You’ve probably heard the phrase “emotional intelligence” thrown around in meetings, on LinkedIn posts, and in self-help emails. It’s become one of those buzzwords that can feel both promising and slippery — promising because it suggests we can get better at being human with each other, slippery because it can stay as a concept in our minds without ever changing how we live. Lynette and I learned this the hard way.

Years ago, when EQ still lived a bit on the edges of mainstream leadership development, we fell into it in a way that felt like fate. We trained with Six Seconds — the Emotional Intelligence Network — and with Josh Freedman, who was and is leading the organization. Back in those days Josh was able to be pretty much one on one with people that were interested in EQ, and we learned a lot from him. We didn’t just take a course or two; we drank deeply. We took every training Six Seconds had at the time and offered it through our company, Spirit of EQ. By learning the tools and the models, and eventually served as Regional Network Directors for North America we found out the meaning of a deeper walk with our emotions.And that meant we were surrounded by people who had a real heart for change: coaches, educators, leaders who wanted to bring more humanity into their work and lives.

But here’s a truth we discovered: no matter how many models you memorize, how many assessments you score, or how many workshops you deliver, moving emotional intelligence from the head into the heart — truly owning it — is harder than it looks. Intellectual understanding is tidy and safe. It sits in the mind, where ideas can be argued and adjusted. The heart, by contrast, is raw and messy. Owning EQ means translating insight into felt experience and consistent action. It means living it, not just thinking about it.

What we learned made the difference between clever jargon and more about structure, practice, and values. Their approach centers around three practical intentions that are easy to understand and hard to neglect: Know Yourself, Choose Yourself, Give Yourself. These are not slogans. They’re invitations to live differently.

Know Yourself This is the foundation. If you don’t know what’s living inside you — your triggers, your default reactions, your values and fears — you can’t intentionally choose how to respond. Six Seconds and its SEI tools support accurate self-assessment, and that’s a useful starting point. But assessment without felt reflection is like reading your own weather report without stepping outside. To own EQ in your heart, you must turn awareness into felt reality.

Practice:

• Start small with regular check-ins: pause three times a day and name what you feel (not just what you think). Use simple language: “I feel anxious,” “I feel tired,” “I feel excited.” Naming an emotion moves it from automatic reactivity to conscious awareness.
• Use a body scan: where do you feel that emotion? A tight chest, a knot in the stomach, a quickened heartbeat? Bringing attention to bodily sensations roots intellectual understanding in bodily truth.

Choose Yourself This is the hinge. Knowing yourself gives you options; choosing yourself means you act on them intentionally instead of re-acting. It’s about the space between stimulus and response that Viktor Frankl talked about — that space is where EQ lives.

Practice:

• Identify one pattern that doesn’t serve you (e.g., snapping when stressed, avoiding tough conversations). Define a tiny alternative action you can take in moments of stress and practice it relentlessly.
• Anchor to values. If kindness is important to you, pre-decide what a small kind action looks like when you feel defensive. That pre-decision helps you act from choice, not from old habit.

Give Yourself This is the outward expression. EQ is not an internal hobby; it’s a way of relating. When you give from a place of presence and purpose, the heart opens. Give Yourself also means self-compassion — you must offer yourself the same patience you give others while you’re learning.

Practice:

• Practice small acts of service or connection that align with your values. These don’t have to be grand: a sincere thank-you note, a five-minute listening session with a colleague, or arriving ten minutes early to be fully present in a meeting.\
• Build a ritual of self-forgiveness. When you fail (and you will), practice an internal script of learning rather than self-judgment: “I’m learning. What can I try differently next time?”

Bringing these three intentions into daily life is how EQ stops being a theory and becomes a way of living. But there are still practical obstacles: busyness, skepticism, and the defense mechanisms that keep us stuck in the head. Here are concrete ways we learned to bridge that gap — ways that helped the people we worked with when we were regional directors, and that helped us in our own lives.

And here is the part where I do a shameless self-promotion: we at Spirit of EQ can help you with these trainings.

1. Use tiny experiments to build evidence

The brain cares about results. When you run small experiments — “Today I’ll breathe for 30 seconds before responding to criticism” — you gather evidence that different responses work. Accumulated evidence rewires expectation and hence behavior.

2. Anchor learning in relationships EQ isn’t a solo sport.

Practice with a trusted person: share your intention (“I’m practicing listening without giving advice”), ask for feedback, and debrief what happened. Real relationships provide both safety and accountability.

3. Move from intellectual insight to sensory experience.

 We often “know” something in our mind without sensing it in our body. Use approaches that require embodiment: role-plays, expressive movement, breath work, or even walking meetings where you name feelings aloud. The body remembers what the mind forgets.

4. Create an identity shift– Tell a new story about yourself:

not “I’m someone who gets triggered,” but “I’m someone who notices when I’m triggered and pauses.” Identity influences action. The more you act from that story, the more the heart will follow. Reframe, reframe, reframe.

5. Practice compassion rituals Moving from head to heart requires warmth toward yourself and others.

Start each day with a two-minute compassion practice: think of someone you care about and wish them well, then extend that same wish to yourself. Science and tradition both show compassion practices open the heart.

6. Use measurement to fuel growth (wisely).

Six Seconds’ approach includes measurement tools like the SEI assessment to track progress. Measurement is useful when it’s used for learning, not judgment. Use data to celebrate growth and to identify patterns you want to shift — not to shame yourself.

7. Connect purpose with practice

 People consistently embody EQ when their practices are connected to a larger purpose. Ask yourself: “Why do I want to get better at emotional intelligence? What would that allow me to bring to my family, team, or community?” When the head’s motivation aligns with heart-felt purpose, change accelerates.

A story that stays with me: we were running a regional workshop and one participant, a manager of a busy nonprofit team, was skeptical. He’d been to countless trainings and felt they were mostly fluff. Halfway through, during an exercise to name emotions and bodily sensations, he blurted out that he’d always been taught to “keep his face on.” The muscles around his eyes relaxed for the first time in the workshop. He admitted that for years he’d been protecting himself by staying emotionally flat. That admission was intellectual, but the group’s non-judgmental witnessing shifted something in him — his shoulders sagged, his voice softened — and for the first time in years he felt something like relief. He later told us that he didn’t become a different person overnight, but that one small felt moment made it possible for him to experiment with being authentic. He started a weekly habit of one minute of naming before staff meetings and eventually began to model vulnerability for his team.

That’s the turning point we saw again and again: an intellectual insight met with a felt experience, supported by practice and community. That’s how EQ moves from the head to the heart.

If you want to own EQ — not just understand it — begin where you are. Choose one small practice from above and make it non-negotiable for a week. Tell someone about what you’re trying. Measure nothing more than whether you did the practice. Notice the felt changes. Then expand.

The work of those many years showed us that emotional intelligence is less a destination and more a living skill — like learning a language or playing an instrument. You won’t master it in a weekend, but you can grow it every day. And when you do, something quietly powerful happens: your choices come from a place of alignment, your relationships deepen, and your life becomes an expression of the values you claim.

We’ve carried that lesson through our careers and into our everyday lives. We still study, we still measure, and yes, we still read the research. But what matters most is the slow, steady translation of insight into action — the felt practice of showing up differently. That’s how EQ stops being a buzzword and starts being a way of living from the heart.