Emotional intelligence has not been widely studied in second language acquisition and studies published to date have been questionnaire-based. In this study we take a qualitative approach to focus on how emotional intelligence is used by two participants, one a learner and the other a pre-service teacher. The two focal participants were selected because they showed the most positive movement toward attaining their possible future L2 selves among a larger sample. Analysis shows the ways in which four branches of emotional intelligence interacted as respondents worked with three activities adapted from the literature on positive psychology: savouring, three good things, and learned optimism. This paper shows how both the learner and teacher employed emotional intelligence to understand and integrate their experiences inside and outside the classroom as part of the language learning and teaching process.