Joshua Freedman

Has Inside Out helped you? I’ve found it’s a great reminder for me, and clients, about some invaluable truths about emotions. Some examples:

Emotions affect us. Seems obvious, but I grew up trying to ignore them and I’m pretty good at pretending they don’t matter.

We have lots of different feelings at any given moment, and they help us see different perspectives & push us in different ways.

Emotions combine. In the movies, you can see this when different characters interact together — in the new one, there’s a great moment where Joy leads Sorrow into nostalgia. In this chart, the left-column are primary, so you can see how Joy (primary) & Sorrow = Nostalgia.

We also made a chart for Inside Out 2, you can get all our graphics about this, with explanations, in a fab new ebook, free! 🔗 on the graphic. This is good for everyone and esp teachers and parents.


As someone leading the global Emotional Intelligence Coach Certification, I’ve seen these movies have also helped change awareness about emotions. Frequently in coach certification classes, I hear people referring to these scenes. Thank you Pixar!

Becoming an EQ Coach taught me to listen to more than words.

And to trust those subtle signals.

My old pattern was to fix. Some days I still fall right back into it. Not bc I want to be selfish. Actually the opposite. I want to help.

But I’ve started to ask a different question: what’s the end game here? More dependence on me? Or more independence for them?

As a coach, the job is clear. Support my client to find their own way.

As a CEO?
Tbh some days I just want my team to do what I say. Deeper down I know that’s a trap.

The vision I care about can only happen if they OWN it. If they help themselves.

That’s not only a pivot in how I listen.
It’s a pivot in why.

And deeper, it’s a pivot in who I am. From “the solutions guy” to “a supporter of solutions.” Quieter. Slower. More powerful.

The hard part is catching the old pattern fast enough to disrupt it.

Emotions are the signal.

A flicker of urgency pushing me into fixer mode.

A pull of curiosity inviting me into coach mode.

And underneath all of it, a question about my own worth: if my value is in fixing, I’ll keep fixing. Even when it’s not what’s needed.

So I’m practicing…

Noticing. Pausing. Choosing.

Listening to connect, not to solve.

Making them feel safe, instead of making the pain stop.

Sitting in stillness instead of rushing to fix.

When I get it right (not always!), something shifts. Their nervous system calms. Mine does too. And the answer they find on their own is almost always better than the one I would have handed them.

You help them, or they help themselves.

Both feel like leadership.

Only one builds capacity.


What pulls you into fixer mode, and how do you find your way back to connect?

Every interaction leaves a trace. 🧠✨
Neuroscience shows something fascinating and sobering:
we don’t just influence how people think, we shape how they feel, and even how their brains respond, through the way we engage.

Not so much what you say or do.
But how.
👋 How you say hello.
🚶‍♂️ How you enter the room, or the Zoom.
👂 How you listen.
❓ How you ask the question.

This mirror-neuron effect is amplified when you hold positional power, formal or informal.
** Leadership makes your emotional signal louder 🔊

So whether you intend to or not, you are influencing.
𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫.
🤝 Every colleague.
🧑‍💼 Every customer.
💛 Every friend.
🌱 Even the briefest interaction.

You’re either lighting people up 🔥
or dimming their glow.

𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘶𝘱 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴?

This is where emotional intelligence comes in:
EQ is the skillset that helps you
1️⃣ notice the emotional signals you’re sending,
2️⃣ choose how you show up,
3️⃣ and do it on purpose.

Again and again.

Those 3 steps are what we mean @ Six Seconds, The Emotional Intelligence Network when we say we're working toward a billion people practicing EQ.

Step 3 is really about this question: You ARE lighting something up... what do you want it to be? We call that "Pursue Noble Goals" and it's what makes the Six Seconds model so profound.

"Every interaction leaves a trace" is from Anabel Jensen, my cofounder and the president of Six Seconds.

Safety is both physical and emotional. Trust is the emotion that tells us we feel safe -- the level of trust is one of the best predictors* of team and organizational effectiveness. Why?

2-part question:
*** Think of a leader or team with whom you felt trust & safety, ***
(a) what fueled that feeling? (eg what did they do, how did they show up)....
(b) what impact did that have on your performance?


I frequently ask these questions in keynote sessions and in exec team coaching, and there's 1 word I've heard over and over and over for 25 years, with people from 150 different countries.

Can you guess?
(scroll down)

v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v

LISTENING


There are a lot of other words too, but this one stands out for me, and perhaps it's one reason I became a coach. I'm not really sure what makes me a “master coach“ (other than a lovely pin) but one thing is: I'm learning to listen to much more than words.
Not that I always succeed...
For me, this kind of listening takes tremendous focus, connection, and... while it builds trust, it also requires trust.
Virtuous 🌀 Better listening --> More trust --> better listening


By the way: What if we enhanced this kind of trust and listening to ourselves?



Data
*In multiple Workplace Vitality research reports from Six Seconds, trust has shown up as the top predictor. It's also a top predictor for individual leaders -- and we can measure it at all 3 levels (leader, team, organization)


### In case we've not met... hi! I'm Josh 😄
I'm obsessed with growing the world's emotional intelligence, and I believe that means I need to grow my own. I'm a master certified coach, I lead the EQ Coach Certification, Six Seconds' ICF accredited coaching school (which is a magnificent journey, and it's so substantive that it's one of the only coach certifications in the US that includes master's level academic credit).
Ask me about it!



Image source: @heidipickett

Some bosses try to solve every problem with a hammer. Often that’s due to missing the emotional intelligence tools (or a culture that's not very emotionally intelligent).

When a manager has only one go-to response (hammer = push harder, fix fast, stay in control... )
… every challenge starts to look the same (nail).

—> Then their people feel it: frustration goes up, performance goes down, and teams start operating in survival mode instead of their best.


🧰 Emotional intelligence expands the toolkit. 🧰

With more EQ skills, managers …
🧩 understand people better, including themselves, to work WITH people.

🧩 because the “get people,” they create conditions where performance is possible.

🧩 that increases adaptability /agility to meet changing needs instead of forcing old solutions onto new problems.


New situations, new complexities… demand new tools. AND the kind of intelligence that lets them know which tool to use, today... and a different one tomorrow.


If your managers had a stronger emotional intelligence toolkit… what would change in your organization?

An easy way to improve emotional literacy* is noticing and naming when feelings are smaller or bigger. Beyond what's on the graphic, here are some examples from Inside Out 2 characters -- and what they mean:

ANXIETY -- prepare for unknown risks (made of fear + surprise)
Low to high...
Unease: early warning, pay attention
Nervous: get alert, prepare
Worry: think ahead about potential problems
Apprehension: protect from future risks
Dread: take serious action for safety
Panic: react NOW to danger


JEALOUSY -- assess ownership & protect what we value (made of fear + some anger & disgust)
Low to high...
Suspicion: become cautious, monitor interactions
Insecurity: address doubts, seek reassurance
Envy: compare with others, understand desires
Resentment: identify and address perceived unfairness
Possessive: assert boundaries and ownership


EMBARRASSMENT -- I need to fit in / be part of the group (made of fear + surprise + disgust)
Low to high...
Self-conscious: notice missteps, reflect on behavior
Unease: pay attention to reactions
Awkwardness: am I doing it right?
Shame: others think I'm doing it wrong (or I am wrong)
Guilt: understand impact, take responsibility
Humiliation: confront a big transgression or not-fitting
Mortification: I really messed up with fitting in

* Emotional literacy is naming and understanding both simple and complex feelings

There are HUNDREDS of words for feelings in English -- I read there are 3,000, but on my personal Big List of Feeling Words I have about 350 (if you want my list, I'll put a link in comments).

What happens when we build our emotional literacy to name our emotions more clearly and accurately?



###
In case we have not met, I’m Joshua Freedman, cofounder and ceo of Six Seconds - the emotional intelligence network. I’m a master certified coach & best selling author, and an emotions-geek.

Six Seconds works in over 150 countries to raise the world’s emotional intelligence — we've reached over 10 million people, leveraging emotion skills for…
📈 building great workplace culture
🛠 equipping learning professionals
🔋 strengthening youth wellbeing

You can feel it, right?

Something shifted around 2020 and the chaos keeps growing.

Connections are more fragile. Trust takes longer. People seem more reactive. Teams are burned in a way that weekend doesn't fix.

I've been calling it the *Emotional Recession*

This week Digital Journal published a deep feature on our peer-reviewed research (published in Frontiers in Psychology) tracking this trend. 28,000 adults across 166 countries over five years.

Global EQ declined nearly 6%.

The biggest drops were in the capacities we need most right now: optimism, intrinsic motivation, and purpose. Those fell 7-8%.

Here's what really stands out: The same study found that people with higher emotional intelligence were more than 10x more likely to report strong outcomes across effectiveness, relationships, quality of life, and wellbeing.

*** Not 10% more. Ten TIMES more. ***

In a moment when so many human capacities are declining, emotional intelligence is more important than ever. It's the foundation underneath everything else we're trying to build.

And it's not a fixed trait. It's a set of skills.
Learnable.
Measurable.
Scalable.

So maybe the most urgent work right now isn't another restructure or another AI rollout.

Maybe it's rebuilding the human infrastructure underneath all of it.

That's what I wrote Emotion Rules about, 'cause emotions aren't problems to manage: They're data.
And when we learn to read them, they become the navigational system we've been missing.


🤔 What's one place you're seeing this emotional fog show up in your organization or your life?

(more re Digital Journal article below 👇)

It's 11:47pm & I'm replaying a sentence from a meeting that ended nine hours ago. "What I SHOULD have said was... "

That's The Ghost.

Different night, same spinning brain, but a different character is running the show. The Architect, planning every disaster so I can feel "safe." The Judge, taking one mistake and using it to grade my whole worth. The Fortune Teller, fixated on a future that probably won't even happen.

Six characters. Six different stories. Same exhausted brain.

But consider...
A busy mind isn't a lack of discipline.
It's a brain doing its job *too well*, trying to protect you from something. The old "just stop overthinking" advice doesn't work bc you can't logic your way out of a pattern your nervous system is running.

But you CAN name it.

Research from Matt Lieberman at UCLA: when people put words to what they're feeling, amygdala activity quiets. Naming literally connects different parts of the brain and gives you back some choice. The story stops running you.

So here's the practice. When you catch yourself spinning, take six seconds. Ask:

🎭 Which character is here right now?

The Ghost? The Judge? The Architect? Naming it is enough to shift something. You go from being IN the loop to seeing the loop. That's the doorway.

At Six Seconds, we call this the Six Second Pause, 'cause emotion-chemicals last about that long in the bloodstream. Six seconds is enough to interrupt the cascade. Six characters, six seconds, perhaps six opportunties? 😉

For coaches and HR leaders: this matters bc the people you're working with are exhausted. Their busy minds aren't laziness or weakness, they're depletion. When you help someone name the character, you're not fixing them. You're handing them their own steering wheel.

Try it tonight. When the spin starts, ask: who's at the wheel?

Which character visits you most often? 👇

Knowing about EQ won't change your life.

Practicing it will.

I learned the Six Seconds Pause decades ago. I can teach it in 90 seconds. I can draw the neuroscience on a napkin.

And still, last Tuesday, I snapped at someone I love. About laundry. 😬

That's the gap.

The map is not the journey.

You can read every book on emotional intelligence (please read mine 😉). You can quote the research. You can ace the assessment. And still get hijacked at 7pm when you're depleted and someone uses "that tone."

Because EQ isn't something you learn once. It's something you practice. Again. And again. On the bad days especially.

Here's what practice actually looks like:

🐘 Noticing the heat rising in your chest before the words come out

🐘 Naming the feeling (frustration? hurt? exhaustion in disguise?)

🐘 Taking the breath you swore you'd take last time

🐘 Choosing the response, even when reaction is faster

Many days, I still don't get there. Some days I do. And the doing is what changes me.

For coaches and HR leaders, this matters bc we're often the ones holding the map for other people. We can describe the terrain beautifully. But the people we serve don't need a better map. They need to see someone walking the path. Sweaty. Honest. Imperfect. Still going.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Please join me & Daniel Goleman on LinkedIn Live next week and let’s talk about the power of practice!


What's one EQ practice you're walking with right now, even when it's hard?

Big feelings carry a hidden message about what matters most to you. And the data is free.

For HR leaders, coaches, and anyone learning to work with their own emotions: most of us have been trained to push the big ones away. There's a better move. ** Look inside **

In my new book, Emotion Rules, I shared this story that changed how I think about this:
...
I'm co-facilitating a leadership retreat with my colleague Marilynn Jorgensen. One of the executives is clearly distressed. I'm worried about his reaction. Mostly I'm worried about what to do.

Marilynn walks right up to him. And says:

"It looks like you're having some big feelings. Would you like to talk about it?"

He immediately relaxes.

What?
How did she do that?

I've watched her do it many times since. The phrase "big feelings" is doing a lot of work. It's neutral. It's not pathologizing. It doesn't sort the feeling into good or bad. It just names what's actually happening: something intense is here.
...

And here's why that matters 👇

** Your strongest emotions point to your deepest values **

When something feels HUGE, it's bc something important is at stake. We don't have big feelings about things that don't matter to us. Rage is about fairness. Grief is about connection. Awe is about meaning.

That's Emotion Rule #10 from the book: big feelings are messages about what really matters, because what we value, we feel.

So the picture isn't really a closed oyster vs. an open one.
The pearl is actually there in BOTH pictures!

It's data you already have. Inside you. Right now.

Free. No subscription. No coach required (although a good one helps 😊).

The catch: if you spend the energy to push it away, you don't get the message. The pearl stays hidden inside the shell.

Here's the practice. Next time you feel a big one, try this:

1️⃣ Name it specifically. Not "stressed" or "fine." Something like: frustrated, dismissed, protective, anxious, moved (use the interactive feeling wheel on Six Seconds' site to find your words)

2️⃣ Ask: what's underneath this?
You may need to ask a few times. Frustrated → my idea was dismissed → I felt invisible → I care about contributing meaningfully.

3️⃣ Name the value. "I care about being heard." "I care about integrity." "I care about belonging."

That's the pearl. 🦪 ⚪

Notice what happens to the feeling once you've heard it.
Often, it softens. Not because you fixed it. Bc you finally listened to it.

For HR leaders & coaches: I think this is one of the highest-leverage things we can teach. When someone on your team has a big reaction, the move isn't to talk them down. ⛔
It's to help them find the value the feeling is pointing to 🟢 That's where alignment lives. That's where the trust gets built.


What's a big feeling that turned out to carry a message you needed?
Curious what came through for you.

This is 30 years of my life's work in my hands right now - in others' hands soon!
I feel thrilled and terrified at the same time.

It's thrilling because these tools have made such a profound difference in the quality of my own life and work. Terrifying because this is the heart of it — going out into the world.

I wrote Emotion Rules because I see so many people struggling with emotions at work and in life — treating them as problems to manage instead of signals worth trusting. This book is an invitation to a different relationship with what you feel.

Launching March 10th. I'd love for you to be part of it.

Is the boulder the problem? Or is feeling stuck the problem?
Neither, IMO.

The boulder is just a boulder. The stuck feeling is data — your brain telling you something matters here, and the path you planned isn't working.

Emotional intelligence is about gathering and using that data to build solutions you couldn't see before. With the right tools, the boulder becomes an invitation.

Three moves that change the story:

1️⃣ Clarify the barrier.
Your feelings have already noticed something. Frustration, doubt, that tight chest 'cause you don't know what to do next. Don't push past it. Read it. What is this signal actually pointing at? Often the boulder isn't what you thought it was.

2️⃣ Create new options.
Stuck = one path, blocked. Exercise Optimism is the work of finding more. Not "everything is fine" (that's denial), but: "what else is possible here?" When you can hold the difficulty AND imagine a way through, new routes show up. The brain is built for this. It just needs you to ask.

3️⃣ Step forward on purpose.
This is where your Noble Goal comes in. Why does this matter to you, *really*? When you connect a hard moment to something bigger you care about, you find the spark. Purpose is the fuel that gets you moving when the easy answer is to wait.

These three are the heart of what we're going into in our next EQ Network webinar: The Courage to Be Known.
--> For coaches, learning pros, and anyone building authority from the inside out — your EQ is how you do it boldly.
Join May 21 or get the replay to watch anytime (more in comments)


What boulder are you looking at right now?
And what might it be inviting?

Humans are social animals, and we're wired to connect. Emotions are the essential signal, giving real-time data to survive and thrive, eg

... who's with us, or not
... who's safe, or not
... who's got our backs, or not

This data is available continuously, almost instantly, and for free! And who doesn't love a good free wifi connection???

Emotions are "the original wifi" because they connect us -- helping us form connection, support, and even identity. Yet in 2026, people feel more lonely and disconnected than ever. We've got a zillion empty ways to connect... emotions give us the real thing.

So turn on this emotional hotspot.
Get out there and feel a little more.
Share just a little more of your real emotions.
Tune in just a little more to the real emotions others are sharing.
And strengthen connection -- 💙 2 💙


Bonus awesome: These signals work without language, and mostly they're cross cultural. So in addition to being the "original wifi," emotions are also the universal human language.

How many leaders actually get this?
Emotions drive people.
People drive performance.

When you look at performance this way, it completely shifts the job of the leader —>

Old: Start with structures, lead by making systems.

New: Start with humans, lead by setting the conditions for people to do great work.


There are so many problems w the "old" approach, including mediocre results. Disengaged people. Lack of risk-taking. Silos. Sunday Scaries. CYA.

The "new" starts with how people feel doing the work, centering the job of leadership in, well, leading people!

Leadership becomes less about pushing results and more about creating the conditions where people can bring energy, judgment, courage, and care to what they do.
Clarity. Trust. Meaning. Safety to think and speak. Permission to care.

New data! 📊
The evidence is in:
The new Business Case for Emotional Intelligence drops today, and it’s compelling
--> 6sec.org/bizcase


When leaders leverage emotional intelligence, they get dramatically better results.

Decades of data show scalable, consistent results.


If you lead people,
this is the work that works.