Nuanced. - 3. How to Overcome Triggers & Become Resilient | Emotional Intelligence Explained

Episode Date: October 7, 2023

In the third edition of this series, Emotional Intelligence Expert Carolyn Stern shares insights on the importance of facing adversity, balancing curiosity and judgment, and how to develop emotional resilience to achieve a fulfilling life.Join host Aaron Pete on the Bigger Than Me Podcast for an enlightening Emotional Intelligence mini-series with renowned expert Carolyn Stern. In this 5-part series, we'll delve into why EQ matters and how it affects you, your family, and your workplace. Get ready to explore the various facets of Emotional Intelligence and enhance your life in meaningful ways!Learn more about Carolyn Stern:https://carolynstern.com/Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

I think you've got to first start with you. So what is it about me and how is that person impacting me? Like just before we went on air, you were talking about a personal story. And how does that person impact you is the question that I would ask you. And why does it penetrate so much to you? You're on your journey. You're on your path. You're going to do you.

Why does, and I question more for you, for your listeners. why is it that other people's journey impact us so much? Why do you think? Episode three, we are here. We're diving into emotional resilience with Carolyn Stern, an emotional intelligence expert. I'm really excited to explore this because it feels like oftentimes we can be on a journey of development and growth. And then the people around us aren't always on that journey with us so they can hold us back. They can discourage us and they can make comment. So it's a topic I'm really excited to explore today.

Great. Great. I'm me too. I'm excited to dig in. When we're on this journey, how do we look at the people around us? Because I think sometimes we can look at them as anchors, but sometimes there are supporters. How do we think about how we develop ourselves when other people might not be on that journey? Good question. I think that you, again, this is why the book is called an inside out journey. I think you've got to first start with you. So what is it about me and how is that person impacting me?

Like just before we went on air, you were talking about a personal story. And how does that person impact you? is the question that I would ask you. And why does it penetrate so much to you? You're on your journey. You're on your path. You're going to do you. Why does, and I question more for you, for your listeners,

why is it that other people's journey impact us so much? Why do you think? I think because we want to be loved within our community and whatever we were doing before has allowed acceptance. So whoever, when you wake up and you realize you want to grow as a person, you realize that the people around you have been there. And so there's a part of you that wants to stay loyal, to stay supportive of them. But there's a challenge as a native court worker. I deal with people who are realizing that the people within their inner circle are

contributors to why they find themselves in the criminal justice system. To cut them off is in their mind to abandon them in their darkest hours. So I've had clients who are homeless struggling and they say, I will not go into housing unless this person comes with me. So there's this rich community there, but it's flawed because it's preventing you from reaching better things, from going forward. And so there's an appreciation you have to have for the people who've been there for you, but a balance you have to seem to take to make sure that you don't let these people keep you where you are. And we see this so often, and I think about it at a macro level, when you think of people in downtown areas, in struggling communities, they often

live their whole life there and never leave that community, despite the fact that 10 blocks away might be a thriving, wealthy community, they never see themselves envisioned in that. And so you are the people you surround yourself in some ways. So you have to find some sort of balance between the two and you can't look at the people as anchors, but you have to recognize whether or not they have the same values as you in terms of their growth. Yeah. And I think it goes back to, you know, I always say to people, like if I let go of my hands and you pour water in it, I can hold it. But if I squeeze it so tight, nothing stays in. And so I think the whole point is sometimes we've got to let go. We've got to let go of if those people are keeping you small,

then it's okay to walk away. I know with my own father for 20 years, I didn't have a relationship with him because he wasn't a good person. And I felt, you know, I was a young kid. I kind of divorced my father at a young age. And I felt that I was better off, even though obviously I wanted a father figure in my life, I was better off on my own than having that sort of toxic environment in my life. And that's really hard. You have to be brave. I'd say the thing I would say to people is you've got to be courageous. You've got to let go of you cannot save people. They have to do that. They have to do that themselves. You cannot save any. This is why. in 12-step programs, right?

You can't make someone not drink, right? All you can do is share what your thoughts are and what your feelings are, and then it's up to them. They've got to get committed to doing it, not you. So I would say as much as there's a community and that's kind of, as you said, anchoring you in, you've got to be brave enough to step out on your own.

And if you see that community a block away, you know, and those people are anchoring you to stay where you are, you know, how are you helping them and how are you helping yourself by staying? How do you interact with this? You spoke about family in a workplace where you can't always replace your boss. You can't always move departments away from people who may be the very thing that made you aware that you need to become emotionally intelligent. How do you navigate it when your workplace maybe fosters an unhealthy mindset around emotional intelligence? I think to me emotional intelligence is about getting curious.

versus judgmental. So I think the first thing is, is get, you know, I would ask a lot of questions. As you can see today, I'm asking a lot of questions. I'm just a curious person of why people are the way they are. I think a lot of times if we, you know, a lot of the retreats that I do when people kind of dig into what is their emotional makeup. And I always ask them, where does this come from? You know, where did you learn this behavior or didn't learn this behavior? It always, it tends to stem from their childhood or their upbringing or their career or their life path. But to kind of step back and just get curious about why people are the way they are. And in business, one of the things people always say to me is I'm in the emotional intelligence training

class, but my boss isn't. And he's the one that needs it more than I do. How do I work with him? All you can do is clean your side of the street. Absolutely. You can only clean your side of the street. You can be influential. You can lead by example and be the best person, but they're going to make their own choices and they're going to say what they're going to say. And so I think it is about being connected but still self-differentiated. I still can stay connected to you. This goes back to what I was talking about when you're overly empathetic, you get emmeshed in people's stuff. What I teach people is you can still have compassion and boundaries. So I can still be connected with you in your community or I can still care about people and know that in my case, my

father was not a good influence. And so I needed to step away. And that was hard because my whole family did not agree with my decision. And as a teenager, that was a tough decision to make to sort of separate for 20 years. But I think it was the best decision for me. How do you choose people who are people to emulate? How do you select people that are going to be your supports while you're on this journey of self-growth and self-development? My mother always told me associate with people you want to emulate. So I always look for, you know, even today, getting to know you more. Like, look for something that I see in you that I don't have.

And I actually, in the book, I talk a lot about that, right? Like finding those advisors who can make you, like, because I'm always about growth, right? I'll be a lifelong learner, no matter how many, how old I am, I'm constantly, no matter how many degrees I have, constantly be learning. I think it's really about finding those people that have something that you want and hanging out with them, spending time with them. If I do what you've done to get where you are, I'll probably get what you get. I think, you know, people make business a lot more complicated than it is. A widget's a widget's a widget. I think the bottom line is if I see someone that has something that I want and I go after it, ask them a lot of questions.

and this is what you're doing in your podcast. You're reaching out to these people. That's what's going to make you so much better because you're going to get all that pieces of data of information from all those wonderful sources. And that, you know, school doesn't need to be at university. And I think that's the big mistake. As a university for professor,

I'll probably get chastised for saying this. But I don't think you have to get that education at university. I, you know, when I look back at my career in emotional intelligence, there's no degree in emotional intelligence. In fact, on a podcast once, you know how you do your intro after I leave, you know, introducing me on air, the woman introduced me as a self-proclaimed emotional intelligence expert. Well, that pissed me off. Because what makes me a legitimate emotional intelligence expert? because there isn't a degree in it. So how do I be, you know, what is, what makes me credible?

I will tell you, I know who we're graduating at university. Some of these people can't even write a sentence and we're graduating them. So does a degree make you legitimate? And so it just makes me think like, you know, I love the path that you're on, that, yes, you've had some formal education, but where you're getting all your knowledge is you're pulling it from all these people. So you're associating with people you want to emulate. And then you're taking, you know, you're taking what you want and leaving the rest.

And that's making who you are, who you are and making and you, you know, putting your own spin to it of how you can take their lessons and go further. I love that. I often think about the challenges of beginning this process of waking up and looking at yourself in the mirror because it starts with such uncomfortable questions. Am I a likable person? Do people want me at their event? Do people enjoy me when I'm there? How do people talk about me when I'm not? there because despite what you might prefer, people talk about you when you're not around. And it can

either be positive or negative. And going through some of those things, the truth can be very uncomfortable. And the reality of where you are can be very dark. The thing I love about a lot of religious belief systems is that they say, be thankful for where you're starting from. Because A, you don't have to stay there. And B, whatever has happened has brought you to this day where you're waking up and you're trying to look at yourself. So there's something glorious about the day where you start to look at yourself and go, am I where I want to be? Am I who I want to be? Am I how I want to be? And I think that that's what books like yours give people the opportunity to do is go, I'm going to ask myself some tough questions. I'm not going to like some of the

answers. But it's something, it seems like it's very heavy to start the journey on. What advice do you have for people who are tempted to open the book, tempted to start this journey, but are afraid of some of the answers and some of the truths they might find. That it's going to be tough. It's going to be tough. This is not easy to take a good honest look in the mirror and look at our warts and our wobbly bits. It's difficult.

And if they just want happy, positive thoughts and experiences, they're not going to learn about themselves. The reason I wrote the book was I wanted people to take a good, honest look in themselves and say, what am I doing? because you're the actor in your own reality show right now. If you don't like the show, change the channel. You have every control to change that channel. But you've got to figure out what don't I like first?

And so if you don't even know who you are or what you're about, yes, it's scary. Absolutely. But I encourage people. And I will just say for myself, before I found emotional intelligence, I was suicidal. I was suicidal. I was going to end my life. And it was truly the answer to my journey, not only to save myself, but to save so many people that I've worked with. Since E.I experience, since I started my company in 2017, I mean, I've been running my business since 2006, but since I started this division of my business, I've worked with 30,000 leaders across North America.

I have changed people's life. Not me, the skill, emotional intelligence. if people can start to be brave. Be brave to look in the mirror and say, what are the things that aren't working for me? And how is that getting in my way? You know, the second part of the book that I, and I'm going to use a story, which I think is super powerful, I ask people to ask others how they see them. So one of my clients asked his wife, hey, honey, do you think I enjoy helping people? That was the question. And she said, I think you help people. I don't think you enjoy it.

And then she said, and I don't remember you being happy since 2016. Well, that opened a whole can of worms because he never thought she thought that. That was the first time he had heard that she didn't think he was happy. So I said to him, once he told me that, I said, okay, here's your next homework assignment. I want you to go back to your wife and ask her, what does happiness look like to you? because I might be showing that I'm happy and I think you see that I'm happy. But if she doesn't see it, it's kind of like communication styles. When I teach people how to speak to each other, I got to speak in your language.

I can't speak in my language or else you won't hear it. So I've got to speak and I got to figure out how do I reach you? Well, so I said to him, go home and ask her, what does happiness look like to you? Because if he was shocked, he thought he had been happy and she didn't see it. Right. And sometimes it seems like people are unhappy, but they've gotten so used to where they are that they don't even recognize that where they are is not where they thought they'd be. And that goes back to my earlier comment about this idea that at a certain point, we stop telling people they could reach their full potential and we stop wondering what that might look like. And it's not just a lot of people think that that's like job.

What job are you going to have a career you're going to have? But how rich is your life in terms of the people in it? How much do you enjoy being around the people around you? What does a dinner party look like at your home? Who are the people in that environment? Is it your loved one? Is it warm and cozy? Or is it tense and uncomfortable?

And a lot of people don't realize that they're writing a story that they don't actually enjoy. That's right. And so that's why, again, I go back to what I said in the very first episode of this series, is that to be emotionally intelligent is to look at yourself as a director in your own film. So right now, if you're like, listeners or viewers are watching this or listening to this. I want them to think, okay, I'm going to take a step back and look at myself from above and what do I love about my life and what don't I love about my life? And the things I don't love about my life, how am I contributing to that?

And then what can I do about it? Now, as you said earlier, I can't change my boss. I can't change a family member. I can't do. All I can do is clean my side of the street. But ultimately, if they're not helping me and it's hurting me. And in fact, it's interesting, I just made me think of something. After 20 years of having nothing to do with my father, I picked up the phone and said, hating you is hurting me. And I don't want to hate you anymore. And I just let it go. Now, I had not, right, like we really had nothing to do with each other all those years. But I realized that me hating him wasn't necessarily hurting him. It was hurting me. Because every relationship I would get into, I would be thinking, oh, you're going to be like, just like my father, right? And so just letting that go and stepping aside and just realizing, you know, looking at your life from above and just realizing, you know, what do you like about your life? What don't you like about your life? You can do everything you absolutely, you have the power within you to change your life as you know it. What you believe is what you become.

Do you think time is essential for that? Because it seems like so many family dynamics. or dynamics with other people feel all consuming when you're in them, but take time apart 20 years, it seems like a lot of it can be put to rest or be let go of, but it seems like time is essential for that. What role does this play when we're talking about developing emotional resilience and understanding yourself, how much time do people need to be on that journey? And I think that's very subjective and personal, but I mean, I'm not encouraging people to take 20 years like I did. I'm kind of a slow learner. But creating space between the trigger and the

response. I mean, you know, Victor Frankel, the outshut survivor, has a wonderful quote, like between stimulus and response. There is a space and in that space, or there is a space and in that space lies the freedom to choose or something like that. I'm probably butchering the quote. But the bottom line is we have, if we can feel an emotion, figure out what triggered that emotion, and then create space, whether that space is, hey, Aaron, I need to step out because I'm getting heated under the collar, or I need some time, or I just need to sit and quiet, or I need to meditate, whatever that is. Create space before you act. Because what I say to clients is, take a sheet of paper take four columns on one side of the one of the columns write emotion so you're on another

column right trigger on the third column right action and on the fourth column right impact or sorry response versus impact so let's say your boss gives you an unrealistic deadline I'm angry okay that's the emotion what's the trigger he gave me a completely unrealistic expectation that I'm never going to meet. My action, I have a choice now. I can choose a high EQ response or a low EQ response. If I choose a high EQ response, I might come up to you and say, hey, Erin, you know, that project you gave me, I'm not going to be able to do it this week. I'm going to have to, I can get this done today if you let me do Project X next week. Your response might be, you might not be thrilled with me setting a boundary, but you at least respect me for doing that. Or I could do a low EQ response

and say, screw you, Aaron, I'm not doing it. And what could that lead to? Insubordination, losing my job. And so by writing it out and creating space to say, what's a high-E-Q response, what's a low-E-Q response, that gives me the freedom to choose and make a conscious choice rather than letting my emotions run amok in my life. Right. What would you say to the boss who might say something like, I believe you're capable of more than you're doing, and you're putting in good work, but I believe you're capable of.

more, and that's why I'm putting this deadline that you view is unrealistic on to you. Okay. I would say, thank you. I would say, you know, what is it that you're seeing? I would want to get curious about what they see. But I'd also say to them, there's only 24 hours in the day. Time is finite. You might think, you know, my energy is not.

I can have infinite energy to do things depending on what I'm doing. But, you know, I would say, you know, given my, what I have to do, in my plate, I don't think I have the time to do it. But I'd also negotiate. I'd also talk to them and saying, okay, you think I can do it, great. What do you think, how can I spare that time then? Like, where do you see that I'm either losing time or I can gain time? Like, have a conversation rather than just discrediting their ideas because maybe they do see something in you that's bigger than what you see in yourself. I think a lot of times as a coach, I see the Olympian before they actually are an athlete. So a lot of times maybe your boss does see a potential in you. And when I think

back to the first story I told you on the first episode of the series, I saw something in Cindy that she didn't see in herself. And because I gave her that chance, she became the most improved student. So I would get curious about why your boss sees you that way, what they think, why they think what they think, and then asking them, okay, if you don't think this is unrealistic, but I think this is unrealistic, let's come, like, let's compromise. This isn't just a one-way conversation. Can you define triggers for us? It's a person, situation, or thing that causes an emotional reaction. Okay. So based on that, I'm curious, we've just talked about time. I'm wondering about these other areas of processing for when we get triggered, when we get

reactive. I think of when I go for a run, it lets out those endorphins. I feel like I'm able to make a more informed, conscious decision after a good night's sleep, after spending some time maybe venting with my partner, there's these opportunities to kind of explore this area in between stimulus and reactions. What advice do you have for people looking for? Exactly like what you said. Go for a walk. Sometimes even changing the environment, changing the, like how you, how you sit at your desk. Change the direction you sit at your desk. Sometimes that changes your perspective. Vented out with someone else. Tell the person that you're speaking in front of, I need to, I need to pause. Like, I think, again, this goes back to society. We're constantly

feeling like we have to answer. There's wonderful, wonderful things that can happen in silence. But these awkward pauses, I feel people feel like they need to fill it. Why can't we just sit in silence and say, I need a moment. My last question is, how do people remain empathetic when they're on this emotional journey to development and growth? How do they remain empathetic to the individuals that they feel are the problem, are more of the issue? How do we remain understanding and accepting?

Because we were once that person, right? Like, the day you start on this journey, you're not all that you could be. So when you wake up and you look at these other people and you go, well, this person's being a real jerk and this person's not handling things well and that person's approaching things wrong. How do we remain understanding as we start to climb this ladder of growth and leave them behind? How do we not forsake them? Great question. I think giving people the benefit of the doubt helps with empathy a lot. I think also leaving, I think the piece that I would say is know that they're their own person and hope and wish and whatever you believe in, pray, whatever that is,

that, you know, they'll be, they'll find their way. But I also think having a lot of curiosity about, you know, why didn't they find their way like I found my way? And having a lot of compassion that, you know, they don't have the same education. They don't have, like, they haven't read the same books. They don't, they don't know what you know. Only you know this. So you found it in such a way. I look back at, why was it that very dark day when I literally was going to end my life that a thought came to me that, hey, remember when you did your master's, you learned about emotional intelligence? I wonder if you should take an emotional intelligence assessment, Carolyn. That thought just came into my mind. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was the divine. I have no

idea. But that thought saved my life. So I think it's people are going to find their time on their time. And as much as you wish them to have it sooner or on your timeline, I think you've got to just, again, go back to letting go, letting them be them, you be you, and having compassion and patience for people that are struggling. There's almost like that idea of faith there. Yes. And hope. I think faith and hope, right? Tolerance for the changes that take time. Patience for the challenge, you know, you might not have the same challenges that I have.

You know, it might be seen easy to you, but it's not easy to me. Yeah, absolutely. I cannot wait to dive into family dynamics, relationships, and how to approach that emotional, intelligent, in an emotionally intelligent way and be thoughtful in those processes. Because I think that's something a lot of people deal with, with Thanksgiving coming up, with Christmas coming up, with Halloween coming up. How do we relate to family and how do we make those bonds stronger and more healthy?

Yeah, absolutely. Brilliant. Thank you.