Building Emotional Intelligence to Unlock Everyday Happiness

We hear about it all the time, right? Especially that old phrase from the Declaration of Independence: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It sounds almost like happiness is this thing at the end of a rainbow—a big quest that we’re all supposed to be on.

But here’s my take, and it’s what I spend this episode unpacking: I don’t think happiness is some mysterious thing we have to hunt for. I actually believe it’s right in front of us, closer than we realize. In fact, sometimes the hardest part is not finding it, but recognizing that we actually have the ability to choose it—right now, right where we are.

I’m a big believer in getting help when you need it. If happiness feels miles away, you’re not alone. There are days when it feels almost impossible to get there. That’s okay. Asking for support or seeking help doesn’t mean you’re failing at this.

One big thing I talk about in the episode is how much we let our circumstances decide our mood. Whether it’s the news, your job, or relationships, it’s easy to let outside events call the shots on how happy we feel.

I get personal, too. I share about the time my son had a near-fatal car accident—the kind of situation that flips life upside down and fills your days with more fear and uncertainty than anything else. Some days were absolutely miserable, and there’s no pretending otherwise. But even in those dark times, I found small moments of happiness—things like noticing the color of the fall leaves on my walks around the hospital. I had to make a conscious choice to look for those little bright spots when everything else seemed bleak.

That’s become my go-to move: a playbook for happiness, you could say. Over the years, I realized that choosing happiness isn’t just something you do when life is good; sometimes, you need it most when things are tough, or even just kind of dull.

Our brains are not always on board with this idea! We’re wired to spot problems and threats, not to go looking for things that make us happy. Those negative stories our minds tell us can feel pretty convincing.

Emotional intelligence really helps here. I talk about skills like consequential thinking and recognizing patterns—these are tools that let us slow down and actually decide how we want to respond, not just react.

It’s important to keep in mind that happiness isn’t a destination you reach and then you’re just done. Life will always have its ups and downs, good days and bad. So instead of waiting around for everything to finally be perfect, I encourage myself (and you) to keep making that choice every day. It may sound like hard work, but I promise it’s worth it.

Another tip I share is about building new neural pathways in your brain. If you’re someone who ties happiness to outside circumstances, you can actually train yourself to do it differently over time—just like taking the new expressway instead of the old backroads.

3 Key Takeaways for Content Creators

1. Happiness Is a Daily Choice, Not a Destination - As I share at 08:38, real happiness isn’t something to wait for or chase endlessly; it’s a conscious decision made, even amidst adversity.
2. Circumstances Shouldn’t Dictate Creative Fulfillment - Using examples like market volatility and personal challenges (05:02), I highlight the pitfalls of tying happiness to external conditions.
3. Build New Neural Pathways Through Intentional Practice - By developing emotional intelligence and forming new habits (23:49), you can train yourself to focus on intrinsic rewards, resilience, and gratitude. This mindset shift boosts both well-being and creative consistency.

In each episode, Jeff and Eric will talk about what emotional intelligence, or understanding your emotions, can do for you in your daily and work life. For more information, contact Eric or Jeff at [email protected] or visit their website, Spirit of EQ.

You can follow The Spirit of EQ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Android, or on your favorite podcast player.

New episodes are available on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays every month!

Please review our podcast

Music from Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/roo-walker/deeper

License code: PEYKDJHQNGSZXDUE

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

Spirit of EQ

Mentioned in this episode:

Thanks for listening to Spirit of EQ

This podcast was created to be a tool to primarily help you to discover and grow your EQ. Science and our own lived experiences confirm that the better we are at managing our emotions, the better we're going to be at making decisions. Which leads to a better life. And that's something we all want. We're glad that you've taken the time today to listen. We hope that something you hear will lead to a breakthrough. We'd really appreciate a review on your podcast platform. Please leave some comments about what you heard today, as well as follow and subscribe to the podcast. That way, you won't miss a single episode as we continue this journey.

Welcome, everyone, to the show. It's glad to have you here. And today in this episode, we're going to talk about happiness. And I'm going to frame this from the perspective of. Here in the United States, we typically call them the Founding Fathers. Well, there's this document called the Declaration of Independence. And for you scholars out there, if I'm missing anything, please don't be harsh, but feel free to correct me in the comments. Comments for the show.

And it's this idea of the pursuit of happiness. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And it's interesting when you think about that sentence, the pursuit of happiness. It really has a lot of connotations that somehow life is this thing we're trying to find. We're trying to get a hold of happiness. I come from the camp that says that happiness is standing right in front of you. And there's really not much of a pursuit. Unless, again, if you're of the mind that it's elusive, that you gotta find it.

And it's maybe this great search, but I'm in the camp that believes it's right there. So is it a pursuit? Yeah, maybe in some ways, yeah, I guess it can be. But in many ways, I think what happens with this subject matter is that it gets lost, that it really is about the choice. But we'll get into that a little bit here about that choice thing. But I want to outline for you where I think happiness can be so elusive for so many. And before I get into that, I just want to stress to you, and if you've listened to our show before, you know we're a big believer in getting help, right? So if you find yourself that, hey, Eric, what you're dispensing today, it sounds like it's easy, but it's not. And I have a difficult time. And quite frankly, I don't even.

I've been having a difficult time for a long period of time to find this thing you call, or we call happiness. If you're in that spot, I don't want you to feel blue. I don't want you to feel down. There is help out there, and maybe it means you need to get more help than the person that lives next door to you or that you work with. There's hope here, and I believe in that. So I don't want you to misunderstand me as we're going through this episode that I'm just throwing out this flipping advice and you should be able to, by the end of the show, just, boom, turn it like a light switch, because I know for some it doesn't work that way. Just want to get that out there. So let's talk a little bit about circumstances, which I think can be the thing that gets people off of this idea or off of their game to be able to find happiness.

Right. And let me use the sort of analogy or the story around something here in the United States called the stock market and quite frankly the oil market more specifically, because right now, at the recording of this episode, there is a war going on, maybe there's a ceasefire at this point between the United States and Iran, throwing Israel into that mix as well. And it's having major impact on the oil market. And the oil market, as you may imagine or you may know, determines typically how much we're going to pay at the gas pump. Right. So I woke up this morning to the BBC and it appears that today, Monday, May, whatever we are on, I want to say it's maybe May 11, there's volatility in the oil market because I guess the United States, our president, has decided that Iran's offer for peace was not acceptable. So therefore the oil market has sort of rallied toward prices going up in the oil market circumstances. So it was very clear as you could hear this particular commentator on the BBC, that there was a sense of doom, a sense of it's not good, that it's negative, right.

But what's interesting to me, this has been going up and down for the last two or three months. You know, you'll get the news flash, there's hope for peace. You'll get the news flash, okay, we're going to have a ceasefire. Then there's not, then there is, then there's shipping and the Hormuz straight and well, yes and no and up and down. And it really got me thinking, are we that dependent on circumstances to determine what direction we're going to go? Short answer is probably, I think many people have made the mistake and it's an understandable mistake because quite frankly, I've done it myself. I'll talk a little bit about that later. Where I, where we, we're kind of dependent on the circumstances, right? So think about it this way. Circumstances are temporary in nature.

We know this, right? You know this because tomorrow there might actually be a true peace deal between the United States and Iran and the oil market will probably drop accordingly, which is understandable, right? Because no more war, free flowing oil, whatever the case may be, and then all things are good, right? But then the following day, maybe the United States or Iran changes their Mind about some point in the peace plan. Market's going to go up and up being negative for us as consumers because of the price. Circumstances really don't care about how I feel and how happy or unhappy I am. They're just doing what they do. And I'm using the oil market as one example. We could apply it to the stock market. We could apply it to your job. We could apply it to your personal relationships or professional relationships.

They ebb and they flow and they ebb and they flow. But the question is, how do we find happiness even though the circumstances are not in our favor? I would argue with you, and I've been on this planet long enough to tell you that I've got some really strong observational data. Circumstances have always been like this. There's always something, there's always a something in our favor. That's always good. We like that. And there's always something in opposition to us. So I'm going to detail for you a story that if you've listened to our podcast before and you followed us, you know, probably some of the detail here, but I'm going to bring up to you or rehash maybe for some of you, the story about my son and a really, really.

It was a near fatal car accident. And that was in the fall of 2024. And I don't think we fully got out of the woods until probably May of last year. So it was a pretty extended period of time of uncertainty. Good days, bad days, hopeful days, disappointing days. All of that 35 surgeries. It was, was really difficult. My hope is, is that if you were to ask my wife and my close friends if I was unhappy during that period, they certainly would note for you that there were those times.

But I would hope because it would be true, I did find happiness even in those dark valley times. And it wasn't because happiness came knocking on my door with a nice bouquet. I had to choose it. And that's the big point here today. You have to choose it. So in those times with my son, I had to find happiness by choice. One of those was the example of where my son was hospitalized, at least initially after the accident. It was in the northeastern part of Ohio and we were in the midst of fall.

Right. You could remember that or tell that by the dates, you know, being October of 2024. And I remember during those times when maybe he was recovering from one of those surgeries or maybe there was just nothing was going on, he was just in his room. I would go out for a walk and this particular hospital was surrounded by trees, a lot of trees. I don't know the variety, but as you can imagine, the colors were changing. We were moving in fall, full fledged, and we were heading toward winter. And I remember going out for walks and specifically and intentionally looking at the color change and marveling and the wonder of the color change. I was searching really hard to find things to be happy about.

But what was interesting for me was that I did find it. And I found it not because, again, circumstances came to me and said, here you go, here's something wonderful to make you happy. Eric I had to choose it because they're colors that I had seen before. I've lived long enough to tell you what fall foliage looks like, right? But it was one of those things that I had to decide. I had to choose it. And sometimes in some of those days and some of those walks, it was not easy because I felt like my world was falling apart, especially in the early part of this journey with this accident. But it really did bring to me the reality of I cannot wait for circumstances to line up for me to be happy. And that was a gift even in the midst of a very difficult time.

And in that choosing, it gave me a bit of a playbook, right, That I could use throughout all kinds of circumstances of life because it wasn't like my son's situation was the last difficult thing I was going to experience because I've experienced other difficulties. Business, you know, this is a big one, right? You know, where a client said, yes, in the latter part of the year and then said, we can't do it. We, when we move into the beginning of the year, disappointment. But along the way, I had a playbook now, and it didn't just start with my son's accident. I mean, I. I think in many respects, I was building this throughout, right. Probably over the last 10 years, this playbook that says, you got to choose it, man, wherever you find yourself. And, and this can happen even in times when there's not really anything that bad going on, right? There's not really anything all that great going on, but I need happiness.

So I got to choose it because it injects in me more gratitude. It. It gives me a sense that there's a reason to hope. It builds more hope, right? And this playbook, if, if I can, again, I describe it that way, it a go to thing, it's a, okay, you're in this place, be it good, bad, or in between, choose it. If you want it, you choose it. Because I see, I think the danger. And I see this in people close to me personally and in my professional life where it seems to be this. I, I, I can't find it, or I'm waiting for it a la happiness.

And the reality is, is that oftentimes it's just there, waiting for you to choose it. Just waiting for you to say, oh, I see it, this is great. Be it small, medium or large, in magnitude, colors in trees, smiles on the face of a child, great news from a client, whatever it may be, choosing it. But we're these creatures, right, where we got all these stories going through our head. And oftentimes those stories are typically negative. And that kind of makes sense, right? Because at the end of the day, you know, our brain is trying to protect us. So it's the ultimate threat detector. And if something's not quite right, something's not going as planned, that can be perceived as a threat.

So therefore, we got to get on hyper alert. We gotta, we've gotta beware. We've got to be concerned, if not afraid. And I understand this. That's how it works for my brain, right? I may not be the case for everyone, but at the end of the day, I have autonomy here. I, I can let my brain know to it's okay, you can, you can chill, you can take a breath, we'll be okay. And I'm not so sure if people realize they have that kind of power and autonomy, and in many respects it probably makes sense why they don't know this because of the culture we live in, the programming that goes on, if you will, and I'm of the mind that, you know, we've, we've got to make these conscious choices. You know, we've got to, we've got to understand that it's not the pursuit of happiness, as if it's something that might be difficult to find.

See, I'm of the mind that, yeah, it is. It's actually very straightforward and simple to find. It may not be easy, but it's simple, it's straightforward. It's right there for you and me today as I'm recording this, I have the choice that I can take to find happiness. Be it small, be it medium, be it large, right? But that takes a lot. It is hard work. But here's the thing. The hard work is rewarded.

If it were easy, it probably would not be that valuable. Happiness would be sort of a blase thing. So as I'm talking about this, I'm going to move a little bit more toward now towards solutions, since we've kind of teed this up, right. You know, there's this idea out there. Maybe it is a concept that, you know, emotional intelligence, you know, is this pathway for making better decisions. And I believe that. But I also think it's a pathway to building a learnable skill. I think emotional intelligence is that.

That's been my experience. It is a learnable skill, and part of that is helping me to understand. Right. How I can go about exercising this playbook that I talked about. And some of it relates to a competency that we have in our sort of EQ model called consequential thinking. And, and the recognizing of patterns is another competency that comes to mind. And I think it really does flow into another one, you know, as I'm thinking about it. And that's the intrinsic motivation piece, and they're competencies in our world.

But let's face it, intrinsic motivation is not exclusive to emotional intelligence and our model, nor is consequential thinking, for that matter, and recognizing a pattern. I don't want to overstate our model, but it's found there and for good reason. So if. If I can call upon those competencies to move me to this place of where I can execute on this playbook, then it's a good thing. But like any skill, you have to learn it. You have to work on it to make it strong, to make it something of mastery, if you will. Right. And I think when we do that, we position ourselves to be happier.

Right. And happier is not a state. Right? As in, oh, once I find happiness, then I am happy. No, this is ongoing. Because, see, circumstances are always, at some point or another, going to be at odds with you or against you. Right. Because as I illustrated today, it could be awesome. There's peace treaties signed, oil prices go down, but then six months later, treaty's been violated, we're going to war again.

Right. There's always going to be something, and I wish that there was this state of nirvana for happiness, but it doesn't exist. You have to be ongoing in this pursuit. And, and I'm. I'm kind of liking it back to the. The Declaration of Independence. I know, but I mean, in this case, the pursuit is. Is appropriate and applicable, as in, you wake up every day, you got to choose it.

You can't. You're not. There is no arrival point. Right. But here's what's interesting, I think happens when we do this, when we're building the skill of emotional intelligence, when we're leveraging these competencies, is we find that it's kind of our rhythm. We kind of get out of the business of waiting around for happiness to find us. We kind of stop thinking that there is this place called happiness. And I think that can be very powerful.

I think it, it, it empowers us to live our best life, right? So I want to note another solution. And that's the thing you've probably heard from us before, and that's building new neural pathways. I think that's a, that, that, that is a must. And it comes along with the emotional intelligence skill. If we have an old neural pathway that got built, and sometimes these neural pathways get built and we're not even quite aware. It's very subconscious in nature because our brain, again, is probably trying to protect us, right? Trying to make this thing called life easy. So whether that that neural pathway was subconscious or conscious, it got built, right? And if you are someone that maybe is in that camp, and I know I was where I thought I could get to a place of happiness as a state, well, the same thing can be true in building a new neural pathway. And it is hard.

Once again, it's hard work, but it's worth it. So think about it this way. You got this old neural pathway that is consistently tied to. Well, the stock market's down today, so, man, I should be really concerned or, you know, that person didn't return my call, so that means they don't like me. So this is not good, right? Or I just got the promotion, so, oh, now I'm very happy. Or I just closed another deal and it's a big one and wow, look at. I'm going to be able to go to President's club, whatever the case may be. Again, if you've tied your happiness to circumstances, that's a neural pathway, right? That's how you think about it.

That's your process. Well, if that's not working out for you, you can change that neural pathway. Or maybe better said, you can build a new neural pathway because the old neural pathway remains, it stays, it doesn't disappear just because you decide that you're going to do something different. And I want to kind of liken that a bit to here in the city in which I live. There was this road. It wasn't a freeway. It was a kind of a highway. It was called 161, right? And it was, I think it was called Route 161.

And you know, years and years and years ago, decades ago, it was the way in which you went to travel from east to west in this Area. It wasn't the only way, but it was in this geography. It was one of the ways you could travel east and west. And over time, with development and growth. They built an expressway and it was called 161. Kind of on the same pathway. They kind of operated parallel, but the old was Route 161 or east Dublin Granville Road, I think is another term for it, or that they had. But today you'd be hard pressed to find anyone really traveling on that East Dublin Granville Road very much.

I think you can if you really wanted to. I think it's still a road that can be traveled. But you. You'd probably wonder, why would anyone go that way? When there's the expressway that speed limits like 65 miles an hour, you can get to where you want to go much faster, more efficient. I use that comparison to the neural pathway because that's very much how it is with our brain and these neural pathways. You know, when you build a new one, it takes time, and there's construction, if you will. And the old one is very familiar, easy, quite frankly, until you build the new one. And the new one is much more of the path that you take.

So in this case, it's maybe you're building a new neural pathway that says, no, it's not based on circumstances. Happiness is not. That's not. That's not how I'm going to proceed. That's not how I'm going to proceed down this path of life, right? So you begin the construction of a new neural pathway that says happiness is a choice. I have to choose it every day. I gotta look around and find it, right? And quite frankly, more than likely, it's really something real close to me. It's right in front of me.

Maybe you do that for a second day, third day, you have days where the construction doesn't go so well. You kind of revert back to circumstances, right, that old neural pathway. And. And this is a big one, I want to stress to you. It is a big one because there's this longing in us, right, for things to go well, to go our way, to feel good about living, right? But I can tell you whether it takes you two weeks, three weeks, three months, three years, whatever the case may be, it is worth the hard work to disconnect yourself from circumstances. Now, as you know, on this show, we don't tell you how to live. I haven't been given that authority, and you haven't granted me that authority. It's up to you to decide.

I personally believe that if you tie your happiness to circumstances, you're always going to find a very up and down life. Kind of like a yo yo. I never liked that. And when I decided to work on building a new neural pathway, it was because I had gotten so frustrated with the circumstances being tied to my happiness. I needed a different way. I did not want my more of my lifetime to be rooted around that this circumstances driving how I perceived life and how I move through life. So with that, I want to just stress to you the worth and the value of continuing to build a new neural pathway that's rooted around happiness being the choice. I am a major believer and advocate for that.

There may be other approaches. I'm certain there are. This is not the exhaustive one and only, but I think there is great benefit in making happiness a choice and building a neural pathway that supports that. So with that, as we come to a close, we'd love to hear from you if you've got comments. We certainly would welcome that and we look forward to the next time that we're together. Take care.