Key insights from Dr. Marc Brackett, Dr. Julie Smith & Serinda Swan on emotional intelligence, self-regulation and the way we navigate our inner lives
What happens when three leading voices in emotional intelligence, psychology and human behaviour come together to examine the way we feel, respond and relate?
In a wide-ranging conversation, Dr. Marc Brackett, Dr. Julie Smith and Serinda Swan explored why emotional intelligence is not simply a “soft skill,” but something that shapes our relationships, decision-making, behaviour, wellbeing and the way we lead ourselves through difficult moments.
Drawing directly from their discussion, this piece brings together some of the most powerful ideas they shared: why so many adults were never taught how to work with their emotions, why regulation matters more than suppression, how our values can help us recalibrate when life feels out of alignment, and why self-awareness may become even more important in an age of limitless information.
One idea sat at the centre of the conversation: we cannot always control what we feel, but we can develop a greater capacity to understand what is happening within us and choose how we respond.
Emotional intelligence is tested in the difficult moments
It is relatively easy to feel emotionally grounded when everything is going well.
The more meaningful test often comes when something unexpected happens: a difficult conversation, criticism, uncertainty, conflict or a situation that activates an old response.
Dr. Marc Brackett described this as the point where emotional intelligence moves from theory into practice, when something suddenly activates us and we have to work with the emotion in real time.
That space between feeling an emotion and responding to it matters.
Emotional regulation does not mean eliminating difficult emotions or remaining calm at all times. Human emotion naturally fluctuates.
Rather, it is developing the capacity to recognise what is happening internally, understand it and choose how we want to respond rather than automatically returning to the patterns that feel most familiar.
Most of us were never taught this
One of the most striking points raised by Dr. Brackett was how little formal emotional education many adults have received.
He described emotional intelligence through five core skills: recognising emotions, understanding them, labelling them accurately, expressing them and regulating them.
The final skill, regulation, is often where the real challenge begins.
Knowing that you are stressed is different from knowing what helps you move through stress constructively.
Knowing that something has triggered you is different from being able to notice the reaction without immediately acting from it.
And understanding emotional regulation intellectually is very different from practising it when you are actually uncomfortable.
Like so many aspects of health, the skill is built through repetition.
Dr. Julie Smith on living in alignment
Dr. Julie Smith brought the conversation back to something equally important: whether the way we are living reflects what we actually value.
Life has a way of pulling us in different directions.
Career becomes demanding. Family requires more attention. Exercise disappears from the calendar. Friendships become harder to maintain. Rest gets pushed aside.
Over time, we can find ourselves feeling disconnected without immediately understanding why.
Smith described a values exercise that involves looking at the major areas of your life, health, relationships, family, career, creativity or whatever matters most to you, and asking two questions:
How important is this area to me?
How closely have my actions recently reflected those values?
The purpose is not to achieve perfect balance or to create another measure by which to judge ourselves.
It is to notice where there is a gap.
Smith emphasised that these gaps can be treated as information rather than criticism: a signal showing us where our attention may need to return.
Her description of balance was particularly powerful.
We do not remain perfectly centred across every part of life at all times. Instead, we notice when we are beginning to lean too far in one direction and make small adjustments back toward what matters.
We cannot do the work for someone else
As we become more self-aware, our relationships can begin to change too.
We may communicate differently. Establish boundaries. React less automatically. Or become more intentional about the role we play in an interaction.
That does not mean everyone around us will change with us.
Dr. Smith made an important distinction here: trying to coach, change or educate someone who is not ready for that work is unlikely to be productive.
What we can influence is how we participate.
When we bring something different into an interaction, the dynamic itself can shift, sometimes positively, sometimes uncomfortably.
The question becomes less:
How do I make this person understand?
And more:
How do I want to show up here?
Serinda Swan on turning inward first
Serinda Swan added another perspective: emotional intelligence as something we first cultivate within ourselves.
She described it as a way of participating with ourselves before participating with the world, noticing what happens internally when we are challenged, uncomfortable or pulled toward familiar survival responses.
That might mean asking:
What happens inside me when I feel challenged?
Do I immediately try to fix the situation?
Do I shut down?
Do I become reactive?
Can I remain connected to myself while an uncomfortable emotion is present?
Swan's point was not that everyone around us needs to have the same level of emotional awareness.
It is that our own reactions can become information.
Difficult interactions can show us where our patterns still live and where greater regulation, awareness or reflection may be useful.
Information is not the same as wisdom
Perhaps one of the most relevant ideas from the discussion was Swan's distinction between information and wisdom.
We now have extraordinary access to information about health, psychology, relationships and human behaviour.
And artificial intelligence is making that access even faster.
But more information does not automatically mean greater self-understanding.
Swan raised the question of whether we are beginning to confuse information with wisdom, particularly as technology becomes capable of giving us answers almost instantly.
Information can tell us what might support our health.
Wisdom helps us understand what applies to us.
It helps us notice our own patterns, recognise what matters, understand our reactions and decide how to use the information available to us within the context of our own lives.
That requires curiosity.
Not only curiosity about the world, but curiosity about ourselves.
Why did that affect me so strongly?
What am I feeling beneath the immediate reaction?
What am I avoiding?
What matters to me here?
What would responding differently look like?
Health is also how we relate to ourselves
At Global Glow, we believe long-term health is built through foundations.
Nutrition matters. Movement matters. Sleep matters. Metabolic health matters.
But so does the nervous system.
So do our relationships, emotional patterns, behaviours and the way we respond to stress.
The conversation between Dr. Marc Brackett, Dr. Julie Smith and Serinda Swan serves as an important reminder that emotional intelligence is not about becoming endlessly calm or perfectly self-aware.
It is about developing a better relationship with what we feel.
Recognising what is happening within us.
Understanding our patterns.
Learning how to regulate rather than simply suppress.
And becoming more intentional about how we respond to ourselves, to other people and to the circumstances around us.
Because perhaps one of the most important forms of health intelligence is not simply knowing more.
It is learning how to understand ourselves well enough to use what we know.
