feel this warmth. I wanted to understand that glimpse, that moment. And that's why I wrote the book. Most of us grew up learning that feelings are irrational, that they're in the way of clear thinking, these unruly horses are dragging us into this chaos. That good decisions run through logic alone. that feelings are noise, something to suppress or push away or ignore. And all of that is wrong. Emotions aren't random. They're not chaotic. They follow rules. And when you learn the rules, you can stop fighting your own feelings. And you can begin to hear the wisdom in the emotions that's been with you all along. I've spent 30 years building emotional intelligence into a global movement. I've trained coaches. I've worked with leaders on every continent. I've published research. The evidence is clear. EQ works. People who develop emotional intelligence lead better, connect more strongly, make better decisions, get better results. This is working well. And then a few years ago, I hit a wall. experienced burnout. Real burnout. Deep depletion. I was caught in a cycle of pushing, giving, stretching, taking too much on myself, and not connecting with others, not letting people support me, ignoring all of the signals my body was sending me. And here's what got me. I knew better. I'd been teaching this stuff, been helping people with these very same challenges. I had all the frameworks. I had the knowledge. But there was something missing for me. Knowing about emotions and really trusting them are two very different things. That gap is the gap between emotional intelligence and emotional wisdom. And that's what this book is really about. Not just being smarter with feelings, letting your emotions guide you to what actually matters, especially when the path is not clear.

Emotions are data. Emotional intelligence is how you use that data intentionally. Emotional wisdom is when you take the next step and those emotions become a source of meaning. And wisdom, I'll be honest, I don't exactly know what it means. I felt glimmers of it. Times when I could see more clearly than other times. times when I had this sense of knowing of where I really wanted to go and I could feel it. That's the emotional part of emotional wisdom. This draw towards a deeper truth. I'm coaching a client who's in the middle of a big life transition. and she's trying to make a lot of changes. And I can see as she's describing this, she has tears in her eyes. And I say, "All that uncertainty, does that feel difficult? " She looks at me and she says, "No, these are tears of joy because I want to feel the uncertainty that tells me I'm growing. " That stopped me because most of us want answers. We want to know what's happening. We want to move out of that discomfort of being in that uncertain place. Emotional wisdom asks something different in invites us to stay in that uncertainty to be in that place of not knowing so we can learn so we can look so we can grow. And sometimes that means doing less and being more using less effort being more fully here. If you're watching this, you probably know already that emotions are important. You've done the work. You've studied. Maybe you've coached and supported others to navigate their own emotions. This book is about what comes next. not more techniques, a deeper way of being, of trusting the messages that your body is already sending you. Emotions aren't just tools for better performance. They're a path to a more alive, more courageous, more whole way of living and being. The book is called Emotion Rules. I wrote it for you and we can continue on this journey together.