The EQ School

As the folks in our Cycle Breakers program like to say, Emotional self-management is self-awareness in action—
it's attuning to your body, your feelings, and becoming acquainted with your unique signals that let you know how you're feeling in any given moment.

It's recognizing when your energy dips, when you feel unsafe, when something is not okay with you.
It's also recognizing what makes you feel connected, calm, and like yourself and noting what conditions consistently make this possible.
It's, over time, trying different ways of responding to yourself and finding what works for you.

Throughout our entire lives we do this this through trial and error - we try things and see how they feel.
But to become more regulated, you have to be present with what is —
you have to learn how to attune to your body,
to slow down and notice when you're feeling reactive or shutting down without immediately having to fix, judge, understand, or change it.
Just being able to notice is a giant step toward creating more internal safety in your own body.

Because regulation isn't about a daily cold plunge or meditation practice, per se — it's about learning how to witness and response to yourself safely.
It's building the self-trust to use your discernment to know when to use what tool, or when to just let yourself move through something.
Because when we're present and we allow ourselves to the ride the waves of activation with safety and compassion, the wave will move through us.

If you're working on emotional regulation, my new book "The Wisdom of Feeling" comes out June 16th!
Deepen your self awareness, start practicing emotional self management skills, and become more attuned to the energy of your environment and how you contribute to a climate of emotional safety.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/767885/the-wisdom-of-feeling-by-genny-rumancik/

And remember, if you order before June 15th and upload your receipt at the link below, you can receive my guide for connecting to your grounded Self for free. Use it when you're feeling reactive, disconnected, or when you're about to make a big decision!

https://woobox.com/m4tzme

If you want to live a life dedicated to growth, connection, presence, and the acquisition of wisdom instead of things, these two facets are key.

First, you have to learn how to be present to your own feelings when navigating pain, hardship, discomfort, and the inevitable lows that are part of the human experience.

In learning how to stay present with your own experience, you can allow yourself to feel your feelings and process that experience. When we don't stay attuned to our own bodies and allow the pain to move through us, it stays stored within us a self-protective shield that keeps everything out — including the goodness, warmth, and depth of connection we need to grow.

It also keeps the pain inside, where the echoes of pain show up as shadows in the most important relationships and areas of life.

Learning to let pain move through you helps you learn the lessons and honor your experience without staying stuck.

Second, begin to embrace the idea that most things that happen to you aren't really about you.
Most of what other people do is about their fears, wounds, stress, limitations, assumptions, projections, and circumstances— not about you or your worth.

When you can really begin to internalize this, it's easier to meet difficult moments with curiosity instead of defensiveness, and to keep trying when one arena, relationship, or situation doesn't meet you where you need to be met.
Much of life isn't as personal as we think it is.

If you're working on these two things, my new book "The Wisdom of Feeling" comes out June 16th!
Deepen your self awareness, start practicing emotional self management skills, and become more attuned to the energy of your environment and how you contribute to a climate of emotional safety.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/767885/the-wisdom-of-feeling-by-genny-rumancik/

And remember, if you order before June 15th and upload your receipt at the link below, you can receive my guide for connecting to your grounded Self for free. Use it when you're feeling reactive, disconnected, or when you're about to make a big decision!

https://woobox.com/m4tzme

Seventeen years ago at a crowded airport, I watched a stranger do something I truly didn’t know was possible.

A woman was throwing a fit because some guy had unknowingly stepped in front of her when the last zone was called to board. When the guy realized what had happened, he apologized but she doubled down and called him, ‘Mr Big Shot.’

He paused, turned all the way around to face her, took a deep breath, and said,

“This feels important to you. Please — I’d like for you to go ahead of me.”

He wasn’t being sarcastic.
He wasn’t being passive aggressive.
He wasn’t shrinking, fawning, or people-pleasing.

He saw her frustration, clocked what had happened, and met her with mature, grounded kindness.

As she took in his energy, she instantly deflated, softened, and began apologizing.
A few moments later they were walking onto the plane, amicably chatting about holiday plans.

I was 23 and completely dumbfounded.
I just stood there thinking, “I want to know how to do that.”

Because at that point in my life, I would have either frozen up or angrily defended myself. Those were really the only two options I knew when faced with someone else’s aggressive energy.

That 90-second moment is where my new book, "The Wisdom of Feeling" begins.

I spent the years that followed that interaction in the airport learning what it actually takes to become emotionally mature — not to just act like 'an adult' in the way many of us have learned to mask, but to become so grounded in yourself that you’re not easily rocked by another adult’s temper tantrum.

This book grew out of those years, out of my own deep work, the lessons I learned along the way, and the wisdom I gathered through teaching emotional intelligence workshops over the years.

"The Wisdom of Feeling" comes out June 16.

And if you preorder before June 15, I have a free bonus for you: a downloadable Grounded Self guide + a 15-minute guided audio practice to help you reconnect with yourself before reacting, spiraling, or making a big decision.

✨ Preorder details + bonus ✨

If you'd like to preorder "The Wisdom of Feeling," you can find all retailer links here:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/767885/the-wisdom-of-feeling-by-genny-rumancik/

Already preordered? Upload your receipt here to receive the bonus:
https://woobox.com/m4tzme

You've been doing all this hard work. You can feel the changes in many areas of your life,
and then you back into an environment, maybe the one you're healing from, and it all comes rushing back.

You freeze up or find yourself instantly on edge or constantly on the defense.
And that makes sense — your body is going back to the old strategy that once worked in this environment.
It's not that the work isn't working,
it's more like you've moved from Koopa Troopas on to Big Bowser, and these interactions take a lot more of your resources.

And feeling those old familiar feelings or falling back into the old pattern doesn't mean you haven't grown.
It just means this is a particularly hard place and your body is doing the best it can to keep you safe.

But this is where the tools come in —
where you can practice self-attunement, noticing, allowing, self-soothing, and stepping away when you need to.
You are an adult and you get to choose how you respond.

Feeling triggered doesn't mean you're not making progress.
It gives you an opportunity to meet yourself in the midst of hard moments, to do the hard work of learning to stay present and actively taking care of yourself.

It's not easy, but it is possible, and I share many tools for helping you develop this skillset in my new book, "The Wisdom of Feeling," which comes out June 16th.

If you order by June 15th, you get a freebie! Upload your receipt and you'll receive a free guide (including a guided meditation) to help you slow down and connect with your grounded sense of Self.

Order your book from a retailer found here:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/767885/the-wisdom-of-feeling-by-genny-rumancik/

Upload your receipt here:
https://woobox.com/m4tzme

The repetitive thoughts that keep finding their way back to the forefront, even when you push them aside.
The nagging anxiety or ache of sadness in your tummy that you try to forget or distract yourself from —
they're trying to tell you something.

And trying to "control" them by forcing them away, thinking positive thoughts, or distracting yourself will only work temporarily — they'll be back or continue to change form until they get your attention.

Most of us have not learned how to be in relationship with our own activation and the signals that are letting us know we've got something inside that needs our attention.

But when you learn how to notice a repetitive or self-defeating thought, observe your own state, and get gently curious about what it might be telling you —
you start the process of self-attunement, meeting yourself with compassionate curiosity.

And from here we can slow down and learn ways to help our mind & body process feelings of activation together instead of avoiding them, becoming them, or battling against them until we're exhausted.

The folks in the Cycle Breakers program are learning to this, and you can too when you pre-order my debut book, "The Wisdom of Feeling," which comes out June 16th.

If you order by June 15th, upload your receipt and you'll receive a free guide to help you slow down and connect with your grounded sense of Self.

Order your book from a retailer found here:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/767885/the-wisdom-of-feeling-by-genny-rumancik/

Upload your receipt here:
https://woobox.com/m4tzme

This isn't the only possible adaptation to a world that doesn't seem to make any sense, but it's a common one.

If you couldn't trust your own feelings;
if you didn't have adults who listened, mirrored, or took accountability of their behavior,
if you often witnessed "I'm fine" when things, in fact, were not fine,
you might have learned to spend a lot of time trying to make sense of what was happening —
in an attempt to keep yourself safe by trying to decipher the "rules."

But in these environments, the rules often changed.
So you had to stay braced, attuned, observant,
because if you could understand the pattern,
you could sometimes prevent fallout.
Not always, but sometimes.
Which is a lot of responsibility for a child.

Kids who grow up with stability, validation, support, and adults who know how to hold themselves
learn that they can trust reality.
They learn that they don't have to analyze or understand someone's motives in order to be safe.
They don't believe it's their responsibility to keep things stable or to make anyone happy.
They don't need to overanalyze and get a deeper read on every person they meet or environment they step into.
They got to be kids.

If you're an overthinker or overanalyzer, my new book, "The Wisdom of Feeling" is a thoughtful guide that helps you come back to yourself, see your patterns, and learn how to create safety from the inside out.
Pre-order is available now, and the book is out June 16th.
Order here by June 2nd for a signed copy at no extra charge:
https://promo.porchlightbooks.com/pages/promotions/wisdomoffeelingps

This is one of the hardest shifts to make when you're feeling hurt and activated — especially when your instinct is to self-protect.

Self-protection makes sense. Wanting the other person to understand what they did wrong and to apologize makes sense.

But there will be many times in life when other people are not capable of taking responsibility for their role in conflict, whether its because of their bandwidth in the moment or their overall maturity or their values are not in alignment with yours.

For whatever reason, you're not always going to get resolution with another person,
and so you have to learn how to shift the lens away from them and back to yourself.

The instinct to focus on the other person makes sense from a self-protection perspective, but not from a healing perspective.
Judging them and shaming their behavior might feel temporarily good, but it doesn't last.
It doesn't make them change and it keeps you cycling the dynamic internally.

What helps is learning to self-attune and allowing yourself to fully feel the depths of how this situation impacted you —
and what older unresolved pain it may be touching.

It's giving yourself space, compassion, understanding, and room to grieve.
It's giving yourself what you didn't receive in this dynamic,
and then taking that learning with you into the future —
which means staying present and discerning in future relational dynamics.

Asking important questions earlier, sharing boundaries, and aligning with folks whose values match yours.
This is what healing looks like.
It doesn't happen overnight, but it is absolutely possible.

If you're working on becoming your own safe space, my debut book "The Wisdom of Feeling" will absolutely help, and is now available for pre-order (it comes out in June!). Order today and it'll be on your doorstep June 16th.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/767885/the-wisdom-of-feeling-by-genny-rumancik/

This is a perspective shift for many people, and it’s also a sign of improving emotional maturity when we can begin to hold space for these complex and often conflicting feelings and truths.

People aren’t simply “good” or “bad.”
We’re all complex, multi-layered, with complicated histories, deeply ingrained patterns, and, for the most part, I believe we’re all trying to do the best we can.

Which means good people can do bad things sometimes.
But seeing the good in someone doesn’t mean you have to stay in harmful patterns or unsafe dynamics.
It means that we can still see and love them and understand how they came to a behavior, AND not be willing to tolerate that behavior.

Learning to separate out the person from the behavior is a sign of your own growth and maturity.
It means growing to trust yourself to maintain boundaries without needing hate, anger, or judgment.
You’re allowed to have boundaries simply because what you need is what you need.

Remember, boundaries ARE kind.
Boundaries are letting people see you; boundaries are part of how we co-create relationships together, through sharing our limits and needs with one another.
They’re how we build real trust because we can see how people respond when we show them parts of ourselves in naming what we need.

There's a whole chapter on boundaries in my new book, "The Wisdom of Feeling," which is available now for pre-order at the link below.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/767885/the-wisdom-of-feeling-by-genny-rumancik/

Where are my fellow easy criers?

It's amazing how long I felt embarrassed about being an easy crier -
until I became acquainted with others who appreciated my sensitivity and I learned that my tears actually help me process my experiences in the world.

When we allow ourselves to cry,
when we can be safely present to our own tears,
we're allowing ourselves to be with what our bodies need to feel. To physically process what's happening within us so that we can more cleanly leave the past in the past.

Tears show up for a lot of different reasons - but there's always a reason. Your tears are giving you information and helping you process an experience.

My easy tears also show up when I'm happy, moved, proud, or feel deeply connected to a person or experience in front me.
They let me know I'm alive and in awe of all the beauty and possibility in this world.

And they help me more easily recognize pain and stay with it so that pain doesn't stay stored in my body for years to come.
My tears help me honor my losses and signal when I'm in distress so that I can better show up for myself in those moments.

Easy criers - your tears are a gift.
They help you stay present and whole.
They let you know when something matters and signal when you need to pay attention.

Slow down and listen to your tears. And appreciate the gift your sensitivity gives you -
and know that you're in good company.

If you're wrestling with embracing your sensitivity, my debut book "The Wisdom of Feeling" is available for pre-order now.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/767885/the-wisdom-of-feeling-by-genny-rumancik/

It's really easy to forget that the things that come naturally to you don't come naturally to everybody else.
Especially those special interest things that you geek out on,
the ones that send you into a flow state.

You get the hang of it and forget the amount of time, energy, and the number of reps or hours you put in to develop this skill.
But no, not everyone can do what you can do.

And that's a really beautiful thing —
we all have specialties, talents, skills, and pockets of knowledge that make the world a little brighter and a lot more interesting.

It's this diversity of interest and perspective that helps to create vibrant, resilient communities.
Embracing and celebrating our unique qualities and talents and sharing them with those around us helps us become stronger, and it's in sharing these parts of ourselves that we learn how to solve complex problems in more creative and relational ways.

You matter. Your weird, quirky little interests —
they matter. You are an important part of what makes this world beautiful.

Speaking of unique interests and contributions — I wrote book!
About deepening your emotional intelligence, especially if you're someone who didn't have great examples of what that looked like growing up. You can pre-order "The Wisdom of Feeling" at the link below - pre-orders are really important for new authors, so I greatly appreciate your support!

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/767885/the-wisdom-of-feeling-by-genny-rumancik/