Creative experiences - writing, making and listening to music, art, improvisation - are the most direct pathway to developing the mind and skill set associated with emotional intelligence. This power point was part of a presentation at The Examined Life Conference at the Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, April 11-13, 2013.

1. The Examined Life
Conference:
Writing, Humanities and
The Art of Medicine
April 11-13, 2013
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA

2. 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

3. “The Night I Met Einstein”
by Jerome Weidman
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
http://www.rd.com/true- untidy white hair, a dead pipe
clamped between his teeth, and eyes
stories/inspiring/the- that contain in their extraordinary
night-i-met- 0
warmth all the wonder of the world.”
einstein/#ixzz2QmKkrpXj

4. The arts, creativity and joy:
about chemistry
0 Dopamine is produced 0 “Thus, we feel rewarded
when we create new
in the oldest part of the objects or actions, and
brain, the brainstem, but since creativity is based on
released in the the decisions made by the
creator, the reward system
newest, the cortex— kicks in when we are in
where we control and inventing
things that we have
create, think, decide, and thought of ourselves.
plan.” James Zull, “Arts, Neuroscience Freedom and ownership
and Learning,” New Horizons for Learning
(March 2005): para. 10. 20 Nov. 2005
are part and parcel of the
<http://www.newhorizons.org>. neurochemistry of the
arts.”

5. 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

6. Emotional Intelligence:
its not (only) what you feel
Emotion is to Its what you
thinking what think about
music is to a what you feel
lyric.

7. “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

8. 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

9. Emotional Intelligence is associated
with the ability to:
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
www.lifestage.org

10. The creative process of
emotional growth
0 Emotional Intelligence is
involved in the capacity to
perceive 0Respectful
emotion, assimilate listening,
emotion-related
feelings, understand the 0Self-and-other-
information of those
emotions and manage
awareness, Self-
them.” Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P., & regulation,
Caruso, D. (2000). Models of emotional
intelligence. In R.J. Steinberg
(Ed.), Handbook of intelligence. 0Creativity
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press. 0Sense of play

11. Listening is the most fundamental
component of interpersonal
communication
Listening 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

12. “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

13. 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.

14. “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

15. Creative experiences cultivate the
competencies of
Emotional Intelligence
Creative process: Emotional
0 Full engagement with the creative
Intelligence
process and partners; 0 Focused awareness of
0 Focused attention; internal experience;
0 Observational skills; 0 The ability to focus attention
0 Awareness of and responsiveness to and make creative choices;
new information that emerges
through interaction; 0 Capacity to observe both “big
0 Spontaneity picture” and details of
situations;
0 Capacity to shift gears when
“Aesthetic Intelligence: What Businesses Can Learn From The Arts”
Rotman Magazine, Spring 2010
necessary and respond
effectively to the unexpected;

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

17. 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)

18. 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

19. 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

20. A highly engaging narrative
evokes powerful empathic
responses
0The
0 The Set-Up
Dramatic 0 The Inciting Incident
0 The Rising Action
Arc 0 The Turning Point
0 The Resolution

21. “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

22. “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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. “I Swear I Found The Keys To
The Universe”
0 “You will never know any parkland, never understand a collectively-
Christopher Cooper, Wiscasset Newspaper
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

28. 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