Interview: Your Growth Superpower of Emotional Intelligence

Listen to Interview: Your Growth Superpower of Emotional Intelligence

00:01 

Well, hey there, everyone, I have a big treat for you today. I get so excited when I get to connect friends. So my friend Adam Bouse is here with us today. And if you're listening to this podcast, I consider you a friend because you're willing to sit and listen to me jabber at a microphone for hours on end and months on end. So we're friends. This is my friend Adam, and I'm so excited to make this connection today. You are going to learn a lot from him. We are going to be talking about emotional intelligence. This is the secret sauce, whether you're a man or a woman listening to this. Friends, I know some of you're been out there listening, and I'm so thankful you're listening as well. This is for everyone today, my friend Adam, is going to really help us understand a lot about emotional intelligence and your emotional quotient and how that can serve you and the people you love and serve as well. So, Adam, welcome to the podcast.  

01:00 

Thank you, Dana. I'm really excited for this conversation and just grateful for the, the opportunity to connect with you and with the, the people that you are serving, so, so well.  

01:09 

Yeah. Thank you. Um, I wanna go back a little bit. I'm thinking we met, oh my gosh, was it 2010 maybe 2011? Um,  

01:20 

Yeah, 2010 I think so  

01:21 

2010. Right. Okay. And we met, we both are, both, were living in Indiana at the time, and we had a, we were taking a flight to Oklahoma and as you know, uh, flight paths would have it work out. I think we had to go through Baltimore. Is that true? <laugh>?  

01:40 

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. The most direct route to, to Oklahoma is always through Baltimore, I think.  

01:46 

Yes, Oklahoma, man, I love it. I love living here, but I gotta tell you, there are very few direct flights anywhere. And for someone who loves to travel, it's a tiny burden to bear. I won't really complain about it, but it's funny 'cause we were experiencing that coming from Indiana trying to get to Oklahoma as well. And I think you and I first connected possibly over burrito bowls in, I think that's right. Yeah. Baltimore just getting to know each other and our, our shared passion for ministry and all things online and technology. And then of course, now you and I have both really grown in the coaching space, so, um, I'm glad we're friends. I'm proud of you, Adam. This is fun to have a chat today.  

02:24 

Uh, I appreciate that. No, it's been really fun to, to see the journey that we've both taken over the last 14 years now.  

02:31 

Yes, yes. Our kids have grown since then, and we've grown a little bit too. We're, we're a little bit wiser <laugh>, so I'm sure we'll have some nuggets somewhere here in this conversation today. <laugh>. Well, first I want to start by hearing your definition of what EQ is. Whenever we're talking about emotional intelligence, can you put some skin on those words? What does that really mean for us in our lives?  

02:53 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's definitely something that I think is continuing to evolve. Um, emotional intelligence as sort of an academic study has really only been around for about 30 years or more. Um, and there are different models and different language and different tools that people are using to sort of define it. And we can talk about that more the more, the more recent definition that I came across that I really love comes from an organization called The Leader Factor. And they describe EQ as being your ability to interact effectively with other humans, which I think is really interesting, right? Because at the end of the day, emotional intelligence does involve us as individuals, but also the relationships that we're in, whether that's yeah, in our personal life, in our church, in our work. And so really thinking through how skillful am I? What tools do I have, what resources do I have to both know myself and know other people, and then really build meaningful relationships.  

03:44 

So that's one definition. Maybe the one other thing I'll say here is oftentimes it's kind of defined by four buckets. So within emotional intelligence, there are, there's self-awareness. What do I, what can I know and see and observe about myself? And then how do I manage myself? And then there's a social component, how, what can I know and see and be aware of in other people? And then how do I manage my relationships with those other people? So really thinking through these, these components of self and other, and then also awareness in addition to the skills of managing what we know and what we observe.  

04:19 

Okay. So something's come to mind as you said, that I like to think a lot about in my own coaching practice about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? Like the idea of the, the clients I'm working with are coming to me with, um, circumstances or frustrations that are not things that were, you know, they've had their basic needs met, essentially they're beyond the first one, two, maybe three levels of concerns in their lives. And it starts to be relationship issues. It might be work issues or even self-care issues. And so we bring in a lot of level, try to bring in some self-awareness and things like that. What's interesting to me is, as you're talking about emotional intelligence, it's such a meta thing, right? Like, it's thinking about like trying to get a perspective on how we show up in our lives. So we have to step outside of ourselves, which I think God created is to be able to do that.  

05:10 

I think we're the only being he created that can do that. So it's a, it's a real superpower and it's something to really utilize. But you're saying we give our, we use the capacity that God gave us to step out of how we're functioning and being like, okay, this is how I'm coming across, or, okay, this is how I'm managing my relationships. And it actually empowers us to work through that hierarchy of needs, maybe in, um, a way that is not just trying to throw darts at a target and hope we hit something, but instead to be more intentional about that. Am I tracking with how you're expressing this?  

05:49 

Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. Sometimes I'll, I'll think about it as the observer part of me, right? I can, I can feel angry or I can experience sadness, but there's a part of me that seems to be outside of having that experience that goes, oh, I notice that I'm, my hands are starting to tighten up, that I'm sweating, that my heart is starting to race. I'm having that experience, but I'm also observing that experience at the same time. And so that ability to be self-aware, I do think you're right. I think that's unique to humans, and that is something that actually is foundational to our growth, to our development, to sort of our intentional way of showing up in the world. And it's not something that you just have it or you don't have it. It's, it's a skill. It's actually something that you can grow and develop.  

06:33 

Yes. And isn't that, that just like, that kind of like, makes the shoulders drop, like, okay, thank God I don't have to remain this way. I wanna point out something that you said about like, you know, I might feel a certain way, but I'm actually experiencing the emotion. Years ago when my kids were little, they both had some significant health issues and some developmental things we were struggling with. And I remember saying, I feel angry about the scenarios. And then also getting to a point where I considered myself an angry person. Hmm. And that broke my heart. Like I was so ashamed of that. I'm not ashamed of it now, because I realized, oh, I validated the fact that the things I was watching my kids go through, it was natural for me to experience anger about that. I didn't want them to have to face those scenarios.  

07:22 

However I experienced it. It didn't make me an angry person. And so to be able to step outside of that meant that I didn't identify as the emotion. I just, I like felt it, and it kind of passed through me. But even like giving myself the grace of, Hey Dana, if you lined up 10 moms that were in this scenario, they would feel angry about what their kids are having to walk through. And the irony of that, which maybe I don't believe in irony, but the irony in that was that the awareness that I was not an angry person, that I was experiencing some anger to process actually freed me up to become a much more engaged mom. And I think that's what we're talking about with the emotional intelligence. Like, okay, we get to see how we're coming across and that improves our relationships in a just a really cool way.  

08:11 

Yeah, absolutely. And I know identity is a, is something that you think about a lot about, and yes, it's really core to kind of how you move through the world and how you help other people move through the world. So even, even what we've talked about already, we've uncovered this, this tool, this, this ability to say, Hey, the language that I use is really gonna start to shape the way I see myself. So instead of saying, I am angry, maybe I'm gonna start saying, I feel angry, because if I am something, gosh, maybe I feel like I can't change that. It just is what it is. So it's, it's disempowering. If I say I feel angry, I'll go, oh, well, what's making me feel angry? And how else would I want to feel <laugh>? So now I've got options and I've got the opportunity to really be more intentional and, and, and have an influence and an impact on my experience and, and in my relationships and in my work.  

08:56 

Yes. And that's such an overlap with a lot of the, the energy leadership index work that I do with my clients. Like if we recognize, oh, wow, I'm giving my energy, I'm allowing myself to be drained by a circumstance that I can't actually change Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and shift that to the way I'm navigating my emotions around that scenario. And feeling empowered to take action or to at least show up differently means that it doesn't change the circumstance, but it changes our experience of the circumstance. And some people might hear that and think, oh, that's kind of wishy washy, but to me it's a matter of life and death <laugh>. Like, I can't change my circumstances, but to be able to experience them differently in an authentic way, right? Like, you're not telling me, Hey Dana, you have to feel this way about something. And I wouldn't tell you that. We wouldn't tell our clients that, but the invitation to feel different, that's, it's a pretty incredible thought. Like the invitation, yeah. I actually do wanna feel different <laugh> about a variety of circumstances, and then inviting that into that means that we can actually do that. I just think that's, it's life changing, really.  

10:06 

Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent agree.  

10:09 

So let me ask you, Adam, how would you, how would you say that Christian working women, women who are in the workplace, they love Jesus, they feel called to what they're doing, they love their families. How could they leverage the idea of emotional intelligence to manage their stress and really to, I don't love the idea of balance a lot, but to maintain a sense of presence, if you will, in their personal and professional lives?  

10:37 

Yeah. Well, first of all, I'll just acknowledge that I'm, I'm not a professional working woman, right? <laugh>. So, um, uh, I've, I've, I've, I've worked with professional working women. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> and I, I, I've, uh, definitely got perspective on what I, what I've heard, what I've learned, what they've taught me, what I've noticed more than anything, I think this applies to everybody, but I do think that, that women have a particular lens on this experience is that we all experience stress, we all have pressure. And the most foundational thing for everybody is to really see the stressful reality. Clearly what I mean by that is to not minimize or to exaggerate what the pressures are. So if we know that we're all gonna feel pressure, we're all gonna have stressful experiences, we're gonna have demands on our time and our attention and our energy. We do our dis ourselves a disservice if we're just kind of on autopilot in terms of assessing how important is this?  

11:30 

How much pressure is this? Gotcha. Where's the pressure coming from? And so really being able to see that stress clearly starts by saying, Hey, maybe even on a scale of one to 10, how stressful does this feel? Or how much pressure do I carry with me right now? Maybe it's an eight. Okay, wow. It's an I'm carrying an eight right now. Where do you think that sense of eight is coming from? Getting a clear picture on that then gives you the opportunity to bring the right resources to manage it to, to, to navigate the swings of energy and attention. But I think for women in particular, there is a pressure that is added to them that says, Hey, you need to do it all and do it without sweating and make it look easy.  

12:11 

Yeah.  

12:12 

Right. So I think that maybe the, the curiosity I would have and and your perspective is, is is definitely welcomed here is for women in the workplace today. Is there still a pressure to minimize how much stress and how much demand there is on your time and your energy and your attention? My guess is yes, there's a lot of pressure to minimize it and downplay it, which actually makes the stressful reality even more stressful.  

12:40 

Yeah, that's a great point, Adam. I hadn't thought of it this way, but I think really I've experienced scenarios where there's a pressure to minimize what's happening. And I'll, I have to go first and say, I've contributed to that pressure. I will make an assumption. Um, and really for me, the source of part of that has been like, I don't wanna come across as someone who doesn't have her stuff together, right? Sure. So I'm just going to act like it's fine and then figure out behind the scenes something to try to solve <laugh>, whatever the problem is. But when you said to minimize pressure that, or to minimize that, that is where the pressure is. I feel like the shift that has helped me when I lean into it is to mitigate the pressure to either get ahead of it or to communicate about it.  

13:24 

Like, Hey, I'm feeling some pressure here. Here's how I feel. What's your take on this? Because it also helps to get out of my head. I heard someone say recently, I think it was Brianna, we, she said, um, we tend to, um, we tend to call ourselves, A lot of us think we overthink when in fact we're not overthinkers, we're under thinkers, we aren't thinking critically. So if, for example, say there's a work scenario where you or I are feeling a lot of pressure, we might just ruminate on it about how much pressure there is, how much stress there is. Instead of that taking it to a scaling question like you did, you know, on a scale of one to 10, how much pressure are you feeling? That's actually the critical thinking that gets us out of the downward spiral and instead gets us towards, okay, we can mitigate this.  

14:09 

We can't get rid of all the pressure, and we, I don't think we actually want to, I need a little bit of pressure to get off my butt, let's be honest. <laugh> Yeah, sure. I need a little bit of pressure. But there is kind of this midpoint where it's like, uh, oh, there's so much pressure, I feel like I can't take action, and then I'm overwhelmed. And then there are so many knots to untangle that I either self-sabotage or I get to a point where I'm not able to put out the kind of product I want to, or I might get the results I want, but I'm not present. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I'm not engaged. I miss out on the relationships, the people that are around me that I love so much. And so it's a win, but it's a little bit of a false win. Like, it's not really what my heart was looking for to happen.  

14:52 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the things that, that, that, that is shown in the research is that women tend to score higher on emotional self-awareness. They, they tend to just be more skilled at it. And this isn't necessarily a debate about how much that is nature versus nurture and socialization. Sure. But reality is, is right now, based on our understanding of the science, women tend to be better at emotional self-awareness. What am I feeling? You know, what's the feeling that I'm having? And there's a challenge that comes with that of, now that I'm so aware of what I'm feeling, what do I do with that? Whereas men might tend to have the experience of lower emotional self-awareness, they're not quite as bothered in general, I'm stereotyping here a little bit. Sure. Okay. They're not as, they're not as, they're not as bothered by some of that fear or that anxiety or that frustration that might be bubbling up in them, but they're just not aware of it.  

15:41 

And so they don't feel like they have to manage it. They can be a little bit more clear on what they are experiencing, and they can, they can talk about it because they're like, oh, yeah, I, I feel fine. I feel comfortable. So it's an interesting kind of experience and, and I'm, I'll even put myself out there and say that I tend to score more in line with what the average woman would score on an emotional intelligence assessment. And so, in a lot of ways, like I, I experience that sense of like, gosh, I'm really in tune with what I'm feeling. And sometimes that becomes the barrier to action. Yeah. Okay. And so I end up in some ways going the other direction. Sometimes I will exaggerate how hard something feels, oh gosh, this feels impossible. I start catastrophizing. And it's because I feel those emotions really strongly, but I'm not really, like you said, bringing in the critical thinking to really assess and say, Hey, scale of one to 10, where am I at? How important is this? What's at stake right now? So I get sort of hijacked and I don't see that stressful reality. And I think that's something that, again, anywhere you, anyone where, where anyone falls in terms of their, their identity, we're gonna have these, we're gonna have these temptations, we're gonna have these tendencies to either minimize or to exaggerate. And for everybody, the, the key skill is how can I be more self-aware and make sure that I'm sort of testing reality to see things clearly?  

17:04 

Yes. Oh, that's so good. That's so good. Because sometimes we unintentionally create our own reality <laugh>. Yeah. Like the result we get is what we sometimes what we think it's going to be, uh, like we are moving in that direction and we don't realize how much we are impacting for better or for worse the outcomes that we're moving towards. You set a question. I love this question, Adam. I'm gonna like, I'm actually gonna write this down. And the question is, what's at stake here? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I think that forces us with that critical thinking with not overthinking, but really thinking properly about a scenario instead of ruminating. What's at stake here allows us to identify the key stakeholders, right? Um, but also our values. A lot of times personally, in my, my life and women I coach, whenever they feel stuck, it's because they're either ignoring a value that's kind of screaming over here in the back of their brain, like, Hey, have you forgotten about me?  

17:58 

And they don't wanna speak up about it, or they might be making a decision towards that value, but it's going to make it so that they can't do any people pleasing anymore. And that's hard, you know, every now and again, we draw a line in our lives and we're not separating ourselves from people, but it might feel like that because we've made a decision that isn't exactly what they want us to do. So that question, what's at stake here really leads me into what I wanna ask you next, and that is about how can, what role does emotional intelligence play in our decision making, you know, for our leadership skills, whether it's in the workplace or our family, the idea of recognizing what's at stake here is a beautiful question when you're moving towards making a decision. So how does emotional intelligence play along with decision making?  

18:41 

Yeah, it's, yeah, there, they're so connected, you can't separate them really. Um, and a lot of the neuroscience and the research that's coming out in recent years really says, gosh, if we look at it from a brain and behavior standpoint, it's really hard to tell where an emotion stops and a thought starts.  

18:59 

Oh, interesting.  

19:01 

And so we actually can't make decisions without emotional information mean they've, they've seen people who've had brain injuries, or they've had some sort of deficiency in their neurology. And the people who have lost the ability to express and feel their emotions to be aware of a physiological emotional experience, they really struggle, even on the most simple decisions, it may take them hours that for you, or I would take a few seconds to make a decision again, because the emotional data is missing. Um, one of my favorite studies of all time, I'm gonna nerd out here just for a minute. Oh, I love it.  

19:32 

Do  

19:32 

It. Please. One of my, one of my favorite studies, uh, this is the title of the study. Uh, it says, being emotional during decision making, good or bad, an empirical investigation, <laugh>, it's just like the most brilliantly crafted of like, okay, let's talk about it. That is a should be emotions, a rich title.  

19:47 

Yes.  

19:47 

Yeah. And I, it, it's hilarious that it ends with saying an empirical investigation. Like, we're gonna think hard about this. Um, and it's from Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. Um, she's a, she's an emotions researcher, and she's, she's fantastic. I highly recommend, um, her, her resources and her books. But here's kind of the, the takeaway, and I'll, I'll read these two sentences here, uh, of what they've found in this study. Contrary to popular belief that feelings are generally bad for decision making, we found that individuals who experienced more intense feelings achieved higher decision making performance. Moreover, individuals who were better able to identify and distinguish among their current feelings achieved higher decision making performance because of their enhanced ability to control the possible biases induced by these feelings.  

20:36 

Ah, okay. Wow.  

20:38 

So here, yeah. So I, here's how I would interpret that instead of trying to eliminate emotion, so we can just be purely rational thinkers, we actually need to acknowledge that we can't eliminate emotions. And so therefore, the people who are more aware of what they're feeling can use that data in helpful ways that, that I wanna move towards something, or I wanna move away from something. But it also gives us the ability to go, Hey, you know what, sometimes our emotions aren't very accurate, they're not very helpful. And so now I can actually be aware of how my emotions might be moving me towards something that's actually not a good decision. Hmm. So it's really powerful, again, to come back to this idea of self-awareness, especially emotional self-awareness, so that I can start to tap into the wisdom of, oh, that, that when I feel that I know that that's a good sign that it's moving me towards what's gonna be healthy and beneficial. Yeah. But when I feel this, I know that maybe that is something that's just trying to get me out of the situation that's trying, I end up trying to eliminate the feeling rather than actually solve the problem. Yeah.  

21:40 

Yes.  

21:40 

So having that awareness is crucial.  

21:43 

That is so relatable. And I think the wanting to eliminate a feeling requires us to say, okay, when have I felt this before? What did I do last time? Well, I also, last time I escaped and I didn't get the lesson, or last time I escaped and I didn't get the, I don't know, pay raise, or I didn't get to say the thing that was on my mind in the meeting, or I didn't have that conversation. That was a little bit difficult with a loved one because I felt that feeling and I escaped it. And I think it's like thinking biologically about how God wired us. You know, the feelings are messengers. They're not threats. I think that's something I really had to figure out. Um, I didn't figure out until probably my thirties. I want my kids to understand that so much younger than I did.  

22:28 

And I want all my clients to understand that because it's like, oh, this is not actually threatening. I'm not gonna die when I allow myself to really feel the embarrassment, you know, you and I run coaching businesses, putting yourself out there causes a variety of emotions, sometimes all within one minute, <laugh>. And, and we're curious, especially if you have high emotional intelligence, you can start getting curious about how others might perceive things. That does not serve me well. So I have to really capture the thoughts, but also allow those emotions to pass through, because then I can take a beat and then actually take the action. Like the emotion may or may not, the feeling may or may not be believable. Right. It may or may not be true. It's just how I'm used to responding to something. And I just love that we're able to, like, I noticed, um, I think it was in 2016, the first time I realized when I was holding myself back in work meetings or in conversations that felt like there wasn't as much harmony as I wanted, I noticed that I began breathing shallow, and like my stomach would get tight.  

23:33 

And for me to recognize there's a physiological response I have, when that emotion passes through my body is like, oh, the only thing I have to do is take a deep breath, and then I can actually get back to where I'm at. It didn't change the circumstance, but I could show up more present because I didn't bury the feeling and got to have the conversation or say the thing, and I didn't die. You know, I didn't lose all my friends or go to hell or anything else. So I think just the, that sounds dramatic, but it's true. Like, I have had different emotions over my life keep me from engaging in things that God was inviting me to. And so my perception of feeling that emotion is what I allowed to keep myself from breaking through in some things that were really important to me. So I think it's amazing thinking about the capacity between, you know, that feeling or emotion turning into a thought, and where exactly does that happen scientifically? Fascinating.  

24:32 

Yeah. Well, I think you bring up so, so many good things. Um, 1, 1, 1 thing that's standing out to me in particular is just the reminder of like, yeah, we are a, we are a brain antibody. Like it's all part of the same system, right? Yes. Yeah. So noticing what's going on in my hands? What's going on with my feet? How are my shoulders? What's my breathing like? Again, for some people that feels wildly out of the ordinary. Like I would, I never do that. Right? I, I would say get curious and see what you start to notice, right? Yeah. It's just really being observant. Again, it's that observer posture of, huh, I wonder what's going on in me right now. <laugh>. Um, and just really starting to take some mental notes, maybe even writing down some notes and just observing, gosh, I've noticed that actually my breathing gets really shallow for like the 10 minutes before I go into a meeting.  

25:15 

I wonder if there's anything that I can do that will change that experience if I don't like it, or if I wanna to, to, to show up in a different way. How is my shallow breathing impacting my meeting versus if I do some mindful breathing for a couple minutes Mm-Hmm. What do I notice about how I show up in the meeting after I try that? So it is, it is this curiosity, I think that is at the core of all of this. And, and one of the skills, maybe the, the foundational skill within the emotional intelligence models that I've worked with, they're all really important. But I think the one that is like most foundational is just empathy. And I define empathy as being understanding without judgment. There's a lot more complexity to it than that, but I'm bringing that up because we also have to practice empathy for ourselves.  

25:57 

Yes. I wanna come in and understand what's going on in here, what, what's going on in my thoughts, what's going on in my mind, what's going on in my body? And I wanna observe it without judging it, because if I judge it, then like there's parts of me that I, I like or I don't like, and all of a sudden I'm, I'm trying to push that away, or I'm trying to change it. And in reality, it's like, yeah, maybe you do need to change some things. Maybe there's some things that you do want to do differently because it's not serving you well. But my, my encouragement would be really slow down and give yourself space to understand without judgment for a little while before you make any decisions about what parts of you are serving you or not serving you.  

26:36 

You know what, that is so helpful. I think that's really a huge, like a practical strategy that women can walk away with today. Like, I'm gonna be curious and I'm gonna have empathy for myself that the curiosity and judgment, really, generally, we don't want those like coexisting or dancing together in our brains. We, we want to say, okay, I recognize there's some judgment here. Let's bring in the curiosity and kind of flesh that out a little bit, if you will. So what would be an example, Adam, of a question that maybe you would ask yourself? Let's say you were in a particularly stressful scenario, keeping in mind, I think what you said is, we don't wanna be impulsive. Like the tendency is almost to escape the emotion. That's what I'm hearing you say. So if the tendency is for us to escape an emotion, you are saying, uh, bring empathy to it and have empathy for ourselves, what would be maybe a question you would ask yourself? How do you kind of walk through that?  

27:32 

Yeah. Really, what I've been working on for years, um, is just the idea of being really specific in noting what emotion am I feeling right now? Um, the, the technical academic term would be emotional granularity. Okay. Most people have a vocabulary of emotions that are like, I'm feeling happy, I'm feeling sad, I'm feeling okay. And it's not that those are bad words, it's just that they're, they're kind of flat. Like they don't give us mu much texture. And I can, I can love pizza and I can love my wife and I can love God, right? But like, I clearly mean different things, <laugh>, even though, like I might be saying I love all of them. So emotional granularity or getting really specific is like, well, I feel sad. Okay, well, what flavor of sadness am I feeling today? Hmm. My feeling, my feeling depressed. Am I feeling lethargic?  

28:18 

Am I feeling despondent? Am I feeling despair? It's not that everybody needs to have these big fancy words, but it's like, how do you describe the uniqueness of what I'm feeling right now? Because not only does that enable me to be clear about what I'm feeling, it gives me the opportunity to start to understand, oh, when I feel, when I feel depressed, here are things that are most helpful. Versus when I feel despondent, there might be a slightly different set of tools or ways of caring for myself that I want to use. So really getting clear about what is it that I'm feeling, how does that show up in my body? I think it, again, it all starts with the self-awareness, getting really specific, really clear, and also giving yourself permission to experience ambivalence. And this is a word that for a long time I thought, ambivalence, that just means I kind of don't care. It's kind of up in the air, like whatever. I'm ambivalent about it. But it turns out the word ambivalent means to experience more than one emotion at the same time.  

29:15 

Ah,  

29:16 

Okay. And we, as humans, we experience more than one emotion at the same time. Think about the word bittersweet. Right? Right. That's like the clearest example. I can, I can feel a sense of sadness and a, a sense of happiness or positivity, and I can feel them at the same time. So in this practice of emotional granularity, getting specific about what is it that I'm feeling, really giving myself permission to go, Hey, you know what? There's 20% of me that feels kind of excited. There's like 45% of me that feels nervous, and whatever percentage is left, 'cause I'm not, math is not my thing. Uh, the other, the rest of that is like, gosh, I'm, I'm feeling a sense of regret. Now I can get even more curious about, okay, what's leading to all these different things that are going on with me, within me? And what Lisa Feldman Barrett, I referenced her earlier. What she has, has really defined is that when we experience a multiplicity of emotions, we experience a a lot of different emotions at the same time, we tend to go up into our head Mm-Hmm. And we tend to generalize it as I feel anxious.  

30:15 

Ahuh. Okay. That is fascinating because that definition of ambivalence, that's huge to me because I think before right now, I would've defined ambivalent. And I do like to try to understand what the emotions are. I do have the emotion wheel. Yeah. I pull the thing out and just look at it and go, no, that's not it. Usually by process of elimination, like, okay, where am I sure to really try to understand and get it as granular as I can. I love that you shared that, um, emotional granularity term with us. But I think I would've thought until this point that ambivalence is almost like a passive experience. Like, I don't feel anything about it, or I choose not to engage. But I can see that when we have a bunch of emotions that are kind of coming at us at once, we come across as ambivalent. And that's the experience of being ambivalent, because it's like, don't make me choose. I feel them all, you know, <laugh> like, yeah,  

31:10 

I'm  

31:10 

Feeling them all. And the second I process one, this other one comes up. Um, that's fascinating.  

31:16 

You know? Yeah. And I think there are some gender differences that can show up in this too. Um, okay. Someone who's experiencing a lot of emotions all at once for, and, and again, stereotyping and generalizing, everyone's unique and different, but generally speaking, women are gonna tend to translate that as a, an experience of anxiety. Gosh, there's something going on. There's something lurking around the corner. I'm not sure what it is. I just kind of feel on edge. Whereas men tend to respond with a feeling of anger, right? I just wanna like solve it. I wanna fix it, I wanna push through <laugh>. And again, it's not that, it's not that either of those is necessarily a bad approach. It's just the question is, is it, is it helping you? Is it serving you? More often than not, probably not. And that's why really being able to understand what's creating this sense of anxiety, what's creating this sense of anger, chances are there, there are a couple different emotional experiences going on underneath that want to be acknowledged, want to be understood, and want to be experienced in some way, shape, or form.  

32:08 

Yes. That's so huge, you know? Um, a couple years ago, you know, my daughter, she came to Chris and me and she was like, Hey, <laugh>, we're a high feedback family. So she <laugh> she was like, Hey, knowing it was a safe place to say this, she was like, we are good. But in our home, I have noticed that when someone is mad or upset or hurt, our immediate response is to try to fix it. I would like for us to be able to sit with feelings more, you know, outta the mouth of babes, right? Like, when your kids start raising you, it's like, dang, she really got me there. And she was so right. I didn't see it like that was, it was self-awareness that I lacked. Um, because we lovingly want to solve things, right? If my kids or my husband or my clients actually with my clients, I don't solve their problems so much.  

32:58 

I help them solve it. But with our loved ones, it's easier to be like, oh, I wanna erase the pain for you. Yeah. I don't want you to feel this discomfort. Let's fix this immediately, which can communicate that I don't value what you're feeling, or I don't trust you to solve that, or I don't actually care that you're feeling that way. I just wanna fixed for you. It might even on the worst of days, come across as I'm fixing problems, not staying in relationship with a person. Yeah. So the idea of learning to sit, so actually Chris and I met with someone for a while, met with a counselor for a while to be like, Hey, we wanna practice. What does that look like to sit with our loved one's frustrations and not try to fix it for them? How do we love them differently?  

33:38 

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> the irony of that is you can't practice those things and not learn to sit with your emotions more as well. So we were like motivated to do it for our kids and for our family, but we're like, oh, now we're learning how to do this even more for ourselves. 'cause as adults, you know, we're still hopefully growing and learning till the, the last day of our lives. And so I think what you're sharing about, like, I want to help the people I love escape that ambivalence, escape the barrage of emotions, but actually I can sit with them through it, and that improves the relational aspect of those people in my life who matter so much to me.  

34:13 

Yeah. Well, a lot of this ties back to that, that idea you had pulled out, right? Of impulse control. Mm-Hmm. And, and what I would add in here to what you're sharing now, even too, right? Is that sometimes sitting with someone else trying to solve it and fix it comes from a good place. And sometimes it's like, I feel uncomfortable with you being uncomfortable. Mm. Right? Yes. And so again, it's that sense. Most people think of impulse control, and this is like a, a discreet skill within the emotional intelligence assessment that I use. Impulse control often is thought of like, well, people just don't think, and I just jump in and do the thing. And usually we think of that in a negative context of like, spending too much money or eating too much food or whatever it might be. But I do think that for a lot of people, impulse control can also show up in terms of, gosh, other people sharing their emotions or other people being sad or other people being frustrated with me, I need to do something immediately to fix it, to solve it, to make it go away.  

35:08 

'cause it's not the problem that I'm actually focused on. It's my own feelings about the problem or about the circumstance. So I think you're, I think you're absolutely right in that bringing that sense of wanting to understand, wanting to be with it, to having that empathy. It's something that's really easy to overlook, especially because there's a lot of pressure in our culture to be fixers, to be solvers, to be action oriented. Yes. And those aren't bad things. Those aren't bad things. They just have a place and a time where they're most helpful. And you know what, if someone else is going through something challenging, we actually aren't the best person to know what they need in that moment, which is why questions like, Hey, how can I best show up for you right now? What, what are you looking for as you're sharing this story with me? How can I show up for you right now? Do you want me to listen? Do you want me to come up with some ideas? Do you want me to make some recommendations? What is it that you're looking for? And how can I be a best service to you?  

36:05 

Yes. Oh my gosh. And we could talk about this forever, couldn't we? Like, as, as we're talking about this and how emotional intelligence can help us build stronger, more authentic relationships, both at work and at home, it reminds me of how, you know, like you had said, like, we are fixers, I think, especially in the West, right? Sure. In America in particular, it's like, oh, you know, I see a problem, I am gonna fix it right away. And that can actually, in a negative sense, help us build up inauthentic confidence. Like, oh, I'm a problem solver. I look for problems everywhere. Well, what if I was a person who loved people first, but I also helped them solve problems? Or maybe we didn't solve all the problems and we were able to shift how we think. And it, what it makes me think of is when Chris and I first moved to London in, um, 2007, we were at church one Sunday morning and they had, you know, like a long kind of session where people would chat before church and after church you would chat.  

36:59 

And it was very relational, a little bit different than what we had experienced in the states. And there was a point where they would have a break in the service and someone would just get up and share about their lives. And we were kind of like, what the heck is happening? This feels like very off program. What's happening here? You know, us Americans being all stiff and set in our ways with church. And a guy got up who wasn't on staff at the church, he just attended the church. And he was like, I wanna tell you about, and he was telling about a conversation he had with a friend at work earlier in the week. And what he said was, he said, and this happened during elevens. I was like, what is elevens? I love words. I think Adam, you love words. And I'm like, what the heck is elevens?  

37:37 

So I literally went up and asked him after church like, Hey, this is not in my language. What does that word mean? And he was like, oh, well, in our culture, we stop around 11 every day and we have like, you know, a mug of tea and a biscuit together, and they walk away from their work and they hang out and they just chat and they don't talk about work, by the way, essentially, by and large, they're just decompressing. And at first, I have to admit, I was a little bit like, well, you're not working like this is paid work time. This isn't your lunch. What is this? I didn't have a place in my brain for that. But the emotional intelligence and the empathy for self and others behind stepping away from a desk really has stayed in my mind, you know, 15 years later.  

38:22 

And even to where I take breaks between seeing all my clients, I see one less client a day than I could now in my schedule, so that I have the time in between to properly process what they've shared with me so that at our next session I'm prepared to step in and start that conversation in a great place, but also so that I am able to show up for the following client in a way where I've processed what I did before. That is my interpretation of the elevens. And I love the example of that because I will also stop, I will go for a walk, I'll walk the dog. I might have coffee with my husband, but I'm doing something that is not work at all, so that my brain has a break to actually show up and feel the emotions instead of letting them stack up over the day and then collapsing at five 30 going, man, I felt a lot today. I just want to ignore it all.  

39:12 

Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. I was just leading a, a workshop last week on the topic of resilience, and one part of that, that model in that workshop is really talking about rest and recovery. And one of the points that we make in the workshop is really identifying that just because you've stopped work doesn't mean that you started recovering  

39:30 

<laugh>. That's great points. So true. Yeah, so true.  

39:34 

So the practice of having the mug and having the mug of tea and having a biscuit, uh, what, you know, for me it's going out in my backyard in between coaching sessions and just spending a few minutes in the garden, or, you know, playing fetch with the dog. If I'm mindful about that, if I'm intentional about that, it's actually recovery. It's, it's, it's not just stopping work, it's actively recovery and restoring the mental and emotional energy that I need to continue on through my day. And we need practices like that in our day and our week and our month and our year. And this is also emotional intelligence. It's understanding how do I work and what is restoring to me, what is re what, what is revitalizing to me? And not just being sort of in that mindless state of moving from one thing to the next, one zoom meeting to the next Zoom meeting one segment of life to the next segment of life, but having these intentional pauses, mindfully considering what's actually gonna fill me back up? What's gonna restore me? What's gonna keep me in this space where I have something to offer?  

40:31 

That's such a beautiful way you described it, Adam, because I think literally, you just gave me two pictures in my mind. One picture is this is the path towards burnout, and the other picture is this is the path towards sustainable work. And I'm not trying to make it black and white. I mean, I, I'll admit, I sometimes, you know, waffle between the two paths. Sure, I have a tendency to love to overwork, but the ability to rest to Sabbath, if you will, to take breaks in between clients and to actually see less clients, so I can be most present for the ones I do get to see same as you. We are able to create habits that support us in being present and, um, living fulfilling lives so that we're not maybe even, you know, thinking a lot about, oh, someday this will be amazing, but actually I love the life I've built right now. So much I'm experiencing God in that I'm loving the people I get to do life with, that it doesn't create a sense of us needing to rush to move towards the bigger better that we seem to think is out there.  

41:32 

Yeah. I, I don't know where I picked up this saying, if you know where I got it from, please let me know <laugh>, uh, but I, I have become a, a huge advocate of the saying that enough is a decision, not an amount.  

41:45 

Oh, so good. Yes. Oh, I  

41:47 

Love that enough. Is a decision, not an amount. And so in the course of a day, am I being intentional to decide what enough is? Because the reality is, is in all of our lives, there's an endless amount of things that we could be doing, working on attending to. Yeah. Fixing, adding. Right. And again, a lot of that's gonna come from a good motivation. The challenge is, is that nothing in nature operates at a hundred percent, 100% of the time.  

42:16 

<laugh>. So true. So true. But we expect that of ourselves.  

42:20 

We do, we do. And so it is emotional intelligence. It is a skill to develop, to be able to say, Hey, I know I've got 10% left in the tank, and I know that recovery will be a lot better if I stop now than if I stop when I get to zero.  

42:36 

Love that. Well, Adam, we've talked about like broadly emotional intelligence, what it is, how we can use it and learn from it, grow from it in our workplace. We've talked about relationships, now I wanna talk about our spiritual connection. In your experience, what would you say, in your opinion, how can developing emotional intelligence actually contribute to a deeper spiritual connection with God? What does that look like in our lives?  

43:00 

Yeah, it's such an important question. Uh, maybe the most important question to, to really reflect on and think about in my experience and in my view of my relationship with God right now, and where, where I think just we are in the world is just acknowledging that the only real way that we can experience God is through, is through our, our own experience, right? I can't experience God through someone else's experience. I have to have that experience through me, right through what I'm seeing, what I'm feeling, what I'm hearing, and bringing that into that relationship with God. So if I am able to practice self-awareness, I can understand what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, what my drives are, where my inspiration comes from, where my gaps and weaknesses and challenges are. If I know what those are, I can more freely bring them into that relationship with God.  

43:52 

If I don't know myself, I'm not sure that I have much to bring to God. I have, I don't have much to put at his feet and say, Hey, <laugh>, what should I do with all of this? Right? I, I, I do wanna read a quote. There's a, a, a fantastic book called The Gift of Being Yourself. It's by David Benner. Um, I, I love, I love it. It's a great reflection, um, from a Christian perspective on things like emotional intelligence and the Enneagram and things like this. But he says, he says this, knowing God and knowing self are interdependent. Neither can proceed very far without the other. Paradoxically, we come to know God best, not by looking at God exclusively, but by looking at God and then looking at ourselves, then looking at God, and then again, looking at ourselves. This is also the way we best come to know ourselves. Both God and self are most fully known in relationship to each other.  

44:52 

Wow. I love that. That's so good. And it's so, um, it's so really interesting to think about, right? Because we don't worship ourselves yet we are God's creation. Sure. So the more we understand him, the more we can hopefully see him in us. And the more I understand the way he wired me, the more I can actually live in a way that draws me closer to him, but also leads me to worship him and to want to honor him with my life that he has given me. That's a incredible, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put that on my book list. That sounds like an amazing book.  

45:22 

Yeah, there's, there's, it's really rich, a lot of great, great things to draw from. You know, I think at the end of the day, um, we live in a culture that definitely, uh, is right now in a season of saying, Hey, know yourself, study yourself. Take this assessment, take that assessment, <laugh>. Yeah. I love a good assessment just as much as the next coach, right? So, yep. Um, I'm not anti assessment. I, I use them, I leverage them for myself and for my clients all the time. And if we only spend time looking at ourselves, we all of a sudden have an overinflated sense of, yes, our importance of our centricity, of our, maybe even of, of our value to other people. And on the flip side, if we only study theology, if we only think about God, if we only come to really just say, Hey, it's not about me.  

46:08 

I'm gonna deny myself. I'm just gonna do, you know, all these things that God is about, it's like, well, all of a sudden I actually lose the ability to grow and develop because I'm only doing the things that I think God wants me to perform at. And I've stopped being open to what he's trying to cultivate in my specific life. Yes, we are part of a community, and I, I think we can at times, again, over-emphasize individuality within certain faith traditions. Yeah. But I think I have to, I think working towards a full integration of know thyself and know God, I think that's actually where the richest opportunities, both for worship and for growth come from.  

46:47 

Oh, that is so good. I think that is gonna have to be our stopping place because wow, I mean, what a, what a beautiful perspective you've brought to us, Adam, your, I know your heart has been around this kind of work for years and years and years since I've known you for sure. And, and no doubt well before, but I just wanna say to you as a friend, I think the incredible work that you're doing is a reflection of the quote that you just shared. It's a reflection of your belief that I'm gonna do the due diligence to understand myself, and I'm also in invested in knowing God and spending time with him and taking that back and forth approach to both of those so that I don't become self inflated, but also that I can know God more and bring him glory. So thank you for your example on that. Adam, before we wrap up today, I want you to tell all of us where is the best way to connect with you? How can we find out more about your business? Optimistic Coaching?  

47:40 

Thanks, Dana. I've, I've really appreciated this conversation. It's been, it's been a lot of fun. Um, awesome optimistic coaching that is my coaching business. And so, um, you can find that online optimistic coach, uh, is the website, uh, also on Instagram. You can find me on LinkedIn. Um, and always happy to connect with people and have conversations. Just this past weekend, I went to a farmer's market to talk about nature-based coaching <laugh>, and what does it look like to get out into nature and use that as, as an environment for provoking new ways of seeing and thinking so much like you, I'm in, I, I'm, I'm in for trying new things and experimenting, but fundamentally for me, it's about helping people grow and thrive. And I think everybody deserves the chance to do that and to be their whole self.  

48:20 

Awesome. Thank you, Adam.  

48:22 

Alright, thanks Dana.