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076 - Stop Freaking Out!

Hello there, Kevin here and welcome to another episode of The Feel Good English podcast. The podcast that is helping you become more fluent in English, and more fluent in life.

So how are you feeling out there? Are you happy, sad, tired, excited?

All day long we experience a variety of emotions. Sometimes we think that emotions only impact us if we are in a fight or we are really upset or very scared.

However, emotions can actually affect all of our decisions, and that is going to be the topic of today. I am going to be talking about emotional intelligence, how we can become smart with our emotions.

Why would we need to do this? Well, the more that we can control our emotions the better we can be at making decisions, as well as dealing with people.

And today I am going to talk about a book that I read called “Emotional Intelligence: Why it could matter more than IQ”. This book is by an author named Daniel Goleman and we are going to talk about how we can determine our success in relationships, career, and even our health, by becoming more emotionally intelligent.

And more specifically, I am going to talk about how emotions can impede our judgement and make us act irrationally, and then I will give you some practical tips on several ways to boost your own emotional intelligence.

Because if I didn’t give you any practical tips this would not be a very practical podcast, would it? And we all know how practical being practical is, right?

And just a reminder, before I get into this episode, if you want a transcript to this and other Feel Good English podcast episodes, go to feelgoodenglish.com, learn how you can become a member and get all transcripts to the Feel Good English podcast to help you be more English intelligent. So after the episode go to feelgoodenglish.com and learn more about what we have there.

Now let’s get into the episode Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.

So what are emotions anyway? Why do we have these? Scientifically, why do humans have emotions?

Well, emotions are important tools for understanding and interacting with our environment. If you are scared about something you need to run away, that is important. If you sense something is wrong, you are feeling unsure about something, you have any emotion of insecurity, maybe there is something going on around you that needs to be taken care of.

So there are reasons that we have emotions. However, our emotions can also be flawed,. When we are in a state of heightened emotion our minds get bombarded with thoughts and images and our minds start to race.

So there is no room for rational thought; if you think about when you are really really emotional about something, there is no space in your brain for rational thinking, it doesn’t fit inside there.

A very clear example for you as an English learner, think of a time when you were really nervous about speaking English; you were thinking more about your emotion, you were feeling, your emotion more than you were thinking about what you were going to say. And the words didn’t come, there was no rational, logical thought process there, you were just full of emotion, so you couldn’t say what you wanted say.

And when you are in this heightened state of emotion, you are really stressing out, you might even misinterpret things because you don’t have the capacity to think rationally about something; so you are really scared about speaking in a group of native English speakers and then you even see things that make you even more scared.

You think they are talking about you or you think they are laughing at you because you are not processing the information correctly, your emotions are taking over your logical thought.

And another way emotions can affect us negatively, is they are based on past experiences. So through past experiences, especially when they have been repeated, we have learned how to react to a situation.

If you were bullied when you were a teenager, you might carry the same emotions when you are an adult. So even though this bully is not around anymore, you still have these emotions of being bullied, and you carry this insecurity into your adulthood, so, this can stick with us if we don’t figure out how to deal with and cure these negative emotions.

So even though emotions are important, they serve a purpose, they can also cause problems in our lives, if we don’t learn how to deal with them more intelligently.

So how can you use the power of your emotions without letting them overwhelm you? Well this is where we need emotional intelligence, it allows you to recognize and manage your feelings without being controlled by them.

And the first aspect of emotional intelligence is being able to recognize and name your feelings; you have to be able to catch your emotions, to see your emotions, objectively almost, without letting them take you over.

This step is vital in being able to manage your emotions. There have been studies that have shown people who aren’t able to recognize their own feelings are more prone to even violent outbursts. And once you’re able to recognize your emotions, you need to become aware of what causes them.

So you know what they are, you start recognizing them, then you need to know the causes behind them. And often this is based on how you think about a certain situation.

For example, let’s say you are walking down the street and a friend of yours passes by and he doesn’t see you, or he doesn’t acknowledge you. You might get upset and say “Why is this guy ignoring me? I know that he saw me, why didn’t he acknowledge me?”

But, if you stop to think why he failed to acknowledge you, you might find out other reasons that make you less upset. Maybe he was lost in thought, he was so lost in thought, concentrating on something, he couldn’t even see his surroundings, and he literally didn’t even notice you. It’s possible.

So when you begin to recognize and manage your feelings, emotional intelligence can help you concentrate on achieving certain goals.

For example, imagine that you have a big report coming for school.

You don’t really like the class, the subject that you are studying, hopefully it is not English, but you would much rather go out to a movie or something like that.

Emotional intelligence can help you manage these feelings, these feelings of being lazy and not wanting to get something done, procrastinating. So being more emotionally intelligent, although the subject matter bores you, you could try to look at it from another angle.

Maybe there is something that makes you excited within that class, or somebody you want to see, or maybe you can know that the feelings of going out and doing something fun, going to a movie, something like that will come, so you can learn how to manage that gratification and defer that gratification until you have time for it. So being able to stay more disciplined in delaying gratification, that’s emotional intelligence.

Now there are several ways to boost your emotional intelligence that this book talks about, and I am going to talk about those, right after this quick message from our podcast sponsor italki.

So let’s learn some way that we can boost our emotional intelligence.

There are a series of exercises that can help you achieve this. If you want to enhance your self- awareness and self-management, emotional management, you can practice using inner dialogs. This will assist you in identifying and naming your feelings.

For example, if your friend tells everyone but you about his bad marriage, he is having a bad marriage, you may feel upset. But having an inner dialog, meaning talking to yourself, you can ask yourself questions like, “why am I feeling upset?” Because my friend confided his marital problems to everyone but me.

Now that you have identified the feeling, you can dampen its power; you’re going to tell yourself something like, “Well I may be feeling left out, but it is possible that he did not want to annoy me, because he knew I was busy right now. Or maybe he knows that I get too involved in these situations and didn’t want me to get too distracted by his problems.”

So you will feel a little bit less upset if you start asking yourself why is this person doing this? Why am I feeling this way?

Maybe you want to enhance your ability to stay motivated and think more positively; sometimes you aren’t able to get what you need get done, done. You procrastinate, you get lazy, you play video games or you just do everything you should not to be doing instead of getting the important tasks finished.

To become self motivated start thinking like this: people who can convince themselves that failures are due to something that they can change, don’t give up so easily. They continue to try because they believe that a successful outcome depends on their own actions.

So again people that can convince themselves that failures are due to something they can change, they can grow, they can get better, they don’t give up so easily. So just thinking differently about your current situation, maybe you’re struggling to do something and you just keep thinking “I can’t do this, I can’t do this.” Just literally change your thoughts, pay attention to your thoughts and just try to work with them and forcefully change the way you are thinking about it.

In contrast, those attribute a setback to some personal deficit, likely give up soon, they just think they aren’t good enough, they are convinced that there is not much they can do about their successes anyway, so why even try?

Very important for English learners, if you have struggled with English learning a lot, and you don’t feel that you’re speaking confidently and clearly and you don’t impress the people that you are speaking with, it has nothing to do with if you are a good English learner or not, it comes down to simply the effort and the time you put into something.

Having patience and daily practice in English is what gets you to that confident level.

Even if you have been learning for years and you still don’t think you are there, well change the approach, change the method that you are using, and also put more effort into that. You can become a fluent confident speaker, it’s possible for just about anyone, it just depends on how much time you spend with English.

Now I will go over some of the main points from today’s episode.

Emotions help us understand and interact with our environment, they are there for a reason.

Number two, when we get overly emotional there is no room left in our brains for rational thinking, our brain is full of crazy thoughts and just racing back and forth, so there is no space leftover for rational thinking to solve problems effectively.

Number three, we can carry past emotions with us through life and they can continue to affect our reactions to situations, we have to be careful not to let our past experiences, negative experiences, past emotions affect us as we get older.

How do we avoid this? Well through learning, personal development, it could be therapy, all different types of things; but the biggest one is number four, being able to label and catch your emotions as they come. So you need to start learning how to recognize and label your emotions. Is it sadness? Is it fear? Is it laziness? Whatever that may be.

And once we’ are able to recognize and label our emotions, it will make it easier for us to deal with them and not to get caught up in an emotion and to completely controlled by the way that we are feeling.

We will be able to stop and think about what is going on and not just react very impulsively.

And number five, practice using inner dialogs with yourself. When you experience something that might be considered negative, ask yourself a lot of questions and investigate why you are feeling a certain way, don’t just make quick assumptions. So asking yourself questions can help you feel less bad about something that might happen in your life.

And number six, lastly, how explaining our successes and failures to ourselves makes a big difference in how we act. Do you think things are changeable, do you think we can improve on the things that we are currently not very good at, or do you think it is just set? If you fail at the something, do you blame yourself and think you are just not good at something? Or do you just focus on the situation and know through more effort, change and learning, you will do better in that situation next time.

So be careful in how you explain success and failure to yourself.

That will do it for today’s lesson on emotional intelligence, I hope you learned something new. If you are somebody who tends to be pretty impulsive and controlled by your emotions, take some of these tips and start applying them, really start trying to pay attention; watch your emotions as they come. Be the person in between your emotions and your actions. Hey that is cool, huh?

Once again if you want transcripts to this episode go to feelgoodenglish.com. You can become a Feel Good member and get transcripts to all of the Feel Good English podcast episodes. You can also get some free transcripts there, so go to feelgoodenglish.com.

And I will get into some of the vocabulary from this lesson in just a second, but before I would love to leave you with a question.

How do astronomers organize a party? They planet.

See you in the next episode.

I use the verb in this episode, to impede. Impede. I-M-P-E-D-E. To impede your progress, or to impede something from happening is to be an obstacle, to prevent that from happening. So the verb to impede is very similar to, to prevent. An example, you could say, “she is impeding the progress of our project.”

Next phrase, i say to make sound judgments, sound judgment or a sound judgment, sounds just like a noise just like you would normally use, sound, music. Making a sound judgment , or you could say a sound decision, just means one that is based in good information, in facts, a rational judgment, so making sound judgments, means making rational, well-thought-out judgements.

To be prone to. if you’re prone to doing something, it means you’re likely to do it, you have a habit of doing it, or you’re susceptible to it.

An example, people who are prone to getting the flu every winter should probably get a flu shot in the fall.

Another verb, to dampen, to DAMPEN something is to stiffen it, is to to lessen its effect, so, or it could be to moisten something, to get wet, but here, to lessen its effect, to make it less powerful. Getting a cold will dampen your enthusiasm, as an example, if you get a cold, your enthusiasm the energy will be dampened, will be lessened To feel left out, the a phrasal verb to leave out, or feel left out,this is to feel excluded, like you aren’t involved with something other people are doing. An example, Johnny felt left out when he wasn’t invited to the baseball game.

Poor Johnny.

Lastly, it comes down to, also a phrasal verb, come down, in this case, it means the essential element of something. So i could say, “it all comes down to this. If you want to be a fluent English speaker, you have to practice every day.

See you soon, bye bye !