[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends, welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. I’m your host Hal Elrod, and if you want to know the one thing that you can do to improve your health, your happiness, relationships, energy, productivity, and a lot more, the next few minutes could literally change your life. Now, what is that one thing? I’ll tell you right away. It is improving your emotional intelligence.

And my guest today is Dr. Travis Bradberry. He is a dual PhD holding expert, not a lot of those, in clinical and industrial psychology, and he’s the award-winning bestselling author of The New Emotional Intelligence. His books have sold over 5 million copies, and Dr. Bradberry is a leading authority on this topic with over 2.5 million followers on LinkedIn alone. Today, you are going to learn practical ways and strategies to immediately improve your emotional intelligence and how you can apply those to improve literally every area of your life. This is one of my favorite podcasts I’ve done in a long time. It will help you. So, tune in. Here we go.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: Travis Bradberry, it is good to have you on the podcast.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Hal Elrod: This is our first time meeting. When that’s the case, I like to start there. So, we’re meeting for the first time and I think it’s kind of fun if you’re a podcast listener to be like, oh, this is cool. I’m like a fly on the wall getting to hear the first conversation between these two individuals. So, I’m excited for this because your expertise is emotional intelligence. To me, it’s one of the most important topics for every human being to become proficient in, and it’s the one that is by default, we’re often left to the emotional example set forth by our parents or the beliefs or the habits, so on and so forth. So, I actually want to start here. How did you get into this work? How did you start learning about emotional intelligence? You’re a double PhD. So, where did this become your passion?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: For me, it was early on, it was in college and I was a psych major. I had a professor who shared, Peter Salovey who’s now the dean at Yale, did the seminal academic study on emotional intelligence in the 90s. There was a previous study where, in the 90s, there was the first time the term was used, but his was kind of the first. It came from Yale. So, it was a legitimate study. And for me, it spoke to me this idea that we have a functional capacity in our brain for how we understand and process our emotions and what we do with that. And that really spoke to me. That was powerful. I said, “Wow, I need this, so I’m going to look into this.” And as I started grad school, it became, how can I teach this to other people? What kind of research can I do to add to the field? And I was just sort of off to the races from there. I ended up writing about it, writing books, writing articles, and just trying to contribute as much as I could.

Hal Elrod: I love that. And I think you’re best known for emotional intelligence 2.0, at least that’s how I had heard of you and I read that book years ago, which was a total paradigm shift for me. The new book is coming out or it’s out now, The New Emotional Intelligence. Bridge that gap, what is the difference between those two books?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Well, the previous book is, I mean, it’s a privilege to be an author and have an evergreen book like that. That’s 16 years old and still a bestseller. And that’s a great thing. Don’t get me wrong. The only downside of it is that’s thinking that’s 16 years old.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, totally.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: And it was high time for me to put the next book out, basically to put this equal out. And that’s why I wrote The New Emotional Intelligence.

Hal Elrod: I love that.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: So, there’s a lot of new discoveries in psychology and neuro that are relevant to EQ. And for me, it’s been a lot of years of accumulating strategies and new ways to approach this that really work. And for me, it just got to the point where I was kicking myself that I didn’t have another book out, that I didn’t share this information with the world. So, it was really nice to finally put it together.

Hal Elrod: Well, I can totally relate. So, the Miracle Morning updated and expanded edition, I came out with 11 years after the original, a couple years ago. And same thing, like when you write something, you’re like, I have learned so much in the last, for you, 16 years. Like, there’s so much new information, new stories, new strategies, so on and so forth. So, totally, I resonate with that. One of the things I’ve heard you say is that our brains are hardwired to give emotions, the upper hand. I’d love for you to unpack that though. How does that work and what can we do about that?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Well, our brains are structured so that everything you experience in the world around you, every sensation that enters your body through any channel goes to the base of your brain. And the first place or one of the first places it travels to is the limbic system. It’s kind of in the middle of your brain, and this is where emotions are generated. This ensures you have an emotional reaction to events first. That’s before the signals travel all the way to the front of your brain, up in your– behind your forehead there, and that’s where you’re able to think rationally about what you’re feeling and what you’re experiencing. This makes emotions the primary driver of our behavior. We have more than 400 emotional experiences every single day. And that pathway, that communication between the rational portion of your brain and the emotional portion of your brain, that’s emotional intelligence. And you can actually change that pathway and change the amount of information that flows back and forth.

Hal Elrod: I remember, that brings up for me, I think it was Viktor Frankl, I believe, that said, and I could be wrong, I think it was Viktor Frankl that said, between stimulus and response is our ability to choose, right?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Yes.

Hal Elrod: Input comes in, a stimulus comes in, somebody says something to us, something happens, right? And then the response in terms of what we do about it, right? The emotion, I think is in between there. And then the choice is like, what will I do with this emotion? What action will I take as a result? How does someone become more emotionally intelligent? Like, just getting right to it, if somebody’s listening, they’re like, yeah, I struggle. I get angry really easily. I get really upset when things happen. I lose control of my emotions. What are some tools or strategies, really practical ways that people can improve their emotional intelligence? And also, what does that look like for someone? Like, what does somebody look like when they go from being emotionally, let’s say somewhat unintelligent, if you will, not in an insulting way, to developing more emotional intelligence? So, what is it? How do they do that? And then what are the benefits? What does that look like for somebody?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Well, the quote that you mentioned, the Viktor Frankl quote is really important because you cannot change what you feel and becoming more emotionally intelligent will not change what you feel. It’s what you do with those feelings, how you’re able to get your emotions to produce the behavior that you want. And you need to understand where you’re at today because you need to increase your self-awareness. So, this is why my book comes with a passcode. Each copy has a unique passcode to go online and take my new emotional intelligence test.

Hal Elrod: Nice.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: And this is another big thing for me. I hadn’t written a test in over two decades. And I’m no longer affiliated with the company that I wrote that previous test for, which means I can basically build a better mousetrap, right? I’m no longer tied to it. I can do whatever I want. And the point there is I feel like I’ve done a much better job of creating an accurate self-assessment because you need an objective understanding of where you are today. That understanding allows you to practice new behavior. Okay? So, this pathway between the rational and emotional centers of your brain, your neurons branch out to each other and ensure a flow of information. Your brain loves efficiency. So, if you repeat a behavior, good or bad, your brain is building pathways to reinforce that.

As you discover what new skills or what new behaviors you need to work on to increase your EQ, your brain will actually form new pathways to reinforce the flow of information and enforce these new behaviors. So, if you discover– so for example, let’s say you take the assessment. And it really pinpoints this fact, something that you’re perhaps aware of, but it gives you some new insight that you’re a yeller, right, that when you get frustrated and mad at people, you yell at them. Well, there’s pathways in your brain that reinforce that. So, your test results will actually point you to which strategies in the book will increase your EQ the most, where you should start.

So, for a yeller, they’ll probably get pointed to the strategy on the anger funnel. And the anger funnel teaches people that anger isn’t necessarily really a primary emotion. It’s something that we use as a substitute for less tolerable emotions. So, let’s say someone does something that makes you feel vulnerable, makes you feel afraid, it makes you feel threatened. Those emotions are hard to sit with. So, what people do is they stuff them in the anger funnel and anger comes out the other side. And being angry at someone for wronging you is a lot more palatable emotion. So, you take the test, you learn that you’re doing this, and then you learn how to defeat the anger funnel, right, how to catch yourself when those triggers happen. And think about what you’re really feeling. And when you acknowledge what you’re actually feeling, it’s a lot harder to get angry.

And so, what you find is that at first, you are kind of biting your tongue a little bit. You’re feeling angry, you’re stepping back, you’re very conscious of it. But once you repeat the behavior enough times, the pathway that reinforces the yelling actually dies. And your brain forms a new pathway that re-informs, that reaffirms the more constructive behavior. So, if I haven’t gone too much into the trees here, this is the idea. This is how you build EQ, one behavior at a time. You need an objective understanding of where you’re going to start. You need to know what it is you’re going to practice. And then in the real world on the fly, you practice working on that skill and you actually change your brain in the process.

Hal Elrod: It’s very much analogous to physical exercise, right? Working out, right? Every day you get a little stronger. Those grooves in your brain get a little deeper, right, through that daily repetition. Where does happiness play in emotional intelligence? For me, I mean, I started practicing emotional intelligence without knowing that’s what it was called when I was, I’d say, 19 years old. A mentor introduced me to positive thinking and being at peace with the things you can’t change. And it was more like he was introducing me to these tools that enhanced my emotional intelligence without me actually even, I would’ve never known that, those two words together, emotional intelligence.

But I was doing things where I’m like, oh, no matter what happens, I can be at peace with it, right? So, I’m curious, I think that everybody, one of our primary goals is to feel good, right? I just want to be happy. I don’t want to be so stressed. I don’t want to worry so much. I just want to feel good. And so, from your perspective, how does emotional intelligence play into our emotional wellbeing, if you will?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Yeah, that’s a great question. And all these years, first time I’ve ever been asked that question.

Hal Elrod: Oh wow, that just came up for me.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Yeah, yeah. And there’s two ways that emotional intelligence impacts happiness. One is outcome driven. So, when you get along with your spouse or your partner, your sister, brother, your parents, you are a lot happier, and emotional intelligence gives you the skillset and the tools to manage your relationships more effectively, manage your behavior more effectively. It helps you to manage your time to be more productive, procrastinate less. So, there’s a lot of outcomes that when you become a master of your emotions and you’re allowed, you’re able to utilize your emotions to produce a behavior that you want, there’s a lot of positive outcomes that come that influence your happiness.

The other side of it is perspective driven. And perspective-driven happiness is learning how to, as you said, practice gratitude and alter your perspective, right? So, this is being able to change your course of thinking when you’re having a negative emotional spiral. So, it’s two pronged, right? Those are the two ways that emotional intelligence has a big impact on happiness. And you don’t even necessarily need to say, I’m going to work on being happier. It’s just, I’m going to work on the EQ skills and happiness is a result.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, which is perfectly aligned with what I said, where I wasn’t trying to work on being happier. I was learning how to be at peace with the things I couldn’t change and let adversity just kind of let it flow through me. And yeah, it’s like, oh, now, I’m happier because I’m not doing the things or interpreting things in a way that causes me to be unhappy and stressed out.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Absolutely.

Hal Elrod: One thing, I’d love to clarify for people and even for me, I want to hear your definition of how is emotional intelligence distinct from cognitive or intellectual intelligence? How do you define the difference between the two?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Well, the mistake that people make with cognitive intelligence, they think it’s wisdom is what you know, and cognitive intelligence, that’s not what it is. It’s the pace at which you assimilate new information. And it’s measured relative to your peers and it does not change throughout your lifespan. Psychologists have conducted longitudinal studies where they literally follow people age 5 to age 50, and they see that their IQ relative to their peers, the pace at which they simulate information, is a fixed trait that does not change.

Hal Elrod: Interesting.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Very, very little. EQ occurs in a distinct area of your brain, and the EQ pathway is actually very plastic and malleable. So, when you work on your EQ, you can physically change this aspect of your brain. Another misconception that people have is that people with high IQ tend to have low EQ. And that isn’t the case. They don’t occur together in any meaningful way. You can be high in both, low in both, high in one, low in the other. That stereotype exists because there are some people that are very, very smart and very, very low EQ, and they stick out like a sore thumb, right? They are the poster child for emotional intelligence, the need for it. And so, people assume that there’s this stereotype that they can occur together, but they certainly can’t.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, because I can think of, two people right now. I can think of one person, a relative of mine, who has a very high IQ. And I wouldn’t say very low EQ, but right, definitely has challenges in that department. And then someone, a good friend of mine that I had breakfast with this morning, high IQ, high EQ, right? Like, I mean, it’s like, he is firing on all cylinders cognitively and emotionally. So, yeah, that’s interesting, though, to know there’s not a correlation because my guess would’ve probably been actually, if I would’ve without much thought or those comparisons of people I know, I would’ve thought IQ probably means a higher EQ because they’re smart enough to know that they should approach things. But that’s interesting to know that there’s not a correlation and I can think of real-life examples of both.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Well, and some high IQ folks are really stubborn about it. Yeah. They can get everywhere with their IQ and they refuse to work with their IQ until they’re forced to.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, yeah. It’s almost like they’re angry that you don’t recognize that their IQ should be enough, right? Then their emotion, lack of emotional intelligence comes out. That’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah, and you could see someone with a high IQ could get defensive easy or they could have a big ego. So, I could see all these things that would affect their emotional intelligence in negative ways. That makes sense. One thing I heard you say in an interview is that emotional intelligence is the antidote to stress. How so? Unpack that.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Well, stress is an emotional response. And emotions are the primary driver of our behavior. We don’t get out of bed in the morning with some level of stress and anxiety. It’s the motivation to act. The problem is that when stress is too severe or too prolonged, we move out of– so stress actually moves you into kind of a flow state, a moderate amount of stress, optimal performance and motivation to act. And as it becomes too severe or too prolonged, it actually works against you and you kind of go into meltdown mode.

Hal Elrod: Okay.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: So, understanding your emotions means also understanding your stress response. And when your stress levels are moving to a level that’s too high and having a coping mechanism, right, an alternate strategy that you employ to bring your stress levels down and back into that sweet spot. So, there’s a couple of– I think, 3 of the 60 strategies in the book are dedicated to stress. When I say a strategy, these are about 800 words. It’s four or five pages, breaking down a specific action that you can take and implement in your life. And a lot of them are to control stress.

Let me give you an example. They did a study at UC Davis, where they taught people to cultivate an attitude of gratitude, and it was a very simple intervention where at regular intervals throughout the day, the experimental group would have a calendar reminder that would go off, and their instruction was when it went off, they were to pause and think of something they were grateful for. The control group had the calendar reminder go off, and they were instructed to basically do nothing, just pause. The group that cultivated an attitude of gratitude had the stress hormone, hormone cortisol. Their levels went down by 23%. So, this is a very simple action that you can take when you feel stressed to break that cycle and calm yourself down.

So, that isn’t even a strategy in the book. It’s a sub-strategy, but that’s how you use emotional intelligence to manage stress. It’s, you catch yourself in the moment. You have an alternative behavior that you engage in that brings things back down.

Hal Elrod: How am I going to try to say this? Perspective shifts, like for me, I think one of the most effective strategies to optimize or, yeah, my emotional intelligence is to shift my perspective, right? I think about the Wayne Dyer quote. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change, and right now, I’m dealing with a friend of mine who’s going through a very difficult time and he’s so in it. I mean, he is the most emotionally distraught he has ever been. And he and I are talking almost every day and it’s been about a month going on. And so, I talk to him almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day.

And usually, all I offer is a perspective shift, right? And his emotional intelligence when he calls me is like on the floor. And then once he goes, wow, like you literally see him think more clearly. He feels lighter, he has more options in how he thinks and responds, and all it was was just asking him a question or offering a different way of looking at things. So, being that this is your expertise, I’m curious to where do perspective shifts fall in your toolkit.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Yes. I love that question too, because perspective shifts are so important because you need them when your emotions are driving the bus. Your emotions are there, whether you’re letting them run the show or not, but when you’re letting them take over, when you don’t have perspective, they are not allowing you to produce the behavior that you want. When you’re able to take a step back and say, what is it that I’m feeling, how is it driving my behavior, and what should I be doing differently, that allows you to channel the emotion into a different result.

And a friend when you’re going through a tough time is a very helpful perspective shift because they feel a lot of what you’re feeling. They care, right? They’re genuinely empathetic to your situation, but they have that outside perspective. And there’s some strategies in the book dedicated to this. One is a mindset where you start to watch your own life like it’s a movie, right? So, when you watch a movie, this character that you identify with, you just know everything they should and shouldn’t be doing.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. You’re yelling at the TV screen, right?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Exactly, exactly. And in our own life, we don’t do that. We just– the guy with the chainsaw is behind the door and we walk up and open the door. So, being able to take a step back and have some perspective on your own life can greatly alter your ability to understand and manage your emotions.

Hal Elrod: I love that. It reminds me of something that, again, I’ve heard you talk about, which is self-awareness and I’ve heard you say it’s the foundation of EQ, of emotional intelligence. Explain that. Why is self-awareness the foundation of emotional intelligence? And how can someone begin to build a deeper or a more robust sense of self-awareness? How can they start to do that?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Well, that’s because your EQ is at a steady state right now. The test that you take with a book, it gives you a score on a 1 to a 100-point scale. It’s normalized much like grading in school, so 75 is average. A 10-point shift in either direction is statistically significant. So, if you score in the 80s, you’re doing better than average. If you score in the 90s, you’re doing much better than average. And I don’t care if you are 72 right now or you’re a 92 right now. You are not going to increase your EQ without increasing your self-awareness. You’re not going to increase it without understanding what’s holding you back right now, what you should be doing differently. You need that perspective shift on your own behavior. The pathway is the same, whether this is something you are naturally more gifted at or whether this is something that you really, really struggle with relative to the general population.

Hal Elrod: Well, and I would imagine that the test that someone can take in the book, that alone increases your self-awareness because now, right, you take the test, it’s literally an assessment. Now, you’re like, oh, I’m now aware of the areas where I fall short in EQ and where I have room for improvement. You said something earlier when I was asking you about emotional intelligence and how it impacts emotional wellbeing and you mentioned that the more emotionally intelligent you are, the higher your emotional intelligence, the better you, how it impacts your relationships, right? Like, if you have emotional intelligence, you’re not flying off the handle every time your spouse or your kid or whoever does something that you don’t like, because you have more emotional intelligence to respond proactively rather than reactively. So, I wanted to ask you, like, diving into that a little bit, how does emotional intelligence help people handle conflict and on the same note, criticism more effectively?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: When it comes to relationships, you need to understand there’s four emotional intelligence skills, right? We touched on the first skill, the one that opens the doors of self-awareness. The second skill is what you do with that awareness. It’s self-management, how you manage your behavior to get your emotions to produce a behavior that you want. The third is social awareness. That’s awareness of what’s going on with other people, not just their emotional state, but how the world looks like through their eyes, what they value what their perspective looks like. It’s a very hard thing to do.

And the fourth skill is relationship management. And relationship management is using these first three skills in concert. So, when you’re having an interaction with another person, you know what’s going on with you, how you’re feeling, what’s triggering you, what’s causing a response. You know what’s going on with them, what’s important to them, how they’re feeling, how the situation looks to them, how you look to them, and you’re able to manage yourself to produce a better result. That is relationship management.

So, it’s the highest level of emotional intelligence skill. It’s one that people tend to score the lowest in on average because it’s very, very difficult. So, the relationship management strategies in the book are really focused on teaching you in that moment to understand what’s going on and how you can alter the outcome. I’ll give you an example, and this is one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make when it comes to relationship management, and that is they win the battle to lose the war.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, there you go. I’m going to prove my point.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Exactly. That momentary need to be right, that momentary satisfaction, which does nothing for the overall quality of the relationship.

Hal Elrod: Totally.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: It just makes the other person feel unseen, unheard, and unvalued. So, the strategy in the book is know when to lose the battle to win the wars, right? So, it flips on its head. Knowing when to take a step back, and the alternate of that is knowing when it’s a hill that it’s worth dying on because sometimes you do need to win the battle. But it’s maybe 10% of the time, 5% of the time.

Hal Elrod: I love that.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Most of us are winning all these battles. We don’t need to win.

Hal Elrod: Dude, you could write a marriage book just on, like, I would say that part of just that concept alone could save a lot of marriages, man. What was I going to ask you? I had two more questions I wanted to make sure that I asked. One, well, here’s one I know for sure. I’m a big fan and I would imagine, I think most people are simplifying something into a phrase or a word or something where it becomes a tool. I think about Mel Robbins. She wrote The 5 Second Rule. And it was like this little tool, The 5 Second Rule, if you want to get yourself to do something and you’re not doing it, just count down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and get up and do it, right? So, it was like these people could remember this concept.

I taught for years the five-minute rule, which I learned from a mentor, which is like, when you feel– this is how I actually learned kind of emotional intelligence, it was when you feel upset, set your timer for five minutes and give yourself five minutes to bitch, moan, complain, cry, vent, like, don’t suppress your emotions and try to hold it together. Let it go, right? And for five minutes, and when the timer goes off, you say three really powerful words, “can’t change it,” which acknowledges I can’t change what happened five minutes ago, so now I got a choice. I can either stay upset or I can be at peace with it, accept it, and move on, right?

So, I’m wondering, if you have any, like, if there’s a tool like that, a simple phrase, a reminder, something that somebody listening could immediately start to implement that would immediately give them a little, like a short boost in their EQ, that if they do it daily, it would rewire their brain to make that a permanent. So, are there any tricks or tips or tools, mantras, anything like that?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Yeah. So, my book is actually structured that way. So, the book has 60 strategies. And the idea is you can effectively work on just two or three strategies at a time, right? So, you take the test, the test tells you which three strategies will increase your EQ the most and you focus on those until you catch yourself doing it without thinking about it. And they’re all geared towards this sort of easy to remember catchphrase kind of thing. So, we talked about the anger funnel, right?

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: That’s one of them. Losing the battle to win the war. That’s another one.

Hal Elrod: Got it.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Another one is a self-awareness strategy. And it’s one of my favorites and it’s called play “you spot it, you got it.” And the idea with “you spot it, you got it” is that people do annoying stuff all day long, but there’s only certain things that get our goat and really rub us the wrong way. And that’s because these actions reveal something about ourselves that we are not comfortable with. So, perhaps it’s someone that’s struggling with confidence. And I know that I struggle with confidence. Watching them do that really rubs me the wrong way. It could also be someone doing something that I’m not necessarily aware of, that I need to work on. So, I need to understand why it rubs me the wrong way.

So, what I try to do in the book is give people, like you said, it’s kind of a mantra. So, if it tells you you need to play that “you spot it, you got it” game, okay, now that’s in my brain. I’m going to go throughout my day trying to play ‘you spot it, you got it.” If I know I need to lose the battle to win the war, every time I’m in a conflict with somebody else, I’m going to catch myself when I’m trying to win this battle to lose the war.

Hal Elrod: I love it.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: And so, yeah, I think you’re really onto something there. And my thinking is the same way. I’m trying to distill this down into specific things. I understand, even if you read my book, I only have so much of your attention span, right?

Hal Elrod: Sure.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: And you’re going to put the book down and go throughout your day. I want to plan a little seed that’s going to come with you through the rest of your day. And in those critical moments, it’s going to pop into your thought and you’re going to say, aha. And you’re going to take a different course of action. That’s all it takes. That’s the path to a higher EQ.

Hal Elrod: I love that. And I mean, for most of our listeners, they’re practitioners of the Miracle Morning, right, which is the six-part morning routine. And reading is one of the parts, right? So, it’s like, great, you integrate The New Emotional Intelligence into your reading. And then scribing or journaling is one aspect, right? So, you’re journaling what you’re learning. Then affirmation is one aspect. So, it’s like taking these key phrases, the main tools that you’re going to utilize, and then putting them in your affirmations, right? So, as you’re reading, you’re transferring the best quotes and highlights and strategies into the affirmations. And now, you’re reading those every single day so that long after you put the book down, those are integrated into your thinking and your way of being. I love it.

I remember what I was going to ask earlier, and this is kind of a different question. So, I’m curious if you– this may may not be something you have any informed thoughts on, I don’t know, but it’s basically emotions around emotions as energy, and here’s what I mean, without getting– I don’t have the background to get scientific with this, so I’ll just speak it kind of in layman’s terms. But in fact, I was reading a book recently and it was talking about that emotion is like love and peace and joy, right? Those are energy giving emotions. When you feel love, right, you feel up. When you feel joy, you feel up. Whereas sadness, fear, anger, those are energy draining emotions.

And so, the idea is if we want to be at our best physically, mentally, emotionally, you name it, we have to manage our emotional state. So, an underlying answer to this question is like, this is why emotional intelligence is so important. We have to manage our emotional state so that we can be in those energy giving emotions as much as possible because not only do we feel better, we do better. If you want to be productive, being in an energy draining emotional state, such as fear or overwhelm or stress, does not give you the energy to go make things happen, but being in a state of love, joy, confidence, optimism does. So that’s a big setup to the question of hearing your thoughts. But yeah, so what are your thoughts on emotion as energy and how important? One of the reasons emotional intelligence is so important, it’s not just emotions on their face, but it’s actually energy management.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: When I think of emotions as energy, I go back to this idea of how our brains are wired, and then emotions are the primary driver of our behavior. So, emotion is motivation to act. That is energy. And it tends to be in one of two directions. The action is forward movement. I’m going to go talk to that person. I’m going to go write that paper. I’m going to go yell at that guy. It’s forward movement. The other is, a lot of it is sort of fight or flight. I’m going to sit still. I feel depressed, I feel anxious, I feel worried. I’m motivated not to act, to sit right here.

Emotional intelligence is awareness of what you’re feeling, how it’s motivating you to act, and understanding is that producing the behavior that I want. Sometimes anxiety and fear motivate you to sit still in a way that’s very, very good for you. But more often than not, you get in this negative emotional spiral and it goes on too far and too long and it ends up being counterproductive. Awareness teaches you when to change course. And when you can do that, you can get your emotions to produce the behavior that you want. You can stop having these counterproductive emotions that leave you in a rut and leave you stuck, or leave you taking destructive actions that are hard on your relationships or your performance or your happiness.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, yeah. It makes me think about if you don’t control your emotions, your emotions control you, and then you’re in trouble. And we can all relate to that, either personally or with someone in our life that we know. All right, so the book is The New Emotional Intelligence. Travis, where else can people, where can they connect with you? Where’s the best place to go?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Yeah, so feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I have a really big following there. I’m also on Instagram, drtravisbradberry. That’s kind of a new thing for me because I’ve always been real focused on the LinkedIn stuff.

Hal Elrod: How many LinkedIn followers do you have? It’s somewhere…

Dr. Travis Bradberry: 2.6 million followers on LinkedIn.

Hal Elrod: That’s a lot. I didn’t even know someone had that many followers on LinkedIn. That’s pretty impressive.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: And I just started on Instagram. I only have 16,000 followers, but it’s really fun because I’m connecting with people on Instagram sort of in their personal lives and I’m seeing how the book is impacting that side of their lives. And I’m kind of remiss that I didn’t start it sooner, but it’s fun to be involved in both things. And I post on both most every day.

Hal Elrod: Okay, awesome. And then the book, wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Nobles?

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Yeah, actually, it’s 50% off on Amazon right now. Finally, they…

Hal Elrod: Ah, I love it. It’s so funny that, just for readers, authors have no control over the price of their book on Amazon. The list price, yes, but Amazon does whatever they want, whenever they want and often, we’re surprised. Like, I’ll tell my listeners, I’m like, “Hey, Amazon’s discount, go buy it.” Like, they’re discounting the book today. So, that’s cool. 50% off, that’s a good deal.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: It is a good deal. They’re not making much money on that book. And when they were just getting started or growing more 15, 20 years ago, every book was 50% off. Now, it’s kind of a good find.

Hal Elrod: No, it’s fair. Cool. Well, Travis, man, you are a wealth of information. I’m a huge fan of your work. Emotional intelligence is one of, if not, the most important areas of competency for any human being to invest time, money, and energy into improving because it affects everything, our happiness, our health, our relationships. I mean, there’s not an aspect of our life, our productivity that’s not affected by emotional intelligence. So, thank you for being on the podcast, brother, and thank you for the work that you do.

Dr. Travis Bradberry: Thanks for having me. I enjoyed our conversation.

Hal Elrod: All right, goal achievers, the book is The New Emotional Intelligence by Dr. Travis Bradberry. Go grab a copy. Follow him on LinkedIn, join the 2.6 million followers on LinkedIn, or help him out on Instagram. He is just getting started with 16,000 followers. So, love you all. Talk to you next week.

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