Blogging Topic 3: Displays of emotion

We'll leave behind the Blind Square this week (finally) and talk a little about Emotional Intelligence and the related concepts.

This week in class, you played the Emotion Coding game. Like most of the games in this class, it was designed to challenge you and make easy success unlikely. For some people, it might have been hard to "be onstage" and for others, it might have been difficult to express emotions. In this blog topic, I'd like you to reflect on the Emotion Coding game and how your performance in this game is associated with the rest of your life.

For example, I remember my mom saying (over and over and over) while I was growing up that it "wasn't what you say, it's how you say it" and I cultivated a fairly sarcastic tone of voice during my high school and college years. I didn't realize it until people started saying I was cynical or unsupportive. To me, a core value is being dependable and supportive. If you need, I'll be there. And, another core value is being positive and believing that everything will work out. So, it was hard to hear people think that I wasn't authentic or that I view the world (and the people in it) in a negative way. I had to check myself and what I was saying, especially when making first impressions, to make sure that my values were coming across. I grew up in an environment in which positive emotions were not frequently or easily expressed (or any emotions, really), because that was not my family's way. Realizing that I have this particular cultural background has helped me bemore aware of my emotional expression habits.