EQ. Pt. 1

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty. I'm your host Terry Baylor along with Ralph Owens and today we remind you of the importance of your journey. We'll explore the concept of emotional intelligence, understanding and managing your emotions for more constructive interactions and we'll discuss the balance between your rational mind versus your emotional mind. Enjoy the show.

And we are live. Alright. Welcome back everybody.

Hey. How you doing? Glad to be here. Glad to be here.

Here for another fun and exciting podcast. I have a really, really good topic for you today. But I think before we get started, Terry, you're gonna you're gonna jump into something?

Yeah. Hey, I just hope you guys enjoyed the revisit of the journey, man. And, I don't know about you, but it really was good for me and it was a good reminder to really just enjoy the process, right? Sometimes the process, let's just be honest, it can be long sometimes, right? Sometimes the process can feel lonely, right?

Sometimes the process can feel like, quite honestly, let's just use this, sometimes it can feel like, man, you're not being loved, God, what's going on here? Right? But understand that it is all, all of it, all of it is working for your good and I like to hear it like this, I'm gonna give Joel, I don't know him but I'm gonna talk about him like I know him, Joel Osteen a shout out here. And I just love how he said this, right? He says, look, you may have made a decision or something may have happened in your life that you just didn't like the result of it, the outcome of it.

What I love about how he frames this is, is God's hand on your life is like the GPS. You may make a wrong turn and in that he's gonna get you back on track the fastest way possible. Right?

Yeah.

Know, so it's gonna work for your good man. So you know, I've also heard it said like this, if it's not working for you, it's working on you. And Ralph, you said this, oh man, this blessed me so good. You had shared in there and this was episode one of the journey and you were sharing with your daughter, right? And you said, look, you have to understand the process is designed oh, this is so, so, so good.

The process is designed to help you become the person you can be because if you get the reward before the person you're supposed to be, then you are going to without a you know, and we several examples, right? The prodigal son got his savings, his, you know, his pass down, right, before he was ready to handle it. And what did he do? Blew it. He blew it, right?

And Ralph, you said this to me. Dude you've helped me in life so much. You said look, what you don't understand or what you don't cherish, you're bound to abuse. Oh, that's so good, man.

Yeah, you

see what I'm saying? So guys, the journey is designed to mold and sculpt us into the creation that God, oh this is He has an idea of who we are, right? Not an idea, He has a perfect picture rather of who we are. Now don't mistake, the perfect picture is not about you being perfect, it's about and it's not one aspect of who you are, right? Because as we go through life, we change, right?

I'm not the 30 year old, right, that I was. If I was the 30 year old now of over 50, that be good, right? Not the 40 year old, I'm not the 50 year old, right? So in each stage of life, I continue to grow, evolve, right? Because we're not, God didn't create us to be stagnant.

We're always evolving and growing and becoming better. So that really sets us up. You know, let me let me pause there. Ralph, what are you you know, what's your thought on that? What what what what comes to mind for you just just thinking about that?

Yes. It's one of the probably the biggest revelations for me in the last ten years is that the destination is not more important than the journey. The journey is more important than the destination because it is to your point there, creating you to be the person that you need to be in order to handle the destination. Me being one that just naturally, puts my hap you know, I'll delay my happiness until I get to a goal. And I started realizing that after you reach these goals that, oh, man, you know, I I I spent all of that time trying to get here and I put, you know, delayed my my happiness because of trying to get to this goal just to realize that the journey was where the value was at.

And and the goal was not, did not give, you know, exactly what I thought I was gonna give. So, yeah, it's until you understand that you don't typically, cherish the experiences that you're having along the way, You may, count them as, you know, a burden or, an inconvenience or or things of that nature and you miss these opportunities to give value along the way. So now I'm very grateful for the journey. Yeah.

I appreciate that, man. I'm telling you that story blessed me. Yeah. Because sometimes we can, to your point, miss the real essence of what's going on and the power of the people that we encounter along this journey. Rich, I think I said in the show, the rich aspect and colorful palette of life and interacting with people, right?

What that brings and gives to life. That leads us here into our next aspect of what we wanna cover, which again is a huge, huge, huge item in the journey and understanding how this impacts every aspect of your life. It impacts every relationship, it impacts every scenario. So Ralph, you wanna go ahead and you wanna introduce that?

Sure. Sure. Sure. So today we're gonna talk about emotional intelligence, from a a number of different aspects or context. Emotional intelligence is something that Terry and I have definitely embraced over the years.

Terry, don't know about you, but I didn't grow up understanding or even hearing the the term emotional intelligence. I didn't learn about this until I was well into my, I wanna say thirties or forties, before I even heard the term. And after learning what it was, you know, we were like, man, this is everything. Right? I mean, once it's it's one of those types of things.

Once you understand it and you learn what it is, it's hard to never see it again. Right? You can't unlearn it. You can't unsee it. So, if you if you if you're good, Terry, I'll just go ahead and dive right into it.

Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Let's let's get it going.

Alright. So emotional intelligence, what is it? Sometimes people call emotional intelligence EQ. You may have heard EQ before. Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, manage, and utilize emotions effectively.

It's more than just your emotions. It's about recognizing and responding to them in a constructive way. So what does that mean? I you I like to use this this analogy. So when you are having a conversation with someone and let's say they're pushing your buttons and in the moment while it's happening, if you can recognize that okay what this person is saying is pushing my buttons and causing an emotional response.

And then as a result of that awareness change how you respond to that person in a constructive way to make the conversation be more constructive. That is emotional intelligence. What most people do using that same scenario is you're in this argument, this person's pushing your buttons and you just emotionally respond back based on the way you feel. But emotional intelligence is the ability to in real time understand how your emotions are being processed and then responding based on a constructive way instead of just being led solely by your emotions. Terry, think do about that when you when you hear that?

First of all, that's that's that's that's spot on. And, just to kind of circle back around, I think man when I first kind of started to understand EQ, I remember I think it was around like 2000 and maybe 14. No. Maybe it was 13, but it was around the thanksgiving time frame. No.

It was 13. And you had recommended a book to me. And it was how to win friends and and influence people. Right? Mhmm.

In that book, there was such a high level of EQ being displayed because it was the ability to actually drive an outcome that was really for the person exercising the EQ to get an outcome that they were looking for, the person who was delivering had no idea. Right? And so we tend to we like to reference EQ as the as the Jedi.

Right.

Right? So you again, because you're not necessarily operating purely in your emotions, right, we can't let me be clear about this too, right? As human beings, we have to be aware of our emotions, so they're always acting upon us. The question becomes is, what is the driver? So I'm I'm I'm reading a book, I got a book here Ralph, and this is, as I was trying to find a date when this was written, but it's a pretty old book, Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman.

And how he likes to explain it is we have two minds. We got our rational mind and we have our emotional mind. And so what we're constantly trying to do is balance those two Because again, that emotional mind, it will help you sense when there is something a little awry. Right? And you can be like, what's now the question becomes is, and I say this all the time, I tell people this all the time, look, I know you don't wanna be on camera for these Zoom meetings and these Teams meetings, But let me give you a hidden secret to being on a Zoom meeting.

Look and see what your face looks like.

Oh yeah.

Right? Because here's what we don't understand, although we may not be on camera, our voice is articulating what it is that's going on with us, right? So if you can see what your disposition is, you can see your body posture, your body language, it's all gonna play out what you are communicating or how you are communicating. There are times when I'm on calls with folks and after I get off that call, I'm like, let me call this person because they really don't know what that just sound, you know, how they sounded on this call. So let me let me give a little feedback.

Hey, are you are you okay? Because that call was interesting. And then when they begin to share what was going on, yeah, even though you weren't on camera, yeah, all of it was on display.

That's true.

So so there's some beauty in guys and being on camera, look at yourself. You don't have to look at the all the participants, look at yourself. I guarantee you, you will be much more engaged in that meeting. Engaged from an aspect of how you are communicating and what you are communicating. But no, Ralph, you're spot on.

You know, we got two minds, we got a rational mind and we have an emotional mind and just like anything else, right, you have to train it.

That's good.

You gotta train it, right? What are you training it with? Are you scrolling? Are you looking at all these high drama, high murder? All these things that are just keeping your emotions on 10.

I don't wanna get too far ahead but man, you gotta understand, we are tuning every day. You're tuning every day, right? How much news are you watching? You're tuning and so now when you get in, I'm getting too far down the road but when you get in situations, you already, own eight and a half. You don't you don't even have much buffer.

Mhmm. Mhmm. You've been tuning your emotions to be ratcheted up. So anyway, I don't wanna get too far but no Ralph, this is this is an exciting exciting exciting topic.

No. It's good. It's good stuff.

Thank you for being with us today on Leadership Sovereignty. Stay connected with us on X, formerly known as Twitter and on Instagram by searching for Leadership Sovereignty. And just like this podcast, let's all collectively grow as we go. God bless.