Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships, we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and this is The Spiritual American. Hello everyone and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare and I'm your host. And today we will be talking about emotional intelligence. I'm sure you've heard that before, that phrase. And we're gonna talk about it and bring a little bit of a spiritual slant on it. When I was thinking about this episode, I was thinking about the emotions that we usually talk about or think about. So happy, sad, angry, whatever those emotions are. And I am gonna kind of come from it in the, in a, in the moment kind of situation. I wrote that emotional intelligence means that you are aware of your own feelings and you're sensitive to the feelings of others. Now, when we talk about feelings, like we put names on them. This is, I'm sad, or I'm feeling grief, or I'm feeling annoyed, or I'm feeling impatient, or whatever. It's, you put words on it, but inside there's no words. It's just feelings, right? Maybe I'm having thoughts, but I'm having a feeling like something's going on inside. So emotional intelligence means that I'm really clear about what it is that I'm feeling, what it is that I need. Also, I'm clear about what others are feeling, maybe as much as I can tell, and what others need. What happens when we have a, let's say, a low emotional intelligence? We are not sensitive to our own needs or the needs of others, and maybe this is where we get into the hurting people's feelings, maybe being a little bit too abrupt or maybe. People might think I'm selfish or I don't care about this or that or this person, or that person. When even inside I may really care a lot, but externally it's not showing. So I was thinking today that I would share my own experience with this growing up, and I've shared this before on the podcast. I grew up in the seventies and eighties. And the emphasis was really on education and outward success. That was a big, that was the most important focus that we would have in life. There was very little to no focus. I'm gonna say on your authentic feelings, like your heart, what's going on inside you. It was more about what you were showing, not what you really feel. So growing up, and I kind of picked up this habit of paying attention to what everybody else was doing or saying and trying to adjust myself to help calm down the situation, or maybe make them like me or something like this. I kind of picked up this idea that if I act this way, it'll be better, or I'll make them feel better, or I'll be safe, or whatever. All these kind of reactive, hypervigilant habits and behaviors that I picked up along the way. None of that is emotional intelligence. It's all reactivity. So emotional intelligence is not the same as reactivity. Okay? So let's say I, kept going in my life and then when I started this spiritual journey and started meditating, I realized. I had to face that I really didn't know myself very well, my internal world. I really wasn't very clear about what it was that I wanted. As a matter of fact, I was so used to doing what I thought other people wanted. I didn't even know what I needed or what I felt. Anything like that. And I know that probably some of you out there are having the same background and maybe the same challenge. And some of you might be listening to this and saying, I don't know what she's talking about. Of course I know what I feel. Of course there's some people are like that. I know people in my family and people in my life that don't have that problem. But for me, that's what it was. And I'm gonna say that that was because I was sensitive that when other people acted a certain way, and maybe I didn't have the language, or maybe I didn't understand or whatever, I picked up these kind of reactive behaviors to deal with it. So when I started doing meditation and I started looking at myself and trying to figure out what was going on inside me, I had to start setting boundaries, meaning I had to start changing my behavior. So part of emotional intelligence is, I'm gonna say self care, and self care is a theme. You're gonna hear on many of these episodes, and I feel strongly that meditation is the primary practice for self-care because it's focusing on the self. I'm focusing on myself. In the beginning, when we start meditating, the mind is going crazy and all the PTSD and activity and negative self-talk and everything is all there at first. Sometimes it's a little scary or maybe we get discouraged when we start to meditate at first. But I stuck it out and I kept meditating because I did understand, based on the knowledge that I was learning, that meditation I had to, I had to start meditating. I had to start getting in touch with what's going on inside. So I've shared this before on the podcast, but two weeks after I started meditating, and believe me, my mind was crazy. Two weeks after I started meditating, anger completely left. I noticed it, like I didn't feel angry, but what I noticed is that things were happening and I wasn't reacting. It just wasn't there anymore. It just disappeared. So I was noticing what was going on in myself. That's part of emotional intelligence. Start to notice how you respond. One of the practices that we do is before bed at night, we run the day in front of my mind's eye. Like in my mind I run through the day and see how I did. Like no judgment 'cause there's no judgment in spirituality. But I try to watch and see and look and learn. Okay, well I did good there. Maybe I was a little selfish there. Wow, I did better in that situation or. Wow. I used to be really angry when that happened and I wasn't angry, or maybe I little need a little more self-control over there. So at the end of the day, I'm watching myself and I'm getting a sense of my own responses and my own progress. That's also emotional intelligence. I'm beginning to understand my own patterns. Patterns of reaction, patterns of feelings, patterns of thinking, patterns of self-respect, or lack of self-respect. Self-respect is also very important because I find that when I feel insecure or I feel maybe confused or a little too overstimulated, that I don't really feel good about myself or my behavior at those times. So, for instance, maybe I'm in a meeting and everybody else is sitting there and I get really enthusiastic about something and I start talking about it and nobody reacts, or maybe there's a negative reaction or something like that, and I just feel really foolish and I sit down and maybe I worry about it later or something. Or maybe I get mad at them. You know, there's, there's all different ways to react, but what I notice is after a situation like that, my feelings are, I don't wanna feel foolish. So self-respect is very important. And part of self-care and self-respect and emotional intelligence is knowing when I need to take care of myself. And we were just doing another podcast episode a little while ago and we were talking about setting boundaries. Like if something is, we use the word toxic, and I'll define toxic, toxic. A definition of toxic is when you're in a relationship with something. It doesn't have to be people, but usually it's people, I guess, where the natural flow of ideas and giving and taking is stuck. It's not happening. So there's abuse there or there's negativity there, or there's hard feelings or something is there, but the natural back and forth of relationship is not there. So I would call that we're stuck. I would call that toxic. So if I have toxic situation, it would help me if I would be able to set a boundary and remove myself from that situation, at least temporarily. We had a class last night also where one of the students said, well, what do I do? I started doing, you know, spiritual practice and now my friends are making fun of me or they're being mean to me or whatever, and I get really upset inside and I don't know what to do. So I suggested, in those moments, remove yourself from the environment because we, it doesn't occur to us. Sometimes we think, oh, I should say, I don't like when you're saying that to me or whatever, which is not wrong. But in spirituality, we're really looking at trying to transform my own internal landscape. And when I transform my own internal landscape by taking responsibility for my own feelings, dealing with myself and not everybody else, not dealing with everybody else just dealing with me. When I do that, I begin to open up a little bit more, and then you'll see my experience is those relationships begin to transform. But I can't transform them when I'm being overwhelmed in the moment and I can't discern what's happening inside. So I need to give myself some room. So I told the person, just say, oh, excuse me, I really have to go now. That's all. Just get yourself outta there. So self-care is very important for getting to know myself, giving myself some room. In the situations where the emotions are running high, maybe I don't have a full clear idea of what's happening yet. I find that when I start doing that, I feel better. My self-respect starts to feel better. I was thinking that, someone has to be on my side. Can other people really help me? I mean, you can get help, but nobody really can make me feel better about me. Not really. They can be supportive. They can give you, you know, advice or support or whatever, but nobody can make you feel better about yourself. I think that's a very important point of emotional intelligence, and it's, you can check it for yourself, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a fact. No one can give me my own self-respect. So with emotional intelligence, we're talking about self-care. We're talking about self-respect, and that may include boundaries, boundary setting, meaning whatever the situation was, I am stopping, or I'm pulling away, or I'm renegotiating the situation so that I don't have to feel inauthentic, so that I don't have to feel uncomfortable. It's important at those times that you don't do anything that makes the other people think that you're angry or upset. Maybe you are, but, and I'm not saying it might not be perfect, it might not be perfect at first, but ultimately in a spiritual way, we want to be able to set that boundary in a neutral way. Oh, you know what? I'm really busy at work right now. I can't. I can't talk right now. And then you're safe and you can continue to work on yourself. And I'm here to say, once you get that time to work on yourself and get that clarity and we can say emotional intelligence, like get that idea of what's going on inside of me, you're much better able to be with others. And there's a secret, there's a magic secret. If you really do this without blaming anybody else, if you really take responsibility and give yourself a chance and meditate and find out what's going on, you'll naturally start to change in a good way. Like the more authentic and more self-reliant, more self-respect, and those energies have an impact on others. Self-respect and self-reliance and independence, and caring, and goodwill, they all have an impact on others. And when I start using that for myself, others begin to change. And that's the magic. So I don't have to change anybody. I can't change anybody, right? We know this. I can't really change anybody, however, can't really change myself either. Not with force, like I can't change myself. Anybody try to change yourself with force doesn't work right. I don't wanna be this way anymore. I don't wanna be that anymore. No, that's just talk in my head. What I'm sharing now is what works is give yourself some time, do meditation. Start paying attention to yourself. Start paying attention to your thoughts and feelings. No judgment. Watch your day at night before you go to sleep. Get a sense of what's going on now. How is this gonna translate into being sensitive to others? I'm gonna say it's just like any other experience. So I'm a nurse. You know this, if you've been watching the podcast, and I have experiences as a nurse, so if I go up to somebody who's a nurse, I automatically understand and if they start talking about something about nursing, chances are I have no problem relating to them. It's easily recognizable. It's easy for me to relate, and I can respond in a positive way. Same thing with emotions. If I have emotions like hurt feelings, or maybe I'm sensitive, or maybe I feel insecure or I'm in a toxic situation and I don't know how to take care of myself. If I start taking care of myself. And if I start healing those feelings, that makes me experienced in that. So when I'm around other people who feel insecure, I'll be able to pick it up. I'll give an example. I was doing meditation in work and I was in my office and at lunchtime we were doing meditation. There were maybe four people in my office and we were meditating, and right in the middle of the meditation, one of the clerks came in, didn't knock nothing, came into the office and started complaining about how she was doing all this for the veteran. I work in the VA and for the patient and she called him and she did all this extra work, and she's like yelling. And I'm watching her, and two things happened. One thing was I was aware that the students were watching me, the other nurses were watching me, so I had to hopefully have a good response. The second thing I realized is I don't know what to say, so I need to be, I got very quiet, so inside I use, I'm gonna say the power of silence. I just got very quiet and I just listened. And when I was listening, I realized what she needed. She needed to be validated. That wasn't in words. In words she was yelling and talking with her hands and being loud and totally unaware that she was interrupting the class or whatever. She didn't care, but I could have said, you know, will you please leave? We're having the meditation, but I didn't do that. I got very quiet. And I heard, it was like I felt what the what the person was needing. She needed to be validated. So I said, wow, you did such a great job with that patient. Thank you so much for doing that. I'm so glad you came in and told me that. That was amazing. Thank you so much for telling me that. And she goes, okay, thanks, bye. And she walked out. That's the magic. When I understand my own emotions, heal my own self apart from them. That is the law of karma. Remember, I'm a hundred percent responsible. I gotta deal with myself. That's the hardest step, by the way. Separating from the situation and focusing on myself. That first step is the hardest step. Once you do that, of course you're gonna want to get better, right? So I'm focusing on myself, and then I have experience. So then when other people have situations, number one, I'm not reacting. Number two, I probably have the answer. And hopefully I'll be able to deliver the answer in a way that feels natural and actually helps the person. Obviously, I'm not trying to be egoic or arrogant and hurting anybody, right? But wouldn't it be nice to be able to feel self-respect, feel secure inside, so that when something happens, I'm able to give the right response to help. Remain stable myself. That's emotional intelligence, So I'll leave it there. I wrote down here just the last two things I wrote down here. You need courage to set boundaries and then back yourself up. So in the final analysis, I can't change anybody else. I can't really forcefully change myself. But if I pay attention to myself, I'll get experience, I'll heal, I'll empower myself, and then I can help others. So I will leave it there. Remember, our slogan is Heal, empower, and serve. Just like I just said, I heal myself, I empower myself, and then I can serve others. So thank you for being here, and until next time, take care. I'm uh, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm.
