TheEIGuruEpisode2

Welcome to the EI Guru podcast, a podcast completely focused on emotional intelligence. Typically, the first question I get is what is emotional intelligence? In very simple terms, it's how we manage our emotions in our interactions with ourselves and others. Or put another way, it's being in the right state and, and not being in a state when under pressure. Emotional intelligence is another label for mindset and we all know that when navigating those important conversations, we need to tap into our best. I'll be interviewing leaders and experts in this ever expanding field and sharing the data on why emotional intelligence is the difference that makes the difference in all of our relationships. Remember to share and subscribe to the EI Guru podcast and if you have any questions, you can post them once you've subscribed. So, welcome back, Joe. It's been a week since we last spoke about the emotional Intelligence framework and we big deep dive into the six quadrants. So I just thought it'd be useful perhaps just to recap on the six quadrants, talk a little bit about that and then get into which I've, I've had a few requests from people that have been listening to the first episode around the how to's. So some how to's. So people are really keen to sort of say, yeah, okay, I sort of understand that, but how do you change some of these scales? Because they, they are all, as you know, very changeable and it takes practice. It's about getting into a different thinking pattern which then creates different behaviors, which then creates different results, as we both know. So the core six quadrants, self regard, regard for others, which is the base layer, the foundational piece that drives everything within the emotional intelligence framework, then points upwards to self awareness and then sideways to awareness of others and then upwards again to self management. So one side is very self focused, the other side is very others focused on. And on the other side of that is the relationship management scales.

So it's like a three layer cake, Jim, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

The jam is in the middle, which we're actually going to talk a bit more about today, aren't we? The awareness, the awareness level.

Absolutely. Because on either side that's, that's where it is. It's the, the jam in the middle is really where the magic happens if, especially if you like jam. But it's, it's the, it's the awareness piece. You know, self awareness is the king piece of the, the, the critical piece of the cake.

So extend that metaphor. You could say the icing and the cherry on the cake is what you see sometimes but you know the real stuff for you is often going on a bit beneath the cherry on the cake.

It is, yeah, yeah absolutely.

I'm going to get conversation thought about that now. Sorry all I'm going to make me hungry talking about this.

Exactly. I'm thinking about cake first thing in the morning so we. What about the, the things that we can do to enhance our self regard. So I, I took some notes earlier around some of the things that you can do when I'm working with clients that I recommend and I and I'd like to hear your thoughts on these aspects as well Joe. So first off when someone's got a low self regard the first thing that they need to start doing and, and start doing pretty rapidly is to start being kind to themselves because there's an internal dialogue that's with someone that has a low self regard that is just not healthy and, and that then keeps them stuck in that low self regard pattern. So for example let's just think about a leader or someone that's doing a presentation and they've got a low self regard. Their internal dialogue prior to the presentation that they might be doing will be yeah, I'm not particularly good at this. I'm not as good as this as Joe is. They'll be thinking about the tricky questions that might come up and that they're not an expert in this field and they won't be able to handle the questions that come up. They'll be thinking the last time they did this they'll re may be referencing back to the last time they did a presentation and it went all horribly wrong so those sort of things. So that's the first thing is to start being kind to themselves and become. So awareness will creep into this and we'll talk about the awareness scale a little bit shortly once we've spoken about.

These, these steps and all that self talk is interfering with your ability to access your own conscious thinking because it's cluttered with lots of noise. Yeah and actually if you can quiet and calm down that and be present. Easier said than done but yeah if you've got all this interference stopping you thinking clearly particularly if you're doing something important when it really matters like a presentation then it's going to make it much more difficult and then it can be a vicious cycle downwards of course because it starts going wrong because you're not being your best.

Yeah so it's their ability to. Their access, their ability under pressure it goes back to that whole thing, you know We've been talking about that on the, on the last episode, which is why emotional intelligence is so critical for performance. So self regard. So start being kind to themselves. The second point that I made a note of, and it's one of the big things that I've been talking about for years and years as a coach is to encourage people that I work with to use a journal. So. And use a journal in a positive way in this. Re. In this respect. So someone with a low self regard, I would typically get them to think about all the attributes that they admire about themselves and they initially might find that a little bit tricky because their internal dialogue is that I'm not great, I'm not good at this compared to others. So you know, and, and maybe write a list of all the things that they've achieved. So you know, from when they were a little grasshopper, when they were at school, you know, some of the things that they did, some of the paintings, perhaps the running ra or swimming races they might have won and other things that they've achieved in their career, etc.

You know, I mean, I always think we may have low self regard right at the moment, but inside us there's. There's still some. There's a lot of high self regard. You just haven't accessed it or you've forgotten where it is. It may be lying dormant somewhere. And self esteem, like everything else, is a habit. And if you just practice focusing on all the bad stuff, replaying all the negative thoughts, repeating Re. Re. Experiencing negative feelings, you're going to become an expert at it. So become an ex. What? Doing this diary thing is a great way to become an expert at, you know, re. Re. Stimulating the positive side, which is there. You just haven't been using it enough.

Yeah, no, I love that. I love that it is still there and you can reconnect it and actually reminding yourself of those, some of those memories will be uplifting for sure. Why wouldn't it be? If you, if you're reminding yourself of all the good things that you've done.

And it's a cycle, isn't it? The thoughts, the feelings, you, You. Your behavior. And before you know it, you're interacting better with other people, they're reinforcing you. So every part of it influences the other parts. And if you can just create that kick the ball, get the ball rolling with, with a diary, something small like that is very powerful starting point.

Yeah. And, and there is research. You know, there was some research from, I think it was Stanford or Harvard many years ago. The, the old classic thing of writing, keeping a journal and writing down your goals. And the people that did that, they then come, went back to them 20 years later and they were more successful than the people that hadn't kept a diary and hadn't set their goals, etc. So it is a really powerful process and it's something that I continue to sort of like encourage, invite people to, you know, start a journal. It might be tricky at first, but then just keep going.

Do you ever tell people to do it handwritten as opposed to typing it On a computer?

Yeah, 100. Yeah, 100. I, I much prefer handwritten. And I also attempt to get everyone to consider it as a thing to do on a daily basis. So it's a ritual, it's a routine. So it becomes an actual habit. And there's been so many success stories come back to me that, you know, initially when they struggled with it, that they stayed with it. And then they've had some major breakthroughs. Because what you can do with a journal is you can start seeing patterns of behavior emerge. And we'll talk about that again in the awareness section. When we're talking about awareness. I just want to get into a couple more of these how to's, you know, what can you do to enhance your self? Regarding. So maybe the other thing to do is to consider is to stretch yourself with something new. So again, a lot of people have fallen out of, you know, they're not having to, they're not at university anymore. So reading a book, for example. So set yourself a goal and a stretch goal. So something that you wouldn't typically do or something that you've been wanting to do but you haven't done it. So, you know, we're getting closer towards the back end of the year. People will be starting to think about New Year's resolutions at some point. Oh, I'll, I'll wait. I'll put that exercise program off until the new year. So I'll, you know, I'll have a weight goal that I might want to achieve or a fitness goal that they might want to achieve. So, you know, here, here in the UK, we've got the couch to 5K. I don't know whether it's gone global, but, you know, people getting off the couch in front of the TV and actually starting a very simple program of, you know, gradually building to a 5k run, it might be that you've got to go a very simple goal of not drinking alcohol through the week and just having a little bit of a Sort of a couple of gl is on the weekend. You know, those sort of things. Healthy habits that you can think of that are a little bit of a stretch for someone. So and, and achieving those things will make you feel better that you've been.

Able to do it and maybe set the goal initially very low. You know, because you said the first step was getting off the couch and I, I don't know about you. When I go to the gym, certainly nowadays it's more about got to be bothered to even put the shoes on or get out the house in the winter it's even worse. But if I could do that first step and say I'm just going to do a couple of minutes or even 30 seconds but after you've done 30 seconds I'll just carry on by the time you've warmed up it's like you've done half an hour or something. But it is, it is getting, getting into that. And you mentioned moving outside the comfort zones. Often think when we've got low self esteem we have a shaky sense of okay ness.

Yes.

Feel good inside. And the way we protect ourselves is by building very strong walls and staying within those comfortable places, doing what we've always done.

Yeah.

And it's a consequence of low self esteem or at least at that time in our life. And sometimes the way of breaking those rules is just doing one or two things. Thinking actually this works. This is useful to me. And consequently you think well I can't be feeling that bad. And you're endorphins particularly if it's physical. You feel better about yourself.

Yeah.

So there's a big link between comfort zones and self regard.

Yeah. For sure. 100 and I like the idea of, you know, just start, you know, just start doing it, you know, for 30 second or a minute or so and then you'll get into it. And the other, the other great one around that is, you know, if you're talking about the gym in particular is actually have your gym bag in the car. So if you're driving back and you're driving back past the gym, then at least you're packed and ready to go instead of having to go home, get your kit and then go back to the gym. Because once you get home the red wine or the nice chilled white wine is in the fridge. And you know that's a different, that's a different decision. So the gym doesn't happen then at.

Least make it your reward. Maybe that's not the right thing to do. I don't know. Conditioning Forget that idea.

And, and the other, the other thing that I think is important for us to be aware of is I spoke earlier, before we started recording this session about the filing cabinet that we all have that we carry with us. We've got a filing cabinet of a catalog of stuff, good memories and of course lots of other memories and that aren't so good perhaps. And I think it's really important for us to be aware that people with a low self regard tend to reference the filing cabinet and reference all the bad things that have happened and can, you know, over catastrophize certain events where they then will, it will then stop them from actually taking action to move forward, to try something new, etc. So that it's a, it's a, it's important to be aware of that thinking pattern that we get stuck back into as well.

I mean do you, do you get your clients to think of positive scenarios that they can just. You put in their filing cabinet and make another. Put it in the same cabinet. Put separate one visualization at least. Yes, I'm going to go back to that. You know, it could be the sports day as a child or having a really good chat with a friend or coming off your coaching and doing it, doing your habit change, it was successful. There's. You've just got to actively focus on it and it's where we focus our attention, you know, and focusing attention is largely how we feel and that's one of our human resources or capacities. Learning how to manage our attention and not let it control us.

You know, the visual, the visualization is a big one, Joe. As you know, in the sporting world the athletes are using visualization.

So well.

You know, the, the gold medalist that's looking to win gold, you know, the high jumper, their visualization before, you know, they, they've run it hundreds of times and won the race. Yeah, you know Mark, my mate Mark Foster, who has, you know, won loads of medals in his career as a swimmer, went to five Olympics. He used visualization. He'd visualize himself in the warm up room. He'd visualize himself in each of the different lanes that he might be in. He'd visualize the tumble turn, him turning first. He'd visualize himself touching out in first position. So he did all that and of course, you know, that added an extra element to his success.

That's really interesting.

He saw himself do that, you know, and finish in first place.

What you've, the way he described it wasn't. He visualized him standing on the Podium with. He might have done that as well. He visualized tumble turning or swimming smoothly. Whatever he did that works for him. It's actually firing off the same neurons as if, I don't know if you'd say this as if you're doing the activity.

Absolutely.

Neurologically, it is firing those neurons so they get rehearsed and practiced. So by the time you're diving in the water, those neurons are already pre hot and wired and ready to go.

Yeah.

100 and, and yeah. So visualization, say you're doing a presentation or you've got a difficult conversation with a, with a client or whatever it might be, visualizing what you want is far more likely to make you prepared and ready for it emotionally and physically.

So carrying that out and, and yeah, you're right. They've, they've done research around this. I mean, I took a, a lot about the, the research they've done with athletes. You know, they, they looked at some college students and they got them to do basketball shuttle runs and they had them all wired up with electrodes and they were measuring which muscles. Muscles were firing off. Then they got them to sit in a chair, close their eyes and visualize themselves doing the shuttle runs and the same muscles were firing off. So you're absolutely right. They do. It does, it is, it's, it's. The neuropathways are being connected visually as well. So that then means what they are, what our athletes have started doing is they actually do the visualization so that they're actually increasing their muscle growth without actually having to fatigue the muscles. They're just visualizing the exercise. Yeah. Here's the funny thing.

Muscle memory.

Here's the funny thing a lot of people think when I share that with them, they think, ah, so I don't have to go to the gym now, then, you know, I can just sit in my chair and visualize doing the exercise and I'll be, I'll get fit. It doesn't, it doesn't work that way, unfortunately.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I'm a great fan of visualization because also it's focusing on where you want to be and the future.

Yeah.

And it's the guided imagery expectations. And we also know that emotions are another term for an expectation. It's what you're anticipating to happen. If you're feeling anxious, you're expecting failure or problems, and that can galvanize and get you ready, but it also restricts you. But if you're expecting achievement or excitement, it's going to create a different type of Emotion. So maybe later in this podcast we'll talk about the type of emotions that are going to elicit the behavior, the performance that you want. Yeah, sometimes, sometimes they're not the emotions you might expect. So we need to be aware of what emotions they are, how we create them, where they come from and how we can recreate them more easily.

Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a great. And we will come to those. We'll. We'll have a look at all the different feelings we spoke about that in terms of looking at self awareness and being aware of when those emotions where, where they've come from, why I'm feeling like that, etc. One of the other things that I also, you know, going back to the how to's is not comparing yourself. So we're. I, I compare myself, we all compare ourselves with others, but it's being conscious of, okay, so don't compare yourself with everyone else. You are unique. There's no other copy of you on the planet. And it's, that's a really powerful reminder to, to your journey's unique. So don't compare yourself with other people. Your story is very different compared to others. So making sure.

Easier. Easier said than done. Do you think, Jim? I mean it's a tough one now.

Yeah, I like there's a phrase that I use which probably winds lots of people up, but it's the, the, the phrase is, it's e. Actually it's easy to do. So this stuff that we're talking about is easy to do.

Yeah.

The challenge for all of us that it's the, the big challenge is that it's easier not to.

Yeah.

Yeah. So a lot of the things that you, if. So if you want to get fit, it's easy to do, but it's easier not to because you just revert back to your old patterns of behavior of having the, the donut or whatever, you know, or not going to the gym, etc, so it's easier to do because that's the pattern that you've been used to. So a lot of these things are easy to do. It's just easier not to.

I wonder also if there's an emotion that's compatible with doing it and emotions that's compatible with not. So for example, boredom is one of my greatest motivators. I can quite happily sit on the couch and do nothing. But then eventually I get to the boredom, a critical point for me and it's so nauseatingly horrible feeling. I want to change it. So I Go and do something active. Are there certain emotions that you can, you know, are going to help you get you off the couch or do the difficult work or make that awkward con, telephone conversation? Maybe things you don't normally want to do, but tap into that. It could be a sense of frustration, can be good. And some of these emotions are there, remember and there's something we'll talk about. All emotions are there for a reason. Evolutionary rise the reason we had frustration was to get us to change things because we are unsatisfied. If we didn't have frustration, we would sit on the couch. We've probably never progressed as a species. So all society's changes have come through strong emotions that may not be very pleasant, but they, they create something, they create change that, you know, it's again coming back to what emotions are going to help you make the changes you want to do.

Yeah. When you were saying that, the thought that came into my head was every decision that we have is the choice is pain or pleasure. So pain and the pain and pleasure principle is, is the key decider in every decision that we make. So every decision is a pain and pleasure decision. Pain if I do or pleasure if I do. You know, so. Or pleasure if I say for, for example, and I'll give this as an example for someone that's attempting to give up smoking. So the smoker that's smoking, this one's pleasurable. So I'm smoking away and I'm thinking, you know, this is, this is not going to kill me. This is pleasurable. I'm really enjoying this. So this one's not going to kill me. It might be the 20,000th cigarette that I have or vape that I have that's going to get me, but this one's not going to kill me.

Yeah.

So they, they associate it with pleasure. Now what they've got to do is they've got to reverse that and say, okay, so this one could kill me. Or actually this one might shorten my life. So much so that I might not see the kids grow up. So much so that my health and well being is going to suffer dramatically, etc. So this is not just to go up smokers by the way. I mean, this is in every aspect of our lives. So you know, going back to your point about, you know, presentations or anything that we do, it's about pain and pleasure. So I've got to put the effort in and I will get the reward. So there is a reward mechanism going on for sure.

And you can use this in goal setting, you know, and habit change, identifying your, your, the thing you want to change. You know, maybe want to stop smoking or you may want to stop falling out with people or you may. Something's not working in your life as you'd like it to. And don't ignore all the problems with that. In fact, build them up. Say, look, what's what the downside. What the, what's the pain?

Yeah.

What the negatives. Write them all down as a list, but then look at where you want to be. So this is a visualization bit, isn't it? Thinking about the future. Right. What, how you'd see that, what the benefits and make that list even longer than the pain, the pain bits. And you could go further and start saying, you know, what are the payoffs for the thing you're doing now? You know, what do you get out of it?

Completely?

Obviously there's a rational reason for it.

Yeah.

Smoking originally you socialized a lot with it. You may have looked cool when you were a teenager, but now it's not working for you. So well. And you may want to shift that to something different and replace it with a different behavior habit that's going to get you what you want.

Yeah. A healthier habit. Yeah, you're right. Absolutely. And think about the. What will it look like, feel like when I've achieved that, that goal.

Yeah, yeah. So working forward towards where you want to be rather than ideally working away from the thing you want to avoid. When we talk about the feelings side of things, we'll look at positive, negative feelings. And negative feelings are there for a reason. They're good, but you want to spend less time there. They're almost like a wake up call. Oh, this isn't right. Thanks for the message, thanks for the feedback. I now need to act upon it and move out of this place to somewhere I want to be. So acknowledge it, pay attention and then act upon it so you don't spend too long. Otherwise that's going to lead to, you know, exhaustion, misery and burnout.

Yeah.

So you don't want to live there. You don't stay too long in that.

Place and the act on it is the big thing, you know, so being aware of something is one thing, but actually you've then got to do something with it. So the awareness alone is not going to get you there. One of the other things that I get people to journal is the framework that you, you're familiar with, which is win, learn, change, which is the, you know, so it's. So if they're Journaling daily. What I invite my, my people that I work with to do is to use Windland change, which is the Thomas Edison strategy that he used many years ago. So you know the guy that invented the light bulb, he was, he did something like 10,000 experiments. And one of the first reporters, journalists asked him a really interesting question. It was one of the first questions he was asked. He said, how does it feel to have failed 9,999 times? And Edison sort of thought for a moment and he said, actually I didn't fail. He said, I did an experiment and I always got a result. It wasn't the result that I wanted, but I got a result nonetheless. He said, but what I did was I went back to the drawing board, I went back to my journal, I wrote down what worked well in that experiment, I then wrote down what I learned and then I wrote down what I need to change for the next experiment. So he used that process of incremental change and that, that got him the light bulb. Yes.

So change, change. You know, let's be honest, change tends to happen incrementally.

Yes.

Some people do have that road to Damascus moment where they see the line. It's a profound, life changing event. But on a whole it tends to be step by step. And recognizing that's really important because if you want to go somewhere, you want to move to a different place in, you know, in terms of your psychological well being, your performance, then get on the first step. The first step is definitely the most important. It sounds like a cliche, but often we sort of only see the end point. I'll never get there. Well, what, what would step one look like? Describe it, try it out, see if it works for you and then we'll, you know, get used to doing that. And before you know it, you're moving on to 2, 3 and 4.

Yeah, it's the old classic saying, isn't it? The thousand mile journey starts with a single step, you know, so that, that classic, you know, that thing.

Well, I'm looking at that picture behind you, that 3,000 mile journey you've done ten times or something. Ridiculous. It's, it's getting off that. I mean that's actually not the biggest part of it. It's the, I'm sure you agree the biggest part is the two years of training before you even turn up on the start line.

Yes.

And get it, that's getting out of bed the first day to get on your bike and do the, do the 20 mile ride before you do the overnight weekend rides. And yes it's, it's the same for all, all change. But that's a more extreme example.

Yeah, yeah. Typical of me being extreme which just.

Going to say talking about extreme. I know we've seen your profile Jim, and you know the EIP profile and you've happily lent us yours as a case study. But if you've ever done the emotional intelligence profile or any other the psychometric tools for development, we tend to get preoccupied with how did I compare against other people. Yeah. And I think the reason we do that is because they sell more tests that way. Companies want to know well where are you on the benchmark? How are you better or worse? But at the end of the day when you're talking about development, you know, you're talking about not comparing yourself against others and we, we, the society is built like that. When all people do nowadays is tell you about the great things they've done, they don't tell you about the bad stuff on social media. That's the same with eip. When you're comparing against a norm group, don't get bogged down with that. You may just be a bit tougher on yourself or you may be over generous. I'd be more concerned about your relative differences between the scales.

Yeah.

For development purposes we're not selecting you for a job, we're not trying to compete with any other people. Just look at. Even if yours are all ones and twos, your three might be your strength.

Yeah.

Yes, relatively.

Yeah, it's a good point. The, some people do get bogged. You're, you're right, some people do get bogged down with the comparison. I always prefer to think about it as a stake in the ground. So it's an awareness seeking missile if you like, you know, sort of. It's a stake in the ground of where you are right now. And, and again talking about low self regard, someone with a low self regard will typically score themselves lower on a lot of the other scales because of their low self regard. So if they've got a low self regard they're self deprecating and they say oh yeah, compared to others I'm not as good.

Yeah.

And that's where they get caught up because a lot of the questions in the questionnaire are asking compared to others, how do you see yourself?

Yeah, so some, yeah, there's even, you know, other people would rate you. 360 is quite a good idea. Again, other people, oh God, I, I rate myself and invariably people do. By the way, they're self ra ratings are somewhat Lower than other people's ratings of them.

One of the other things I've got written down here Joe, is to surround yourself with positive people. And again, you know, so someone that's got a low self regard, surround yourself with good people that make you feel good about yourself but also give, you know, you have a bit of a laugh, a bit of banter, a smile more and making sure that you get rid of. So actually have a detox of the negative people might, you know. So my eldest daughter has recently done that with great effect and she feels so much better about getting rid of some of the people that aren't particularly positive in her life and not adding to her life. It sounds quite brutal but it's really powerful to declutter that energy because there's an energy that people transmit.

You know, they say that emotions are contagious and we know that with things like mirror neurons and oscillating. If, if you're, you know, at an event and everyone's having fun, you tend to laugh along. Don't you feel taken into it? And if you're looking at comedy, you start brightening the mood and you can create that emotional climate around you as well. So if people are down, you know, you could shift their mindset. Ultimately if you're unable to do it, you know, you might have to move away at least for a while. I was telling you before we spoke, Jim, you know, asking what we did over the weekend. I went to see my, my girlfriend's uncle who's 91 years old and we spent three days in Wales and you know, 91 year old I think is certainly at the end of his life but he's. I've never known anyone to laugh so often and he was, you know, it's wonderful to spend time with somebody at that age laughing at everything and enjoying life. And I felt good. I was, you know, going to see the in laws type of thing. Oh, this could be challenging, couple of days. But it wasn't. I really enjoyed it because that person in his presence, I felt good about myself because we just had a lot of laughter and maybe that's another aspect of building your self esteem. Find opportunities even if you're having tough times, which you will for joy. Yes, fun, laughter. It could be people, it could be events, it could be memories. Find, find that stuff because it will release those positive endorphins and feelings and get them more, you know, it's like oiling a car, getting it, you used more, they'll become more accessible.

Yeah, no, you're Right. I mean, there was this, there have been some studies looking at people that have not, you know, enhancing their well being through watching comedy. So, you know, a whole load of, you know, movie after movie, you know, comedy movies that make them laugh, you know, so which is causing the serotonin, oxytocin, you know, the dopamine hit that we need, you know, so that's, that's helping them. There was a study done many years ago that I might have spoken to you about, you'll probably be aware of, Joe, that looked at mildly depressed patients, you know, about 100 mildly depressed patients. And what they got them to do for two weeks was they got a pen and I'm not rec. We're not recommending this to people that are listening to this, by the way. This is not a leadership motivational thing. But it, what they did was they got them for three times per day for 15 minutes, they got them to put a pen in their mouth. And of course that, that caused a smile, which triggered off the serotonin, oxytocin. And at the end of the study, after two weeks, they were feeling better and so their mild depression had been improved. And it's just a reminder that smiling is really critical. Even, even a little sneaky smile that I'm doing to you now with my eyes, that's triggering serotonin in me. When it lands on you, that causes a trigger of serotonin in you. Then you smile. Sneaky little fellow will smile back at me. That'll give you another hit. And gives me another hit. So it's a really lovely setup to, you know, enhance your mood.

Yeah. And yeah, sorry, it goes both ways. I just know that some people can bring you down and before you know it, you're getting, getting sort of crushed.

Yeah. And that's what I mean by getting rid of some of the energy vampires. So get rid of those people that all they want to do is talk about doom and gloom. You know, the government this, the, the bills this, the bills that, the kids this, you know, the boss this, you know, blah, blah, blah. And actually before you know it, you're thinking, oh, I was actually in a good space a moment ago and now I'm feeling dreadful. So you've got to be conscious.

Lock us in. When you're talking about that pen in the mouth thing, it's thinking of modeling other people. And certainly, you know, in the early days, I was saying the previous podcast, I work with teenagers and particularly in building their self esteem and one thing that really works well with young people and we don't practice it enough as adults. Is. Is modeling, role modeling, copying, if you like.

Yeah.

And they don't just do it by, you know, learning about them. They pretend that they are them. They embody that behavior that mannerisms the style. And one way of doing that is think about people who've inspired you, who got you in that place, and, you know, actually embody what it is to be like that or time in your life when you've been like that and relive it. So simply changing your demeanor, your posture, your voice can make you feel different. It's difficult to stand up tall, walk confidently, talk confidently, and feel weak.

Yeah.

So all these different elements of us interact. So changing your behavior, your body will change your feelings, and they'll galvanize different positive thoughts and so on and so forth. So it's a really good idea to change the physical side as well.

100. I agree entirely. The we. We talk about in the coaching program that, that I run when I'm working with leaders is we talk about specifically those points, the four keys to short term change your state. So you, you've just talked about posture. We were talking about smiling. So posture, smiling, and then also movement. So movement's really important as well. So once you've been sat in a chair for 45 minutes, you. Once your bum goes numb, the next thing that goes numb is your, your brain. So making sure that if you're in the office and you're on the computer that you take a stroll around the office or go outside and get some fresh air. So movement's critical. So it's movement, posture, how you hold yourself, how you sit, smiling. And then the big one, which is the huge one that the spiritual gurus have been speaking about for centuries, is breath. And breath work. So being conscious of your breath and deliberately slowing your breath down. So if you've got an important meeting, making sure you slow that down before you go into it. And there's a Hudman I learned from one of his recent podcasts about the Huberman breath. So he's talking about, and there's research that if you're really stressed, one of the things that you can do is take a. Take a breath. So you take a breath and then take a sneaky little one on top of it. So take a breath and then an extra one, hold it and then let it out, and then do it again. And then you take a breath.

And.

Then a sneaky one on top. Hold it and then let it go. And then straight away, you, you feel so much I'm. The research is overwhelming in, in that regard, in, in in particular that breath.

So.

And it's, that's what I like about Huberman's stuff. He, it's neuro. He's a neuroscientist. And it's researched and it's, it's really cool. Finally, I just want to talk about the, the final thing that I made a note of, which was, and this happens a lot with people that I've coached over the years, when they have a low self regard, they typically put themselves last on the list of the three things that I talk about that are really important. So self is important, family is important, and then career. So they're the three big things that we all grapple with and someone with a low self regard. If they, if I ask them to order those three things in terms of priority, in terms of where are they spending most of their time, typically it comes back to family. Then they talk about work as number two position and then they talk about themselves as number three. And that's fairly consistent. So over the years that consistently comes back in that order. And the tricky thing is to get them to realize that actually self is more important. They've got to put themselves first. So if I'm happy and comfortable in my skin, love myself, warts and all, I'll be more able to support the family because I'm happy and comfortable in myself. And I'll be happier and more engaged at work because I'm not feeling bad that I've missed out on a gym session because I've got to get to work or pick up the kids or cook dinner or clean the house or whatever it might be. So putting yourself first. And as I say that, I think about the single parents. So the single parents that are, that might not be able to do that because they've got an obligation to take care of their children. And that's true. What I would say to those listeners is that they do need to craft some time to self. So that could be perhaps a simple thing like getting up a little bit earlier and you know, doing a gym session or whatever it might be, but making sure that they create some time for themselves because that. That's the critical thing. So again, it's about attempting to get yourself into the space of putting yourself first. It sounds selfish and that's. I get pushback from a lot of people saying, yeah, but that isn't that selfish. And it's sort of, yeah, but you're not really getting it. Getting. You're not Getting my point. The point is that actually you have to be happy with yourself to be able to give fully to others that you care about. And of course, so I'm interested in hearing what you, what you have, what, what's your experience around that as well.

Jim, it takes me back to the, the framework which you introduced at the beginning and you know, we've mentioned, haven't we, that some people are real helpers and get their boxed into the right hand side of the framework.

Yes.

But as you can see, the arrows go from the left to the right. They do work both ways by the way. But the dominant direction is, as you're saying, it's very difficult to help others in the long term if you're not caring for yourself initially. And it kind of manifests as people, those feelings don't just go away, they turn into sort of feeling like a victim. Everything I do is never appreciated. I do my best, I'm exhausted and you know, you end up taking out on other people, taking it out on yourself and ultimately unable to help other people. Yeah, so there's a, there's a close link. I think there's, I think there are differences as well, that some people are more locked into the selfish side and other people into the unselfish side. And there are individuals who actually, maybe it's a time in their life to start giving back. I wouldn't say always selfish. Often, dare I say it, people who've got to a certain age, often male, worked in a certain industry and actually have been locked into earning a living and working predominantly on achieving achievement for what they can achieve, obviously for themselves, but often it's for their family, but they're so locked into doing that they've unaware. And it's about moving from the top layer of the framework back to awareness. So what is it I want in life, what I want to achieve? And actually it may be for those individuals it is a bit more about helping others than helping yourself. So it can, it can work both ways on, on the, on the freight, on the EI side of things.

Yeah. And I think that's a nice segue into the next level up, which, you know, I know, I know you're keen to talk about, which is the self awareness and awareness of others scale, which is the feelings level. So maybe, maybe if I get you to talk about that and talk about how you know, your experience, your thinking around the self awareness stuff, I, I'd like to add some stuff as well, but I'd just like to hear your thoughts, Joe.

Thanks. Jim so last time we unpacked the self regard, regard for others through the two by two matrix, what we call the attitude matrix or originally it's a life positions of Thomas Harris and transactional analysis. And there's a lot of depth to that, of course. But yeah, we're talking about the jam in the middle. The awareness bit is the core to emotional intelligence. Yeah, self awareness, which is our third scale on the EIP is about being aware of your emotions and how they, how they affect you. So it's where your physiology, it's where of your feelings, way of your intuition as distinct maybe from other tools like personality measures may talk about. Self awareness is in your knowledge, knowing your behavior. So I know I'm an introvert, I know I have these characteristics, these behaviors. That's not quite the same with emotional intelligence. We're talking about noticing, paying attention to the, the bodily. It's very much being in the present, it's very much being aware of yourself at the present time and how those feelings affect you, managing and choosing what to do about those feelings as opposed to just allowing them to take free rein, noticing where they've come from. So as we see in our model, self regard largely influences our underlying attitude influence and they create the patterns that trigger off these feelings. And those feelings influence how we think and they influence how we behave, which is the management level of the framework. So yeah, we could talk about. And if we think about the description of emotional intelligence often describe as thinking about your feelings to guide your behavior.

Yes.

So it's thinking about your feelings, being aware of noticing, paying attention to what's going on. For me, labeling them accurately to guide what I choose to do about it. So emotional intelligence is a doing, it's a verb, it's something in the present.

Yeah. And I spoke about Magoo on the last episode and awareness around that. And you talked about your car metaphor. One of the metaphors that I've, I use around awareness is the, the fingerprint metaphor, which I, you know, I think is really, really powerful for leaders, for individuals to be really conscious of. So if I pick this glass up, I leave my fingerprint on the glass. Everyone's conscious of that. We've got a unique fingerprint that is unique to us. So every interaction that we have with somebody, whether it's, you know, our intimate relationships or work colleagues or a stranger, we leave a fingerprint in that interaction. Now, depending on how emotionally intelligent I am, if I've got a really high emotional intelligence, I'll pick the glass up and I'LL deliberately, because I'm mindful, I'll deliberately leave a positive fingerprint in that interaction. So I'll go out of my way to, to be mindful and I'm aware enough to deliberately leave a finger, a positive fingerprint in that interaction. If I've got a mediocre emotional intelligence. So some days good, some days not so good, or some moments good, some moments not so good. So I'm not, you know, so I'm sort of 50, 50, you know, with my emotional intelligence, I'll pick the glass up, I'll leave a fingerprint on it, and it's possible that I might crack the glass on those not so good moments during the day. So we, this is about the awareness piece. And then of course, if you follow the metaphor all the way through, if I've got very low emotional intelligence, I'll pick the glass up and it's likely that I'll shatter the glass. So I'm operating out of awareness. I might give someone some feedback, but in a very inappropriate way. The look I give with someone would be, you know, like, not particularly good at all. The, the eye roll, all those things, they're subtle fingerprints that we're leaving in all of those interactions. Now, as a leader, when they've got their team with them, all eyes are on the leader in terms of, they're picking up signals, cues all the time, how things are said, how the words, the, the language that they're using, how they're saying it, as you were saying earlier. So this is about awareness of the fingerprint. So the first thing is awareness of self awareness, which we're talking about self awareness of how I'm interacting with everyone that I interact with. And there are three groups, Joe, that I, I sort of clump people into three groups and, and I hierarchy those groups as well. So the first group is our intimate relationships. So and the most important, I believe they're the most important aspect to us as human beings. So the intimate relationships we have, our partner, our kids, our, our family, our close friends. So those are the intimate relationships. And the reason I consider those to be the most important is that they are our life support system. They're our sort of fans that cheer us on, that support us, that help us do, you know, and support us in the goals that we're pursuing. And unfortunately, sometimes, unfortunately quite often, sometimes we take those individuals for granted. So being conscious and being aware of the fingerprint that we're leaving in those interactions without intimate relationships.

Yeah, I think you brought together all the different parts There for me where self awareness, it's influenced by underneath what's going on in your relationships. Your, your own self concept and other people influence you. It impacts on, you know, your awareness on other people and impacts on the other parts of the framework which is how you manage your own behavior and relationships. And you know, I think you can take from your metaphor that all those different parts and maybe if I draw upon some of those parts in terms of the, the model to give a few examples.

So I mean before, just before you do, let me just. The. So the, the intimate relationships is one of. That's the first position. The second position is our relationships with people at work. So second most important because we spend a lot of our time at work and we interact with people at work. So again being conscious of the fingerprint that we're leaving in those situations with our, our colleagues, our boss, etc, so that's position number two. Position number three is all the, all the random people that we meet. So you know, when I'm at the checkout at my grocery store, when I'm filling up the car and paying for that. The, you know, the, when I'm meeting or bumping into people on, on the train or whatever it might be. So those random interactions where I probably won't see that individual ever again. But why not deliberately leave a positive fingerprint, even if it's just very subtle, a smile or whatever it might be or just pick out something that, oh, you've got a really, you know, that really suits you, that color or that coats, you know, you look good in that etc. Those things be authentic with it. You don't have to make stuff up. But so if, if we, if we did that. So intimate relationships, our relationships, you know, and we're, if we were conscious of the fingerprint that we're leaving in all of those interactions, including the, the people that we might not ever see again, the world would be a wonderful place. It would be utopia, you know, because we're all interacting in a, in a really conscious, at a conscious level. And I'm not sure whether I spoke about the kids animation that I saw over Christmas last year. The child, the fox, the mole, the horse. I don't know whether you've seen it.

I think I've seen that one.

It's beautiful. It is absolutely. It's a great animation. And the one of, I think the mole asks the young boy what do you want to be when you grow up? Which I think is a fantastic question. And it's been asked, there's Been lots of different asks this. The answer was beautiful. The young boy said I want to be kind. And it blew me away. It was like, wow, what a clever piece of writing. Scripting as a message to the world. I, I want to be kind. If we were all wired that way, I, I want to be kind. Well, wars would be, wouldn't be a thing. You know, rude and angry people wouldn't be a thing. You know, it's amazing. So I, I interrupted your, your, your not really adding two. So yeah, please, please do add Joe.

Yeah, because it's all, it's all going back in this cycle of just checking in with yourself and maybe, you know, from, from what you're saying, it's really about doing that more often and that recognizing the impact what we're doing has on other people. And sometimes to do that we need to, you need to stop and think, you know, stop and notice it inside yourself and notice where it's coming from. You know, because we're talking about self regard before and clearly if I have low self regard and I'm feeling rubbish about myself, I might have all sorts of painful feelings I don't want to acknowledge, pay attention to and they're uncomfortable. So that immediately distorts my self awareness and I sort of bury those feelings. And if I'm not self aware, it's very difficult to start improving other facets of my behavior like dealing with setbacks, building relationships, other people. So I think emotional self regard and self awareness are intimately connected. And if you don't pay attention to your feelings, sooner or later they're just gonna, they're gonna grow stronger. They don't sort of disappear. They need to be acknowledged and acted upon. I use the metaphor of, you know, if you're, if you're a manager of a company and you don't pay attention to the feedback you get from the workforce, then sooner or later they're going to get pretty disgruntled and they might give you more and more feedback and they may start working a bit differently and underperforming. But if you just continually ignore and ignore it, rather like you might ignore your feelings sooner or later. What, what's going to happen? Well, well, they might go on strike. Yeah, rather like the same with feelings. You might, your body goes on strike, you become unwell. And so the metaphor I have is, is your feelings are like your body because feelings live in the body.

Yes.

And your brain, if you like, is the management. And it's important that the two work together. Otherwise you get all of these Problems that are going on in the industry today. Noticing, paying attention to what's going on on a day to day, momentary basis and that will make life much easier. And you can respond to things rather like the metaphor of managing your car, looking after it. If you don't look after your well being or pay attention to what's going on with the engine and tyres and all the other stuff, then it might start to break down. So consider feelings as useful feedback that.

Oh, massively, massively so. And actually it's interesting you say all that Joe. You've triggered off some thoughts for me around all that. The, the data, the neuroscience behind it is fascinating. I, the one of the books that I've read recently was when the Body says no by Gable Matter and they've done, he's done research around this and basically we don't really think about this often but every thought that we have creates a chemical cascade. So every thought. So we, and we have thousands of thoughts every day. A lot of them are the same thoughts actually interestingly, but thousands upon thousands of thoughts every day and that creates a chemical cascade. So every thought, bang. Chemical cascade. Now if we're wired negatively it's no wonder that we're at dis ease with ourselves. We're not comfortable in our skin, in our body as you say, because that's where the feelings live. So we're bombarding ourselves with those thoughts, those the. And which create feelings which aren't healthy. So we're at dis ease with ourselves which created, which creates disease in our body. So and lots and again neuroscience is backing this up. You know, if we're the, you know, if we're negatively wired there's a higher chance of cancers and a whole load of other ailments. So it's being conscious of making sure that we're aware of our thoughts and, and what we're thinking. And so that's where the awareness piece is, is so, so crucial. As you've said already, it's, it's critical that we're conscious of and, and I think the key to some of this, and I know we spoke about it last last week, Joe is and it's pretty much most leaders that I've worked with over the last 20 odd years on when I'm working one on one, the biggest thing they need all, all of them have needed to do is to slow down. So you know, we, we talk about taking a breath and becoming present. So slowing down to this moment now. I always think it's funny, I love it when people Talk about multitasking. You, you can't do multi time. It's not, I, it's not possible to do. I think people would argue. Right. And I'm sure listeners are probably thinking, yeah, I can multitask, but actually you're not fully present. If I'm not fully present now talking to you and I'm thinking about writing down some stuff or doing an email while I'm talking to you, I'm not fully present to you and to this conversation, I'm. My, my brain's occupied by doing other stuff. So that's what I mean by we can't do mo. You can multitask, but you're not fully present in either of those things that you're, you're doing.

Yes. So, so, yeah, I mean, continuing on with that, the relationship between the self awareness aspects of your behavior, it's going to impact on if, you know, if you know some of the scales that come from the emotional intelligence profile. We talk about emotional resilience. And if you're not aware of your feelings, it certainly helps if you notice your feelings sooner before they, you know, irritation becomes anger or a little bit of worry becomes great stress.

Yes.

So paying attention to your feelings earlier, it will help you develop your, your resilience and coping strategies. It'll help you in several other ways, like if you, you know, connecting with other people, forming relationships. We often form relationships by sharing ourselves, being open about ourselves. Not just cognitive thoughts or telling people what we've been doing, but sharing our vulnerabilities, sharing our feelings. Of course, if you're not aware of your feelings, it's quite difficult to make that connection. And some people don't literally don't pay attention to feelings. So the conversation never gets to that level.

Yeah, they don't know how to articulate it.

No, it's, it's people who have fun. Spontaneous emotional interrelationships that get closer. Trusting connections because you feel you know the person. If you want to build trust, and we mentioned, you know, awareness of others as well. If you, you know, it's, it's directly connected. If you want to build awareness of others. We need to put ourselves in other people's shoes.

Yes.

And if you can't, if you've never experienced those feelings or you can't relate to another person's, particularly when they're difficult feelings, you know, painful, you know, feelings of grief, sadness, worry. Doesn't mean you have to feel that way all the time. But it's certainly if you're helping somebody or coaching somebody is much better if you've got a sense of understanding, empathizing with them, if you like really feeling how they might have felt.

So.

And the, the self awareness as it is crucial to all aspects of emotional intelligence, it's also crucial to the relationship side scale. So you've got things like conflict handle, handling emotional expression, control, which sound very much to do with the relationships, but actually if you're, if you're not noticing feelings early and they build up and up, they grow stronger and stronger, then it's going to end up impacting on other people.

Yes.

So you go from being quite passive or emotionally controlled, keeping everything tight and sooner or later it over, it over spills.

Yes.

And it, you become mostly under control or you become quite aggressive. Now that's impacting your relationships. But if prior to then you'd noticed it was going on inside of you, you had better self awareness then you wouldn't have got to the stage of it. Getting to the, you know, the too much side of the scale.

Yeah. Spilling into the relationship and the conversation that you're attempting to have. Yeah, it's, it's great. It's sort of like almost bubbles over and actually it's, it's, it's so interesting. It's the, it's the, the piece of. This is the. And we'll get into the, the other scales perhaps in one of the next episodes because I think it's, it's important to. I, I, my, my goal is to help people understand this in, in a bit of detail. So hence the reason for not wanting to rush into, and go deep into some of the other scales at this stage. The self awareness piece is the, it's, it's the key that opens the door to everything. You know, it really is, it's sort of, it opens the floodgates. So it's about awareness and, and about the patterns of behavior that you're running and your awareness of those patterns of behavior. And in coaching we talk about the mirror work. We always talk about the mirror work. So look in the mirror first before you look at others.

Yeah.

And, and one of, one of the books that I recommend to people that I work with is Leadership and Self Deception, which is written by the Harbinger Institute. And they talk about Albert Semmelweis. So I don't know whether we've spoken about this. Joe, which is a professor back in the late 1800s. Now, interestingly, their mortality rates in his hospital were higher than anywhere else in Austria. And he couldn't understand it because he thought that his hospital was meant to be. You know, he was a professor. He looked at every aspect to try and nail down what was going on. You know, he looked at the nursing, he looked at other doctors, he looked at, you know, every procedure and all the incremental bits that the steps before, you know, and was trying to understand why their mortality rates was higher. He then went on holiday for two weeks and the mortality rates dropped significantly. So that he had to then start thinking, oh, this could be me. So it was actually him. He was doing all the autopsies and he was transferring disease from dead patients to live patients because he wasn't washing his hands. So when we've had this bout of COVID the biggest thing that they said you could do was to wash your hands, to, you know, to use the, the bacterial stuff to get the germs off. So that's how disease is transferred. So Covid, one of the biggest things we could all do was to actually wash our hands. And that came from Albert Semmelweis. Yeah, and that's fascinating. And what's fascinating about the book is it creates the awareness for the leader that actually, before you look at other people, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself the question, what am I doing or not doing that's creating this pattern of behavior in other people? So am I either doing this or not doing this? Before you start saying it's them, you know, or blaming, whatever.

Yes.

And the mirror work is really powerful. So the mirror work helps you then dive into your awareness and it enhances your wet. Your awareness. And I think you were going to talk about. Sorry, Joe.

Well, this, this just brings up the close relationship between self awareness and. And awareness of others. Yes, on our framework and paying attention to others. I mean, awareness to others is similar to what is a self awareness, but it's on others. So noticing the feelings, intuitions, noting what's going on for other people, paying attention to other people, and you could do that consciously. So I could notice somebody's tapping their finger on the table nervously and say, well, what's going on? What's going on for them? Are they a bit anxious or frustrated?

Yes.

And I mean, there's certain personality types that perhaps more aware of others, they're more noticing their environment, they're less internal. So some people may be better at self awareness because they've got more introverted awareness of what's going on for them, while other people are more oriented externally, so they pay attention to the outer environment. They're more observant naturally, so they might Be strong on that. But there's also an intuitive side to noticing others, sensing what's going on for them. So for example, Paul Ekman, who studied sort of facial features, emotional expressions, identified about 10,000 different facial micro gestures. Yeah, I mean there's no way you're ever going to remember. But the brain is hardwired to actually anticipate understand the facial expressions and what they mean. We may not know why we picked it up in that person. We can tell, oh maybe they're a bit worried or maybe they're not interested in what I'm talking about or maybe they want to, want to talk about something else. It's, it's that ability to sense intuitively that there's a part of the brain that does this instinctively if you like. And again it's probably just to, you know, keep us safe to, you know, and anticipate any risk or threat in the environment. So you know, an infant, a baby will automatically be able to read a parent's face very quick, very early on whether they're happy or sad or annoyed with us or whatever.

Yeah, very clever.

But there's different types of being aware of others. It's, you know, there's a conscious, there's the intuitive side and then there's the empathic side that we've mentioned already where you can actually sense other people's feelings. And as a coach I imagine Jim, you spend quite a lot of time, you mentioned earlier about moving away that from people that may bring you down. And that's probably if you're very empathic you're going to experience their feelings.

Yeah.

More than others might do. You won't necessarily ignore them.

No, you're right, you're bang on. And I do, I am a very sensing feeling sort of person says I do use my intuition quite a bit and actually I encourage people that I work with to use it more. So almost go on a fishing exhibit expedition. So around a team meeting I would get them to try and enhance their intuition by if you're sensing that with somebody then just ask or ask the question. You know, I'm sensing that maybe not everyone's on board with this or you know, I'm sensing maybe a little bit of unease here or confusion. So you know, so invite that, you know, so then you're getting feedback instead of just letting it go. You're then getting feedback in that situation, in that moment.

And it is something you can develop is that you know, you can become more tuned. I think we all have this intuition and capacity for empathy Well, I say all. There are some individuals who generally, you know, cognitively do really struggle with it. But we can improve the capacity to pick up on other people's feelings and just by, by, through self awareness. If I notice I'm feeling anxious, then maybe it's because people around me are nervous about something. And you know, if you want, you want evidence of that, you know, if you're, if you see people who've had a accident or hurt themselves or hit them, hit their arms and you wince in pain, that's empathy. Yeah. So if you experiencing what other people do, then, then you have got your demonstrating empathy.

And I know you were, you were going to talk about the, the feelings grid that I can share on screen with folks now if they're watching it on, on video. So this is Pluckett's feelings grid.

Okay.

I don't know whether you've got a copy of it there, Joe, but can you just talk us through the wheel of, you know, the different feelings? Because actually a lot of people don't necessarily label them. But that, that's part of the self awareness piece, isn't it? It's noticing the feeling, labeling it and thinking about it and then acting in a different way to change it. So, so maybe if you just sing out some of those, those different feelings that are on, on Pluckets.

Yeah, I mean there's, it's the great thing about. I mean, I, I don't know if it's pluck it or blue chick, but blue chick.

I don't know, my pronunciation is terrible.

I mean, he was one of several people who've explored sort of diff and come up with models and frameworks for different types of emotions. But generally they tend to say this the same thing, that we have some core underlying fundamentals between all humans, all cultures, all backgrounds. We all feel a certain amount of joy, sadness, fear, anxiety and so forth. But rather like the primary colors, you know, there's. The fundamentals are there, but you can blend them infinitely. You can get infinite number of different combinations.

Yes.

And I say the same with emotions. We can have all an infinite number of different feelings. And the more and more aware of those that we are, the better we are at dealing with them and managing them. But when we talk about feelings, you know, we're talking about different. We might be talking about emotions, which are things on this wheel, those different labels and our interpretation of those. We could be talking about our sort of physiological body so, you know, pain or tension which is going on inside of us, or we may Again, be going back to this sort of intuitive feeling, which is a sense of unease or hunch or gut feeling. And all of those are very important. I think what I really like about these models is they are an organized, they give a sense of organization of, of how emotions may be broken down. So we can describe emotions as being pleasant or unpleasant. Some people talk about them as being positive or negative.

Yes.

It's not a phrase I would choose because I think all emotions are useful. As I said earlier, you know, there's an evolutionary reason for why we, we have pain or we have fear or we have anger. Because it's informative.

Yeah, it's feedback, as you were saying. Yeah.

The worst thing we can do is not accept our feelings and ignore them or pretend that they're different from what they are.

And it's interesting as you say that because people do bottle them down, you know, they, they bottle them up. They don't. And that's when it gets into the conflict handling piece that you were talking about earlier where they bottle it up, bottle it up and then they go bang. They, it's got to go somewhere eventually or they create disease within themselves. So, you know, they're stressed and they're angry and you know, eventually they'll pop. You know, they've got to let the cork out some at some point.

So yeah, I mean, this is too much emotion. And not managing emotions can really interfere with our abilities. So, you know, interferes with our ability to think clearly, for example, or our cognitive capacity, our iq. Too much emotion tends to stop us accessing our ability to the higher cortex to work things out, to see fine grid. And we tend to become far more judgmental. Things are either right, wrong, it's like the categorical side to our brain.

Yes.

And it, and it, and it makes us more, more assertive, more judgmental in our decision making. So yeah, it narrows our awareness, focuses our attention, makes us more judgmental. And ultimately we make generally worse decisions. And most sort of thinking problems come about from too much emotion or not managing emotions effectively.

Yeah. It's interesting because you, you just reminded me of something that I do share with individuals is that it's best not to make a decision when you're not in a good space. So if you're in a, one of those moods that, and you're not happy, you're angry, you're frustrated, those thoughts, feelings will not help you make good decisions. So be in a space in a state mentally where you're in a good state, you make better decisions there. And And I think it, it speaks to what you just said there, which is you're more able to access your innovation, your creativity, etc, because you're, you're, you're in that higher space in the, in the brain where you can access it more readily. If you're, you're pushed down and negative, then you're not going to readily access your creativity, your innovation, etc.

Yeah.

And your thinking skills, you know, your thinking.

Yeah. So there's too much emotion. There's also too little emotion where you become disengaged, demotivated or bored. There's almost a, an up and down curve. The Yerkes Dobson performance arousal curve, we're told it is. But ideally you want to get an optimal level.

Yes.

Where you engage, focused, attentive. Too much actually creates anxiety and stress and too little creates disengagement and demotivation. So learning to get that optimal level. You're talking about athletes before as well. They've got to get themselves really focused but not burn up all their energy before they've jumped off the start line.

Yeah, of course, yeah. You know, the high adrenaline and, and then they burn out so that they've got it in reserve.

So emotions. Yeah, there can be the intensity and you've also got the positive. I was mentioning the positive or negative or pleasant or unpleasant. And the danger. With too many unpleasant emotions, it takes us down a negative spiral. We start seeing the world more negatively or we might perceive others more negatively. It's like having a looking through a lens that's clouded. It's not giving us a true present representation, true awareness of what's going on.

Yeah.

So I might become very blaming or critical of other people. Whatever it is they do, they seem to annoy me. Why is it every time I try and help you, you don't appreciate me? So the victim or the critic or I, I, you know, sometimes as a coach we try to help people really, because it's dealing with our own stuff. So I become over help like I become trying to help you with your problems so I don't have to look at my own stuff.

Yeah, no, completely. Yeah. That, that's a, that's a good pattern. It keeps you distracted.

So this is what's happening. When we get into this negative emotional mindset, our defenses are easily triggered.

Yes.

And then it, you know, we could become more demanding as, you know, we expect others to look after him. You know, you don't care about me, you don't love me enough, you don't do enough for me. So we're putting, it's all, it's all about pointing the finger externally towards other people rather than noticing them for myself. So emotions. Yeah. You've got the positive side, you've got the uncomfortable side and then you've got the different levels of intensity, sort of high strong emotions or less strong karma emotions. And if you put those two dimensions together, you get a matrix of four different types of emotion.

Yeah.

And I quite like that as an organizing model for understanding, you know, our feelings.

Yeah, no, it's clever. It's very clever. And, and being conscious of when you're in the quadrant that could lead to burnout, you know, where you're stressed, angry.

Frustrated, usually this is a type of, you know, cyclical. So, you know, in the workplace, people like us to be enthusiastic and energetic, which is a positive, positive pleasant. Emotions, which are high energy, but it's easy to overdo that. And that's when people move into the high energy, but it's not very comfortable. These are anxiety, stress, frustration, anger, possibly these emotions that they can be very productive but they tend to upset a lot of other people around us. And if you stay like that, if you stay in this stress level, in a high stress zone, it's not sustainable.

Yeah.

And this is when the energy levels drop. So you go down, sort of feeling tired and exhausted and as you mentioned, burnout emotivated.

Yeah. And. And then people then go for a coffee, a cigarette, sugar cravings, you know, to try and boost that, to enhance themselves feeling better about stuff.

I think the trouble is people try to go from this sort of low energy zone, angry, upset or disengaged, and they try to get back to the place they were before, which was feeling engaged and enthusiastic and so they give some artificial stimulant, but they haven't yet dealt with those emotions or where they've come from.

Yeah.

The place for this, and this is what I call the emotional intelligence zone is where it's low energy but positive, low, calm motions. You mentioned about the breathing and then a little bit more breathing. These kind of activities help calm the body, relax the brain, the mind and help us to think more clearly.

Yes.

And this is low energy, positive. It's calm, relaxed, thoughtful, reflective.

Yeah.

This is the, this is the mindful zone. This is the zone that's going to help you deal with the, this, the other side of the, you know, the red zone, if you like, that you've not been coping well with before. You go back to energized. What you don't want to do is Just jump back into that high energy and not have dealt with the stuff that's bringing you down.

It's interesting. I read a book many years ago called Feeling the Thinking Feeling Trap, or the Feeling Thinking Trap, I think it was called. It was written in the late 1800s. Really profound because it was actually really simple in its, in its way of trying to get you to become aware of the pattern typically we had. So I'll give an example which might, might help people think about this for a second. So New Year's resolution, want to get fit. So you set the alarm for 6 o' clock in the morning, new pattern of behavior and you, the alarm goes off six o' clock in the morning. It's, that's not normally the time you wake up, but so you, you wake up to that and you're feeling tired. So your feeling then drives your thinking, which is I'll just hit the snooze button or not today. So our, we've got to become aware of our feelings driving our thinking. So, so currently that's, that's happening for most of us on the planet. Our feelings are driving our thinking. We've got to reorder it the other way around. We, to be able to switch this and, and create a different pattern of behaviors. We've got to do the thinking to drive the feelings. So for example, go to bed at night thinking about, okay, well the alarm's going to go off tomorrow morning at six o'. Clock. I'm going to have my gym bag packed. I know I'm going to probably not feel particularly great, but I'm going to get out of. As you were saying, I'm going to get out of bed and get to the car and get to the gym or whatever it is that you're doing. So it's, it's reordering that. So doing the thinking about it before it happens.

So preparing.

Yeah.

Yourself mentally for that event.

Yeah, yeah. And I, and I love the fact that, you know, we talk about the model and how they interact and, and it's so true. So this is a us thinking about our feelings. So we've got to think differently if we want a different result if, if we want a different feeling. So it's the thinking that drives the. So we need to get control, take back control of our feelings by thinking about it and thinking about a different emotion or a feeling that we want.

Which I like that example of actually preparing yourself. So when you do have that automatic feeling in the morning, you've already prepared a habitual response which is almost like doing the behavior triggers a different action and a thought reaction. But if you thought about it prior, prior to the event, then you're, you're able to deal with it better. It happens.

And, and that's that. It does really sound so simple. Oh, okay. But actually it's so tricky. We then get back. Caught back into the feeling thing, you know, so we then get back into the feeling that drives the thinking. So if we're not feeling particularly great, as you were saying, it's. You can end up getting stuck. So you're not feeling great. So then other thoughts come into your mind so that. So you're not feeling great about yourself. So the thinking that you have is other. You bring in other mates to help that bad feeling feel even worse, which is a nightmare.

You could also address the feeling. And I suppose as a coach, sometimes we're dealing with people who are very highly aroused, highly anxious, upset, angry, and because of that there's too much emotion to actually think clearly. So they're unable to solve the problems that they've come to you with. So we are lending them our brain because we're hopefully calm, we can think things through, we're less involved. Of course, it's much easier when it's not us or our family and we can help them to work things through. So we're lending them our ability to think through the problem. But if we could help them, first of all, and I know a lot of, a lot of coaches go this way, is start by helping them to calm the emotional brain down in order to help them to use that innate resource of intelligence, of cognitive reasoning. And as you suggesting, the breathing activity or some kind of relaxation activity that helps them to slow down their feeling so they can re. Engage the thinking part and then start working through issues. Or more helpfully.

Yeah, there's a, there's a. One of the models that I've used many years ago actually, and he just reminded me of it is the slow model, which, which ultimately is what you want people to do, slow down. So the slow model is the S stands for stop. So when. So just stop. Just stop for a moment. And then the L is listen, listen to the thoughts that are going on. So, so, so stop, take a breath as you, as you, as you will do anyway, listen to what's going on. Then the O is organize your thoughts. So what, what are the thoughts? What are, what are the options that I've got here? So, you know, the O is organize options, basically. So, okay, so what are my options here? And then the, the W is way to proceed that you know, so what, what how do I want to proceed? What do I want to act on now? So it's just a really clever way of sort of thinking about it in terms of okay so stop. And the old, the old fashioned way. Our grandparents would have said just count to 10. You know so if you're angry just go over there and count to 10. You know it just stops you thinking about something. So it's a pattern distraction. Yeah. So count to tens or, or just take a breath. The breath is the, the most powerful way to become present again.

I like that as an acronym because often when we're anxious too much emotion we can't access all these wonderful techniques and things we've been taught to do because our brain, we don't have access to our higher cortex. We don't have access to those subtle clever things we used to know about. But we might just be able to remember something like an automatic acronym like slow and just do the first thing which is stop. And by the time you got to W, you're ready to start thinking again.

Yeah Joe, I think today we, we've pretty much recapped the self regard. Regard for others. I'm really pleased with where we've got to with regards to the self awareness and the awareness. So we've spoken a lot about self awareness but of course once you become good at and have mastered self awareness you can then become more aware of noticing that in others. So as you say the arrows go following the diagram the arrows go certain ways for, for a particular reason. So self awareness first and then become aware of others patterns of behavior and noticing it Also I had to have an internal chuckle earlier which I didn't mention which was the old classic body language courses that were big in the corporate world some years ago that they were sending sales reps on and other and leaders on to attempt to get to understand body language. You know and all this sort of stuff. You know it was really funny that and, and of course they, they are extremely helpful fall but also can be confusion confusing as well just because someone sat like this and you know I, I learned very early as a coach when I'm working with a team, someone sat with their arms crossed doesn't mean that they're disengaged. It just might be comfortable. So you know it's, it's a, it's about that. So I have to thank you again for being available and being able to discuss this because I know we're both passionate about it and I think hopefully the, our listeners will, will get that. But also I'm hoping that some of the gems that come up and they do bubble up, they bubble up in me and I'm, I'm hoping that they bubble up in you as well. This, this conversation, this dialogue is really, really helpful and, and I'm really grateful for you giving the time to discuss this. It's, it's been fantastic once again. So thanks ever so much Joe and thanks Jim.

It's been great. And, and it's also, you know, I'd say it inspires me just talking about these things and reminds me of a lot of thoughts, you know, areas I haven't maybe been focused on recently. So as I hope it will be for your listeners as well.

Yeah, no, perfect. Well, I look forward to speaking next week about the, some of the self management scales because I again, you know, people will be thinking about how to's so you know, if we can come back and that's what we'll be looking at. You know, some of the self management scales which are critical to help us manage ourselves more effectively. And I, I'm really keen to get into that because I'm, you know, I've had a real delight in talking about the self management scales, the emotional resilience, the personal power, the goal directedness. All those things are critical when we're trying to manage ourselves and navigate through life.

So yeah, yeah, and they take us back, you know, full circle to self regard and what we're discussing at the beginning because these are the doorway into develop any, any way of developing. So any of these aspects will help in for support your self regard. Fundamentally.

Perfect. Well, look, have a great weekend and look forward to catching up with you next week. Well, that's a wrap for this week's episode. Thank you for listening. Remember, remember to share and subscribe to the EI Guru podcast and if you have any questions, you can post them. Once you've subscribed, you can follow me on Instagram at the Eiguru and you can get more information from my website, theeiguru.com have a fantastic week. Bye for now. Neuroscience is backing this up. You know, if we're the, you know, if we're negatively wired, there's a higher chance of cancers and a whole load of other ailments. So it's being conscious of making sure that we're aware of our thoughts and, and what we're thinking and so that's where the awareness piece is, is so, so crucial. As you've said already it's, it's critical that we're conscious of. And, and I think the key to some of this, and I know we spoke about it last, last week, Joe is and, and it's pretty much most leaders that I've worked with over the last 20 odd years on, when I'm working one on one, the biggest thing they need, all of, all of them have needed to do is to slow down. So you know, we, we, we talk about taking a breath and becoming present. So slowing down to this moment now. I always think it's funny. I love it when people talk about multitasking. You, you can't do multi time. It's not, it's not possible to do. People would argue. Right. And I'm sure listeners are probably thinking yeah, I can multitask, but actually you're not fully present. If I'm not fully present now talking to you and I'm thinking about writing down some stuff or doing an email while I'm talking to you, I'm not fully present to you and to this conversation, I'm my, my brain's occupied by doing other stuff. So that's what I mean by we can't do mo. You can multitask but you're not fully present in either of those things that you're, you're doing.

Yes. So, so yeah, I mean continuing on with that, the relationship between the self awareness aspects of your behavior, it's going to impact on if you know, if you know some of the scales that come from the emotional intelligence profile. We talk about emotional resilience and if you're not aware of your feelings, it certainly helps if you notice your feelings sooner before they, you know, irritation becomes anger or a little bit of worry becomes great stress.

Yes.

So paying attention to your feelings earlier, it will help you develop your, your resilience and coping strategies. It'll help you in several other ways. Like if you were, you know, connecting with other people, forming relationships. We often form relationships by sharing ourselves, being open about ourselves. Not just cognitive thoughts or telling people what we've been doing, but sharing our vulnerabilities, sharing our feelings. Of course, if you're not aware of your feelings, it's quite difficult to make that connection. And some people don't literally don't pay attention to their feelings. So the conversation never gets to that level.

Yeah, they don't know how to articulate it.

No, it's, it's people who have fun, spontaneous emotional interrelationships that get closer. Trusting connections because you feel you know the person. If you want to build trust. And we mentioned, you know, awareness of others as well. If you, you know, it's, it's directly connected. If you want to build awareness of others. We need to put ourselves in other people's shoes.

Yes.

And if you can't, if you've never experienced those feelings or you can't relate to another person's, particularly when they're difficult feelings, you know, painful, you know, feelings of grief, sadness, worry, it doesn't mean you have to feel that way all the time. But it's certainly if you're helping somebody or coaching somebody is much better if you've got a sense of understanding, empathizing with them, if you like really feeling how they might have felt. So. And the self awareness as it is crucial to all aspects of emotional intelligence, it's also crucial to the relationship side scale. So you've got things like conflict handle, handling emotional expression, control, which sound very much to do with the relationships but actually if you're, if you're not noticing feelings early and they build up and up, they grow stronger and stronger, then it's going to end up impacting on other people.

Yes.

So you go from being quite passive or emotionally controlled, keeping everything tight and sooner or later it over, it, it over spills.

Yes.

And it, you become mostly under control or you become quite aggressive now that's impacting your relationships. But if prior to then you'd noticed it was going on inside of you, you had better self awareness then you wouldn't have got to the stage of it getting to the, you know, the. Too much side of the scale.

Yeah. Spilling into the relationship and the conversation that you're attempting to have. Yeah, it's, it's great. It's sort of like almost bubbles over and actually it's, it's, it's so interesting. It's the, it's the, the piece of this is the, the. And we'll get into the, the other scales perhaps in one of the next episodes because I think it's, it's important to. I, I, my, my goal is to help people understand this in, in a bit of detail. So hence the reason for not wanting to rush into and go deep into some of the other scales at this stage. The self awareness piece is the, it's, it's the key that opens the door to everything. You know, it really is, it sort of, it opens the floodgates. So it's about awareness and, and about the patterns of behavior that you're running and your awareness of those patterns of behavior. And in coaching we Talk about the mirror work. We always talk about the mirror work. So look in the mirror first before you look at others.

Yeah.

And. And one of. One of the books that I recommend to people that I work with is Leadership and Self Deception, which is written by the Harbinger Institute. And they talk about Albert Semmelweis. So I don't know whether we've spoken about this, Joe, which is a professor back in the late 1800s. Now, interestingly, their mortality rates in his hospital were higher than anywhere else in Austria. And he couldn't understand it because he thought that his hospital was meant to be. You know, he was a professor. He looked at every aspect to try and nail down what was going on. You know, he looked at the nursing, he looked at other doctors, he looked at, you know, every procedure and all the incremental bits that the steps before, you know, and was trying to understand why their mortality rates was higher. He then went on holiday for two weeks and the mortality rates dropped significantly. So that he had to then start thinking, oh, this could be me. So it was actually him. He was doing all the autopsies and he was transferring disease from dead patients to live patients because he wasn't washing his hands. So when we've had this bout of COVID the biggest thing that they said you could do was to wash your hands, to, you know, to use the. The bacterial stuff to get the germs off. So that's how disease is transferred. So, Covid, one of the biggest things we could all do was to actually wash our hands. And that came from Albert Semmelweis. Yeah, and it's fascinating. And what's fascinating about the book is it creates the awareness for the leader that actually, before you look at other people, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself the question, what am I doing or not doing that's creating this pattern of behavior in other people? So am I either doing this or not doing this? Before you start saying it's them, you know, or blaming, whatever.

Yes.

And the mirror work is really powerful. So the mirror work helps you then dive into your awareness and it enhances your wet. Your awareness. And I think you were going to talk about. Sorry, Joe. Well, this.

This just brings up the close relationship between self awareness and. And awareness of others. Yes, on our framework and paying attention to others. I mean, awareness of others is similar to what is a self awareness, but it's on others. So noticing the feelings, intuitions, noting what's going on for other people, paying attention to other people, and you could do that consciously. So I could notice somebody's tapping their finger on the table nervously and say, well, what's going on? What's going on for them? Are they a bit anxious or frustrated?

Yes.

And I mean, there's certain personality types that perhaps more aware of others, they're more noticing their environment.