How Upgrading Your Emotional Intelligence Can Improve Your Romantic Relationships

Hey, thanks for coming. Welcome to the Love Shack.

Hey, welcome to the Love Shack. It's a little old place where we can get together and explore fresh perspectives, eavesdrop on juicy conversations and uncover mysteries that nobody talks about, but absolutely influences our relationships. If you are struggling in your marriage, just starting out in a new relationship, or are single and looking to do better next time, this is the show for you. My name is Stacy Bartley and I am here with my co host and lover, Tom. Together for the past decade, we have been teaching and loving on people from around the world with the sole purpose of helping individuals and couples to love more and fear less on their relationships, both with themselves and others.

And a quick shout out to our podcast listeners. Just want to remind you that we are live every Thursday at 1pm using the wonderful KKNW up in Seattle for that live. So I share that with you. If you'd ever like to catch us live, ask us a question live, we'd love to have you. Bottom line is, wherever you are today, wherever you're listening, we sure appreciate you taking a few moments out of our, out of your day to listen to us. And we're gonna dive into a really, really juicy place today. It's actually, we're gonna take this slow and steady.

Yes. Because we're gonna talk about upgrading your emotional intelligence today and absolutely how that can improve your romantic relationships. You see, emotional intelligence may be a term that, yes, maybe you've heard many times, but have you ever stopped to think about how much it affects your relationships? The truth is, most of us are much more uncomfortable, right. Talking about our emotional selves and are more comfortable talking about the physical aspects of life. Say the weather, work, the kids. Right? Anything that's physical or tangible is much preferable over the emotional stuff. And that's not because we aren't capable of it. It's just because our emotions cause us to feel. Feel uncomfortable. So gaining an understanding of our emotional selves is an imperative and often neglected part of building healthy, loving relationships. I mean, after all, relationships is where the emotional parts of ourselves are expressed. And it's glorious in the beginning, isn't it? Isn't it so fun to share all the incredible aspects of ourselves emotionally, all our hopes and dreams? And the beginning, when you're meeting a new lover or a new friend, all.

Those firsts, the first movie, the first cup of coffee, the first incredible meal at your favorite restaurant.

The reality is, it's what created the connection you have with a special someone in the first place. It's the emotional so we're going to ask you some very deep pondering questions. Don't be afraid. Make sure you come back and we're going to dive into this very important topic of developing your emotional intelligence and how you can do a little bit of what we call emotional weightlifting. We'll be right back.

Are you tired of sitting on a couple's counselor's couch and feeling like you're just rehashing the past and making no progress? Do you feel like you're holding on to your relationship but panicked you're losing your partner? It's time to learn how to deepen your connection, finally resolve the arguments that keep coming up. Understand yourself and your partner and create the level of intimacy you've been dreaming of. It's time for love to tingle your toes again. Schedule your private session with relationship expert stacey bartley@staceybartley.com checkup foreign.

Ready to learn the most important thing you can do to revitalize your relationship today? Go to stacybartley.com fairydust staceybartly.forward/fairydust this is the number one thing Stacy teaches her VIP clients that has the power to improve the health of your relationship today. Learn how sprinkling a little fairy dust in your relationship can stop arguments in their tracks. Rekindle your spark and take your difficult conversations from the struggle bus to easy street.

Do you feel like your love life is on life support? It's time for a turbocharged relationship resuscitation with an alternative to marriage counseling. Head over to stacybartley.com to learn more about their proprietary programs their clients use to save their relationships. S T A C I B A R t l e y.com visit stacybartley.com today going our own way every day alternative talk 1150.

Welcome back. We're going to be diving into the juicy topic of upgrading your emotional intelligence so that you can improve your romantic relationships. And we're going to be talking about, yes, emotional intelligence and what it means and how to do some emotional weightlifting. But let me first ask you just so we can make sure that this conversation is absolutely where you want to drill down deep, turn up the volume and stay tuned. Do you and your partner continually have have the same reoccurring arguments kind of.

Over and over and over again?

Do you get stuck obsessing about the details of what happened instead of what needs to happen in order to move your conversations and your relationship forward? Are you unable to come together to find solutions that actually improve your relationships? Oftentimes, this is what happens. Is we can't seem to make any traction in the things that are driving us crazy. And so if your head is nodding yes, know that you're not alone in this. You're probably arguing over the physical details and circumstances instead of how the whole experience has caused you to feel. We have a saying in our body of work that says we sacrifice the sacred, which is the emotional connection about checking in to make sure that we're on the same page for the circumstances, because that's where we tend to get stuck in our fights.

And now, that's a very important distinction. I don't. You know, Stacy says it real fast because it's what, you know, she does, working with our clients, you know, all day, every day. But that's a very, very important distinction when. I love that word distinction. So really get your arms around what, you know, we sacrifice the sacred.

So the true connection aspects of ourselves.

Yeah, they're really connecting with someone. And we. And we, we, we, we. We start to box around the circumstances. To speak for Stacy, that when people come to see us and they want to tell us the whole backstory, we're not disrespectful. We say, you know what? We really don't care about any of that. Doesn't matter, because, number one, we've heard it all. And number two, it's not the meat of the matter.

Yeah. And it's probably what you're doing and what I used to do in my previous relationships before I learned these incredibly powerful tools and skills about emotional intelligence and emotional weightlifting, because it's what makes sense to us. And if right now your head is twisting, it's okay, just take a breath, because we're going to help lay this whole thing out. What I need you to understand is if you said yes to any of these things, you find yourself in reoccurring arguments. Right. And you can't seem to make any traction, and you start obsessing about the details of what happened. And if you're unable to feel like you're coming to true solutions that move you forward, and you just keep banging around about the problem over and over and over again, you are going to love this episode. So if your head is bobbing and down. Yes, yes, yes, that's me. You're in a really great place, because today, right here in the love shack, we're going to uncover some key topics to help you upgrade your emotional intelligence, including the reasons why focusing on what your partner is or is not doing will make you very unhappy. And I don't know about Y', all. But, man, that used to make me crazy, whether it was my lover or whether it was my kids or whether it was my neighbor. And I couldn't figure out why they were doing more, what they were doing. That's where I would go when something was upsetting me. And we're going to understand that if we show up in our relationships and feel good about who we are, then we can't make people pay for the pain that I'm feeling, because then I don't feel so good about who I am. We can't hurt the people we love and feel good about ourselves. It doesn't work like that. And we're going to also dive into what to do if you often feel coerced or leveraged in your partnership, and most of us do, because that's what we know to do. That's what's been modeled. That's what's been demonstrated to us. So I know that's a lot. We're going to take it piece by piece. So let's get started, shall we? I want to start by defining for us all, so that we're all on the same page, what emotional intelligence is. It may be a term that you've heard many times, but have you ever stopped to think about how much it really affects our relationships with significant others? And let's be honest, do you really even know what this means? I mean, I know I didn't. It was a cliche word. It was a cliche concept. Yeah. I knew it was a part of doing business, but it wasn't until I started to really understand human behavior and that of relationships that I truly knew what the answer.

Yeah, I would say, you know, you hear that thrown around a lot. It sounds very clinical sometimes. I'll share with Stacy. Hey, that sounds very clinical. So what we try to do is break it down to where you can have an understanding of it and then take it into your life and have some improvement. Immediate improvement. That's always the goal here. So we're going to really try to break this. This emotional intelligence down into a place that we can get our arms around it and really understand how it really is driving the show. And it's also, though, going to be the place where you can make some significant improvement in your relationships.

Yes. And so what is the meaning of emotional intelligence? Quite simply, it's the ability to understand one's emotional self and to govern and control or meter one's emotional experience. You have the ability to do that. Sounds pretty easy. I know. I went, yeah, I Think. I think that makes sense to me. Right. And then if we take it a step further, how do we govern and meter and monitor that? Oh, now that's where it gets a little slippery. So before we die too far into the emotional experience, it might be a great moment for you to just take a moment and reflect. Like, how are you with your emotional experience? The reality is we as human beings, we have been given an incredible navigation system. And that navigation system consists of your physical body and your emotional body.

And let me just say, if you're having problems with that word emotion or emotional, you know what, it's the. It's feeling, you know, it's. It's. Right. It's synonymous with it's the feeling part of your life, you know, which is. It's the sweetest part of our life. But many of us avoid it like the plague, so you can use those interchangeably. Emotional, again, is kind of the clinical, but it's the.

It's.

It's feeling. Right? It's feeling.

It's the feeling part of ourselves. We have this physical body that we all relate to, that we all understand. And we live our lives through the physical lens because it makes sense to us. It's tangible, it's quantifiable. We can measure it. Right. We can agree on it most times. So when we get into a conflict, we're going to go to the physical because again, that's what makes sense to us. Now, our emotional bodies, they're real, too. And the really great news is if we. We take care of our emotional bodies through our physical lens and we compare those two, it's going to give us a lot of clues in regards to understanding our emotional selves, which most of us are terrified of. Why? Because contrary to our physical experience, again, physical is my thinking, my doing, my tangible. I can measure it, I can quantify it. We could put our hands together and physically, I would see very clearly where I end and you begin. And we wouldn't argue about that. Yeah. Yeah. That's my hand. Yep. That's your hand. Yep. This is where my foot is compared to my shoe. We could agree on the wall that divides the room. We could defy, you know, decide and def. And define all kinds of things. Even when I go to a medical doctor, they can run tests and quantify very quickly what's going on with my physical body. But when it comes to my emotional body, and again, both of these things are very real, that becomes a little more tricky. Why? Because my emotional body. Oh, see, that's a Very different thing. It's invisible, it's intangible. Right. It's traveling fast. And not only does it travel fast, it time travels. So I could hear a song that I used to have an affinity for or emotional connection to back in 1970, and I can hear it right now in present day. And I'm all of a sudden traveling back to 1970. I can also have a trigger that we call in the world of psychology that happens in me. And all of a sudden, once again, I'm traveling back to 1970. And so our emotions are something that most of us are really scared of. And here's the other bit you need to understand. Our emotional experiences cannot be quantified. They cannot be measured and they cannot be compared or judged. Why? Because they are very unique to me. They're part of my personality. They're part of what makes me tick. And you and I might be having a very similar experience in the physical, but we might have a very, very different experience in the emotional.

Well, I would say there's the classic confirmation, you know, the same set of so called external factors, if you. All right, but isn't it amazing that the variety of different, you know, feeling part of that same set of physical conditions. I mean, for those of us that have children, I mean, how many times do we heal? Parents say, like my children could not be more different than night and day. Same parents, same biological parents, same house, same house, same basically life experience. But how could they be? Yes. I mean, so there, I mean, we could just go, you know, situation after situation after situation. Therein lies how it's so different to us on the feeling side of life with the same set of so called external factors.

Yeah. So the inability to understand our emotional souls is responsible so for so much of the heartache that personally I have experienced. And I bet you too, in my first and second marriages, and perhaps like me, you have found yourself continually having the same arguments over and over again. And so much of the time, do you feel that what needs to be done is so obvious from your perspective? I mean, I remember thinking, it's so obvious what needs to be done here. Why won't you just start doing or stop doing the thing that's creating the problem? Because then, guess what, our problems are going to be solved. And I would literally spend hours trying to figure out why it is my partner would do and say or not do and say the things that they were. And when we would fight, I couldn't figure out why there was always a discrepancy with the Details of what was happening or what took place. I couldn't wrap my head around this. And it always seemed to be twisted somehow, causing me to think from time to time that I was absolutely crazy. This all created such confusion for me. And all the while I became more and more unhappy in with myself and with my marriage. And the more intent I became on figuring them out, like, if I could just figure out why they do this stuff that twists my brain around so hard, then I'm going to finally be able to have a clue or come to the ability to solve our problem. And so we would talk about the problem over and over and over and over, somehow thinking that that was going to take me to the promised land. And all it would continue to do is emotionally deplete me, cause me to feel like it's worse than I ever thought, cause myself to question myself, because I must be crazy. I cannot figure this out. And yes, finally our relationships would end, and I still couldn't figure it out. The truth is, most of us are much more comfortable with the physical aspects and don't know how to talk about the emotional aspects. And so we bury them instead. And so, just like I had said, physical makes sense to us. We view the world in physical terms. The emotional, unfortunately, it's not that we don't have the ability or the capacity to get our heads around this. Right? But we do not have a lot of tools to help us understand our emotional bodies. Now, this is our navigation system.

So let me. Let me ask. So. So would physical, in the sense of an argument or a continually recurring argument would be synonymous or would be equal to the circumstances of the situation, of the situation, rather than the experience, the feeling part of this continual.

Let's give some examples, shall we? Okay. So when we fight, okay. When people come into my office, clients and couples, individuals and couples, the first thing they want to do, and I was there too, I did this too. The first thing that they would want to do is they would want to tell me the backstory. And they would go on and on and explaining all the juicy details of their relationship. And so. And so did this, or so and so didn't do that. And I know I'm right because of this and this and this, and this is what I'm doing, and this is what they're doing. And notice if the word doing is in there. We know we're talking about the physical. We know we're talking about the circumstances, and that's not okay. And they shouldn't do that because of this. And this and this, anybody knows because of this and this and this. Right. And that's evidence. That's the physical evidence that they're now using to support their story. And so we base our fights on the physical. Simply put, I could say, you know what, when you arrived late, it was 1215. And somebody might say, it wasn't 1215, it was 1205. And they're going to say, I'm going to say, I know it was 12:15 because of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're going to say, well, I know it was 12:05 because I looked at the clock in my car. And that's an example of how we fight and argue about comparing our physical experiences, but that's not what ails us. That's not what's creating our problem. What's creating our problem is the other side of our navigation system, which is what made me or how do I. How did I feel about that physical experience? What's hurting my feelings about the fact that you're 15 minutes late in my experience, and you're trying to justify it now by telling me it was only 12:05, which essentially minimizes what I'm feeling about you being late. We're not talking about you being late. We're talking about the physical details of how late were you, which are very different things. And so how we sacrifice the sacred is we bang around on the physical circumstances of our lives instead of talking about how those physical circumstances caused me to feel. And here's the kicker. Our emotional bodies are running the show. I'm going to say that again because it is so important you wrap your head around this. Our emotional bodies run our lives. They run the show of our lives. I show up physically as good as I feel, and if I don't feel so good, I don't show up so good. And this is why it won't matter to your kids or your partner how much physical evidence you have about the way they feel. Because it's not the evidence physically that is troubling them. It's the way that all of that makes them feel. And if we can't start talking about the things that matter most, which is the way I feel, that's the only way we're going to be able to find a solution through the problems that we face. So I vote that we break this down a little more, shall we?

Absolutely. And I just can't overemphasize how important what Stacy just shared is. I mean, we talk about this and teach and mentor on this over and over and over. Because there's such a default for all of us. It's not anybody's fault. No pun or pun intended. But that's just how the world seems to have been modeled to us. But if we can really, really encourage you to understand what's going on here, and it's awesome to see our clients, once they fully get a glimpse, like, oh, my gosh, I've never realized that that's what we're doing, then you can start stepping into the feeling side of your children, of your partner, of your family members. And then when you can do that again, and none of this is to say, you know, that what they're doing is superior to what you're doing, and simply ability to be able to really connect to the place of feeling versus the circumstances.

Yeah. So, again, we can learn a lot about our emotional bodies because sometimes we talk about emotion. It seems like this mysterious mystique kind of etherical thing that we have a difficult time wrapping our heads around again, because it's invisible, it changes quickly, and it time travels on us. And so most of us don't have a lot of demonstrations about how to navigate with some emotional intelligence and ability, the experiences that we absolutely have in our. In our physical bodies, but it absolutely runs the show. Okay, so here we go. I'm going to put it into some physical terms. And thank goodness our emotional bodies work just like our physical ones. So here we go. Our physical body. Right. Think about your physical body for a minute and think about what we do to remedy it, especially when we're feeling pain. And when I feel physical pain, what do I do? I look at it. I get acutely aware of where does it hurt?

If it's a headache or a splinter in your finger.

Yes. In fact, Tom brings that up because I often tell a story. When I was a kid, I had a best friend that lived across the back fence of my house. And why in the heck would you walk around the block when you could just climb the wood fence? And why would you put shoes on when you're in a hurry? Right. So oft times, I would climb this old, decrepit wood fence barefooted. And, of course, having to use my hands. And inevitably, I would end up with a lot of slivers in my fingers and in my feet. And it became such a problem that my mom taught me how to take a needle, sterilize it, and dig them out. Right. And then what to do after I dug them out. Right. Put some Neosporin on it, peroxide first, alcohol, maybe Some Neosporin and a band aid. And there were a few times, in my experience, climbing this back fence, that even in spite of all those wonderful things I knew how to do, she had to take me to the doctor and he had to actually surgically remove them because they had gotten so embedded and or had been sitting in there for so long, there was a duplicate there. So having that analogy be the case, let's just think about how we handle our physical pain. If I have a sliver in my finger or in my foot, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to start looking for where that sliver actually is. What finger? What toe? And then I'm going to assess it. How deep is it? Can I get it out? What are my remedies? And then I'm going to attempt some remedies. Like I said, I'm going to get that needle out, I'm going to sterilize, and I'm going to get in there and see if I can get it out. Sometimes they'd pop right out. It was really simple. But sometimes I have to go in after it. Of course it would bleed. And then I would put it in the peroxide and I would then put some Neosporin on it, wrap it with a band aid, and then I wasn't done. Even with all of that physically, I would watch it, make sure it healed. And if it didn't heal properly, then I'd start showing it to my mom. Mom, is this problem. What do we need to do about this? And she would make the call and maybe apply a few of her little remedies. And. And like I had shared already, sometimes in worst case scenarios, we'd have to take ourselves to the doctor. So let's think about our emotional pain for a moment. How do we handle that? Do we handle it anywhere close to what I just described? Do we look at it? Do we assess it? Do we apply some remedies? Do we watch it and pay attention to it? Are we willingly able to ask for some help if we don't know what to do?

I would say most of us try to just squash it. Squash it through some very interesting ways.

Yes.

Get rid of it as fast as possible.

As fast as possible, as though there is some shame in having emotional pain. And so let me ask you, if somebody was stepping on your toes right now, Just think about yourself in that context. Somebody came and stepped on your physical toe, how long would it take you to go, excuse me, you're stepping on my toe.

Depending on the Size of the individual. It would probably be pretty quick in any sense.

Yeah. And if you were the person stepping on somebody's toes, wouldn't you, like, jump back and go, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. And I don't know about y', all, but I like to be up close and personal. So I've stepped on somebody's toes a second time, and then I'm. I'm. I'm so embarrassed. And then I'm really surveying the scene to make sure I don't do it a third time. Right. I'm making sure that there's adequate distance between us. And it. It usually doesn't take us but nanoseconds to say, you're. You're stepping on my toe. Could you just scoot back a little bit? Now, I want you to think about somebody stepping on your emotional toes. Like. Like, it hurts. And I don't feel good about this.

And so what would that. What would that. That's. I think that's a. What would stepping on your emotional toes, what would that sound like?

You hurt my feelings. Oh, what you just said hurt, or I don't feel good about what you're asking me to do. I feel uncomfortable with that. And how long do we let people stand on our emotional toes? Long time. Hours, if not days, weeks, months. Long time.

Years, long time.

Before we'll ever disclose saying, ah, that hurts me. Step back. We got to do something different here. This isn't okay right now, just like our physical body speaks to us, like, again, connect to your physical body. Our physical body says things to us like, I'm hungry, You're tired. I need some sleep. I'm thirsty, you know, I just need to go for a walk. I'm feeling all stiff. Right? That's me right now. And you need to understand that your emotional body, it speaks to you too. It says things like, hey, speak up, Say something. This doesn't work for you. Don't go along with this. You're going in the wrong direction. Hey, you know what you want? Are you going to advocate for. Speaks to us just the same. Now, I also want to point out that our physical bodies, it has a capacity. So hypothetically, right? We take food and water into our physical bodies, we digest it down our bodies. When they're working ideal, they take what they need and they let the rest go. Okay? That's called flow. My emotional body, it works just the same. Thoughts and feelings come in, right? I take what I need, I break it down, I digest them down I take what I need and I let the rest go. Except for that's not how it works, right? Are you with me? Thoughts and feelings come in, and then they rattle around because I don't know how to digest them down, and I don't know how to let it go so that there's a flow. Because the thoughts and feelings keep coming, right? The, the. The triggers, the thoughts keep coming, the experiences keep coming. I just don't know how to digest it down, take what I need and let the rest go. So I become emotionally constipated, and that's a real thing, just like my body. If it's not in flow, we'll do the same thing. It becomes constipated. And let's just go back to the physical for a minute. What happens when my physical body becomes constipated? Anybody?

Not good?

Okay, well, let's talk about it.

Houston, we have a problem.

Yeah. What happens? How does my physical body respond?

Well, literally, things start to back up.

Yes, things start to back up. And then what does my body do to cope? Any ideas? I used to be a colon therapist in my previous life, so I know the answer to these things.

See what I'm dealing with, ladies and.

Gentlemen, every day, when our physical bodies back up because there is no flow, ability to digest down what we're inputting, taking what we need and letting the rest go, my body will back up. I become physically constipated, and then. Brace yourself. It turns to diarrhea. Why? Because something's got to give. There is a capacity to what my body can hold. And when I reach capacity, I will get diarrhea. Not because it's good for me, but because my physical body is trying to give me every opportunity, things around, to take action, to go in a different direction. And if I take that, I can turn that whole thing around. Otherwise, what happens? It compounds again. Diarrhea will cause me to become dehydrated. Dehydration can lead me to a place of, right, all kinds of problems, organ failure, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So this doesn't get better. It actually compounds if I don't address it. But what I want you to see in this moment is that my physical body gives me every single oper opportunity and chance it possibly can to help me turn it around by buying me time to turn it around. Understanding, willingness to turn it around. And my emotional body, it does the same thing. So if I don't have flow in my emotional body, thoughts and feelings come in. I need to digest Them down, understand them, take what I need, let the rest go. If I don't, I'm going to become emotionally constipated. And just like my physical body, there is a capacity to what I can hold. And what do you think happens in my emotional body when my capacity gets reached? The constipation is at a critical level. What do you think's gonna happen? I'm going to lose it in some form or fashion. This is where people have anger management problems. This is where people, right, go behind closed doors and become depress and cry for seven days, right? I lose it. I have diarrhea emotionally, and is this good for me? It buys me time to turn it around. Where's the breakdown there? I use my physical body. Where's the breakdown? The breakdown is I don't understand myself from an emotional experience. I don't know how to digest down my thoughts and feelings. Take what I need and let the rest go, my friends. That's what we call in my body of work, emotional weightlifting. And if you don't know how to do emotional weightlifting, you need to know. You've got to learn it. It is the number one killer of intimate relationships. And if we don't learn and practice this one, intimate relationships will be bumpy and difficult for us to navigate. At its core, we need to learn this critical skill. And we're going to take a break right now and come back and tell you how to get started with your own emotional weightlifting program. Yes, it's going to make you sweat, right? It's going to cause you to dig deep. But you got to know, in the end, it's so worth it.

So grab some fluids and we'll be right back.

Are you tired of sitting on a couple's counselor's couch and feeling like you're just rehashing the past and making no progress? Do you feel like you're holding on to your relationship but panicked you're losing your partner? It's time to learn how to deepen your connection. Finally resolve the arguments that keep coming up. Understand yourself and your partner and create the level of intimacy you've been dreaming of. It's time for love to tingle your toes again. Schedule your private session with relationship expert stacey bartley@staceybartley.com checkup.

Ready to learn the most in important thing you can do to revitalize your relationship today? Go to stacybartley.com fairydust stacybartust this is the number one thing Stacy teaches her VIP clients that has the power to improve the health of your relationship. Today, learn how sprinkling a little fairy dust in your relationship can stop arguing arguments in their tracks. Rekindle your spark and take your difficult conversations from the struggle bus to easy street.

Do you feel like your love life is on life support? It's time for a turbocharged relationship resuscitation with an alternative to marriage counseling. Head over to staceybartley.com to learn more about their proprietary programs their clients use to save their relationships. St A C I B A R T L E Y.com Visit stacybartly.com today Alternative Talk 11:50 it's good for what ails you. This statement has not been evaluated by the fda.

Foreign. Welcome back. If by chance you're just joining us, we're having a very juicy conversation on emotional intelligence and emotional weightlifting. And we're comparing our physical bodies so that we can look at how we live life through the physical experience and negate the emotional experience. And yet there are both very, very necessary. And we left this by saying that if we don't know how to do emotional weightlifting, it's the number one killer of our intimate relationships. And so we've got to learn and practice this one. And yes, it's going to make you sweat and yes, it's going to cause you to dig deep. But it is so worth it because without it, without bringing our emotional experience along for the ride, our emotional or intimate relationships emotionally are going to continue to pay the price.

Yeah. Let's give them. Mrs. Bartlett, let's give the the our technical definition, if you will, for emotional weightlifting in our body work. Again, we say this is the skill and practice that enables each of us to truly utilize and benefit from our emotions in a way that allows us to feel strong, empowered and complete.

Yes. And that our emotional experience or emotional bodies, we would say we talked about having a physical body and an emotional body. And these are very real aspects of ourselves. And the kicker is the emotional body is always running the show that we act. Our behavior is driven from the emotional side of ourselves. And so if we say, oh, I don't do that emotional thing, well, the emotional experiences you have had in your past are driving your show. You're not allowing yourself to go certain places because you're afraid of what's going to happen in the emotional experience of it all. You feel like you lose control. Now our emotional selves. Right. I get it. They're scary. They can be very scary. Especially we don't talk about them. We don't understand them. We judge them because they are intangible. They Are invisible and they will time travel on us, right? They do that.

It's almost unfair.

Well, yes and no. But, you know, it's also this emotional ability that we love when we have moments that matter to us or that tingle our toes, as we say in our work. It's our emotional bodies, right? We love to be taken back to a moment or a memory that we love and that makes us feel good. We have to remember it's the same aspect of ourselves that does that. We also need to remember that as we're navigating life step by step, which is what I highly recommend, and we'll talk about that another time. But we need to navigate our experiences in life as we go, because of the experiences that we're having are going to help us navigate it. Now, I had mentioned and touched on this a little earlier, but let me highlight it again here. Our physical bodies and our emotional bodies are our navigation system. And unfortunately, most of us as human beings, we navigate kind of with one half of it. We're either very logical, we like to think things through and use our brains, and we totally negate the emotional experience. And if we're emotional creatures, we get drowning in the emotional experience and totally negate our ability to utilize our logic, our brains, our thinking, our strategy. And depending on what side of that coin you're on, each side is judging the other, and we're constantly trying to enroll the other person into being more logical or more emotional. No, be more logical because it makes more sense. No, you need to be more emotional. You need to be in touch with your feelings without realizing. Each and every one of us as a human being need to develop the capacity to do both. That if we operate just on one side of the equation, we are really limiting the awesomeness of our navigation system. So let me give you an example. If I were to take a step forward, when it makes sense and it feels right or good for me, I take a step. If either one of those are missing, I need to pause and contemplate this a little while longer. How many of us, just because of the logic or the strategy of it, charge forward thinking that we have this whole thing figured out, only to find ourselves in a place where I'm arriving home thinking I've done all the right things and the person that I love the most has moved out? Happens all the time. Why? Because I wasn't in a place where I could emotionally show up. There was a nothing available of me emotionally to keep the relationship alive.

I would say, let me just stack on that Mean, the classic story that we hear where, you know, whichever person of the partnership or the marriage or relationship was, say, the provider, and they're working very, very hard, lots of hours, and they're, you know, doing everything they can to provide a high level, say, of financial success, but yet they're not there emotionally. That person's like, like, well, what the heck, man? Come on. I was doing everything. We've got. We've got the house and the furniture and the lifestyle on that. I'm just, I'm paraphrasing here. The person on the other side that has, you know, checked out because they never got any of that person on the feeling side of life. Yes.

Now I can go, yes, absolutely. And it can flip. The other side. What about the person who's just a complete emotional hot mess all the time, and we can't ever plan and strategize about that trip or building that house or, or investing things or experiencing things like we talked about in the beginning. You just can't pull it together long enough for us to get there. That's an extreme example of drowning in the emotional side of ourselves. Again, we need to develop both. One is not superior than the other. We need both in order to navigate to our best selves throughout life. And you need to understand, yes, we can quantify the physical, but the emotional, that's always going to be unique and very individual to the person who's experiencing it. So let's take this one step further. I think we have enough time to dive into this. And don't worry, we're going to come back and we're going to talk about this next week because this is such a big conversation. We've been talking about having difficult conversations in this segment of the show in the love shack for the last couple of weeks. And now we're getting to the heart of the matter.

And I would say the reason, and you correct me, Mrs. Bartley, would you say the majority of our clients that work with us, this is the major stumbling block.

Absolutely. It's the major stumbling block for most of us as human beings. And the unfortunate thing, again is we all have the capacity to develop these things inside of ourselves. There's just not many places you can go and learn about it. Right? They say, oh, men don't feel they're not in touch with their emotions. Well, that's true, right? Only because they haven't been given that as an outlet of expression. Because I can tell you, every little boy, I have three girls and three boys. Every little boy is in touch with their emotions until they're taught that it's not okay for them to be. And so what do they do? They resort to the physical aspect of this, of that being. Every girl, man, she's taught to be in touch with her emotions, to be right. And if she can't figure it out emotionally, she's got a whole slew of girls that can. But she's horrible at owning her physical body. She's horrible at the physical expression of herself, but she can express herself emotionally. Now, I just say that because I want to point to the experience here. That we all have the capacity to do both. Whether we develop it or not is a physical and emotional choice that you have right now. And of course, I'm going to encourage you to physically and emotionally develop yourself. You need both. It's your navigation system. It's what makes life wonderful. And your relationships very juicy. So when your partner says to you, babe, right, do that pole dance for me. Express yourself physically. You go, yeah, okay, I can go there. Instead of going, I gotta run the kids, I gotta work late. I gotta do the dishes. There's some laundry. And when you say to that partner, hey, honey, there's some things I want to talk about, they go, gosh, honey, I just can't fit that in today. You want to talk about emotions? I gotta get the heck out of dodge, right? That we have the capacity to go, yeah, okay, I can go there. Because it's part of who you are. It's part of how you're built. Whether you're male or you're female, we have the capacity to do both, but we don't have the ability to do both. And that's the point. And so when you come into problems in your relationship, which, by the way, is a very emotional experience, you got here from a very emotional experience of sharing yourself with somebody who related to you on an emotional level. You did some physical things, right? You expressed some emotional things, and then there started to be some emotional things that you didn't quite like anymore. And there's where things started to break down. We couldn't talk about it. We couldn't share about it because, A, I don't even know myself emotionally enough to tell you about it, and B, I had never been given the skill to develop that aspect. And so rather than talk about it and go there, which is what we need to be talking about, not the physical experience and our emotional experiences of our relationships, but the way it made me feel, that's where we're going to make progress. And Instead of doing that, we start banging around about the circumstances of an emotional problem. And until we can talk about the emotional problem, the solution to that will continue to elude us. There's no way around it. And guess what? If we go back to our physical analogy, does it make any darn sense whatsoever to have a physical pain inside of myself, and I'm looking at my, my partner's body to find out where it hurts? Does that make any darn sense whatsoever? And what I'm pointing to here is if you are having an emotional pain with inside of yourself, that message is for you, not your partner. If you want to get to the bottom of it, you need to start looking at yourself and why it hurts and why it bothers you and what you think the remedy of that might be. And then we need to gain the ability to ask for that, disclose that, look at that, explore that, communicate that, and then we can find a solution through it. But looking at your partner and what they're doing or not doing is not going to do anything to help you solve your emotional problem.

And I would, you know, not to point fingers, but that's what many of us do is we think whatever this person in our life, you know, that we're having this challenge with, it's because of what he or she is doing or not doing is the source of our upset. And as lovely as that would be, and to put it in a nice little container and put a bow on it if we need to, that's not how it works. I mean, I know I'm. We're on very strong psychological ground here. You know, how we feel is how we feel. I'm not to discount, please don't, don't misunderstand me here. I'm not discounting there are things that aggravate us, but at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves, why is that so aggravating for us? And that's a much more successful place to go. But it takes some reps in that emotional weightlifting gym for us to be able to do that in a common occurrence, to do it quickly and to do it masterfully into where we can get ourselves back on track quickly. I mean, it's just like if you're in the physical journey and you do repetitions in a gym, CrossFit, whatever, cycling, walking, running, it's time on in the Saddle. It's the same analogy. That's why we use emotional weightlifting. Our clients really like it is because it literally. We've simply not done literally zero or very few reps in that emotional weightlifting gym to take us to a place to where we can navigate ourselves out of a difficult emotional experience and share, you know what, that really hurt my feelings. Or you know what, please help me understand why you're so upset with what I just said rather than flying off the handle.

Yeah. So emotional weightlifting or emotional intelligence gives us the ability and the practice and the know how to actually feel something that's uncomfortable and what we typically do because. Right. Emotional pain is not supposed to be okay. We react and we attack and we start comparing and judging or blaming and shaming because I'm feeling uncomfortable about what you just did or what you just said. And then we're going to fight and we're going to fight to the degree that I'm pulling up my evidence and you're going to pull up your evidence and we're going to bang on those physical circumstances until we're emotionally exhausted. Exhausted. We're going to just simply run out of gas without realizing what really needs to be talked about is the emotion that I'm feeling inside of myself. I cannot look to you or figure you out enough in order to remedy the emotional pain that I'm feeling inside of myself. Because pain number one is a message for you. Just think about your physical body. Your physical body says, hello, right? We have a problem here. I need your attention right now. Just like the story of my slivers and climbing the back fence. But if I have a headache, if I have a stomachache, right. If I trip and fall down, my physical body is saying, hello, I need your attention right now. And so is my emotional body. It's saying, hello, I need your attention right now. You're going in the wrong direction. There's something that's happening here that does not work for you.

So let's say somebody listening. One of our listeners is having this recurring argument over and over again. What could be a takeaway that they could take right to that situation after they our show is over or they listen to our podcast? What could they instead of the typical going around and round around around the circumstances, what would be one or two specific sentences or the order in which you coach our. We coach our clients to say to that. To that in that challenge versus that would change the trajectory of that conversation.

Yeah, you talk about the way it makes you feel. Instead of saying you were late, let's go back to the analogy. You were late. We're 15 minutes late. And they say, no, I was actually. It was 1203. No, it was actually 1215 and this is how I know. Stop it. What does being late cause you to feel? You know what? Here's the question, here's the share. When you're late, I feel like you don't care about me. And it would really mean the world to me. This is asking for what I want. It would really mean the world to me if you could make a concerted effort to be on time. Could you do that? Yeah. Okay, sure. That'd be awesome. Thanks, honey. I really appreciate. Appreciate that. Do you notice that we just stepped over an entire fight filled with evidence that could have gone on not only just hours, but days? And that's the difference between talking about the way that I feel versus the circumstances of the situation. You know what? When you don't share yourself with me, I don't have anything to emotionally connect to. I miss you. I feel lonely. That's way more powerful than you never share, you never talk. When are you going to get in touch with your emotions? You need to go to counseling. What does that do? Pushes them away instead of brings them closer together. And these. I know I'm highlighting a lot, but I hope my only intention with this podcast today is to get you thinking about how we handle the physical versus the emotional and to realize that you have the capacity to do both. And we need to develop that through a process of what we call emotional weightlifting. And when we come back together next week, I promise we're going to dive deeper into this. I'm not going to leave you hanging, but if you could just think about this week before I see you again, how it is you keep banging around on the physical elements when really what is hurting you is the emotions you are feeling inside of yourself. The places that hurt the most emotionally. Let's talk about those because those are where the solutions to what is ailing you live, not in the physical. Okay, I'm sorry, but it's time for us to go today. Just about the time we're like in the juiciest heart of it all. But again, we're going to come back with some step by steps in regards to how you can do some emotional weightless lifting next week. And the song that I've chosen to share with you this week is a really good classic. It's an oldie but a goodie. And the reason why I chose this song for this week's episode is because sometimes we hardly know ourselves, right? Sometimes getting to up close and personal into what emotionally ails me is difficult. Sometimes that's hard for me to even go there. And yet it's the the juiciest place of our lives. And if we can go there, we can learn about ourselves. And we can teach our partners how to love ourselves best. And we can share more of ourselves with the people that we love the most. So I leave you with. If you don't know me by now, you'll never know me until we see you again. We're sending you off with extraordinary love, along with the power to create it today. Bye bye for now.