169. Emotional Intelligence: More Than Buzz Words

Foreign Kenny here. Welcome back to the show. Leadership in a nutshell, cracking the code of the driven mind. And that's really where, as you see, the podcast begin to shift and evolve. I'm just going into the brain, into the human mind. The communication really is what we're here to discuss of how, how, you know, how we have this conversation with ourselves that ends up in emotions and feelings, how we project that out from what we feel, what it stirs in us, what it reminds us of, and then how we fast forward to conversations with other people. And so today, episode 169, emotional intelligence more than buzzwords. And that's, you know, I, there's, there's been, and I threw that in there because it's like, oh, it's a buzzword. You know, back in my keynote speaking days, like, oh, we need a speaker that'll talk about emotional intelligence. And I'm like, that's textbook crap. I don't want to talk about that. And so today, you know, if you found this as textbook crap, let me give you a ruiner right now. This podcast doesn't have textbook crap in it. Please be with me. If you're one of our newer listeners, I want to welcome you aboard. And no, I'm not dogging textbooks. I'm just here to have real conversations. And I'm going to spend 10, 15 minutes with you today just going through some ways to enhance your life and improve your communication internally and externally with others. And so that's really, you know, I, I've resisted these buzzwords of emotional intelligence, but I, and yet, as I say that I've worked with my, you know, back when I did one on one work with clients, I, I would work with emotional regulation. Now I only do group coaching and I run events and different things that I do. And we talk about emotional regulation now. Well, emotional regulation is really another set of buzzwords probably for emotional intelligence. And that's, you know, that's the thing is all I'm, what I'm looking to do is take myself and those around me off of this journey of super high highs and super low lows. And I, you know, I, I, I, many years of my life, I thrived on that. And I just had this, you know, what we're doing as, as human beings, we are our number one pharmacist. Like, we are creating chemicals all day, every day firing in the brain, giving us different thoughts, feelings, emotions and, and what have you. And so it's like, oh my gosh, I, I love this super high high and Then I'm like, oh, my gosh, I got to go home and smoke and drink. So I minimize this because I have anxiety and I feel it pulsing through my, you know, my solar plexus and my heart. And I'm like, ah, you know, and maybe you can relate, like wherever you are in your journey. And what I want you to know is it doesn't have to be this way. And emotional intelligence or emotional regulation or emotional acceptance, perhaps. And, you know, just getting off of that, that roller coaster ride or treadmill of, you know, I just, I thought that, you know, I'm going to record an episode about anxiety coming up here pretty soon, that I won't get into all of that right now. But I used to live with a feeling of just anxiousness, if you will. And as I heightened my awareness, which is a key component of emotional intelligence, sometimes it would even get worse. And I want you to realize sometimes, people, that when we first start meditating, perhaps I've been meditating for years now, every single day. It's part of my life, it's part of my practice, it's part of my journey, it's part of my own emotional regulation, and it's a tool that works. I used to drink, now I meditate. And I feel way better on every level, right? But what I know is when I first started, and many people tell me when they first start, it's like almost that anxiety, it gets worse. It heightens a little bit. And maybe you've heard me say this before on one of the previous episodes about meditation, how it served my life. I didn't look them up because I didn't know I was going to talk about this today. You might get that I sit down and have a conversation with you when I report, record these podcasts. I have a thought in my mind and I have an outcome that I want you to feel better. And I'm going to talk to you about this thought that I have in my mind and this thing that I've observed in clients and myself in humanity in general. And we're going to have a conversation and you're going to feel better at the end of 10 or 15 minutes than when you got on this. Does that sound good? And those of you that are returning listeners, can I get a nod? And those of you that are new to the podcast, can I get a. If you feel better, you'll share this with somebody. Okay, now we're on the same. That's fair. But, you know, the goal is just to feel a little bit better. There's plenty of things and billions of dollars being spent on making you feel not so good about yourself. Every advertisement on TV is about telling you what you're missing, what you're lacking, where you're not, how you don't look right, how you don't feel right, how you don't drink the right beer, how you don't. What? Like, no, no, no, no. That's not tied to emotional intelligence, much less emotional regulation. And so what I want you to realize is as you become more aware, all you're doing is becoming more aware. And that's why when people start meditating, like, no, I already had this anxiety. I'm just slowing my mind down. And I'm like, oh, damn, I got some anxiety rolling here. Well, okay, cool. It's there anyway. It just happens to be destroying your human body, your container. Now you're becoming aware of it. Now we can do something about it. Okay, so, you know, when I was doing some research and studying emotional intelligence a little bit more, there's an expert by the name of Daniel Goleman that, you know, he's a psychologist that kind of gave, you know, five key components, and those are what I'm going to share with you here today. And so the first thing that he talks about is self awareness. Big surprise. So key component of emotional intelligence is I'm aware of myself. I'm aware of what I'm doing. I'm aware of what I'm saying. I'm aware of what I'm feeling. I'm aware of maybe how I'm making others feel. So as a leader, this is incredibly important. And I say, as a leader, my gosh. I mean, it's one of the reasons I've thought about changing the name of this podcast, because we're all leaders. We're just having a human experience. And so, you know, I just want you to realize it doesn't matter if you're, you know, put on your business hat, put on your, you know, your manager title. And now you're going to apply these things from this podcast. No, you're a human being. I'll say you're a spiritual being having a human experience. And because of that, you are able to use what we're talking about here in every aspect of your life. What a cool thing, right? So, you know, you can get the business to pay for it. Oh, yeah, the podcast is free, isn't it? So. So you don't even have to pay. You're paying with your time, energy and effort to show up and spend a Few minutes with me every week. So. And I gratefully, I, I take that very seriously. And I, and I gratefully appreciate that. And I, and I, you know, I commit when I say I just sit down and have a conversation. I'm speaking from the heart. I'm speaking my divine truth to your divine truth and help you change your behavior. That's why I do this podcast. No other reason. You see, I don't sell a lot of product on here. Well, shit, I don't think I've ever sold anything. Mentioned my book a few times. If you haven't bought that, maybe go buy blue collar success laws, but you know, or all the way back to Six Dimensions of Change 2.0. Like, you know, maybe I'll, I'll offer a program here or there on this podcast, but that's not what I'm doing it for. I'm doing it to improve your life. And well, heck, that's why I write books too. To improve your life. That's it. But Daniel says number one is self awareness. So becoming aware of yourself. See how I noticed? I was rambling there for a minute. But seriously. And I just, you know, the higher your emotional intelligence. I'm not talking about taking a test and finding this quotient. I'm just talking about you being a little bit more aware when you're talking. When you meet those people that just don't shut up and you're like, damn, I wish you had a little more awareness. Don't be that person. Right? That's all we're looking at. So one, self awareness. Two, self regulation. So, meaning, okay, now I'm aware that I'm doing this behavior. I'm aware I'm acting about this type of a situation. Now let me regulate, Let me back off of that and go, hang on, wait. That's not what I want to do. That's not what I want to say. It's not how I want to feel. So I'm going to shift that. I'm going to change that. I used to be the scream and yell, slam doors. You don't get it. I mean, as I look back on my previous self, I have massive compassion, empathy, and love for my previous self. But my God, God, was I a terror. I was like that Tasmanian devil on, on the cartoons, just spinning around. I'm like, ah. And then I would bring that to other people and then people would like move their behavior and do different things. And then I had this like, thought that, like, oh my gosh, I mean, I, I mean, I'm A combat vet. I jumped when drill sergeant said jumps. And maybe that's what giving people respond to. No, that wasn't very emotionally intelligent. I certainly wasn't super high awareness. And I didn't regulate myself more. The more I've realized, like, man, if I'm aware of what I'm doing, how I'm speaking, what I'm saying, then I can maybe influence my inflection a little bit, maybe my speed of my communication, maybe the words that I might use. Because notice how when I slow down, I've also slowed down your thought process. And no, I'm not going to put you into a meditation or a trance or whatever, but I see that where, you know, when you have some regulation and knowing, like, I'm aware, I only get you for 10 or 15 minutes a week. So my responsibility is to take you up a little bit and get you fired up and tell you how excited I am for you and how amazing life is. And we've never been alive at a better time in our human experience. But then you go watch the news. Oh, my God, don't watch the news. They're telling you everything sucks and you're a terrible person and you need more pharmaceutical drugs and your relationships are falling apart and money's gonna cost 100% interest and everything. And then that's just be this for yourself. Be this for other people where you're aware and you take, you know, you're taking yourself and others on a journey. But regulate that as you go through, number one, self awareness. Number two, self regulation, number motivation. So, you know, when I believe that we're motivated by the things that create feelings. And so what I see, what I hear, those are the things that motivate me to do certain things right. So, you know when you realize what motivates you and what doesn't motivate you. I used to like having kind of a late dinner. I lived in a small town for a long time where restaurants closed up early. And I want to have the late business meal and the business dinner late and have a couple glasses of wine and all that. And even though I don't drink at all anymore, I would still have late dinner sometimes. And when I met the lovely Christie, she wasn't as attached to an exact time for dinner all the time. So sometimes we'd eat a little late. Well, now I've realized if I eat late, I don't sleep as good. And so now I'm realizing, like, oh, I like to eat a little earlier. And so now if we have an earlier dinner. Then I have a better chance of. Of a good night of sleep. And different. That's a different level of motivation. And guess what? That came from awareness, that came from regulation and knowing what motivates me. Same is true for you. Then we go to 4 empathy, having the ability to be empathetic. And I'm talking about empathy, not sympathy. And, you know, I mean, gosh, at blue collar and professional tech academy and sales specialist academy, we teach this as part of the sales process that, you know, empathy, not sympathy. I'm not going to take on your pain and actually feel your pain myself. But that would be sympathy if you swung a hammer and smashed your finger. And I'm like, oh, my God, my thumb. Ah. Like, that's sympathy. I'm not looking for that in my life. I'm looking for empathy. I'm looking for, oh, my God, dude, you just swung and smashed your thumb. And I'm like, damn, that's gotta suck, doesn't it? I can feel for you. Like, I know I've hurt my thumb in the past and that doesn't feel good. What can we do for it? Do you need some ice? Do you need. Where I'm going to have empathy for your situation, but I'm better positioned to help you if I have empathy instead of sympathy. And so that's where, you know, I have so much empathy for the group clients that I, you know, the calls that I run and the people that I work with and, you know, overall, you know, just the human experience of pain. And I have massive empathy because I had massive pain for a long time. And even though I built businesses and I had what the world said was success, I was ate up inside and I was miserable and I was destroying my. My mind and my body and my spirit. Even though I was, like, trying to be grateful and trying to do the right thing, and I was, you know, focused on personal development, but I just had some. Some things that I needed to reconcile and learn about. And so I get it when people are. Are in that place. And that's when I adopted years ago when one of my first life coaches, Marcus, taught me that, you know, the belief that I ended up adopting that people are doing the best they can. I just believe that in my core. You can't talk me out of it. You can challenge me with it. But as of right now, that's my belief. And I just. You go, but, Kenny, the person that just robbed the liquor store, what about the person that did this? What about the, you know, the person that said that what about the person who did whatever. Fill in the blank, right? There's a lot of terrible things. I just don't think there's a lot of terrible people. I think there's people that do terrible things, and I think they're doing the best when they do the terrible thing based on the education that they got. And I don't mean formal education, I mean life education, how they were raised, what they were taught, the experiences that they've had in the world. The more you get aware, the more you realize, like, everybody's had some crappy stuff happen to them. And you've got a past and I've got a past and I've shared a lot of mine on the podcast and on stages across the U.S. canada and Australia. But this, it doesn't matter. That's just my story. Everybody's got a story and we're working to either run away from it or justify it. And I'm going to tell you right now, you'll never outpace your past. You'll never be able to, you know, outsell your past out, succeed your past, whatever that is. And I'm, you know, I'm just saying, like, you realize that and you just have empathy for people. It's a big part of your own awareness and your own growth. Okay, so Daniel Goleman says that's the fifth thing and then. Or the fourth thing rather, and the fifth thing is overall social skills. And that's, you know, I talked about that a little bit around self regulation, but just being aware of how you show up. And if you have a tendency to have BO after you sweat a little bit, take a shower, change your deodorant. If you get stinky breath after you eat garlic, then be mindful of that before you get close to somebody after a lunch date or a lunch meeting or whatever the case, just be aware and have some social skills. Because at the end of the day, what we're really looking to do is improve these three things. Write these down. I want to improve my decision making, I want to improve my conflict resolution, and I want to build strong teams. And when I say build strong teams, that can be my family unit, that can be my business unit, that can be my sales team, that can be my community, that could be my, you know, homeowners association, what, whatever it is for you, it could be my church, it could be whatever it is like that. That's the key is when we're looking at my decision making, my conflict resolution, which those tie together, and then build strong teams. So the better I up level my emotional intelligence or even emotional regulation. And then I'm able to go, okay, well cool, so what does that mean? Self awareness, self regulation, motivation, empathy, social skills. I'm not big on the textbook stuff, but I felt like today when I started seeing some people kind of losing their shit over stuff that wasn't that big of a deal from my perspective. Yes, they were doing the best they could, but maybe we can all take a, take a little bite of this and go, hey, let's all just chill out a little bit. There's a lot of chaos going on in the world. There's a lot of crazy stuff taking place. There's things coming down the pike that we don't even know about yet. That's part of the brilliance of the human experience. Be grounded, be rooted, be easy with yourself and then you can be easy with others. I'm proud of you. I'm honored to have you as a listener. Please do me a favor and kick this to somebody that could use it today and give us a like or rating or review. And that would really help us grow the community here of like minded individuals all just doing the best we can. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. Thank you so much for being here. Until we talk, make it a better than fantastic week. See you next time.