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Why do people choose to develop emotional intelligence and why do they turn to Six Seconds for their path? In “Voices from Six Seconds Network,” we introduce you to people in the network who share their experiences, personal journeys, and how they embrace EQ in different areas of their daily lives.

Voices from the Network: Jessica Nelson

by Maddalena Campitelli

“I have a choice with emotions. These are skills I can apply, I can get better and I don’t have to feel this way all the time”. -Jessica Nelson 

This month we interviewed Jessica Nelson, a passionate EQ Educator on a life changing journey of practicing self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Equipped with this new awareness and EQ tools, she now wants to help others, and her students in particular, to support them to better navigate challenges – at school and in life. “Seeing the positive impact I can have on students through teaching,” Nelson says, “is literally my purpose.”

“How did I get here?”
Jessica was a girl with a plan. She excelled in school, made it through university, settled down, met someone she thought she would marry and have kids with, and became a teacher. Everything seemed fine, until suddenly, life stopped going the way she expected – she faced a series of health issues and her relationship fell apart. She struggled with depression and anxiety – and because she felt like she had lost all her certainties, she fell into a hole.

Eventually Jessica arrived at a moment of reckoning and asked herself, “How did I get here?” She started working with a counselor, and after some sessions her psychologist suggested she learn more about emotions and build her skills to understand the reasons beneath those feelings. The counselor suggested she work on her Emotional Intelligence – a learnable and measurable set of skills. So Jessica set out on her next adventure– to develop her EQ – a discovery that started her down a new path of self-awareness.

The Illumination of Self-Awareness
At Six Seconds, self-awareness includes two competencies: enhance emotional literacy and recognize patterns. These skills help you to be more aware of what you feel, and the patterns around your responses. Emotions are data, and these skills enable you to gather that data more effectively. When you know yourself and your strengths and weaknesses, you know what you are doing, what you want, and thus, what to change to get the results you really want. Self-Awareness is often the foundation of the Six Seconds Model of Emotional Intelligence <know more about the Six Second model of EQ> which has three important pursuits: to become more aware (Know Yourself- notice what you do), more intentional (Choose Yourself- do what you mean), and more purposeful (Give Yourself- do it for a reason). At its root, emotional intelligence is something to BE. You recognise emotions more accurately in yourself and others and this information will assist you in making decisions and developing effective answers to the challenges you face in everyday life.

Jessica’s first discovery was that emotions don’t just happen to people, and it is possible to learn about them because there’s a structure and science to them. When she found Six Seconds, she realized: “I have a choice with emotions. These are skills I can apply, I can get better and I don’t have to feel this way all the time.” She found great comfort in knowing that there is an evidence-based structure and framework she can use when facing a difficult decision or challenge. She was so enthusiastic about this discovery that she thought, “Why don’t we teach this in school to everyone!?” And that’s when she took the EQ Educator course. She shared “If someone would have taught me this when I was younger, I would have been able to respond so much better to all those crises in my life and I may not have ended up in the place that I did.” So her goal became to give students these essential skills that she wasn’t given at their age – and hopefully make their lives better.

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Meet Jessica Nelson LinkedIn→

Professional achievements: Jessica is a relationship-orientated educational leader with an outcome-driven approach to engaging teaching and learning, and also a passionate advocate for health and wellbeing, with strong success in empowering others with essential physical, social and emotional skills. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education with a specialization in Health and P.E. In pursuit of further expertise, she completed a Graduate Certificate in Youth Mental Health, and later achieved a Master’s degree in Education, specializing in this field. Throughout her journey as an educator, which began in 2011, she has honed her leadership skills by taking on various roles, including HPE teacher, Head of Year, and Head of the HPE department. She’s now a Certified Six Seconds EQ Practitioner, Assessor, Educator, Facilitator, and Teacher Trainer: additional certifications which empower her to support students and fellow educators in developing emotional intelligence, empathy, and self-awareness. Currently, Jessica is working as a HPE educator, and also holds the position of Education Manager, in Australia, and Operations Executive APAC with Six Seconds. With time she discovered that being creative helps her work through her emotions and, driven by wanting to share it with others, she started making her own art and selling it at the markets. She created a small business called Wild Blooms & Co (wildbloomsandco on IG), where she runs textured art workshops.

Favorite Six Seconds Learning Philosophy: “No Way Is The Way! “I have used this philosophy in many aspects of my life since first learning it when completing my Unlocking EQ Course with Six Seconds. It reminds me that even though I may have a plan and the way I would like things to go, life happens, and that is okay. It enables me to flow with the waves of life with greater curiosity and courage rather than fear and apprehension.”
Learn about Six Seconds Learning Philosophy→

Noble Goal: “Empowering myself and others through continuous learning, effective teaching and the application of emotional intelligence skills, nurturing healthier and more fulfilling lives.”
Learn about Six Seconds Noble Goals→

Her “Don’t Miss This” Six Seconds tools & courses: The Pluthcik’s Emotion Wheel is a fantastic tool- personal use and teaching – because it gives you the message behind the emotions and how you can use it. Concerning courses, I can only imagine a world where everyone completed the Unlocking EQ course! And definitely the EQ Educator, 1, 2, 3 for all educators.

​​​​​​3 Tools to Bring Emotional Intelligence Into the Class – or the Field

Emotional Intelligence not only changed her relationships, it also changed her teaching. She now leans on the Six Seconds approach to be able to help her get through challenging moments in the classroom. Having the awareness that underneath other people’s behavior – in her case particularly students and their parents – there are different emotions that drive behavior, gave Jessica more empathy and choice in how to respond. Instead of just reacting to situations, she now pauses and considers how to best support them. It was a huge change for Jessica to shift from emotionally reacting without any sort of control to what was happening in the classroom – which can be a really hectic and busy place- to being in response mode: “Before I used to be quite reactive, while now I’m able to slow down and choose how to respond rather than to react.”

Jessica set out to make school a safer and more inclusive space and education a holistic and transformative experience for her students by infusing emotional learning into her teaching everyday. “High School is so hard, so can’t we just make it easier and teach kids about emotions?”

Since she took the EQ Educator course, she likes to use the Engage, Activate and Reflect framework <Learn more about the CHANGE MAP incorporating both rational & emotional processes for change> in her lessons plans. She likes to add a “spark activity” to engage students like a video, or a game challenge or she does something kids won’t expect that engages them emotionally with the lesson. Then Jessica moves to the content, framing it in a meaningful context. At the end she asks the students to think about what they’ve learned in class to extend into their time at home. Jessica says this process of pausing and reflecting deepens kids’ learning and helps them anchor the content into longer-term learning. Another Six Seconds tool she uses a lot is the Emotion Wheel or Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions, especially when she’s having a conversation with students and they are struggling with something and are not able to identify how they feel. At that point she pulls out the Wheel and asks if any of the feelings listed resonate with them or help them recognize how they are feeling. This really helps students understand the messages emotions carry. Another tool she uses frequently is the Reaction Cycle <Learn how to get out the cycle of an escalating conflict> with topics such as Sports Psychology by connecting someone’s on field reactions to the neuroscience behind it and how to change that behavior.

The Connectivity of Self-Awareness 
Self-awareness changed Jessica. She can now see that everyone is different, and each person has a unique way of feeling and reacting and showing emotions to others. But at the same time, everyone feels similar emotions and can develop awareness to make better choices with them. With her increased self-awareness, she navigates relationships more easily and can develop a deeper sense of connection with others. Wanting to find people with a greater sense of self-awareness, empathy and care, she reached back to the Six Seconds’ Regional Network Director in her region and asked how to be more active in the Six Seconds community. That led to her current role as Operations Executive with Six Seconds Asia Pacific. Jessica described the learning experience with Six Seconds as a beautiful and lovely growth journey, thanks to which she’s now healthier and happier. EQ positively impacted her mood and overall health and wellbeing. She is sure she wouldn’t have been able to get by if she hadn’t learned about the science of emotions and how to navigate them, and she can say that compared to where she started from, now she is a completely different person: “EQ was truly transformational for me, now I am much more emotionally aware and always continuously learning”.

Thank you Jessica for sharing your EQ journey with us!

If you would like to share your story and be featured in future newsletters please email [email protected]

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​Want more resources about Self-Awareness?

How to Improve Emotional Intelligence: 10 Tips for Increasing Self-Awareness

Naming and understanding emotions

Using Biodots for Self-Awareness

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