Emotional Intelligence

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Episode 191: After Happily Ever After, a Novel by Leslie Rasmussen That Hits Home

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Leslie Rasmussen didn't intend to write a novel. Her idea was to interview people in their 40s, empty-nesting or nearly empty nesting, in long-term relationships or newly divorced, hearing their stories and finding commonalities in order to write a non-fiction book for people to find comfort in these transitions.

She found so many commonalities that she decided to combine the patterns she was hearing about to write the stories of one fictional family's experience.

This story resonates because it feels so familiar. Every character is familiar, from the teenaged daughter to the high achieving best friend. The primary protagonist is me. She's you. She's your husband or your wife. Though her actions and how she chooses to move through her current situation won't exactly match what you might do, the feelings and circumstances absolutely will.

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Episode 190: Terre Roche and Her Accidental Music Career

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It seems ridiculous now, imagining parents of a 17 year old agreeing to send her on a road trip across the country with her 18 year old sister to perform their music at small venues, mostly on college campuses.

But that's exactly what Terre & Maggie Roche's parents did. Terre's father even met with the principal of her high school where she was supposed to be for her senior year and negotiated her school work and exams to be completed in between their 6-week touring dates.

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Episode 189: Podcast Brief 3 - Ideation & Adaptability Gain Momentum

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In this week’s episode I’ll round out a description of my top five talents with Ideation and Adaptability. Ideation being the one that I imagine as a hamster on a wheel in my head, constantly running, coming up with ideas about what I’ll do next, ideas to solve problems, sometimes completely random ideas about why things happen the way they do, how things work (usually unrelated to anything that actually matters in my life), and how to express concepts so they’re sticky and/or persuasive.

Adaptability is the talent that allows me to switch gears easily, and that makes me a good person to be around when a project goes sideways.

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Episode 188: Podcast Brief 2 - Strategic and Activator Might Just Look Impulsive

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She called me Speedy Gonzalez. My first coach after becoming a Gallup certified StrengthsFinder coach had a gorgeous Barcelonan accent, and she said: “Sarah, you’re like Speedy Gonzalez. Imagine you notice the village is running low on cheese, so you take money from the village coffer, run fast, as you do, to a nearby village, buy cheese, and run back. Problem solved! Except that when you return, you hear the villagers having a discussion about what kind of cheese to get this time… or maybe they won’t get cheese, maybe it’ll be salami instead… But you’ve already solved the problem, right?”

I’m such a visual person, I immediately imagined the tiny mouse running, like a blur, to the next village and running back carrying a huge block of cheese over his head.

And just like that (snap), I had a deep insight into how I sometimes get in my own way.

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Episode 187: Podcast Brief 1 - When Command is in Your Top StrengthsFinder Talents

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My mother and her twin sister said: “Sarah, you’re so bossy.” Our large family had a reservation at a restaurant and I was being insistent that people stop yammering and get into cars, directing people and touching them on the arm to gesture toward a vehicle.

I was insulted and defensive. It was my intention to get the family to the restaurant on time for our reservation out of respect to the venue, which seemed reasonable to me. I felt like I had been gentle in terms of nudging my aunts, uncles, and cousins to get moving. That’s not how my mom and aunt saw it.

That wasn’t the first time I was called bossy or pushy, and it wouldn’t be the last.

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Episode 186: True Stories Can Bring Your Work of Fiction to Life

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Our conversation easily flowed from topic to topic, and it was clear to both of us that the themes from the book are highly relevant in many of our friends' lives, as well as our own.

Each of the protagonists is in a very different place in their lives, one in her early 30s, another in her mid 40s, and another in her late 60s. And yet, each is grappling with transition and transformation in their lives, which is what brings them together.

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Episode 185: What Happens When You're the Child of Survivors of Significant Trauma?

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Jeff Furman is an extraordinary combination of his parents. He has the gift of intense observation of people and surroundings, while also demonstrating significant empathy. The two together allow him to predict student behavior in the classroom, making him a highly effective educator.