Emotional Intelligence 2.0 - Self-Management

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John: Welcome to another episode of The Present Professional. We’re here to continue the series on emotional intelligence. And today, we’re going to expand on self-management. So the second concept from emotional intelligence 2.0. So getting into after self-awareness when we’re aware of the feelings, the emotions, the states that come up time after time, moment after moment. then it comes into having agency over those and your will to shift within those. So I think in the awareness side, we create the space from separating the distance between stimulus and response. And now in that space is where we can manage. So we’ll go through some of the strategies from the book, some of our own experiences, and Really hope you guys leave with something that resonates and some steps that you can take to manage your emotions and be able to act from your values, like how you want to respond to life when things happen. So with that, I’ll turn it over to Tony. What are your first initial thoughts on self-management?

Tony: Yeah man, well I think you teed it up real nicely. In self-management, what I love about this concept that’s mentioned in the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is that it builds upon self-awareness. So self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence and in self-management, is like you mentioned, part two. And in that, I mean, it’s more than just breathing exercises, which we’re going to talk about that. But it’s really about having the awareness to keep yourself from blowing up, keeping your emotions in check. And what the book defines it as is self-management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions to actively choose what you say and do. So your ability to actively choose what you say and do is a little more actionable than self-awareness. Self-awareness is more of a discovery process. Self-management is when you put things into action and you choose how you act. And there’s small subtle things you can do that helps you choose how you act. And a lot of them we’re going to cover today. I think you had one you want to talk about with breathing. I think that will be a good way to kick us off, especially from a foundational standpoint, is we’re big on meditation. We talk about that all the time offline. And I think just breathing and meditating and visualizing yourself is important for self-awareness and self-management. But you ready to share that story you got with breathing?

John: Oh. Oh, man. I mean, it was so beyond breathing. So just to tee this up for the listeners, this is the opposite of self-management. This was early in my career. It was my first role with Exxon out of college, and I think it was maybe a year and a half or two years into. So I was pretty comfortable in that role at the time. I was making strides towards what I wanted to complete with. This big project, I forget, I was moving some work between countries and doing some changes to our base contract, which just required so much red tape, all these approvals, all this recycle, recycle, hitting my head against the wall. I feel like a lot of that repetition and a lot of that grit to push through, had me already on edge a little bit there. At the time, we were just about to get this over the finish line, and I was probably lacking sleep at that time too. I’m sure that added to it, but to get to the story, We had another woman came in to the group within the middle of that process, and I was meeting with her to get her up to speed on the changes that have been made, like how we’ve recycled with law, and we’ve gone through and made all of these changes. and we’re ready to roll it out. To me, it was almost like a informative meeting. Here’s what happened and here’s how we’re moving forward. But one of the things, it could have been her just trying to make her mark, new to the role, new to the group, wanting to have some influence over the project. They put her on it to talk to me about. If she doesn’t do anything to change it, then you can’t put it on your, performance assessment for the year so i think that drove a lot of behavior at that company actually was just the forced rating and ranking system every year so it was if you get put on a project and you don’t do something that you can actively write down as a contribution for the end of the year, then it’s like, what’s the use of it? So the fact that you couldn’t put something down that, you know, we just collaborated and put this across the finish line together. It was, you know, I needed to write down some specific things that I did. So I feel like that may have driven it, but all that to say, she had pushback on the contract. and wanted to put in more clauses and recycle with law. At this point, I had spent the last month or so doing this, and I just straight up threw a temper tantrum. I was near tears in this meeting room. It was probably the most unprofessional moment of my career. And I was furious and I couldn’t contain the fact that, listen, no, we’re not going back to law. I was basically throwing a tantrum and saying, I don’t care what you have to say or what your opinion is. This was an information session, all right? We’re getting this across the finish line. It was looking back, even looking back when I stepped out of the meeting room 10 minutes later, what the hell was I doing? Looking back, And in hindsight, obviously I did what self-reflection has taught me and went up, apologized, expressed my feelings and needs, and then we moved across the finish line together. But in that moment, If I had the self-management strategies that I have now and that are in this book, I think the two that are really coming out to me is one, breathe right. I probably wasn’t even aware of my breath. I was probably only taking deep breaths to then scream full sentences. I love the one, so breathe right. If I would have steadiness of breath and notice when my breath was going crazy, I probably would have been able to step out of that in the moment. Count to 10. The other strategy here in the book, you just sit back, count to 10. It gets you out of that frenzy. Because I was in a frenzy. I was in a frenzy, man. To be able to step out of that frenzy in the moment would have been fantastic. It’s a lesson that I learned and I moved on from my career and managed my emotions much better since then. It’s definitely a glaring story of self-management for me. I would say for listeners out there, if you’ve experienced this type of frenzy, you experienced tears in the meeting or it’s being able to one, notice through self-awareness and then manage by taking action. So that’s self-compassion really is saying, hey, I’m feeling a little flustered because my need for appreciation and closure on this is not being met. So I would really appreciate it if maybe we could schedule another call, let me get a breather, or if I could stop out and grab a glass of water, or we could pick up a call later or something. Just calmly expressing what I’m feeling in a professional way and being able to step out of that situation. Man, so many lessons that I could go back and tell younger John then. Either way, yeah, that’s not self-management and a couple of those strategies that I think would have helped there, man.

Tony: It’s like you needed to coach yourself in that moment. You needed your current self to coach your younger self in that moment. You needed to coach.

John: Bad. I wish I would have known about coaching really earlier in my career. I would have had a coach from day. I would have been lobbying my managers, lobbying our executive teams. This needs to be something that is delivered company-wide, even if it’s on a monthly basis, even if it’s a little bit more sporadic. Man, it’s just something to have that professional mirror to help you see your emotions, see your patterns. Yeah. I agree, man. You got a story about self-management, Tony.

Tony: I’m sure I do. But I wanted to highlight something in that too that the book talks about is talking to a skilled self-manager is one of the self-management strategies. And like you mentioned, to me, I would first identify, obviously, a coach. But for those of you who may not have the means or the time to hire a coach at this moment, you know, there’s always someone in your company or there’s always someone around you that is a skilled self-manager. You probably can identify somebody that you know, somebody that’s always cool, calm and collected, somebody who you’ve seen rise through the ranks and kind of do the right things or always say the right things. And trust me, That person is not doing that haphazardly. They definitely are intentionally doing the right thing, saying the right things, and they’re probably doing something that you could adopt or adapt in your daily life. So that’s one of the self-management strategies is taking time to talk to a skilled self-manager. I just want to re-emphasize that. And, you know, if you need someone to talk to, we are available to talk to through our coaching programs. And we just really want to re-emphasize that because self-management It is you managing yourself, but it’s not an isolated process. You can always watch YouTube videos and things like that, but it’s so much better when you can talk to a human and have that human-to-human interaction in order to improve and be aware of things that you’re doing and aware of things that you could be doing better, kind of like John’s story. Another self-management strategy that I wanted to highlight and kind of kind of coincides with your story a bit, is to take control of your self-talk. So, three strategies that the book gives on taking control of your self-talk is, number one, turn I always or I never statements into just this time or sometimes. You know, we always, I just said it, but we always do this thing where we say, I always do this, or I always do that, or I’m never gonna do this, or I never do that. And that’s really not the case because we’re not robots. We are humans with emotions. We are the most emotional creatures on the planet. So we don’t always do something the same way. We don’t never accomplish this or that. So turn those I never, I always statements into just this time or sometimes because we change. We’re constantly growing. We’re constantly adopting new techniques and thoughts. Did you have something you want to chime in on that one? I’ll use the next ones after you. Go ahead and say something. I’ll bring in the next two after this.

John: Oh, man, I agree. The self-talk thing is huge. And it’s funny you say that. The I always and I never statements, I work with my clients a lot on that. And so I… I always call my clients out on that. And it’s funny, some of the clients that I’ve been working with for five, six, seven months now, they catch themselves before I even say anything. Because it’s not true. They’ll say, right, they’ll say, I’m always upset in these situations, or I can never, I can never have a constructive conversation with my manager. And then I’ll just, first it starts with, they move from me, me, like calling them out. And then it’s like, they just see my eyes. Yeah, they know. And they call themselves out. And then eventually they just in their own mind are like, never mind, I’ve struggled with some conversations with my manager in the past, but now we’re really working on it. It’s just a whole different energy.

Tony: Totally different. To put it into some simplistic terms, it’s almost like if you always say, I always or I never, it’s like you’re putting a period or a stop sign in your life because you’re stopping completely, hitting the brakes to say, I never do that or I always do this. But if you could treat your life or treat those circumstances like a stop light instead of a stop sign, where sometimes it’s green and you’re going through something, you’re passing through a situation, or sometimes you got to slow down because you could be leaning towards an area that you don’t want to be into, or you actually are at a red light and you have to stop because you have made a mistake or you have hit the wall, but it’s not always the same. It’s going to be interchangeable or always changing, just like a stoplight. So number one, when it comes to taking control of your self-talk, switch up your always. Thank you, bro. Switch up your always and your never statements to sometimes and just this time. Second one is replace judgmental statements like, I’m an idiot, with factual ones like, I made a mistake. It’s OK. We’re human beings. We make mistakes. You’re not an idiot. It’s just like, John’s story about temper tantrum, throwing a fit, that was a moment. That was a mistake that you might have made at 22, but that doesn’t define who you are. You were so far from that person. So we don’t need to attach permanent labels to ourself. If you do that, you’d leave no room for improvement. So attach factual statements to yourself. I’m an ever-growing human being, or I’m in a state of transition, or I have a new role, or I have a new business, so I expect to fail. I expect to not perform at an optimal level all the time. I didn’t tell you, I forgot. I actually was in a conference last week and I got to hear, it was virtual of course, but I got to hear Jay Shetty live. And one of the things that Jay was mentioning is that when you’re going through life and you’re starting something new, you’re going to have a point where you’re performing. That’s like step three out of five. And right after you get to that point of performing, I think the first one is you learn what you want to do, you try it out, and then you start performing. Right after performing is fail. You’re going to fail after you start performing something new, and that’s just a part of life. If you can remember that the fact is that you’re going through or that you are working to improve in an area versus you’re labeling yourself as someone who’s not going to succeed, you’ll have a lot better self-talk. The last one, is accept responsibility for your actions and no one else’s. So, you know, the blame game is tough. Sometimes you want to bring in other people for things that didn’t go right. Point the finger. Just own what you own and accept what you accept and move on. Move on.

John: Mm. Responsibility. It’s huge, taking ownership and then moving through. I loved all of those strategies. These are all things to be aware of in our own minds as things come up, as emotions come up. as we’re triggered by certain things. I think that’s a good part of self-management to speak to that is not really talked about as much in this book, but those triggers, being aware of certain situations, certain people maybe, certain types of people. That’s just who they are, their natural tendency. That’s okay, but it’s not like you have to be completely on guard and defensive when you’re in those situations. It’s great to be aware that I may be triggered. I’m aware of what that feels like and spend some time understanding what are those blind spots? What are my triggers that set me off? Is it a particular relationship with someone? Is it something that helps that questions my identity? Is it someone speaking over me all the time? There’s so many little things to be aware of, but know it. and also set boundaries around it. When it comes to those people, it’s okay to set a boundary and a consequence. I think that’s another part of self-management, but we’ll probably get into that a little bit more when we get into relationship management. I don’t want to spoil that episode.

Tony: Yeah, but people are the most complex. items, things, individuals, beings on the planet. So I mean, relationship management is going to be so important. I mean, it is so important to emotional intelligence. I got another one I want to highlight that the book talks about, but I have my own way of viewing this too. So the book says one of self-management strategies is to make your goals public. And when I think about that, it really makes me think immediately of a wedding, right? What’s more public than a wedding where you declare your love for the person that is the one you’re going to spend the rest of your life with, right? That is such a public event that you have every single person that you could think about that you can’t afford to bring in there at your wedding and you stand there and you recite the vows and you kiss and then you have an amazing reception and then you start life together. But I think that in regards to self-management, the reason why it’s so public is because it puts you on the spot to do your best. Both of you individually now have declared to everybody that you know that you’re going to spend the rest of your life together. When you make your goals public, it really just puts a microscope on you to perform better. Another thing for me is I’m in a doctoral program, as I mentioned to you, and I really, as you know, rather, but I was talking about it earlier, but I really wanted to make it public this time. So I really wanted to make sure, and I’m doing this on purpose, intentionally, to hold myself accountable. There’s no quitting, there’s no going back, there’s no stopping, there’s no, none of that. I am focused on putting this out there so that When times are hard, I know that I’ve told the world what I’m doing and that just helps me hold myself accountable and perform at optimal levels or even as one of my professors says, Olympian-like levels because we’re all busy. So whenever times are hard and I’m tired, I’m sleepy, maybe Logan’s having a day or maybe I’m having a day, I got to push through. And that helps when it comes to self-management, because that helps you push through, that helps you remember your why. So if you have big, scary, hairy goals, I mean, John, you are a full-time entrepreneur, and everybody knows it, and I applaud you for that, and you are killing it, and keep doing what you’re doing, and everybody else out there that’s listening, if you have something that you’re passionate about, that you’re working on, put it public. It’s easier to fail in private than it is to fail in public.

John: Yes, yes. I love that. It’s like lighting that little fire under you. It’s like that little bit more of accountability. Actually, not a little bit. That’s the biggest form of accountability.

Tony: Yeah, especially in this generation, where all we do is show our highlights.

John: Exactly. We got to put it out there, put the real stuff out there, what we want to accomplish, who we want to be. Let people hold us to that. Let people call us on it. Call us on it when we’re out there. Inspire people. Exactly. Inspire others too. Exactly, man. I applaud everyone that’s out there sharing what they want to accomplish in the world. I think that more and more people can do that, and I think it’ll lead to more and more inspiration. I love that. The other strategy here and self-management strategies that I feel like has been a quest for me. Clean up your sleep hygiene. Like I mentioned during that story, I was likely sleep deprived from working on that contract. It was probably just actually compounding on just the frustration with that plus lack of sleep and then combined was explosion. I’ve constantly been on a quest to have the most optimal sleep. It’s been interesting, a rollercoaster. There’s been some learnings. I’ll just go through everything. Even my mattress I invested in is ridiculous. It was one of the first things that I bought out of college. I financed my mattress. I’m like, come on, another thing would go back. and tell young John another thing, I’d be like, listen, the middle of the road is good. You’ll be solid there. Great mattress, shades, blackout curtains, I even put little stickers over all the lights. I’ve tried all the different supplements, PS 150, melatonin, you know, bedtime teas. So from complete darkness to white noise machines to the Philips wake up light that forms like a slow sunrise and at the the in the morning like 30 minutes before my alarm goes off. It’s just like so many different things that I’ve done in the bedroom to optimize sleep. It’s still the best nights of sleep that I get. We could do a whole episode on sleep. Let’s take note of that. But has been the times when after accomplishment, When everything’s planned the following day, like organization, space, cleanliness reduces anxiety and helps me sleep like no matter any supplement, any bed, whatever, if I’m comfortable and I know what I’m doing the next day and I feel good, accomplished, whole, complete. I feel it’s so much more reflective of my emotional state than anything that I can control in my environment. I’m sure the environment stuff helps, but cleaning up your sleep hygiene, yes, you can do what you can in the environment, but then you got to look at your inner environment, your inner world. I think that when I talk about cleaning up your sleep hygiene, I think that your inner world is the most impactful thing that you can start taking care of. with therapy, with coaching, with journaling before bed, with listening to music, with going on a walk, you know, around your neighborhood. Something to clear your mind, something to, you know, to feel grateful for before you go to bed. I would say that That’s what I would recommend here. I think that it’s a huge, huge thing for your self-management because when you’re tired, man, that space between stimulus and response gets pretty small.

Tony: Yeah. That’s so tough for people who are type A or high performers because you’re usually trying to finish something, you’re usually trying to complete. a project and you feel like if you sleep or if you fall asleep or go to sleep on time or get that optimal number of hours you need, that you’re letting something else down. And I’d say it’s okay to let something else down. Or if you have a partner, you know, use your partner to help you stay accountable. But your sleep is how you feed your body, how you feed your mind and soul and for me, if I’m really trying to get some really good sleep, I’ll meditate right before I go to bed. I’ll take just maybe 10 minutes and just meditate to clear my mind and then I just go right to sleep after and I’m like knocked out. Crystal says I snore now. I don’t believe it. She recorded some dude snoring in his sleep. I don’t know who it was. Anyway, that was great and I got one more too that I really love that I actually have a quote in my car that’s right on my dashboard that kind of connects to another self-management strategy that they talk about in the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and that’s the strategy is to focus your attention on your freedoms rather than your limitations. So here’s a quote that I got from an amazing fortune cookie. And it says that, really, it says that losers visualize the penalties of failure, winners visualize the rewards of success. I’ll say it again. Losers visualize the penalties of failure. Winners visualize the rewards of success. And so, I mean, when you think about that quote, if you take out losers and winners, it’s really not about winners and losers. It’s really about us as human beings and who we are as individuals and us trying to be something or trying to strive to grow. And growth is a tough process. It’s kind of like a gaining wings or something. When you’re growing yourself, you’re going to fail. But if you focus on the feeling of failure, if you focus on how it’s going to feel to fail publicly or how it’s going to feel to throw yourself in a new love relationship and what’s the worst that can happen, you are setting yourself up for failure because all you’re thinking about is what could go wrong. But winners, as the quote says, are people who are getting what they want out of life. It’s because they’re visualizing that prize. They’re visualizing what things could be. They have that positive psychology behind their thoughts and behind their thinking and what they’re setting their self up for. It’s to achieve what they’re going out for. I mean, it’s as simple as an athlete going for a medal in a sport of some sort. They are thinking about standing on the podium in first place. And even if they don’t get first and they end up with bronze or they end up fourth or fifth even out of 10, I mean, they’re striving for that number one spot. They’re not going in thinking about what if they fall or what if they fail and what 10th place feels like. Everybody wants that. for a spot, but wherever you land, it’s okay. There’s another great quote it said, it’s by Kanye West. He says, shoot for the stars, shoot for the stars, and if you fall, you’ll land on a cloud. And I love that quote too, but try not to visualize yourself failing. That’s setting yourself up for failure in the beginning. So, you know, just want to make sure you understand that it’s a great self-management strategy and just continue to visualize and prepare to succeed, man.

John: where your attention goes your energy flows period right yeah it’s you know it’s a constant that you know even comes back to self-awareness is just being aware of where your attention is right in the first place and you know another thing that can that can help develop that awareness, so you can see where your attention’s going, is one meditation, for sure. Different, any type of mindfulness activity or meditation can help you see where your attention’s at in the moment, be able to refocus. So moving your attention to refocus on your freedoms, on possibility, on choice, is really the foundation of that. that strategy, that principle. And one other thing, you know, one last concept to close us out is another thing that can help with that attention is, you know, speaking to someone who’s not emotionally invested in your problem. Speaking to someone who’s not caught up in the hustle and bustle or in the action, in the conflict that you’re currently facing. That’s another place where coaching really makes a difference. Being able to have an honest mirror that is able to look at the situation objectively without any attachments. without any relationship dynamics, without any preconceived notions of the people that you’re interacting with or the situation that you’re facing or the history that you have, and really look at those things objectively and help you see from a different perspective. and not just a different perspective, from multiple perspectives to help you change the story, to help you reframe the way that you’re looking at a problem, a challenge, a situation, and really become, I don’t want to say omniscient, but really viewing it from a higher level so you can see all the different perspectives in the story. Then you can make a choice of how do you want to show up? How do you want to manage yourself in the situation? I think that coaching is a great avenue for that, especially for leaders, especially for folks at the top of small businesses or on executive teams that don’t quite feel like they have someone to talk to that’s not kind of that doesn’t have skin in the game. I think it’s absolutely crucial to have someone on your team, your personal team, right, that doesn’t have skin in the game. So you can see from all perspectives and you can make the right choice without bias and without your history and involvement, right?

Tony: Mm-hmm. Yeah, man. That’s the important piece of having that person that can view it from a 10,000-foot view because sometimes family is just not the right medium to get a problem solved, and even friends. I mean, anybody that’s too close to the fire can sometimes view it inappropriately or incorrectly, and that’s not what you need when you’re really trying to unlock something big in your life.

John: Right. So to close us out here, I want to ask and give the listeners one thing. So what’s one thing that you would want them to take away about self-management strategies and practice to bring into their life today, this week?

Tony: Man, that’s a good question. I’d say just remember that it’s a journey. It’s not a sprint. And I think my favorite piece about it is taking control of your self-talk. I think that’s super important because we have 50,000 thoughts a day. 50,000 thoughts a day on average. Some more than others. I’m smiling because my wife and I, we talk about this all the time. Who has more thoughts? We did a marriage counseling session long ago, and they said women have like three times more thoughts than men. I don’t know if that’s true, but on average, research shows we have 50,000 thoughts a day. And if you’re not filtering yourself properly with positive self-talk and honest self-talk, it’s not always about you feeling good when you’re having self-talk. It is also about you being honest, but it’s definitely not about you beating yourself up. I think sometimes our biggest enemy is the one in the mirror. And the more that we judge ourselves or hurt ourselves with negative thinking, we just set ourselves back and then when you interact with other people, They can’t see or they can’t understand why you’re viewing things the way you’re viewing them. And you can’t explain it either. And that’s because you’ve already set yourself up for failure by coming into a social setting or a relationship with baggage that nobody else can address but you. And so if you’re going through things where you do need that third party, really consider getting a coach. Really. They’re getting a therapist because they can also unlock some things that a coach might not necessarily be able to do. So, you know, I just want to reemphasize that and Hold people accountable by asking you to be nicer to yourself, be honest with yourself, be okay with getting help if you need it, which we all do. Even the great coaches have coaches a lot of times. And be okay with growing and treating it like it’s a marathon.

John: Thanks for closing us out, man. That was great. I agree. Yourself talk. There’s one thing you come out of here with. I think that’s I think that’s the great one. So with that, we’ll let Tony wrap it up on that note. And thank you guys so much for listening. If you liked what you heard today, please rate and review us where you found your podcast and subscribe. Subscribe anywhere you can find your podcast. And we’ll be coming out with new episodes every week. If you have any comments, questions, we’d love to see you drop a comment in the box and you’ll be able to learn more, see the show notes and interact with us at the presentprofessionalpodcast.com. So check us out. See you next week. Manage yourself. Talk. Peace. Peace. Have a good one. Y’all take care of my friends.