(_____) IS NOT THE ISSUE; OUR EMOTIONAL METABOLISM IS THE ISSUE.

EQ isn’t just important for leading business; EQ is?essential?for leading (period). It’s not a new concept. Like you, I know plenty about EQ.

EQ has been proven to be the leadership differentiator when it comes to sustainable results and everyone wants more of it. Most companies however, turn the importance of healthy leadership EQ into a soft-skill side dish. That hacker approach to EQ isn’t likely to flip the switch that improves our emotional metabolism.

MY EMOTIONAL REACTIVITY FOLLOWS A PATTERN — MAYBE YOURS DOES TOO.

After the fact, in situations like the example below (e.g., at home, at work, in my head), many of us regret how we handled it. We wish it had gone smoother; we wish we had performed more skillfully in the moment, again. But it was so aggravating that I couldn’t turn the reactivity off. The impact of how we handle those situations can be quite costly.

Coach:?I hear you. You sound stuck. Your ___ is all messed up, and has been messed up for a while. You’re right. So?

Me: (the coachee): So what?

Coach:?There is no so what.

Me:?So, what do I do now?

Coach:?I don’t know…do whatever you want…what do you want to have happen?

Me: I don’t know… but I know I’m not wrong this time (banging the table).

Coach:?Ok. You are not wrong. Now what do you want to have happen?

Me: I'm right, so I want them to agree with me and do what they’re supposed to.

Coach:?Ok. I already agreed with you. Again, what do you want to have happen besides being right? How will you end this little impasse and move forward?

Me:?I just told you, I want them to admit they are wrong and do what their supposed to do. If they don’t, then they are idiots and they should be punished.

Coach:?Ha, you’re the “punisher” now? I don’t really think your primary goal or intention is merely to prove others wrong and punish them. Is it?

Me:?No, that’s not my primary intention but c’mon, it’s obvious they are being idiotic.

Coach:?Ok — and what if you’re being idiotic? Just imagine for a moment, hypothetically…what if you think you’re right but are missing some information that in fact makes you wrong about ____??…should?you?be punished? If you are punished, will that make you trust them more in the future? Or will punishing you just create the potential for them becoming your future #1 enemy?

Me:?That wouldn’t be fair. I don’t want to be wrong. I’m right.

Coach:?Either way, you seem triggered. You seem to be feeling more and more frustrated — increasingly more reactive.

Me:?Ok, Ok, I’m stuck — I feel like I’m backed into a corner so I only see 3 ways out: dig in, give in or get away.

Coach:?Those are pretty limited options for you — FYI, those are just your instinctive reactions — fight, flight, freeze, appease. Do those reactions even help you solve the issue? Or do they just provide temporary relief but then leave you with more issues to deal with in the future?

Me:?We’re back to me sounding stuck, aren’t we?

Coach:?You’re only stuck if you don’t see that in addition to your instinctual reactions, you have other options. Your issue is not the issue — your emotional metabolism is the issue. (end scene)

IF OUR IQ ABOUT OUR EQ, IS SO HIGH… WHY DO WE STILL GET STUCK?

If you're like me, we know that we could get ourselves unstuck, when/if we’re ready. But it could take time. Hours? Days? Years? Whatever the timeframe, the delay is costly and compounds. We could always take a mulligan to minimize the cost. At any time we can apologize for our reactivity and try again, but try differently. We have unlimited “do-overs”.

But how often do we take the do-over? If we were to look back at the gamefilm?…we would see instead, that we tend to self-righteously stew on the issue, gather support to justify our behavior and/or we quickly engage in some form of automatic pilot, sedation, emotional eating, distraction, amnesia inducing cover-up operation where we pretend to move on and simply “hide the bodies” as nonchalantly as making reservations for dinner in a John Wick movie.?

It’s like our brains seem to be working against us. All our expertise and rational intelligence (IQ) aren’t able to get us unstuck. The interaction goes beyond the rational dimension.

‘”Emotional intelligence refers to the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, motivating ourselves, and managing emotions well in ourselves and our relationships.” -Dan Goleman. People with high EQ can influence without positional authority and show positive emotional energy. Goleman says these high EQ individuals have a large “trust radius”.

I’m constantly reminded that just knowing about it doesn’t mean we can do it.?Why doesn’t our emotional intelligence (EQ) kick in when we need it??We were triggered — they were triggered — we were all reacting to the emotions. (That’s what all emotional beings do with emotions, at first.) But our emotional reactivity is just that — reactivity. We’re also cognitive beings, so like my coach was trying to tell me, we have an infinite number of better options available to us beyond our reactivity.

The more emotionally trapped we feel, the higher our blood pressure goes, the tighter our muscles get and the lower our IQ drops. It’s a?vicious cycle?that we can find ourselves in repeatedly.?Unfortunately our IQ doesn’t activate our EQ.

OUR EMOTIONAL METABOLIC RATE IS WHAT SPINS OUR EQ FLYWHEEL (slow or fast)

Unlike IQ which is largely limited by our genetics, we can always continue to develop and expand our EQ throughout our lifetime. There is no limit to how high our EQ can go, but our EQ does have a regulator. Our EQ is only regulated by our emotional metabolic rate (EmMR) which locks in how quickly we can turn the RPMs of our EQ flywheel. It determines how fast/slow we are able to input a wide range of emotions and produce a variety of complex outputs. I was stuck because my emotional metabolism was still too slow to convert the convoluted emotions and the stress I was feeling, into efficient thinking (problem solving) + relating (interacting) + taking action (task completion).

If our EmMR isn’t tuned to run fast enough to process the flow of emotions, we can’t self-regulate, we can’t switch off the vicious reactivity cycle and switch on the virtuous power of EQ and conscious choice. If our EmMR isn't conditioned to handle the pressure spikes, we have a reputation of showing up bloated and overweight with unhealthy, unprocessed reactivity. That’s why it feels like we’re grinding vs gliding through life. Jamie Wheal, co-author of?“Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work”?writes:?“we’re like overloaded (old) shopping carts in a rundown parking lot. Rattling, one wheel stuck backwards, veering to one side and never going where were pointed — (maybe) we get to our destination eventually, but it’s a ton of work and not much fun. But what if we could be a hovercaft and learn to float just above it all?”?

What if we could spin the flywheel of our EQ faster, to whatever RPM level we needed, whenever we wanted to?

I’m not a doctor, psychiatrist, neuro-anything — emotional metabolism is just a metaphor I’m using to help paint a picture for why I/we can or can’t recover more quickly (when we want to) once we get hijacked by our emotions. Our EmMR regulates how efficiently/effectively our EQ can convert psychological stressful/tense situations into more useful energy/actions in the same way that our physiological metabolism regulates how efficiently/effectively our body converts calories (and oxygen) into all the energy we need to function.

DRAMA PATTERNS SABOTAGE OUR EmMR, LIKE SUGAR, FAT & SALT?

Drama patterns are addictive, destructive and distracting. Karpman MD, documented how emotional dramas (large and small) play out over and over again in our lives. They are costly, contagious, vicious cycles that can create an invisible, never-ending pandemic of suffering at home and at work.

These drama patterns are why we can’t get our job done. These dramas help us justify why we yell at the people we love, blame them for everything and why we bail them out (over and over again). These dramas are why we beat ourselves up and just can’t seem to be the best version of ourselves as often as we’d like. These dramas entertain us, comfort us and simultaneously suck the life out of us.

Here’s how they play out and ultimately sabotage our EmMR. Depending on where we focus our attention, our emotional inner state is triggered — it just happens in our brain. We can’t stop emotions from happening. The inner state happens and we react to it. If it’s a good emotion we react instinctively by moving towards it (to feel good). If it’s a bad emotion we react instinctively by trying to get away from it (to not feel bad). We learned at an early age how to navigate the complex cocktail of patterns (e.g., accommodate, avoid, attack) that work for us depending on our circumstances. As a result of prolonged practice, the dramas now run in the background of our personal operating system. Over the years we have proven to ourselves that these success formulas work when it comes to relieving the emotion. They work so well for us that we let them run our lives. So they do. We default to them as our go-to reactions to life. It is these unconscious, default success formulas that set the EmMR to its baseline and limit our current level of emotional intelligence. Our baseline is rarely enough to handle the increasingly complex challenges we’re facing.

PROBLEM-REACTING IS NOT THE SAME AS PROBLEM-SOLVING

These patterns of reacting only temporary scratch the itch of the emotion — they focus our attention on getting away from what we don’t want (emotional stress) vs focusing our attention on getting closer to what we do want (process the emotion, solve the problem, make sustainable progress). We just get better at coping, settling and rationalizing. We scratch the emotional itch to get rid of the anxiety. The temporary relief feels like success. We think we are solving the problem but we are really only reacting to the emotion. The problem gets buried then returns again.These patterns are problem-reacting cycles NOT problem-solving cycles.

We seem to be hoping that our IQ and good intentions will somehow clean up the messes made by our lack of investing in EQ. Our dabbling and hacking at EQ is what engineers a suppressed, slower metabolic rate. Maybe we’re ok with it? Maybe we’re so addicted to the drama and our victimhood that we don’t mind all the consequences? Afterall, who would we be without our victimhood? We’d be increasingly happier and more effective, despite all of the change and challenge that life has to offer. That’s who.

PLAY THE HAND YOU’RE DEALT (BE A PLAYER); LEARN TO PASS ON THE DRAMA (ITS HOLDING YOU DOWN)

We can be so much more effective than we’re being right now. Let’s get up to a higher altitude. What do we really want out of life: high-performance, high-trust, high-integrity? If we’re not satisfied with our results, health, relationships, spirituality, fulfillment at work or at home — maybe we have an emotional metabolism issue. Maybe our emotional metabolism sucks. Maybe it’s time to figure out which success formulas are serving us well and which ones are keeping us stuck. Maybe we can prioritize EQ and invest in speeding up our emotional metabolism so we'll be able to see that we have more options, make better choices and get better results.

PRACTICE IS HOW WE SPEED UP OUR METABOLISM & EQ; YOU KNOW THIS ALREADY

We gotta get our reps in. We can’t regulate our emotions/psychology until we regulate our physiology. Just trying to muscle past old success formulas doesn’t work. It takes expert experimentation and deliberate practice to accelerate our EmMR. Anyone — everyone can do it. We don’t have to live our lives at the mercy of emotional reactivity, drama and distraction. At this point your reactive brain might be shouting,?“Practice? I don’t have time to practice!”?Consider this — we’re always practicing something.?

I heard a guru (source?) put it like this:

“Imagine if we practiced (drama &) distraction 8 hours a day, 6 days a week. After 6 months we’d be good at (drama &) distraction. After a year we’d be great at (drama &) distraction After two years we’d be an expert at (drama &) distraction. We’d write the NYT best selling book on (drama &) distraction. TED would invite us to give a TEDtalk on (drama &) distraction. That’s how good we’d be at (drama &) distraction. The truth is we haven’t been practicing (drama &) distraction for 8 hours a day/6 days a week. We probably have been practicing it more like 16 waking hours a day/ 7 days a week. Lets just say we have been practicing (drama &) distraction 10–13 hours a day/ 7 days a week on average. It’s no wonder we are so good at it. We become good at what we practice whether it’s good or bad.”

No wonder we’re stuck.

Learn how to practice speeding up emotional metabolism, strengthen EQ and get rid of costly workplace drama with Three Vital Questions & The Empowerment Dynamic. Pre-crisis and post-crisis...always be ready to pursue a new master plan. More change is coming. Join me & we’ll get some high-quality reps in, together. d3&t