The Most Important Skill That You Never Train: Emotional Intelligence

This is by far one of the most important videos that I've ever made on YouTube. When I ask players or coaches what the most important skill in basketball is, generally I'll get answers like shooting or ball handling or defending or rebounding, even, I'll get a myriad of different answers. And all those things are important in what we refer to as hard skills, right? So the physical ability to actually get the job done. Can you make the shot, can you handle the ball, can you make the pass, can you pull the rebound? All that stuff is important to do. Just like how an electrician would need to know how to install wiring, or a chef would need to know how to properly season a dish that they're making. You need to have those hard skills in order to be an effective player or effective at whatever job that you might do. But there's also soft skills, which are essentially attributes or personality traits that influence how effectively you interact with others and manage your work. And these skills are a lot more subjective, generally, and they're harder to measure, but they're equally important. And I would argue they're actually more important to your success as a basketball player or whatever it is that you do. But specifically, we're talking basketball here. The soft skills cannot. Can make or break you when it comes to, like, do the hard skills even matter? And we'll kind of dive into what exactly that means in a second right here. But we look at it going back to the example of, like an electrician, right? You need those hard skills, like, can you install wiring? All that sort of stuff right there. But also you need the soft skills. Can you effectively communicate with other tradesmen on the. On the job site, you know, and then for that chef, like, they may need those soft skills of, okay, can I effectively manage my time in terms of getting this dish prepared in a, you know, in a timely manner? A lot of times basketball players, basketball coaches are only focused on developing the hard skills, the shooting, the ball, handling, the finishing, the passing, the defense, the rebounding, the athleticism. And like I said, all that stuff is important. But in order for you to truly be the best player possible, you need to focus on developing the most important soft skill out there, which is emotional intelligence. Now, this one skill is going to do more for your game than. Than. Than pretty much anything else. The best part about it is that it's something that you can develop relatively quickly, as opposed to these hard skills, which take generally a lot of time to develop. Now, emotional intelligence, which I'll also probably refer to a little bit as EQ is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others and then your ability to use the understanding to manage your behavior and your relationships. So this affects our own behavior, how we manage different social situations and how we respond to the things that happen to us, which is a very important thing and we'll come back to a lot. But so much of being successful as a basketball player, it's about how you can handle things that happen to you. Think about throughout the course of a basketball game, how many things happen that are outside of your control. And when I look at it, especially from the, the perspective of coach and from a trainer, the best players that I work with, the best players that I coach are the ones who are able to handle things that get thrown at them the best. It's not necessarily the ones who are the most skilled, who are the most successful. It's the ones who can take things in stride, overcome adversity and be able to regulate themselves and their emotions in those moments that are difficult to handle. Now the important thing to understand is that EQ or emotional intelligence and IQ are actually very different things. IQ is your ability to learn and your ability to pick things up. And a lot of times that that has like a ceiling or, or it's a lot more fixed, there's less you can do to increase your iq. EQ is something that is very much changeable, something you can improve. And like I mentioned, it's something you can improve relatively quickly as well. So let's talk about three reasons why EQ is the most important skill for you to have as a basketball player. Number one is it's going to make you play better. When you have a higher iq, you're going to play better, especially under pressure. So like I mentioned, the players who are the best, the ones who can handle things being thrown at them that are unexpected, things that are difficult, and having a high level emotional intelligence is going to allow you to manage stress, stay calm in big moments, and ultimately it's going to lead to better performances, better decisions, and a better ability to perform in those clutch, high stress moments. The second thing is that it's going to make you a better decision maker and a better playmaker. Being able to regulate your emotions keeps you focused, keeps you sharp, which is one of those important things to have if you want to be a consistently high level player. And because of that, you're going to see the court better. And that's going to lead to you being more confident and ultimately making better decisions with the ball in your hands. Number Three is that you're going to improve faster. So you're going to be much more open to feedback and much more open to having the humility and the self awareness to say, hey, I need to get better at this and this is how I can do it. Or you know, this person's telling me this, so here's how I can take that and use it to become better. You're going to be able to do that at a much higher level. You're going to be able to use that feedback to improve way faster than most players, meaning your potential is significantly higher than a player who doesn't have a high level of emotional intelligence. You're going to be much more open to critiquing yourself in a positive way. What is going to allow you to, to progress so much faster because you're going to have a higher level of self awareness, which we're going to talk about here in a second. Then the fourth thing, the fourth reason why emotional intelligence is so important for a basketball player is because you're going to be mentally tougher. So with that high level of eq, you're going to bounce back faster from mistakes. You're going to stay focused when you deal with adversity. It's going to keep your confidence high when you make mistakes or when you struggle. And this is the difference between constantly underperforming and feeling like you're not quite playing up to your ability level and finally becoming that consistent, unstoppable player that you really want to be. A lot of times it's not about the hard skills, it's about those soft skills. The most important one of all is EQ emotional intelligence. So we, we're going to dive into the four aspects of emotional intelligence right here, including a couple of things that you can do to start implementing this into your game right now. The best part about this is that this isn't just basketball, right? This is going to make you a better human being. It's going to make you better in every other area of your life, right? And everything is going to become better. And that's why I always like to say to players like, the best thing about basketball is that the, the, the, there is no way to fail, right? I look back at my own career and I'm like, okay, well I wanted to do all these different things. I had all these different, you know, I wanted to and I, I achieved some of them, right? And maybe you have goals, maybe you want to play in the NBA or you want to play in college, or you just Want to make your varsity team or you want to average X amount of points, whatever your goals may be, right. Even if you achieve none of them, if you develop these soft skills through the game of basketball, it's going to make you successful in everything else that you will ever do for the rest of your life. So that's why I say this video is one of those important videos that I ever made on YouTube. Because not only is it going to help you to become the best player that you can possibly be, but it's going to make you the best human you can be in every other area of life. So let's dive into it. It's actually really interesting. Some of the studies they've done on emotional intelligence. Specifically, there was one study where they measured across a whole bunch of different industries, levels of industry regions in different places throughout the world, and they looked at just okay, performance level of the people that they measured. And they recognized that 90% of the high performers that they, that they found throughout the study, 90% of them also had high levels of emotional intelligence. Meanwhile, of the low performers that they found in their study, only 20% of them at high levels of emotional intelligence. So there, there was a direct correlation between emotional intelligence and your success, your ability to perform. What they also found is that there was a direct correlation between emotional intelligence, the amount of money that you made, where for every point higher of emotional intelligence that they had in their study, that that equated to about $1300 more per year of salary just based on emotional intelligence. They found that people who are high in emotional intelligence on average made $29,000 more per year than people who are low in emotional intelligence. So not only are there like intangible things that, that are different between people with high and low emotional intelligence, but there's actual physical, like tangible things that are affected by the level of emotional intell have right there. The first part of emotional intelligence is self awareness. And this is like the foundation of, of having a high level of emotional intelligence. You need to have a high level of self awareness. What that same study found is actually very interesting. 83% of people in that study that were high performers were also high in self awareness. The even crazier part of it is that only 2% of low performers were high in emotional intelligence. So essentially, if you don't have self awareness, your likelihood of being a high performer, meaning when I say high performer, meaning a successful basketball player, a high performer on the basketball court, your likelihood of doing that without a high level of motion intelligence becomes significantly Lower, right. And this is why I said that this is the most important skill in basketball, because, again, we can have all these hard skills, but if we don't have this, the studies have shown our likelihood of being a high performer is significantly lower. Let's talk about what self awareness is. It's simply defined as your ability to recognize and understand your own emotions, thoughts and behaviors, as well as how they will affect others. Having a high level of self awareness makes it much easier for you to make the right decisions, for you to set yourself up for success, and to avoid mistakes that are going to hold you back. So let's talk about two ways that you can develop a high level of self awareness. Number one is to watch yourself like a hawk. So this is, I think, a really interesting analogy, right? We think about how a hawk views the world. They're 200ft above the ground, and they can see for miles and miles and miles. They see the. The full picture of things. And then you compare that to how we as humans see the world, where even when we're standing up, you know, most of us are between 5 and 6ft tall, right? Some a little taller, some a little shorter. We. We don't see that far around us. We pretty much are stuck in our immediate vicinity, right? You might see, if you're in a stre of open land, you might see for, you know, a couple miles away, right? But that hawk can see for, you know, dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds of miles away based on how high they are. So that hawk really sees the whole picture, and they see the world very, very different than how we would see it. So taking that analogy, we need to think about in different situations, being able to remove ourselves from where we're at and look at the situation as if we were a hawk. So try and get an a view of the entire big picture outside of just what we think and what we feel in that situation right there. So let's say, for example, right, your teammate yells at you because, you know, you took a shot that they deemed as a bad shot. Now you know that it was actually a good shot that your coach wants you to take that you know, you can, you can take and you've made before. And so, you know, it wasn't a bad shot. And because of that, you want to go right back at him and, and, you know, say, start a whole argument or make a whole big scene of it, or you want to crawl into your shell and kind of shut down and not shoot anymore, right? Depending on who you are, that might be your Response to your teammate kind of snapping at you about something, maybe unfairly. And so instead of doing those things, you take a step back and you look at the situation as a hawk, right? Not from your own perspective, but from the big picture. And you say, well, my coach has really been getting on my teammate this whole game about just a lot of things. He's been struggling, he made a couple turnovers, made to a couple bad shots. And so my coach has been going at him, maybe pulled him out of the game, something like that. And so what that was with your teammates reaction to you was their own frustration kind of boiling over and them not being able to handle that super well. It was just a sign of their own frustration with how they're playing. And so you recognize that the best thing you can do in that situation is give them positivity, give them encouragement because you need them to kind of crawl out of that place of being frustrated and get back to, you know, being in the game and playing well. Right? So you make a point to where whenever you can, the rest of the game, give them encouragement, be positive with them. And that ultimately leads to a much better result than you lashing out at them because all you feel, all you see is where you're at, not where they're at. Okay, that's an example how to look at this situation as if you were a hawk. The second way we can develop a high level of self awareness is by stopping and asking yourself why you do the things that you do. So it's really, this seems so simple, but it's so easy to let emotions, reactionary moments and out of character decisions kind of just come and go and pass us by without realizing it or understanding why it is that we did those things, said those things, thought those things. One of the best ways to increase your self awareness is just to ask yourself why you did something. And when you do this, you can truly dig deep and find the root emotion in the source, right? So let's say for example, ordinarily you're a very coachable player. But let's say during a practice your coach corrects a mistake that you made and you made it very clear in your reaction to him that you didn't really want to hear it. And because your body language wasn't good and just you had overall had a bad reaction and everybody saw, your coach saw it. And because of that they, you know, they end up giving you less opportunities during practice. They're upset with you and ultimately like it was a negative outcome for you because you didn't respond well to the criticism or the feedback that you got from your coach. And instead of just kind of letting that go and forgetting about it, you, you kind of dig deep into it and you ask yourself, like, why is it that you reacted that way? Especially because for you, maybe it's an out of character thing or it's something that you recognize as a negative that you don't want to keep on doing. So you ask yourself why. And so you realize it was because you were frustrated with the mistake that you made and you didn't handle it correctly because your coach was actually just trying to help you. And so next time, because you've taken the time to ask that question and dig into why you handled it that way, when you're in that situation again, you might handle it differently because you've recognized like, hey, I should have handled that situation differently. And now when you're back in there, your coach is going to give you that feedback. The criticism you're going to, instead of being offended by it or, or getting upset, you can take that criticism and use it to become better. And now we've completely changed the, the way that we respond to what happens to us, and you become a better player because of it. Just by recognizing your emotions and asking yourself, why is it that I did that? You're going to become more. More self aware naturally. So as often as you can ask yourself those questions, the more self aware you're going to be. And again, that's ultimately what's going to lead to kind of the foundation for having a high level of emotional intelligence and ultimately being a high performer. So now let's talk about the second part of emotional intelligence. And this is self management. Now, self management is just your ability to manage and regulate your own emotions and your reactions, your behaviors that may stem from them. Right? So the first part is self awareness, being aware of these emotions and these reactions. The next part is self management. So how do you handle these things? This is where a lot of players struggle, and this is the reason why a lot of players aren't as good as they could be. I can't tell you the amount of players who I've coached, I've trained who had a lot of those hard skills. They could shoot, they could dribble, they're athletic. But as soon as bad things happen and bad emotions come up, whether it's frustration or it's embarrassment or anger, whatever, they don't know how to manage that. And because of that, they never play as well as they should play, and they Become the biggest what ifs. Oh, this, this, this player could have been so good. But they couldn't handle adversity ever. And they could never be consistent because if one thing went bad, they didn't know how to manage it right there. So this is such an important thing to do. Self awareness or self management builds on self awareness because it's your ability to use your awareness of your emotions to actively choose what you say and do when you're aware of your emotions and then you can choose how to best respond to them. You have the power to take control of challenging situations, adapt to change quickly, and ultimately reach the goals that you have for yourself and be able to overcome the things that might hold you back from that. So if you want to develop a high level of self management ability so that you can be your best when adversity hits and stay focused on accomplishing your goals no matter what comes up, here's a couple of things that you could do in order to be able to do that. The first one, very simple, is count to 10. Now the reason for this is because when, whenever you, you sense something, so think of any of your five senses. So site, taste, touch, hear, smell, that immediately travels up to your brain through an electric signal, right? So you touch something, maybe you touch a hot stove that travels to your brain and then your brain says, oh, that's hot. Take your hand off of that. Okay. How it works though, is when it enters your brain, the first part that it passes through is your, the emotional part of your brain, the limbic system before it gets to the frontal lobe, which is the rational part. So you're always going to experience emotions before you're able to rationally or logically think about something, right? You probably recognize that there's a lot of times where maybe you feel like, man, I reacted really quick and emotionally to that. And after the fact, you're like, wow, I should have handled that way different. Now that's simply because you are literally hardwired to experience emotions before you're able to think reasonably and rationally about things. So what the the idea of counting to 10 does, it gives your brain time to process things rationally before you make a decision or you say something or do something. You aren't always going to have 10 seconds to do something. But even if you only count to three or five, by taking that extra time, it's going to give you a little bit more time to be able to process things rationally and not freak out or, or react emotionally right away. Right there. So for Example, let's leave it like this. Your coach pulls you out of the game and you know he yells at you because you mess something up on defense right there. And your emotional gut reaction is to get angry, to get, you know, you know, embarrassed and kind of storm over to your seat of the bench, mumbling on your breath, whatever, like that's what you want to do. You're mad, you don't like that you got called out, you feel like maybe you were doing a lot of good things on offense and you, you know, you don't feel like you deserved what you got, right? And that that's your gut reaction. Instead you count to three, you take three seconds before you do anything and by that point you realize that the best response here is to take coaches feedback, use it to be better the next time in that situation. And you calmly walked your seat on the bench because of your ability to self manage your emotions. You avoided letting your initial feelings of anger, of embarrassment or frustration make your situation worse. And instead you made the most productive choice possible right in that situation. It sucks. No one wants to be in that situation, right? But your reaction can either make it worse or it can make it potentially better, right? So not only you make it better because you can use that feedback, but now your coach respects you more because they see you can take feedback and they can trust that, hey, if I have to say something to this, to this, to this player, they can hear it and they're not going to check out or lose it because of that, right? So you're going to build a better relationship with your coach, which is something we're going to talk about a little bit later here. But that's the importance of counting to 10 is it gives your brain time to process things rationally instead of you just responding emotionally to things. So in the context of a game, if you feel yourself frustrated or angry, whatever, just count to three, count to five and then allow yourself to move on. And chances are if you do that, you're going to give yourself time to come to a more rational decision than you would if not. So that's the first thing is you want to count to 10 as a way to effectively self manage. Number two is to take control of your self talk, right? So something to think about is that you have over 50,000 thoughts per day and obviously with that many thoughts is impossible to actually keep track of every single one of them. But it's important. Kind of like what we mentioned earlier, where we have to dig into why we did what we did to build Self awareness. If we can start to take control of the way that we talk to ourselves, it's going to help us significantly when it comes to managing our, our emotions. Right. So for example, we want to start to identify the, the permanent statements that we make and change them to temporary statements. Right. What that means is that like whenever you say an I always statement or I never statement followed by usually a negative thing, we need to get away from saying those things to identify them and change them. So for example, players will be like, man, I always miss left handed layups because they miss like two and that those are situations where you need to recognize, hey, that's a permanent statement. I've got to change it to a, a temporary statement because first of all it's not true. You don't always miss left handed layups. You might miss 99 out of 100, you still made one. So by saying I always miss, that's a false statement first of all. But more important than just the, you know, the vernacular of it or the words that we're saying, right? We're not, it's not, it's not about that. It's about the fact that when you make that permanent statement, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Because now we're saying, hey, I always miss that. So what do you think is going to happen the next time you do it? You're already thinking that you're going to miss it because that's what you just told yourself is you always miss it. So we need to take these always or never statements like man, I never make left handed layups or I never make three pointers or whatever the case may be. These permanent statements that are usually first of all not true and second of all are going to be self fulfilling prophecies and probably make you perform worse and, and change them to I sometimes or just this time statements. Statements that are actually true. Right. So for example, you drive to the basket, you miss a left handed layup and then immediately say, I always miss left handed layups. We can reframe that as saying I missed that left handed layup or man, I missed a couple of layups today. Right? Just that change has no effect on your future, no effect your future performance. And it was true. It's what happened. Right? Right. So we essentially want to keep ourselves from boxing ourselves in with those future statements, which is I always or I never followed by a negative statement. We don't want to do those things. And then the other way you can do this is by replacing those judgmental statements with true statements. So for example, to start a game, you miss your first four shots and you say, man, I suck at shooting. Right? Instead of saying that, you can say, okay, I missed my shot so far. Right? There's is a very simple change right there, but it now gives us a chance to be able to change the future, change what we do next instead of putting ourselves in this box and saying, I always or I never or this is what I am. Okay? So taking the way that we think, the way we talk to ourselves and changing it is one of the best ways to build self management. So let's talk about the third part of developing a high level emotional intelligence. That's developing a high level of social awareness. Okay? So this is where we take those first two steps of self awareness self management, and now we start to make it a broader thing. How does what we do impact other people? And how can we assess what other people are feeling, thinking, doing, and how does that impact what we should be doing or feeling or thinking or how we should be acting? Right. Social awareness is just your ability to accurately pick up on the emotions of other people and understand what's really going on with them. Because it's very easy to get caught up in what we're doing. Right? Talking about that analogy of the hawk again. Right? It's very easy to be stuck in our own little world instead of seeing the bigger picture and what's going on with other people. So having a high level of social awareness is such an important part of being successful. We can develop this by spending more time focusing on listening and observing and spending less time talking. That's the best way to develop a high level social awareness. So this is going to require us to spend more time staying in the present moment. So not thinking about, specifically when we're in a basketball example, not spending time thinking about what we said or did wrong five possessions ago, or spending time being fearful of like, what if I mess up again? Like being able to live in the present moment, which is why I talk about a lot, is such an important key to being able to do this right here. So let's talk about two strategies you can do to develop a high level of social awareness. Number one is understand that timing is the most important thing. Right? So I think the key to social awareness is recognizing that it's about focusing on others and not on yourself. This means that your words and actions shouldn't be based on what you want in the moment, but they should be based on what is right for the other person in that moment. We can really Utilize social awareness. If we have a high level of it when it comes to your teammates and their potential emotional and mental struggles on the court, right? So, for example, your teammate misses a couple shots and you notice their body language shift. So they might start to hang their head or they stop calling for the ball. And in this situation, we can recognize that and say, hey, okay, what do they need in this moment? Not about what do I want to say. It's about what do they need in this moment. You can give them encouragement. Hey, man, keep shooting. We trust you. Next one's going in. We're good, dude. Next one's going in. We're good. Like, speaking with encouragement, we can try our best to get. To set them up with an easy shot. Okay? So, you know, like, hey, I know we. We can get this guy this shot if I do this. And so you can try and get them going a little bit that way by creating an easy shot for them, or you can just do your best to make sure you stay engaged with them. So by communicating more with them, constantly checking in with them, making sure that you keep them up and keep them focused on the present moment, right? We need to look at what somebody else is going through and have that impact, the way that we do things, okay? Because the way that, like, you might not have to do that with every teammate, and you might not have to do the whole time with every team, but there might be moments where that's what they need in. In that specific situation, right? So timing is everything. What does this person need from me in this moment? Let that be the driving force behind what you say and what you do. And number two is step into their shoes. Think about what it's like to be an actor or an actress playing a role, right? You completely adopt a different person's behaviors, thoughts, way of speaking, way of doing things. And a lot of times after that, these actors, actresses will have a newfound appreciation for the role that they played, the person that they played right there. So this concept of stepping into somebody else's shoes is such a powerful one because it allows you to understand their motivations and. And the. The emotions behind it. And then it's going to allow you to communicate and interact with them in a much better, much more effective way. So, for example, imagine you're a starter, and you play most of the game, but you have one of your teammates who is on the bench, and they barely get any minutes when you step into their shoes. And consider how they feel, probably frustrated, maybe overlooked, maybe anxious about the limited amount of opportunities that they have. From this perspective, you can realize that they need more encouragement or inclusion during practices and games. So maybe you invite them to join you during extra workouts, showing that you value their effort and you value their development as well. Right? That's a super simple thing that you can do on the court. You can make sure to really celebrate their successes, even if it's a really little thing. They set a really great screen. Be sure to celebrate that, Tell them that, tell everybody that about the things that they're doing. They made a really good pass, they advanced the ball well in transition, they pulled a big rebound. Let them know about those things. Right. That's a great way that we can celebrate their own successes. And then you can also make sure that they're involved in, you know, off court things so, you know, in discussions and you know, whatever other activities you might do as a team, helping them feel like they're an important part of what's going on and they matter and they have value behind, you know, what's going on with the team regardless of how much they may play. By understanding their experience, by stepping into their shoes, you can help create a better situation and help uplift them. And that is really what social awareness is all about. Is again, what does this person need from me and how can I deliver on that in this moment? Then the last part of developing emotional intelligence is relationship management. Now relationship management is your ability to use your awareness of your own emotions as well as your awareness of others emotions to effectively manage relationships. So really this is like this takes all three of the first things we talked about. So it takes self awareness, takes self management and it takes social awareness. And this is like a, a mass combination of the three in order to effectively manage the relationship that you have. The weaker your connection is with somebody, the harder it's going to be for you to work with them, get your point across to them or have them support you. Right. If you don't have a strong connection with, with people, you know, strong relationships, you're going to be less successful. And that 100% applies to the basketball court as well. If your teammates don't like you, if your coaches don't like you or respect you, you're probably going to struggle to be as successful as you could be. So it's important that we practice effective relationship management. So let's talk about a couple things you can do to effectively manage your relationships. Number one is something that I already mentioned briefly, but it's your ability to take feedback. Well, people only trust people that they can be honest with. If people feel like when they're honest with you, you're going to shut down or lash out or freak out because of it, they're not going to trust you, and therefore you're not going to be in a position to receive honest feedback from people and know what you really need to improve on. And you're going to find that you hit your ceiling very quick and you can't really break through because no one's going to be honest with you. Feedback is one of the best gifts that somebody can give you because they have to stick their own neck out and risk you being upset with them or you going back at them or, you know, you making a huge scene out of it in order to give you feedback, particularly criticism, right? So when we understand that, that when somebody gives you feedback, it's one of the best gifts they can give because they have to risk something, they have to risk the relationship to do that. You. That. That should give you a newfound appreciation for any sort of criticism that you might get from a coach or from a teammate. So one of the best ways to ruin a relationship is to take that feedback poorly and not appreciate the gift of feedback that you're being given. Like I said, people don't trust people who can't take feedback, who they can't be honest with. They will not trust you, and therefore they won't be honest with you going forward. So you. You're never going to know. Oh, man. Am I actually doing the right thing? Am I moving the right direction? Am I going towards my goals? Because no one will tell you, no one will help you with that if they don't think that you will take feedback well. So when we talk about taking feedback well, the first thing is we need to use that social awareness, meaning we need to listen and we need to observe and we need to not talk and allow them to get their point across. Right. You can ask clarifying questions if you need to, but we really want to take time and listen to what they're saying and really. And really make that a huge point. Whether you agree with it or you disagree with the feedback, thank them for it. Again, show them that you take feedback well because that's going to build the relationship. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with what they're saying, it's important that you do that. Again, coming from a coach or teammate, we want to make sure that this is coming from a respected source. Right. If it's somebody who's not in your practices, not in your games, doesn't know what they're talking about, then don't. Whatever they have to say don't matter, right? They don't know. But if it's someone who is a respected source, so a coach or a teammate, someone who is actually in the know about what's going on, thank them for that. And then at that point, use your self management skills to determine what comes next. What do you need to do for those next steps, Right? So maybe you take some time and you write down what do I feel about this feedback? And then you can kind of take some time. Again, the two self management abilities right there, where we can now count to 10, first of all, so more than 10, we're writing things down. You have time to process things logically and rationally. And we can write down even like an emotion versus a reason list. So you write down a list of the emotions that you felt because of that feedback and then the logical things that you now know after being able to process things, a great way to be able to take feedback and then take action, right? No better way to show that person giving you feedback that you appreciated than to actually implement what they're saying. If your coach says, hey, you need to look to, you know, instead of shooting that shot, you need to look to do this instead. And by you taking action and doing that, that's how you truly build that relationship. Because you effectively can take feedback. Is most important things you can do to build great relationships with your coaches, with your teammates is number one, take feedback. Well, number two is kyp. Such an important, such a simple thing. But this stands for know your personnel. So the way that you communicate with one person probably won't be the way that you communicate with another person. And it's up to you to understand how to best communicate with the people that are on your team. So let's say during a practice, right, you notice that two of your teammates respond differently to feedback, right? One of your teammates is really, really confident and you know, they really respond well to a direct approach. You going right at them like they respond well to that. And maybe you have another teammate who doesn't respond well to that. Like they need you to, to approach them from a little bit of a, of a more gentle perspective or a more gentle way. And you know, you notice that you need to be a little bit more positive with the way that you give them feedback. So that first teammate, maybe they, they miss a defensive assignment and you know, you say, hey, you got to stay on your man, close that gap, but you can't miss that, and they respond well to that and they fix it because of it. Right? But then that other teammate, if you were to go at them the same way, they're going to shut down, they're going to have an issue and it's probably going to hurt their relationship and it's going to hurt their performance. Again, going back to social awareness, it's not about what you want to say. It's about what they need to hear at that time to get the best out of them. It's about what they need, not what you need. So for that other teammate, maybe they miss a defensive assignment and you approach it a different way. You, you know, you say, hey man, like, just make sure next time that you, you check that right there and I'll be, I'll drop down there to take yours right there. Like, I'll be right behind you. Okay? You just approach it. You just worded it in a little bit different way right there. That first team, I might miss a shot and you're like, man, like, come on, like, get, like, get in the game. Like, let's, let's figure it out. Like, put the ball in the basket. And that might be how they best respond to the type of female that they best respond to. That other teammate, though, they might miss a shot, you might have say, hey man, keep shooting ball. Like, we know you're going to, you're going to make the next one. Like, those are great shots. Just keep shooting. Don't even think about it. And we just approach the same situation in a different way. Because you have two teammates who respond differently to, to certain things, you have to be able to adjust what you're saying depending on who you're saying it to. And that's how you effectively manage relationships with your teammates. And when you do that, when teammates feel like you understand them and you're willing to tailor what you say and do to them, they're going to be so much more supportive of you and they're going to be so much more willing to go to bat for you and to support you in return. Right? So super important that we also know our personnel when it comes to effectively managing relationships. So like I said, when you effectively develop a high level emotional intelligence, it's going to lead to you being a higher performer. And that goes for basketball, of course. And all our examples today were basketball situations where the better you can handle those, the better you're going to be, the more consistent you're going to be, the higher level player you're going to be be. But like I said it's not just that, it's about everything else that you could possibly do is going to make a positive impact. But again, as we saw and as, as, as the studies have shown, if you want to be a high performer in anything you do, but on the basketball court, if you want to be a high performer, develop a high level of emotional intelligence. And that skill alone is going to make more of an impact than any other skill that you can possibly work on. And again, these are things that we can start to implement right now. Now if you want to dive even deeper into this and find even more strategies to develop this at a high level, I just developed an entire course on basketball emotional intelligence and how you can develop it at a high level, developing the emotional intelligence needed to dominate on the court. And I added it to Basketball IQ Academy, so now it'll become a part of it. So if you're a part of Basketball IQ Academy already, you can, you can see this course and go through the whole thing. If you're not a part of Basketball IQ Academy, it's our full program that goes into becoming a better basketball player from every aspect. So from developing your basketball iq, understanding how to effectively score, how to create for your teammates, being able to read the game, read situations, become a better decision maker. So from that perspective, it's, it's going to help transform your ability on the court. We also have a full course on building confidence and building self belief and having like a bulletproof mindset on the court. And then we just added in Basketball EQ Academy where we dive into how to develop a high level of emotional intelligence, where we have way more strategies right here we have ways for you to implement them and look to add that stuff to what you do and who you are. And ultimately it's the, it is the best way to completely transform who you are as a player. So if you have lofty goals, you have big goals as a, as a Hooper, whether it's, you know, you want to make it to the next level, you want to, you know, average a certain amount of points, whatever it is that you might want, Basketball IQ Academy is going to give you all the tools that you need to be able to get there. So highly recommend you check that out. That's going to be linked down below. Appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.