
Joshua Freedman
#13: Emotional Intelligence in Action: Transforming Leadership with Joshua Freedman
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Joshua Freedman explores how emotional intelligence (EI) can redefine leadership. He highlights the importance of self-awareness, empathy, and connection in building trust and fostering collaboration. Through real-world examples, Joshua provides practical tools for integrating EI into daily leadership practices to achieve extraordinary results. Access the show notes for this episode at: https://www.cameronnorsworthy.com/flow-unleashed
ABOUT THE GUEST
Joshua Freedman
Joshua Freedman, a leading expert in emotional intelligence (EQ), is the co-founder and CEO of Six Seconds, a global nonprofit dedicated to EQ education. A Master Certified Coach, he has over 25 years of experience helping organizations like FedEx, Microsoft, and the United Nations improve leadership, innovation, and employee well-being through EQ.
Author of *At the Heart of Leadership* and five other books, Joshua also created six validated EQ assessments and leads the world’s largest study on emotional intelligence. He teaches at Columbia and Antioch Universities, empowering professionals worldwide with practical EQ tools to create meaningful change.
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SHOW NOTES / RESOURCES
Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee
Emotional Agility by Susan David
TRANSCRIPT
Unknown Speaker
Flow unleashed. Unleashed, unleashed.
Cameron Norsworthy
Do you ever find that your emotions confuse you or get the better of you?
Welcome to flow unleashed. I'm Dr Cameron Norsworthy, scientist and high performance coach to multiple world champions. In this show, we unpack key insights on specific topics so that you are kept up to date with the latest science and practice of human performance. You
I witness emotions playing havoc in the lives of those that I coach all the time, if ignored and not well managed, emotions quickly become barriers to flow, being a constant source of conflict and distraction in our mind and our consciousness. Take Laura, for example. Laura came to me because, although she was an experienced tennis player, one of the best in the country for her age, her emotions kept on getting the best of her, for example, whilst playing the national championships, Laura recalls she was favorite to win. Expectations were high, and while she was staying in the game, she wasn't finding her normal flow. She recalls standing at the baseline wondering how to mute her own feelings. Nerves fluttered through her body, her stomach felt twisted into a knot. All she needed to do was to focus on the ball and hit it like she had done 1000s of times before. Yet she couldn't her mind and her body felt overwhelmed. Her own emotions were not only distracting her mental game, inhibiting her flow, but they were making her body react uncontrollably. Her arms felt weak, almost shaky, affecting a bull toss and conviction on the serve she had been pushing away. Her emotions all matched, pretending they didn't exist, and now they were back in full force, unable to think clearly or perform as she had moments ago. She berated herself for being so incompetent and shouted at a coach, stop giving me advice hitting the ball out. She paused, thinking, Why were these emotions so compelling? Where did they come from? Why couldn't she control them? And I'm sure you have had times recently in which you felt emotionally overwhelmed, where you were not able to think clearly or be your best. Our emotional landscape affects all of us, and it is a critical component of experiential intelligence, which is why we are going to look at why emotions are so compelling, where they come from, and what we can do differently to manage them effectively. I You are listening to flow unleashed with Cameron Norsworthy, as we know, it's not the smartest people who are the most successful, the most satisfied with life. It turns out that happiness is correlated to our emotional quotient. Our IQ can certainly help us get good grades and solve problems, but it's our EQ that helps us to assess our memory, stay calm and perform at our best. When emotions are unmanaged, they not only mar the experience before us, they cause us undue stress, impact our ability to perform, leave us feeling lonely and isolated and become detrimental to our relationships and mental health. For example, if you struggle with acknowledging colleagues concerns appropriately, wrestle with active listening with say your partner or your conversation with someone is strained, or perhaps you're prone to outbursts, you create drama in your life, you blame others when things don't go to plan, or you find yourself frequently dissatisfied, or you struggle to perform under pressure. If you relate to any of these, you're probably suffering from a lack of emotional intelligence. According to research by organizational psychologist Asha Urich, 95% of people think they're self aware, but only 10 to 15% of people actually are. And emotional intelligence matters, not just for personal satisfaction, but according to the Harvard Business School, 61% of employers are more likely to promote workers. With high emotional intelligence over candidates with a high IQ. Why? Because at the heart of human performance is our ability to be effective emotional beings. Our guest today, Joshua Friedman is a specialist on emotional intelligence. He is an author and CEO of six seconds, a nonprofit dedicated to emotional intelligence. He has helped co develop EQ assessments, developed an international network of consultants and coaches, and been a critical reason for the practical uptake of emotional intelligence, helping millions to become more emotionally aware. Welcome, Joshua,
Unknown Speaker
thank you. Chandra, how
Cameron Norsworthy
would you describe emotional intelligence?
Speaker 1
We have a super simple definition, being smarter with feelings. So we all have feelings, and we can kind of let them come out sideways and kind of be idiotic with them, or we can deal with them carefully and well and use them to help us move forward. But I think maybe it's easier to think about mathematical intelligence. And you know, if you think of somebody who's got strong mathematical intelligence, it means they are able to accurately pick up numbers and mathematical shapes, and they can get that data, and then they use that data to solve puzzles like how much change to leave, or how much tip to give, or how to share, you know, four cookies among five people. So those are, those are mathematical puzzles. And, you know, they they come up with solutions to those and the same thing is really true of emotional intelligence, particularly the part about sharing cookies among five people. It's not just a mathematical puzzle. It turns out, there's also emotional data that we're picking up and using, and as we try to figure out how to solve problems, we need this data. And if we can be accurate and get this data from ourselves and each other, and we can use that data well, then we're being emotionally intelligent.
Cameron Norsworthy
So what is your area of focus within emotional intelligence? How are you helping people with your work?
Speaker 1
Well, we developed a measure of emotional intelligence that we use in our research, and we actually developed a measure, because what we're interested in isn't so much the theory of emotional intelligence, but the practice. How do you actually do this? And so we wanted to measure that looked at the process of actually using these skills in our daily lives, and we have a framework from our researching experience on how can you actually be emotionally intelligent? And the way that shows up in our lives is that we're more aware of ourselves and each other and that we're more intentional, less reactive, less volatile, less on autopilot, and also we connect with others and the world beyond ourselves, so that we're more purposeful.
Cameron Norsworthy
Typically, most of us don't pay attention to our feelings unless they become a distraction or hindrance or boil over and become overwhelming, but emotional intelligence exists on a continuum. For example, in a scenario in which you are criticized for not doing a good enough job, a low EQ reaction would be to feel attacked, become defensive and competitive, whereas a high EQ response would be to understand the individual's emotional response and subsequent criticism, or perhaps to excuse yourself appropriately and take the time to process your emotions and safety, perhaps in private or in a scenario in which you're on a date and it's not flowing. A low EQ reaction would be to decide that there is something wrong, and perhaps we should just end the date as quickly as possible, whilst a high IQ response would instead, perhaps ask open ended questions, maintain good eye contacts and practice active listening, giving the date the chance to overcome nerves, preconceptions and the expectations that often are these first encounters. Joshua, what have you learned about emotional control?
Speaker 1
It turns out, we don't just have one feeling at a time. So for example, if I'm feeling irate with my teenage son, lo and behold, I also love him, and also I'm afraid, and also I'm confused, and also I'm hoping for something better, and also I'm committed, and also I have trust and I have distrust, and all these things at the very same time. And that, I think is part of what's so vexing is. Where our emotions, they're actually neuro hormones, and these, these little molecules go running around in our brains and bodies, affecting every living cell. And it's not that we have one of them and they don't cancel each other out. They're not knowing matter and anti matter. We can be loving and outraged at the very same moment. So part of the challenge and opportunity here my favorite emotional literacy question, we call this emotional literacy, learning to tune into the nuances of feelings and understand them. My favorite emotional literacy question is, what else are you feeling? Because so often we just listen to that loud voice, you know, the kettle, the kettle boiling, and that little whistle shrieking, and think, okay, that's what I'm feeling. Well, that's true. But what else is there? What else are you feeling? And I think as we get more nuanced about this, and this certainly wasn't the case for me 21 years ago, when we started, I didn't really know how to answer this question, but with practice, I've learned to see that I can have multiple feelings, and I can tune into them, and I can start understanding the situation in a more complex way,
Cameron Norsworthy
emotional control is a bit of a paradox. The more we try to control our emotions, the more they tend to control us. Many of us I know, I certainly did, grew up in households in which emotions were not seen or heard, just shoved under the carpet, and consequently, I formed habits of avoiding my emotional landscape. And we know now from research and sport and other domains that blocking or negating our emotions doesn't actually help our moment to moment experience or our performance. When trying to focus rising emotions can feel like a distraction, but if ignored, the only similar way in the background sucking our attentional and energetic resources that are used to keep them suppressed, only for them to resurface with more significance moments later. Instead, research suggests that actually embracing and expressing these distracting emotions even during a performance is the turnkey solution to letting them go and improving our ability to increase our performance. More often than not, it is our friction and fear of our own emotions, not the emotion itself that actually limits us.
Speaker 1
Well, for myself, like you, I grew up in an environment where this wasn't really a thing. My parents were both statisticians, and for me, I think, if I'm really honest, I was really afraid of emotions, and they seemed very arbitrary and kind of out of control, and I didn't understand them, and I thought they just sort of happened a little bit out of the blue. So from for me, one of the things that's been really helpful is to realize that there is actually a logic of feelings, and there are rules that feelings follow. One of the pioneers in emotional intelligence, so Peter Salovey and John Mayer really invented the science of emotional intelligence, and one of their colleagues is fellow named David Caruso. And David Caruso said to me one time, it's kind of like chess pieces. There's certain moves that the pawn can make, there's certain moves that the rook can make. If you don't know those rules, the game seems very random, but when, when you start learning basic rules of emotions, go, okay, I can kind of make sense of this, even if I can't play it well, at least I can kind of basically understand the game, and that's been my experience as a starting point for becoming more comfortable with emotions, was to learn like, Okay, this is what anger means. You know, we have anger because our way is blocked, or we have fear because something's at risk, or we have sorrow because we're losing something that we love. And learning this sort of like eight basic emotions, and what they mean was, was a great starting point for me, and learning some more words. They're like 3000 words for feelings in English. And I reckon that 20 some years ago, you know, I used five of them. It was bad, it was good, you know, yucky. How are you feeling? Okay. That was sort of it. So I think that's, that's a starting point. Well, a lot of people, you. I say to me, essentially, I want to be less emotional, and my response to that is, okay, be more emotional, and that'll help you do that. What I think happens is, and you alluded to this before, we suppress our feelings, we ignore our feelings new. So as say, I have a colleague at work who is new, and he writes some email that I find annoying, and I just sort of push that aside and pretend like I'm going to be rational here, which is very irrational, by the way, and then, you know, a couple days later, it happens again, and I think I just don't have time for all those people nonsense. And, you know, and then it happens again, and I go, you know, up to him, and I say, you know, Cameron, what the heck is going on with you? Why can't you write an email? Right?
Speaker 2
He's like, and you're like, Whoa, dude. What? Where did that come from? Just, you could have just talked to me,
Speaker 1
right? And what's happened is I have pushed aside, pushed down, stepped on, hidden away these feelings, and they've grown and grown and grown until they're actually really quite hard to deal with. And if I had just sort of dealt with it the very first time when it was small, it really wouldn't have been a big deal. And people pretend like they're, you know, they're great actors or something, right? They're like, Okay, I'm not going to be, I'm going to bring this up, but just in a neutral way. They're like, Cameron, do you remember when you're like, what? That wasn't very neutral. We're actually pretty terrible actors. I think, you know, most of us, and I think we need to confront that reality that people actually pick up a lot of what we're feeling, even when we pretend like, Oh, I'm just going to be calm here. If inside I'm not calm, it comes out.
Cameron Norsworthy
Thanks for tuning in. If you like what you hear, please hit the follow or subscribe button on the device that you're listening to this on hitting subscribe is the best way you can support the show. It is the one and only favor that I would like to ask from you. It helps others to find the show, and supports us in making many more pods for you to enjoy. Okay, let's get back to the pod. So where do emotions come from? Why do they have such an impact on us? What I
Speaker 1
want to start with there is that emotions are part of our physiology. I mentioned they're neuro hormones. They're actually chains of amino acids. They're part of our body's regulatory system. They're part of what helps us survive and thrive, and particularly as social animals, they're very important in our survival system. And so these chemicals literally affect every living cell in the human body. They change our electrical set point of ourselves. They change our muscle production and activity. They change our digestion, they change all of our body system. And so that's part of what makes it complicated, but it also means that we actually physically feel feelings. And this isn't true in every language, but in English, I think it's interesting that we say, you know, feel feelings. I feel sad. We use the same verb for temperature or texture or stress, or, you know, something, something physical. And so that is an interesting clue. Like, how can we perhaps use those physical sensations and even something as simple as you know you're listening to this right now. Do you know if you're smiling or not? Do you have a little furrow in your brow, you know, as your jaw clenched, like what's going on? Physically for you that obviously there's some clues there. And if you think, Okay, I'm going to become like an emotion detective, and I'm going to start tuning into this data, these physical signs, could give you a clue that something's happening. And I think that's a very powerful way to start developing your emotional intelligence.
Cameron Norsworthy
I love that. I love the idea of having fun with our emotional intelligence. It doesn't need to be a boring or a serious subject. The idea of being a detective, it's a really fun way that I can use with my kids later today, and not just them, but myself and others that I coach. I lived in a Spanish speaking country for several years, and found it fascinating how the Spanish language talks about having emotions, having anger, sadness or happiness, rather than the English language, which says that we identify with the emotion I am. Am angry, I am happy. And often wonder whether this detachment from it, although linguistically, has a cultural and an emotional effect. It seemed to make it more transitory, less significant. And perhaps you know, that is why Spanish speakers and Spanish speaking culture seem to be able to handle flamboyant discussions and arguments more disintegration, or disintegration of our emotions into who we are is not fixed, and we are more malleable than we think. Our core emotions rise, setting off a cascade of reactions. And once the mind interacts, a plethora of feelings add complexity to the landscape, and if allowed to linger, they develop into moods and states. Would you agree?
Speaker 1
Yeah, the same. It's about time and generalization, and so we have this automatic physiological reaction. I do want to point out it's an automatic physiological reaction, but it's a system that we're programming. We're setting up this reaction. We'll talk about that later, but we have this automatic physiological reaction, which I would call an emotion, and then what some researchers use the term cognitively saturated, and becomes, starts becoming more cognitively saturated. We start thinking about that experience, and we start it's, it's literally starts affecting our bodies, and then it turns into what I would call a feeling, and then a mood, which is perhaps before a state, a mood, is maybe more persistent and more generalized. And then I think, as the physiology, we start getting ourselves set up to deal with that opportunity or threat, and our bodies are reacting in order to deal with what we're perceiving, then we have a physiological, cognitive and emotional experience that lasts for a little while, and I call it a state.
Cameron Norsworthy
So how do we get started when our emotions rise and we feel confused or we feel like a jumbled mess, what's the next step?
Speaker 1
It's a somewhat jumbled mess. I think that that, you know, that's a great entry point of just saying, Okay, I'm feeling a bunch of stuff. It kind of feels like a jumbled mess. Could I tease that out a little bit and journaling or talking to somebody, or just going for a walk and noticing, okay, I'm feeling a little of this. I'm feeling a little of this. When you're just getting started with it. I don't think you even need feeling words. You can use metaphors, you know, it's maybe, you know, this is feels like a bit, bit like, you know, crocodile chewing on my leg, and it feels like, you know, dog barking, and it feels like whatever, or, you know, feels like a car that's out of tune or feels cold or it feels hot. You know, metaphors can work, or colors can work. And then, as we get more sophisticated with our emotional literacy, we can actually start using feeling words. But even with that, a metaphor or color, you know, taking a piece of paper and saying, Okay, I've got this jumbled mess. Let me pick a color. That's one of the feelings that I have. I scribble it on the paper kind of looks like this, and here's another one, and here's another one, and here's another one. Pretty quickly, I think what we start finding is that we can find sort of pieces and threads of that, of that mess, and then start sorting it out. And by this, the way, the same thing is true with any intelligence. The same thing would be true, you know, if you dealing with a complex math problem, it starts out as a jumbled mess, and you start trying to tease apart the variables, and that's exactly what you can do with emotions. You know, most of us who went to school, we studied language and we studied mathematics, and we did that for hundreds and hundreds of hours you're really, I mean, if you think about how many hours of math class you've had in your life, and all that math homework you did, I'm obviously harping on math. I'm coming back to my but like, that's a lot of hours of training, you know? And how many hours of training. Even when I studied psychology, I didn't, you know, there was sort of a passing nod to emotions. So I think we need to give ourselves a little slack here and say, like you said, you know, maybe I'm just getting started with this, and that's okay. So what practical
Cameron Norsworthy
tips do you suggest people can use when practically. By managing their feelings well.
Speaker 1
There's a quite a lot of research that says that naming our emotions is a powerful step to transforming and naming emotions is actually a great example of emotional intelligence. It's we're building this bridge between different parts of our brain. We're building this bridge between a kind of cognitive function and this felt experience. And I think part of what's happening is it causes us to step back just a little bit, and it also makes this experience feel a little less out of control. It's more understandable. Okay, what's going on here is this, and now I can start making sense of it. Now I can start having a conversation.
Cameron Norsworthy
What's so fascinating to me is that when we do sit and witness and name some of our emotions, I find other feelings become more prominent or come out of the woodwork. For example, My daughter just went into hospital the other day because She shut her finger in a door I know still, still wincing, just thinking about it, and my my heart was instantly scared, and my mind raced down all these avenues. You know, whose fault it was. Will she be okay? How can I protect her? Why did she do that? This is so inconvenient. I don't think she has ever felt pain like this before. How can I protect her and on and on and on and on and as I just allowed them to come and disappear, what seemed to rise was this unwavering, deep sense of love that I have for my daughter. And whilst, moments ago, I felt scared, out of control. Moments later, I felt full of love, and my whole experience had changed.
Speaker 1
It's a great example of, you know, my favorite question, what else are you feeling because you're sitting there, you're, you know, this voice starts in on you. Of like, you know, this could happen. This could happen. Okay, fine. What else am I feeling? And what else am I feeling? And then you really quickly, you come to the point that how much you love her and how precious she is, and how precious this moment is, and that actually, you know, that gives you a kind of a big, broader perspective, a lot of our problem oriented feelings, our feelings related to threat, they're very urgent. And their purpose, their biological purpose, is to focus our attention and motivation to deal with threat. And that's often kind of evolutionary perspective that was often things that were quite immediate. The saber tooth tiger is coming like, let's deal with it now. But you know, your daughter in surgery that's, you know, fighting or fleeing or hiding isn't really going to solve that problem, and so we're going to need to have a more nuanced approach. So I would just suggest two practices there. One is what we talked about before, about I am experiencing this feeling, not I am this feeling. And that's really important. This is something that's actually quite transitory. And I encourage people to sort of think about it like clouds going by in the sky, you know? Okay, there's a dragon in that cloud. There's a butterfly in the cloud. I'm seeing what I'm seeing. I'm perceiving this. I'm watching it, but it's not me. And the second is a practice that's going to take a long time to really internalize that there's no such thing as negative feelings. I think one of the reasons we get into a lot of struggle with our feelings is we get into this. I shouldn't feel this, and even, even knowing this cognitively, I remember when my dad died, and I you know, I know I've studied grief, and I know that anger is part of it, and I remember feeling angry at him and saying to myself, Oh, shouldn't feel angry. And then kind of snacking myself in that like you shouldn't be, shouldn't think it's interesting how strongly we're socialized or deeply we're programmed to hide certain feelings or reject certain feelings. So there's a Buddhist principle, which is that suffering comes from denying what is. And there's something incredibly powerful about just saying, Okay, this is what it is. I'm feeling this. It's not me. It's the clouds going by. I'm watching it. It's not irrelevant. It's. But it's not me and it just that's what it is. You know? I'm feeling embarrassed, it is what it is. I'm feeling enraged, okay, it is what it is. I'm feeling heartbroken, it is what it is. I'm feeling joyful, it is what it is. None of those are innately positive or negative. They're just data about how we're perceiving the world around us and inside us, and their clues to help us understand where are the opportunities and threats. And in that same vein, one of my other favorites is when we have strong feelings, it's because we're perceiving a big opportunity or a big threat. And one of my colleagues, Marilyn Jorgensen, who leads our coaching programs, she has this way of saying this that I just adore. She says, Oh, it seems like you're having big feelings. Isn't that darling? No, seems like having big feelings right now. You can try that with your two year old, you know, and you're having big feelings. It's very neutral, okay, it looks like you're having big feelings. You must be perceiving something big, particularly for parents, that would be such a gift for your children, is that you don't need to do anything. Oh, it looks like you're having big feelings. What are you feeling? And sometimes they don't know what they're feeling. You know, you can make an observation saying, Well, I noticed that you're slamming your slamming your hand into the table. Makes me wonder if maybe you're angry, and I see tears in your eyes, and I wonder if maybe you're sad, but just the kind of treating it as something neutral, it's a huge gift.
Cameron Norsworthy
It is amazing when we don't rescue other people and we allow them to have their feelings and emotions. We don't try and change it for them, or even want to have their emotions changed. Seems to make them feel empowered and and safe. Coaches and psychologists, we get trained to allow people to express and own their own emotions without diminishing their power in the process, but we often forget to do it in our own lives or adopt these learnings. Yet if we can see emotions without the reactions of our mind and body seeing them as a threat, then we can get clarity and feel more in control of them. We can work with them, and they can really add texture and color to our life's tapestry. And now a question to you, do you need to raise your mental game? Are nerve stress or pressure getting in the way? We have found that spending a few minutes every day to build your confidence, focus and mindset can make a massive difference to your life. We have helped 1000s of professionals level up and start reveling in their challenges. It has been our privilege to support people in their endeavor, be a professional sounding board and give people the skills to be their best. Getting a flow coach is invaluable, and for many it has been life changing. We are here for you, too. If you want your very own flow coach to maximize your own performance and satisfaction in life, simply go to flow center.org today.
Speaker 1
You know, my thing I'd like to add is I find people and including myself, quite interesting, and this opportunity to be in a state of learning about ourselves and others. And, you know, we we all screw up sometimes, and I certainly do often, and saying, Okay, that's interesting. I want to do it differently next time. And I think this notion that we have more chances and we get to try again, and we get to learn that in itself, is very powerful as a gift to ourselves, but also to each other, also to our children or colleagues or friends, like, how awesome to have role models around us, of people saying, Yeah, unlearning, and it's not about being perfect, it's about learning. And I made a mistake, and I'm going to try again and I'm going to do better. And I think as a CEO, that's something I work to practice, as a dad, that's something I work to practice. But for myself, not beating myself up when I make a mistake, but taking responsibility and saying I'm going to do better. So I think it's a gift to ourselves and it's a gift to others, to be in that learning state and this realm of emotions and behavior is a fascinating place to be a learner. Time to flip the mic when you said, I could ask you a question, and I'm wondering you know for yourself, what is it that catalyzed for you, this hunger to learn about your own emotions and reactions? Ah,
Cameron Norsworthy
good question for me, I became fascinated in my emotional management when I'd reached a point of dissatisfaction with my current experience, yeah, I was probably about 16, feeling very emotionally suppressed, and frankly, afraid of my emotions boiling over and feeling out of control of them. And whether I was on a tennis court speaking in public or talking to a girl I fancied, I felt completely hamstrung by my own emotions. My behavior ended up avoiding speaking situations through my tent, my racket around the tennis court, because I didn't know what else to do, and I often felt that my insides had been externalized and exposed for everyone, to ridicule, and for me, I'd reached my own crisis point. These rising and ever increasing daunting feelings were derailing my ability to play elite tennis, which, at the time, dedicated my life to. And in hindsight, I didn't have the words for it at the time, but they were also blocking my ability to feel deeply satisfied and alive. I knew there was a better way, but I didn't know how. And slightly later, I had a girlfriend who was full of joy and able to manage her emotions, and I'd watch her and watch half in awe and half in intimidation, as I felt that level of emotional management she possessed was so far out of reach for me, but it gave me hope. It gave me an idea of how I could be emotional. And so I saw emotional help, and slowly started to put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together.
Speaker 1
I'm just doing some research on this, and I think that sense of I can see that there's another way. I can see that there's some possibilities. Somehow things aren't quite the way I want it to be, and I'm not just going to sit here that seems to be a really critical doorway. Was a delight to get to talk to you. Thank you.
Cameron Norsworthy
As Joshua eloquently highlighted, one of the most common indicators of low emotional intelligence is the difficulty to identify and express emotions. Emotional Intelligence is typically broken down into four competencies, self awareness, self management, social awareness and relationship management. People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others. They use this emotional information to guide their thinking and behavior, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately. In doing so, emotionally competent, people can connect with their feelings, turn intention into action, make informed decisions about what matters most, adjust and adapt to environments, communicate effectively and shift gears and lighten the mood, both internally and externally. You're able to overcome challenges and diffuse conflict when it comes to happiness and success in life, EQ matters just as much as IQ. The skills that make up emotional intelligence are not innate talents. They can be learned at any time, but like any skill, knowledge and applied wisdom are two different things to be emotionally competent, emotions need to be integral to your decision making and flow moment to moment. You must become comfortable with them so we can manage them effectively. After all, they are a part of our life's experiential tapestry, an emotional training not only helps you, but it will also help all those that encounter you. Emotional literacy helps you to be more empathetic, understand the subtle emotional cues of others, connect your personal experience with those of others feel comfortable socially, recognize the power dynamics in a in a group setting, communicate clearly, inspire and influence others and work well in a team. In short, it helps you to become socially and relationally aware, and the more you tune in with your emotional intelligence, the easier you can make the transition from reaction to response and intentionally respond to the situation in a manner aligned with your goals and your values. At the end of the day, we are all social animals. Humans are wired for connection. The more we can build positive relationships by developing. Emotional intelligence, the more enriching our lives may be. If you want to find out more about the work Joshua is doing, please visit the show notes.
Thanks for tuning in. If you've enjoyed this chat and feel like giving back please share it and subscribe. It makes a huge difference in helping others to find this pot. If you want further details about this episode, please go to the show notes. That's it for now. Keep evolving, and we hope to see you when the next episode drops. You have been listening to flow. Unleashed you.
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