Emotional Intelligence From a Teenage Perspective | Maximilian Park | TEDxYouth@PVPHS

[Applause] [Applause] last year I experienced what I call the ultimate rejection from not one but two people at the same time and I don't need to go into too much detail about that because that's the short story but what is more important the long story is what happened after it hurt it really hurt it's kind of like that feeling when someone follows you on Instagram so you follow them back and one week later you realize they unfollowed you but times a hundred I try to sleep as much as possible to escape my pain but after being brought back to reality I'd wake up crying it was like this cruel joke my brain was playing on me tricking me into this false sense of comfort with my dreams only to be brought back into a world where my body burned through each hour of consciousness I isolated myself successfully losing friendships I'd spent years cultivating I didn't go to school I struggled with homework and I was constantly overwhelmed by anxiety always feeling like I was dancing at the edge of a cliff of course my family my friends and my classmates were there but when you feel like you're drowning in loneliness and your emotions get the best of you everyone just seems so far away I needed a life raft and the reason I couldn't handle these emotions is because I did not have a high emotional intelligence quotient emotional intelligence is the ability to understand your emotions and response them effectively and I'm not the only one who's had this problem anxiety and depression is rapidly increasing in high schoolers and even middle schoolers the American College Health Association found a significant increase from 50% in 2011 to 62% in 2016 of undergraduates reporting overwhelming anxiety so what happened in just the last 10 years there's been a doubling of hospital admissions for suicidal teenagers and most teenagers got this way like me because they were too afraid to open up or didn't know how anxiety is like a snowball rolling down a hill becoming bigger and bigger with each passing minute until it becomes unmanageable so what can we do to stop this we need emotional intelligence inside building classes in every high school across the nation this would help prevent the build-up of anxiety in children before it takes over their lives or even takes their lives when we don't understand something it becomes scarier emotions are puzzles we have to solve each and every day to become better and healthier and they become easier to solve once you understand where they come from take a two worlds example both worlds having the same girl struggling in math let's say both girls get a D on a test now let's look at world one our world the one without emotional intelligence classes the girl sees the d gets pissed off angry upset all the emotions when you have a bad grade and she says I hate math the next test comes up and she decides why bother studying anyways I'm just gonna fail she catastrophize 'as seeing the world in black and white and perceives her future as darker and darker she's vulnerable and anxiety sees an opportunity to jump into her she feels as if she's in the eye of a tornado watching the world spin around her helpless - its attacks and this built up pressure starts to have physiological effects on her body depriving her of sleep causing a positive feedback loop on the instability of her grades her vibrant colors her red passion her calm green and are optimistic yellow fade away they melt into each other blending into a monochrome blob of darkness and mystery a few years later after barely graduating high school this girl with this built-in mindset doesn't get into the college she once dreamed of she settles for a job she hates and considers it her fate because she feels it is what she deserves she didn't have the most compassionate friends or the most supportive family she was in a dark room locked in her own mind with no exit she needed a doorway I needed a life raft now obviously not every student is like this and some are more naturally inclined to handle disappointment and stress but that doesn't mean they still can't benefit from these classes and fine-tune their EQ and what is more it dramatically affects the majority of the student population whose silent crisis's need to be addressed in a safe learning environment so what can we do to help how can we support our next generation well let's look at the other world world - the world with emotional intelligence glasses it's the same circumstances the same girl the only difference is she's a semester into her first course she gets her tests back and sees the D slapped onto her paper and red ink and before her emotions take over she stops and breathes because she remembers her equ teacher she remembers learning about a UC Davis study and - recites it in her head an experiment group was told to think of one thing they were grateful for every time they got stressed this lowered their stress causing cortisol levels by 23% she remembers that these positive gratuitous thoughts can become reflexes that are eventually built into the brain and that people with these reflexes when hit with waves of stress almost instantly combated it she finds it interesting how a self-made automatic coping system can be made can be made by anyone and is inspired to make her own this girl with her newfound confidence is determined to try better on her next exam she gets a B which helps her realize that she's in control of her life that effort is directly correlated to success that everyone can do better despite how they feel about themselves EQ schooling teaches you that you can reach your lowest most helpless point and still bounce back as the girls emotional intelligence increases the flow of information between her rational and emotional brain increases allowing her rational brain to comprehend her emotions better than before and prevent them from overtaking her compare world 1 and world 2 we live in world 1 but I'd like my children to live in world 2 and have an opportunity I didn't have to learn something essential to life an important part of EQ is to understand that it is not fixed it has an unknown capacity that anyone can utilize and grow and it can out and it can act outside the scope of helping emotionally vulnerable kids for example imagine your friend Becca ignores you you waved her her in the hallway put on your brightest smile and make direct eye contact with her and she walks right past you now the first thing that can pop into your brain screams she hates you as your brain gets rattled with negative assumptions about her or she could have just failed her test or been yelled at by her mom earlier that morning or maybe she just didn't see you we as humans tend to assume the worst case scenario mainly because we don't want to give ourselves false hope after all pain is easier to accept after you've given up but these assumptions thoughts poison our well-being more often than we think negative or aggressive actions directed towards us have nothing to do with what we did or who we are more often than not it's the other person's issues being projected on to us EQ schooling helps people understand that really understand that and with that knowledge poor experiences can be converted into great ones you asked Becca what's going on in her life how she's feeling and instead of isolating her for ignoring you you become closer friends as she spills her problems to you and here's another EQ tip call people by their names as often as you can because it releases their good feeling hormone which causes you to be perceived as more likeable since you triggered that chemical reaction it's a fun way to trick people into liking you it seems small and insignificant but it really works on average we have about 400 emotional experiences every day how nice would it be if we can make just over half of those positive an article by Lisa Firestone explaining how she taught an emotional intelligence course reveals that her students after taking this course had a higher social awareness self-awareness were more introspective were more creative had better leadership skills were a bit were able to communicate better and even did better with her academics all while reducing their anxiety and stress EQ schooling helps students understand body language be able to work better in a group environment when they get older and overall bring positive benefits to the world now West Western culture has a habit of labeling emotions as good or bad but judging yourself for having these emotions and labeling them as undesirable prevents you from realizing what created them and when you ignore what created it you ignore how can be solved last year my coping mechanism was to lock myself in my room pretend I didn't exist and empty my mind but using your brain with no idea of how it works is like trying to play Monopoly for the first time without instructions it's confusing frustrating and hard to win although to be fair monopoly is hard to win even with instructions emotional intelligence videos I found online or my monopoly instructions by watching these videos I was pulled out of my hole it allowed me to accept help from my wonderful family and my friends who support I reject it in the past I tried new things and failed at some but it didn't matter because I saw my life as a heart monitor you can be high and low to the tops of the mountains to the depths of the valleys but that means you're alive that your hearts beating and if you reject life never reaching high for the fear that you might fall your heart stops beating it's still and your story is dead if you ever feel like your flatline do something fun in this timespan of the universe we are only alive for like a second in a thousand years no one's gonna remember your embarrassing moments that time someone lent you their pencil and you accidentally started chewing on it that time your stomach exposed your hunger in a silent math class or that time you were rejected it's okay it means your monitor is going crazy that you're living your life to the fullest I spent hours creating this art project for English and instead of thinking is this good enough like I used to I thought this is me it can be called beautiful ugly rancid or anything in between but I loved it so think if only a few hours of watching these videos a week helped me this significantly think of what schedule emotional intelligence courses could do for nation thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 131,245

Rating: 4.8621941 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Social Science, Cognitive science, Education, Empathy, Youth

Id: MbmLNr89L-A

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 25 2018