Words & MusicEnhancing Emotional Intelligence Through Creative Experience

The Examined Life Conference: Writing, Humanities and The Art of Medicine

April 11-13, 2013 University of Iowa Iowa City, IA

A story about listening

0 “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”

0 Albert Einstein

“The Night I Met Einstein”by Jerome Weidman

http://www.rd.com/true-stories/inspiring/the-night-i-met-einstein/#ixzz2QmKkrpXj

0 “’Just allow yourself to listen,” he whispered. “That is all.’

0 It wasn’t really all, of course. Without the effort he had just poured out for a total stranger I would never have heard, as I did that night for the first time in my life, Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze.” I have heard it many times since. I don’t think I shall ever tire of it. Because I never listen to it alone. I am sitting beside a small, round man with a shock of untidy white hair, a dead pipe clamped between his teeth, and eyes that contain in their extraordinary warmth all the wonder of the world.”

The arts, creativity and joy: about chemistry

0 Dopamine is produced in the oldest part of the brain, the brainstem, but released in the newest, the cortex—where we create, think, decide, and plan.” James Zull, “Arts, Neuroscience and Learning,” New Horizons for Learning (March 2005): para. 10. 20 Nov. 2005 <http://www.newhorizons.org>.

0 “Thus, we feel rewarded when we create new objects or actions, and since creativity is based on the decisions made by the creator, the reward system kicks in when we are in control and inventing things that we have thought of ourselves. Freedom and ownership are part and parcel of the neurochemistry of the arts.”

Every response we give to another person involves our intellect and emotions.

The intellect composes the message, and the emotions provide animation and grace. Howard Hopkins, retired teacher, Montreal

Emotional Intelligence: its not (only) what you feel

Emotion is to thinking what music is to a lyric.

Its what you think about what you feel

“The skill to combine intellect and emotion in this dramatic and powerful fashion is emotional intelligence, and it possesses the power to elevate even the common exchanges of everyday encounters from the base level of you-and-me to the sublimity of I-and-Thou!” Howard Hopkins, retired teacher, Montreal www.canadone.com/ezine/july04.eq.interview.html

Emotional Intelligence is as important as technical or academic intelligence.

0 Interpersonal skills are found to be as essential as medical knowledge and technical skill in the operating room

0 Medical errors – with resulting complications and sometimes catastrophic outcomes for patients – were found to be directly related to communication failures among medical and surgical teams.

0 Social, relational, and organizational factors - are complex and relate to hierarchical differences, concerns with upward influence, conflicting roles and role ambiguity, and interpersonal power and conflict.

Michelle O’Daniel & Alan Rosenstein, “Professional Communication and Team Collaboration” Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality April 2008.

www.lifestage.org

Emotional Intelligence is associated with the ability to:

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0 accurately appraise oneself;0 perceive and understand one’s own

emotions and the emotions of others;

0 form and maintain intimate relationships;

0 express and manage emotions;0 regulate and control the expression

of emotions;0 validate one’s thinking and feeling; 0 handle change and effectively solve

problems.

Mark Slaski and Susan Cartwright, “Emotional intelligence training and its implications for stress, health and performance” Stress and Health Volume 19 2003

The creative process of emotional growth

0 Emotional Intelligence is involved in the capacity to perceive emotion, assimilate emotion-related feelings, understand the information of those emotions and manage them.” Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. (2000). Models of emotional intelligence. In R.J. Steinberg (Ed.), Handbook of intelligence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

0Respectful listening,

0Self-and-other-awareness, Self-regulation,

0Creativity 0Sense of play

Listening is the most fundamental component of interpersonal

communicationListening is not something that just happens, it is an active process in which a conscious decision is made to listen to and understand the messages of the speaker.

0 “The skills you need” www.skillsyouneed.co.uk/IPS/active_listening.html#ixzzsMpHTGa5Y

“When others speak, we typically divide our attention between what they are saying now and

what they are going to say next -

For many of us, the opposite of talking isn’t listening, it’s waiting.”

Daniel Pink, To Sell Is Human, Riverhead Books, 2012, p. 190

The nonverbal dialogue

0 “Human interaction is nonlinear and characterized by unpredictable and emergent patterns of meaning or patterns of relating that self-organize without anyone's intention or direction. These patterns emerge from the relationship process itself. Words and phrases or nonverbal gestures introduced into dialogue merge with memories, beliefs, judgments, and emotions in each individual. These interior dimensions of the relationship process are invisible to the researching observer. They occur in an internal dialogue within the brain and body of each participant.”

0 F. Daniel Duffy, “Complexity and Healing Relationships” Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2006 January; 21(S1): S45–S47.

“Artistic and scientific approaches need not be at odds

but must be carefully harmonized.”“When Should A Process Be Art, Not Science?” Harvard Business Review, March 2009, www.hbr.org

Creative experiences cultivate the competencies of

Emotional Intelligence Creative process:

0 Full engagement with the creative process and partners;

0 Focused attention;0 Observational skills;0 Awareness of and responsiveness to

new information that emerges through interaction;

0 Spontaneity

“Aesthetic Intelligence: What Businesses Can Learn From The Arts” Rotman Magazine, Spring 2010

Emotional Intelligence0 Focused awareness of internal

experience;0 The ability to focus attention

and make creative choices;0 Capacity to observe both “big

picture” and details of situations;

0 Capacity to shift gears when necessary and respond effectively to the unexpected;

“I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.”Bill Murray as Phil Connors in Groundhog Day

(1993)

Everyone can develop these skills. Some people just need a little more time than others.

Same day, different guy

“When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.” Bill Murray as Phil Connors in Groundhog Day (1993)

0“Neuroscience has discovered that our brain’s very design makes it social, inexorably drawn into an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whenever we engage with another person. That neural bridge lets us affect the brain – and the body – of everyone we interact with just as they do us.”

0 Fishbane, M “Wired To Connect: Neuroscience, Relationships and Therapy” Family Process, Vol 46, No. 3, 2007

If a story is told and no one hears it….

Storytelling is human connection at its most primal form. Storytelling is to entertainment as the slow food movement is to dining – it’s fresh and it’s local.” Catherine Burns, Artistic Director for The Moth storytelling broadcast

A highly engaging narrative evokes powerful empathic

responses0The Dramatic Arc

0 The Set-Up0 The Inciting Incident0 The Rising Action0 The Turning Point0 The Resolution

“Neural coupling” occurs in successful communication

0 The findings indicate that during successful communication, speakers’ and listeners’ brains exhibit joint, temporally coupled, response patterns. Such neural coupling substantially diminishes in the absence of communication, such as when listening to an unintelligible foreign language.

“Speaker-listener neural coupling underlies successful communication” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science Vol. 107 No. 32 http://www.pnas.org/content/107/32/14425.full

“We often tell ourselves a story about others’ real intent.

These stories determine our emotional response.” The Cost of Conflict Avoidance” VitalSmarts Research , www.vitalsmarts.com

Happiness and Emotional Intelligence

“The experience of joy, contentment or positive

well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good,

meaningful, and worthwhile.”

0Sonja Lyubomirsky, “Why are some people happier than others? The Role of Cognitive and

Motivational Processes in Well-Being”, American Psychologist, March 2001

Magellan Health Services, Inc. | 23

Happiness is the fuel to thrive and to flourish, and to leave this world in better shape

than you found it.

“You tap into it whenever you feel energized and excited by new ideas. You tap into it whenever you feel at one with your surroundings, at peace. You tap into it whenever you feel playful, creative, or silly. You tap into it whenever you feel your soul stirred by the sheer beauty of existence. You tap into it whenever you feel connected to others and loved. In short, you tap into it whenever positive emotions resonate within you.”

0Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, the Chief Researcher and Head of the Positive Emotion and Psychophysiology Lab at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Happiness is not the same as positive thinking – but positive efforts to learn, change or

acquire a new skill combined with cognitive shifts can create it.

0 “People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.” 0Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper & Rose, 1990): 20

Happy experiences promote long-term well-being

0 “Positive emotions - like joy, interest, pride and gratitude - don't just feel good in the moment - they also affect our long term well-being. Research shows that experiencing positive emotions in a 3-to-1 ratio to negative ones leads to a tipping point beyond which we naturally become more resilient to adversity and better able to achieve things. The evidence linking an upbeat outlook to increased longevity is actually stronger than the evidence linking obesity to reduced longevity.”

0 B.L. Fredrickson, Positivity: Groundbreaking research reveals how to embrace the hidden strength of positive emotions, overcome negativity, and thrive, 2009. E. Diener and M. Chan,Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 3(1):1-43, March 2011

“I Swear I Found The Keys To The Universe”

Christopher Cooper, Wiscasset Newspaper

0 “You will never know any parkland, never understand a collectively-

owned mountain with the intimacy possible when you live on and work with a piece of ordinary land…I think as I work that my purpose is product -a grove of ginkgos, a curved retaining wall, a woods road extension. And so it is to the extent that these ends give me focus and order and the satisfaction of seeing my plans put to concreteness.

0 But more fundamentally and necessarily, and essential to my emotional good health, this art, like I think all acts of creation however rude or refined, is about process. Writing the song and singing it, painting the picture, chiseling the stone, stacking the bricks to a height and in a form nobody has yet quite done-in these and similar acts are we made whole for a time.”

0 http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/20/4689

www.lifestage.org

0 Lifestage is a training and consulting company that designs creative, experiential programs for personal and professional development. Read articles by Lifestage trainers at www.livesinprogressnewsletter.blogspot.com

0 contact Jude Treder-Wolff at 631-366-4265 or lifestage_2000@yahoo.com