The Physiology Behind Our Emotions

I highly recommend the work of Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves, and their respective research teams at TalentSmart®. Their books, The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book and Emotional Intelligence 2.0, continue to be sources of great and beneficial information for me.

Consider the following scanned-image-excerpt from Emotional Intelligence 2.0:

This image shows us the physical pathway of information in our brains. Information initially begins in our senses and enters our brain through our spinal cord, it then passes through the limbic system (where we feel emotion), before finally entering the prefrontal cortex (where we think rationally). What this means is that most of us tend to feel before we think. This also explains why we feel compelled to do certain things when we experience strong emotions. When this occurs, the feeling part of our brain often “overpowers” the thinking part and renders the latter almost useless until our emotions have subsided.

Emotional intelligence depends on the level of “communication” that exists between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex, that is to say, it depends on the level of communication between the feeling and thinking parts of our brain. If we have developed strong communication between the feeling and thinking parts of our brain, we tend to be more able to think rationally about things while we are experiencing strong emotions. On the other hand, if little communication exists between the feeling and thinking parts of our brain, we tend to be unable to think rationally until the emotions are gone. Many people make resolutions when they are able to think rationally, but cannot seem to keep them when they experience strong emotions. Again, this results from a lack of communication between the feeling and thinking parts of the brain.

When a person seeks to develop emotional intelligence via self-awareness and self-management (as discussed in Lesson IX: Emotion and Intelligence in The Catalyst of Confidence), their brain begins opening up communicative neural-pathways between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. Put differently, when a person thinks about how they are feeling and how they are acting in response to that feeling, they start to open up communication between the feeling and thinking parts of their brain. The more they do this, the more neural-pathways develop, and the stronger the communication between the two respective parts of the brain becomes. Thus, over time, a person may continue developing emotional intelligence until they are almost rationally unaffected by the presence of emotion in their life.