Imagine a world where we all use our emotional, positive, and spiritual intelligences to create the life we would all like to live. In this episode of Emotional Intelligence: Your Greatest Asset and Key to Success, I explore how understanding and integrating these three types of intelligence can help you become a happier person, a more effective leader, and a person who has so much good to contribute to the world.
If you've been paying any attention to the trends in "intelligence" lately, you'll know that smarts and college degrees and such just aren't "all that" anymore. People who possess the big three, as I call them--EQ, PQ, and SQ--have demonstrated that they are better leaders, more resilient, and frankly, the kind of people that others want to be around. And guess what? We can *learn* these skills just as we would any other kind of intelligence. Sure, there is aptitude, but the truth of the matter is that if we want to become better people, we need to be self-aware, intuitive, and guided by the Source within us that is love, goodness, and compassion. Most, if not all people say that they want their lives to *mean* something. We seek connection, meaning, truth. Spiritual Intelligence gives us that.
I also discuss the ten saboteurs that might be silently undermining your potential, from the harsh inner judge to the relentless people pleaser. Learn practical strategies to counter these negative forces by shifting to your brain's sage mode, where empathy, curiosity, and positive action reside, along with that still small voice that guides you to a path of wholeness, love, and self-compassion. As we examine the growing trend of people identifying as spiritual but not religious, you'll see how spiritual intelligence can guide you toward a more authentic life. Don't miss this opportunity to gain insights into developing these vital intelligences—emotional, positive, and spiritual—to enhance your everyday interactions and overall fulfillment. Engage with our community by sharing your thoughts, and join me at the PQ Gym for ongoing support and enriching insights.
Show Notes: Spiritual Intelligence: The Ultimate Intelligence, by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2001
Pew Research Report on Spirituality Among Americans https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spirituality-among-americans/
Imagine a world where we all use our emotional, positive, and spiritual intelligences to create the life we would all like to live. In this episode of Emotional Intelligence: Your Greatest Asset and Key to Success, I explore how understanding and integrating these three types of intelligence can help you become a happier person, a more effective leader, and a person who has so much good to contribute to the world.
If you've been paying any attention to the trends in "intelligence" lately, you'll know that smarts and college degrees and such just aren't "all that" anymore. People who possess the big three, as I call them--EQ, PQ, and SQ--have demonstrated that they are better leaders, more resilient, and frankly, the kind of people that others want to be around. And guess what? We can *learn* these skills just as we would any other kind of intelligence. Sure, there is aptitude, but the truth of the matter is that if we want to become better people, we need to be self-aware, intuitive, and guided by the Source within us that is love, goodness, and compassion. Most, if not all people say that they want their lives to *mean* something. We seek connection, meaning, truth. Spiritual Intelligence gives us that.
I also discuss the ten saboteurs that might be silently undermining your potential, from the harsh inner judge to the relentless people pleaser. Learn practical strategies to counter these negative forces by shifting to your brain's sage mode, where empathy, curiosity, and positive action reside, along with that still small voice that guides you to a path of wholeness, love, and self-compassion. As we examine the growing trend of people identifying as spiritual but not religious, you'll see how spiritual intelligence can guide you toward a more authentic life. Don't miss this opportunity to gain insights into developing these vital intelligences—emotional, positive, and spiritual—to enhance your everyday interactions and overall fulfillment. Engage with our community by sharing your thoughts, and join me at the PQ Gym for ongoing support and enriching insights.
Show Notes: Spiritual Intelligence: The Ultimate Intelligence, by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2001
Pew Research Report on Spirituality Among Americans https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spirituality-among-americans/
Hello and welcome to the podcast Emotional Intelligence, your greatest asset and key to success. I'm your host, dr Jamie Carlaccio, coming to you from the Greater New Haven, connecticut area, as a positive intelligence, or PQ, coach. I'm committed to helping people develop both emotional intelligence and mental fitness. That is, you'll come to regard problems as situations that help you learn and grow. Pq is a way of being and doing in the world that enables you to develop and sustain a positive relationship with yourself and others, at home, at work and everywhere in between. Please subscribe to this podcast and tap the like button so more people can enjoy the benefits of PQ. And now here's the show. Hello everybody, welcome to the podcast Emotional Intelligence, your Greatest Asset and Key to Success. And today I'm going solo. I don't have a guest, but I am going to talk about another. I Last week I talked about intent and impact with my guest, dr Margaret Barrow, and we talked about the idea that you can have the best intentions in the world, but if you say something or do something that lands on somebody that they found harmful or hurtful or disturbing your great intentions don't matter as much as how, what you did, said or whatever landed on them.
Speaker 1:
And that actually applies to what I want to talk about today, which are three kinds of intelligences. Now, when we talk about intelligence, we often think of the smarts, the brain, and certainly we've all probably seen IQ tests and maybe even taken them a pretty smart individual. But when it comes to those internet IQ tests where you have to look at blocks and figure out patterns, I just completely get confused. So I'm not sure if that's really a measure of your intelligence or not just being able to see blocks and patterns. But anyway, what I want to talk about today are three other cues that I think are even more important. That isn't to say you don't need to have a certain amount of smarts or maybe a college degree. If you're going into business or you're going to be a business owner or an accountant, yeah, go to college, learn accounting, learn finance. Or if you're going to be a doctor, by all means, please go to medical school and do well. You know the joke. What do they call the guy that finished last in medical school? And do well, you know, you know the joke. What do they call the guy that finished last in medical school Doctor? That's not the doctor I want to see, but anyway.
Speaker 1:
So we're talking about this podcast is called Emotional Intelligence. So we're going to talk about emotional intelligence, positive intelligence and spiritual intelligence. There's a great book that I found and it's called SQ, spiritual Intelligence, and because I have a fake background, you can't really see the title, but rest assured it will be in the show notes. So emotional intelligence is the ability to be self-aware, it is the ability to be resilient, it is the idea that working collaboratively is often better than working individually. Now, that isn't again to say that individual ideas and projects aren't good, but if we can work as a team and really build on each other's expertise and build on each other's ideas, that's collaboration.
Speaker 1:
And I was just having a conversation with a future podcast guest, m Devinish, and we were talking. She's a leadership coach and we were talking about what it is that differentiates great leaders from either good, decent or even bad leaders. And it really comes down to emotional intelligence. Are these the kind of people we want to work for? And if you're on LinkedIn, then you know that a ton of the posts that at least the people I follow they're all about who's a good manager. What does emotional intelligence mean? What does positive intelligence mean? And then I'm going to again talk about spiritual intelligence, because I don't see that talked about as much and I think it's also very important and I think it goes to the heart of that inner sage, that still small voice.
Speaker 1:
But back to emotional intelligence for just a moment. We talked about how leaders often have a top-down approach and employees don't always feel valued or heard or management is not taking into account other people's ideas or really making them feel valued. And we had that moment where there was a phenomenon of quiet quitting and there was a talk of toxic workplace and the idea that people want to feel valued, they want to feel heard. They do not want to go to work every day and dread it Right, you don't want to go to work and say, wow, you know, my boss doesn't even know my name or you know, every time I have a great idea. They say, no, that won't work.
Speaker 1:
People who lift us up and help us grow and want to support us and at least I know for me, I was in a workplace that I had a lot of toxic relationships and unfortunately neither of my supervisors did anything about it. So they watched it. They watched it happen, they saw me cry, they saw the discord it. They watched it happen, they saw me cry, they saw the discord but they just kind of pretended like it wasn't there. Or I guess they thought it would iron itself out. Or I said maybe they thought that this other person and I would figure it out on our own. And after eight months it didn't figure itself out on its own and we did have to have an intervention. I went to HR.
Speaker 1:
But the thing is it shouldn't have to be that way. You know, I went to work, loving the job but hating the atmosphere, and that just isn't a recipe for success. So I came home and I was sad a lot and I could have done even better work had I been more supported. And again, I have talked about this before I hadn't had any positive intelligence training at that time and I really wish I had, because I would have been a different person showing up to work. It was certainly on me as well. I'm not saying it was all supervisory or anything, but I would have shown up as a different person. I would have shown up with this idea that hey, we're working together and we're on the same team and we actually want the same thing. So let's figure out what's going on. So emotional intelligence is that self-awareness like, yeah, I am part of the problem and you know, I eventually did come to that place. But also, you know, when setbacks happen, we're resilient.
Speaker 1:
And the idea is we all want to see and be seen and hear and be heard. And one of the things I think that happens in our society and why people are so at odds with each other is we don't see each other. We don't see each other or we see another. Right, we just see somebody else. We don't see that they're like us.
Speaker 1:
Last week I talked about how we bleed red blood. You know, we all have the same stuff inside us. It might be a different size and our brains might be wired slightly differently, but ultimately we all have the same kinds of emotions. We all have the same kinds of things that upset us. We get angry same kinds of emotions. We all have the same kinds of things that upset us. We get angry, we get sad, we are happy. And if we can't start looking at each other as what I say beloved children of a loving creator, then we're never going to create the kind of society that I think we all want.
Speaker 1:
We want to live in a better world. We want to help make that world a better place. You know, we can't solve all the problems of the world. We can't solve hunger and poverty, and and you know. But we can do our part. And if everyone took their square foot of earth, that they're standing on and decided I'm going to make this patch of the world better, that they're standing on and decided I'm going to make this patch of the world better, and if we all started doing that, this world would grow into something amazing by leaps and bounds.
Speaker 1:
Now I do want to say one thing, and that is that when you watch the news, it's all doom and gloom. Everybody thinks that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and parts of the world are, and there are a lot of things that we need to be concerned about the poverty, the war, the crime, the lack of sustainable living situations, whether that means drinking water, irrigation, whatever. But there is a lot of good in the world and there are a lot of good people in the world and I think we need to hold on to that and we need to try and find those people and create a movement of sorts Like, yeah, there is a lot of good. In this world there are a lot of loving people, there are a lot of charities that are designed to try to help people who need it the most. So I don't want to say that the world is bad, but I do think we have a long way to go to make it better, and I think we all have the resources to do that.
Speaker 1:
And some of it's just right up here in that decision to be a better person, to be emotionally intelligent. Right, that isn't to say we don't have bad emotions, but it is to say feel the feelings, get real, get vulnerable, do the Brene Brown thing and embrace your vulnerability. And that isn't to say that you lay everything out on the table to every stranger you meet, but it is to say, yeah, this is who I am, this is who I'm showing up as today, and that's okay. I don't have to pretend to be somebody else, I don't have to try to be liked by everybody, and I'll be the first poster child to say that, as a people pleaser, I want to be liked by everybody, but I know that that's just not the case. Some people just aren't each other's cup of tea. But that doesn't mean we have to be mean or unkind. It just means, yeah, you know, we have different values and different views, but ultimately it isn't about being liked or, you know, getting a lot of pats on the back, even if that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 1:
But if that's the only thing that we go through life is looking for that external validation, it's never going to be enough. Happiness isn't going to be out there, it's always going to be an inside job, and I just wanted to say really quickly that one of the ways that I boost my emotional, spiritual intelligence is dancing. It took me a long time to decide to treat myself to this, but I went to the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Guilford, connecticut, and I've been taking lessons and these guys are awesome. Not only are they great instructors, but they're just great people and I feel so good when I go there, and they will give you a free introductory dance lesson if you go there. That's on the Connecticut shoreline, so obviously you need to be a bit local, and so just tell them. Jamie sent you from the Emotional Intelligence Podcast. That's the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Guilford, connecticut, and that's how positive and spiritual intelligence combine with emotional intelligence. So I've talked about positive intelligence a lot, since that's what kind of coaching I do.
Speaker 1:
And we have those 10 saboteurs, we have the judge, which is the head chief, and then the judge has nine buddies or accomplices, and I call them all ventriloquists because they may sound like our voice, but they are not true. They are not speaking the truth. The people pleaser is telling you you have to do X, y and Z so that you please other people, so that they will like you. The controller says I need to be in charge of everything because it's just not going to get done right if I'm not.
Speaker 1:
Or we come from a background with a lot of trauma and the only way that we could survive was to try to control our environment. Right, hyper-achiever, hyper-vigilant, hyper-rational emotions do not have a place in this. Well, guess what they do? And we all use our emotions to make decisions. And who else? The victim? You know the victim is there. The victim says oh my gosh, the world is terrible, everybody's done this stuff to me. And then we don't have to take responsibility. And of course, the stickler says everything has to be perfect and if I'm not perfect, I must be bad.
Speaker 1:
So we have this kind of black and white thinking, but we have the inner sage, and the sage has five powers and those five powers defeat all of the 10 saboteurs. And it's a completely different neural pathway and we can learn it right. So once we learn about how these 10 gremlins have been sabotaging our lives, we can do this, pq reps, which is, stop it in its tracks. Excuse me, stay in the moment, ground ourselves with our breath or with our eyes or our ears or any of our senses, and then say wait a second, that's not true, that's not me, right. Take the furniture out of your head for all of those folks and tell them to get lost, or at least tell them to be quiet, because you're not going to listen to them anymore. And then head over to the sage part of your brain and develop that pathway right. So develop the empathy for yourself and others.
Speaker 1:
Empathy is probably one of the biggest things. I think we're all probably pretty good at beating ourselves up. I know I am, and that means I'm not fully present because I'm too busy navel gazing, I'm too busy finding fault with myself. But if I can say, well, I did the best I could with what I had at that time or with what I knew, then I have the ability to maybe move on and say but I'm not there anymore and I do know more now. And compassion for others, right, we have to remember that when somebody's having a bad day or does something, what is it that's going on with them? Or when somebody makes a mistake, you know, what is it that is happening in their world that you know? Maybe we can at least say, yeah, I've been there too, I've had that happen too. Or just to try to lend a hand.
Speaker 1:
And of course, we have the explore power and that involves curiosity. Hmm, I've never thought of it that way. You know, I've talked about the 90-10 rule when you're in a meeting and that maybe you know. If everyone gets to say something and nobody gets to shoot down anybody else's ideas, maybe 90% of the person next to you says something you don't agree with or you think is like outrageous. But 10% of it's good, you can run with 10% of it and if everybody does that, pretty soon you have a synergistic collection of great ideas and nobody felt shut out, right.
Speaker 1:
So curiosity is a great tool to have, you know, exploring options, and I also like the navigate function. So navigating is what would my older self tell my younger self, right? Or what if I? You know what would my the self that is dead? What would that person tell this person today, like what to worry about, or what to think about or what not to worry about, or when I'm making a major decision, what is the thing that I should be thinking about? What are the values? What's the compass that's guiding me?
Speaker 1:
And you know, the idea too is to pivot when we make a mistake. You know, shirzad Shamim talks about the three gifts technique. So when we make a mistake, I call it an A-F-G-O another effing growth opportunity. When we make mistakes or when something happens, what are three gifts? Is it that you found that you're stronger than you thought? Is it that you had to come up with a new idea? And it turns out that if you hadn't made that X mistake, you wouldn't have found a way to do it differently and better?
Speaker 1:
And then, of course, activate. You have to take action, right. We all, at least for me, I can procrastinate when I get really overwhelmed, but when I take action, stuff gets done. You can't climb Mount Everest in a day. You have to get to base camp, but you can't even get to base camp until you start at the bottom of the mountain. So you have to do it Every day. If we take an action, whether it's to boost our emotional intelligence and our positive intelligence, or to try to make the world a better place or to better ourselves, then we are doing the things that completely make that overgrown with the brambles and everything, and that's ultimately the goal fallen out of favor, I should say.
Speaker 1:
Over the last few decades, more people are calling themselves spiritual but not religious. Or if they have to tick a box and what is your spiritual faith? They might put none N-O-N-E. And so the number of nuns is growing in the US, according to all of the reports that do the research on this, the Pew report being the biggest one Religion in America. I'll stick a link in the show notes to that because it's actually fascinating.
Speaker 1:
And since I went to divinity school and thought I was going to be a priest and then turns out I wasn't going to be a priest, then thought I would be a chaplain for the rest of my life. Turns out I'm not going to be a chaplain for the rest of my life. I would be a chaplain for the rest of my life. Turns out I'm not going to be a chaplain for the rest of my life. But what I have learned is that people come from all different places with regard to how they see themselves in the world right, and how we see ourselves in relationship, maybe, to something bigger.
Speaker 1:
I can't speak for atheists, because I've never been an atheist and I've never been an agnostic, but I can say that for me, I know that I have some kind of higher power and I see it in action. I have felt it in action. I have literally been saved by my higher power from situations where I should have died and, I kid you not, that has happened. I have literally experienced higher beings, the presence of higher beings. I've experienced the spirit of people who have passed before me, who have come to visit me.
Speaker 1:
And I'm not saying that you know that's necessarily spiritual intelligence, but what I am saying is I have to admit for the possibility that humans are not all that, that there is other stuff out there, and for me it is a divine source. And I do believe that my inner sage is the divine source, and that is often the still small voice that I hear, and I don't always heed it, but when I grow my spiritual intelligence, that is what I listen to. I listen to the still small voice and I remember that, even though it might sound like me, and then I can sort of say am I rationalizing this? Am I making this up? Chances are, if it came to me and I didn't even know it was in there, it's spirit telling me something and I have learned to follow that guidance and I have learned to notice synchronicities and coincidences in my life that have changed everything for me.
Speaker 1:
So I just wanted to again look at this book, spiritual Intelligence, and I wanted to just read a short bit about it. So it says here the major issue on people's minds today is meaning. Many writers say the need for greater meaning is the central crisis of our times. I sense this when I travel abroad each month, addressing audiences from countries and cultures all over the world. The author is talking here. Wherever I go, when people get together over a drink or a meal, the subject turns to God, meaning, vision, values, spiritual longing. Many people today have achieved an unprecedented level of material well-being, yet they feel that they want more. I wonder if that's you. I know that for me, the material possessions are not what make me happy. That's not what's going on inside of me. Many speak of an emptiness here, pointing to their abdomens the more that would fill the emptiness seldom has any connection with formal religion. Indeed, most people seeking some spiritual fulfillment see no relation between their longing and formal religion, between their longing and formal religion.
Speaker 1:
I used to go to church a lot. I grew up going to church and I stopped going to church maybe six months ago. I just sort of realized that I have a really strong connection to God, to my higher power and to my meditative practice and my spiritual practice, and I wasn't getting that in church. Now that isn't to say institutionalized religion isn't something because it is, it's something big for so many people, or the churches wouldn't be filled up on Sundays and sometimes other days of the week. So I definitely am not dissing church because, as I said, I've been a churchgoer most of my life. But I've just come to a different place in my life where not going to church is more important for me than going to church. And that isn't to say I won't go back again. One of my good friends is a rector and if he begins working at a certain church that I live near, I'll probably go back, just because I think he's awesome and he's a very spiritually enlightened human being and I love him to death, anyway.
Speaker 1:
So it says here conventional religion is externally imposed set of rules and beliefs. It's top-down inherited from priests and prophets and holy books or absorbed through the family and tradition. Sq is an internal, innate ability of the human brain and psyche, drawing on its deepest resources from the heart of the universe itself. And so I'll just leave it there. I want to sit there and read a book on this podcast, but I like that because that's also where we draw our inspiration right. Inspire that idea of the spirit within. That's where that breath comes from. So for me, I feel inspired.
Speaker 1:
Sometimes, again, like I said, the ideas just don't, you know, they don't seem to be coming really from me, even if it is my voice. So I have learned to do a better job of listening. And when I found that when I don't listen, things do not go well. When we do the world according to Jamie, things go very poorly. But when we do the world according to spirit or my inner source, things go exactly like they are meant to be. Or my inner source, things go exactly like they are meant to be.
Speaker 1:
So this is my plug this week to develop your emotional intelligence, your positive intelligence and your spiritual intelligence. And I went live at the last minute, so I don't even know who's here, but please add some comments. I'd love to hear what you have to say about these three cues and until next time, I will see you at the PQ Gym. I hope you will like and subscribe to this podcast, and if you want to learn more about these three cues, please get a hold of me. I would love to work with you Until next time. Bye, oh, solitude of love, where love has been confined. Next time, bye.
