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The Mountain Is You: Building Emotional Intelligence

Hey Square Readers,

 

Weโ€™re kicking off the third section of The Mountain is You by Brianna Wiest, and so far weโ€™ve covered why and how self-sabotage happens, and how to identify your emotional triggers. Now, letโ€™s dive into Chapter 4, all about building emotional intelligence.

 

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The author frames self-sabotage as a symptom of low emotional intelligence. While that may hit hard, it shouldnโ€™t! Emotional intelligence is something thatโ€™s built up with hard work, and not having it isnโ€™t a sign of weakness, but rather of growth opportunity.

 

โ€œWe need to understand how to interpret feelings, what different emotions mean, and what to do when we are faced with big, daunting sensations that we donโ€™t know how to handleโ€ฆ The root of self-sabotage is a lack of emotional intelligence, because without the ability to understand ourselves, we inevitably become lost.โ€

 

The author breaks down some of the common ways and reasons that we tend to not fully understand and process our emotions. Being afraid of failure is a big contributor to self-sabotage and a lack of emotional intelligence. 

 

โ€œWe resist doing the work that it takes to actually get [what we really want] because we are so afraid of not having it, any brush with failure makes us rescind our effort and tense upโ€ฆ When we are relying on some goal or life change to โ€œsaveโ€ us in some unrealistic way, any incident of failure will trigger us to stop trying.โ€

 

One way the author recommends to work through enacting change in a productive way is to take it slow with small habits, rather than jumping in to make sweeping changes all at once.

 

โ€œA mind-blowing, singular breakthrough is not what changes your life. A microshift isโ€ฆ Itโ€™s not radical moments of action that give us long-lasting, permeating changeโ€”itโ€™s the restructuring of our habitsโ€ฆ Making big, sweeping changes is not difficult because we are flawed, incompetent beings. Itโ€™s difficult because we are not meant to live outside of our comfort zones. If you want to change your life, you need to make tiny, nearly undetectable decisions every hour of every day until those choices are habituated. Then youโ€™ll just continue to do them.โ€

 

A big reason for this is the phenomenon of Adjustment Shock, when the brain perceives even good changes as threats. 

 

โ€œWhatever is familiar is what we perceive to be good and comfortable, even if those behaviors, habits, or relationships are actually toxic or destructiveโ€ฆ any accomplishments, achievements, or life changes, no matter how positive, elicit change. Change elicits stressโ€ฆ We often resist most deeply the things that we want most. This is because of adjustment shockโ€ฆ It is scary to receive everything we want, because it forces us to shift out of a survivalist, fear-based mindset and into a more stabilized one. If all we are accustomed to is doing what we need to do to survive, we are then confronted with the next phases of our self-actualization.โ€

 

Another is Psychic Thinking, where we think we know whatโ€™s going on around us. It could manifest as assigning meaning where there is none, thinking we know what someone else is thinking, assuming the worst, or that another life path would have turned out better. 

 

โ€œPsychic thinking detaches us from reality. In place of logic, we put emotions, ones that are often incorrect, unreliable, and wholly biased toward what we want to believeโ€ฆ Psychic thinking breeds anxiety and depression. Itโ€™s not just that something scares or upsets us; itโ€™s that we believe that the thought must not only be real, but predictive of future events. Instead of feeling like we are having a down day, psychic thinking makes us assume we are having a terrible lifeโ€ฆ Psychic thinking is nothing more than a series of cognitive biases, the most prominent of which are the following: confirmation, extrapolation, spotlighting.โ€

 

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Speaking of Anxiety, the author explains that it is a normal and good thing that protects us when things are stressful or scary. But it can have a dark side when you canโ€™t work through to the logical conclusion that you will be safe. 

 

โ€œAnxiety tends to be the result of an inability to process acutely stressful and ongoing circumstancesโ€ฆ Youโ€™re experiencing a logical lapse. Youโ€™re jumping to the worst-case scenario because you arenโ€™t thinking clearlyโ€ฆ When you experience a logical lapse, the climax becomes the conclusion. You imagine a situation, you figure that you would panic, and then because youโ€™re scared, you never think through the rest of the scenario. You never think about how youโ€™d get through it, what youโ€™d do to respond, and how youโ€™d eventually move on with your life afterwards. If you were able to do this, you wouldnโ€™t be scared of it, because you wouldnโ€™t think it had the power to โ€œendโ€ you.โ€

 

Getting through anxiety and the logical lapse takes work, mental strength, and emotional intelligence.

 

โ€œBasically, you prove to yourself that you will be okay, even if something scary does happenโ€ฆ Mental strength isโ€ฆ believing that we have the capacity to handle it if it does [go wrong]... So often in life, our biggest anxiety comes not from whatโ€™s actually happening, but how we think about what is happening.โ€

 

This is an example of Faulty Inferences, using real evidence to come up with a false conclusion. 

 

โ€œFaulty inferencesโ€ฆ are when fallacies, biases, and incorrect assumptions are made from valid evidence. Whatโ€™s happening in your brain when youโ€™re very anxious is that youโ€™re taking an often innocuous stimulus and extracting some kind of meaning or prediction from itโ€ฆ Rather than spending your time rehearsing how much youโ€™d panic if such-and-such a situation were to come to fruition, imagine how a third party would handle it if they were in your shoes. Imagine getting to the other side of the issue, perhaps even treating it as an opportunity to create something you otherwise couldnโ€™t.โ€

 

Weโ€™d love to hear your answer in the comments:

  • When have you felt Adjustment Shock in your personal or business life, when you had a positive change but had negative feelings around it?
  • What do you have the most Anxiety about in your business? What faulty inferences do you have about them?

 

Feel free to share any other thoughts you have about this book. We canโ€™t wait to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

 

Donโ€™t forget to:

 

Happy reading,

Pesso

 

๏œ๏ธ Aylon Pesso, he/him
Small Business Evangelist, Square

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This is all very interesting.. 

I think it's incredibly normal to feel anxious in your business- and in life. When I'm "coaching" people (I HATE that term) I remind people that the language we use signifies to ourselves levels of seriousness in our lives.

Anxiousness is a feeling- an emotion.

Anxiety is an emotional state or trait (according to Brene Brown's work in the book Atlas of the Heart,  Anxiety is both a state & a trait).

 

That is why I use "I'm feeling anxious" instead of "I have anxiety". The latter is almost an invitation for anxiety to move in (and it does so permanently- as our brain wants to keep us "safe" and keeping us "safe" is usually from that which is unknown).

 

What I do when I'm feeling anxious is to recognize it. I do that by maintaining something called "witness posture" that I learned from Dr. Michael Lennox. Making sure I'm aware of the quality of my thoughts and what corresponding feelings/emotional sensations arise from them (another good read to learn witness posture is Untethered Soul by Michael Singer).

 

 

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That's a really good point, @DinaLRosenberg -- I hadn't really thought about that distinction between being and feeling anxious. It's a good one, and I'll work to make that change in my usage. 

 

I love that technique of being aware of it, recognizing it, and witnessing it and not letting yourself get sucked into those feelings. Thanks for sharing the method and that book rec!

 

What in your business have you felt anxiety around? 

๏œ๏ธ Aylon Pesso, he/him
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In real life, I recently decided to address some leftover PTSD from my years in the military.  A lot of what is presented in the book parallels the counseling I received. Understanding what gives you anxiety is part of gaining control over it. One of the most interesting revelations I had going through the process was anxiety (aka PTSD) doesn't occur in a supportive environment. 

The present is based on past experiences. It takes time and work but I think it is possible to reframe our experiences. To give them context for today, to give ourselves the power and ability to think about them in healthy ways. I think that's what she was referring to when she wrote about emotional intelligence and strength. 

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Thanks so much for sharing this, @bonny !

 

That's so wonderful that you've been working on addressing that, and that the book has been reflecting and reinforcing your counseling. 

 

These are such great points and learnings, and I absolutely agree -- it's hard but it's so possible and pretty much necessary. 

 

So glad you're getting so much out of it-

 

What in your business have you felt anxiety around? 

๏œ๏ธ Aylon Pesso, he/him
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Giving myself the authority that art is a real business. I can't begin to count how many times I've heard, oh, that's a nice hobby. It feels like a twilight moment... like on a rubber band instantly taken back to the first times I was told that nonsense. I don't know why it took years to see it for what it was. I am firmly grounded in the present knowing some people will say anything out of jealousy. Fast forward to today, I respond intelligently to comments like that and they don't have the same diminishing effect they once did. 

This is more from the way I was raised, contrary to the feeling of "less than" and compliant training expected of me as a female child growing up when I did, I learned it's ok to stand up for myself. And to take credit for my work. Edit: Also, I stopped trying to convince the naysayers that it's not a hobby. They can think what they want to think. The mental shift made a world of difference for me. 

Bonny Wagoner
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Oof, @bonny . Yea that sounds like hearing that would be very demoralizing and hard to break through. I'm so glad that you've been able to break through most of it and able to respond in a productive and less effected way! 

 

Heck yea for standing up for yourself and being proud of your work! You know how great you and your work are, even if others don't and never will. What you think is more important than their thoughts.

 

Rooting for ya as always and thanks again for sharing so much!

๏œ๏ธ Aylon Pesso, he/him
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Thanks Aylon.

Bonny Wagoner
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Several years ago when I came to the reality that I mentioned in another thread - I had to force myself to do the work I didn't want to do because it wasn't going to get done.  It was a positive change because I adapted new habits, pushed myself passed barriers to get and stay in a good place with my work but had very negative feelings about it because I had to reckon with myself that it was my own doing, no one else got me there and I had to reckon with the feelings of inadequacy because I was looked down on for not doing better in the first place.  But like she says, once you've tackled it and gotten on the other side of it, there is a new level in your brain of "oh... I CAN do this.  I did do this.  I am good.  I made an improvement.  I moved forward" and now I feel that sense of accomplishment and my brain has learned to stop holding me back in this area.  I no longer allow my brain to say "I don't want to".  It was connected to a sense of fear that I wasn't going a good job, that I was making mistakes, that I was causing a problem.  I was avoiding.  Not procrastinating.  Actually avoiding because of the fear.

 

My biggest anxiety is not being able to pay the bills.  I've had too many occasions in the past where I've had to pay us and only us and that's terrifying to me.  I don't want to deal with the aftermath of that.  My faulty inference is that our world will fall apart if I don't pay the bills, that my worst case scenarios from my imagination will come true in life.  I know that she describes the worrier in the book and I am not one like she says who literally sits around 24/7 and does nothing but worry.  But I do more of it than I should and I project too much in my mind, both about life and about business and I allow those things to cloud my thinking.  It has kept me from moving and literally becoming stuck like she says.  The fear gets so strong sometimes that I just sit and ignore/avoid.  If it doesn't exist and I don't acknowledge it, then it's not real, the fear is just imagined and I don't have to take action because there is no pending doom.

 

It's interesting because I didn't know that this was the cycle that I went through, that I've actually worked through all of this by just pushing myself several years ago to move forward.  However, as I've mentioned, I've allowed myself to become stuck with the new things I want to do and now I recognize it.  There's always room to grow.  We learn something new everyday, even if it's just meaningless trivia.  The idea alone that I have done this and come this far is motivation to now look deeper and see what my mind was doing that I was unaware of and figure out how to put a stop to it.  If I made one monumental change, I can make another and another and another.  You cannot eat an elephant all in one bite.  I learned that over 30 years ago and I've been saying it ever since.  We always think that there has to be some big bang for us to see monumental shifts.  To hear her point out that it's the micro-shifts was mind blowingly accurate.  We have to take those teeny steps, one 'bite' at a time, to move forward.  We've all heard it said a million times, don't try to change everything all at once, tackle one or two things at a time until you've completed it and then moved on to the next.  But she broke it down even farther and smaller and she's right.  There is so much to consume in this book.  It's so impactful. 

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Thanks for re-sharing that story with some extra context and learnings, @CareyJo ! It sounds like that was a major turning point for you in fully embracing the challenge and boosting your confidence in that you can absolutely do it! Pushing through that fear and avoidance is a massive accomplishment and I hope you're still just as proud of yourself. 

 

I love that breaking down of that fear & anxiety. It comes from a place of self preservation, and I'm glad you're realizing the projections and fear of failure there, and that it can lead to getting stuck. It is so hard to do!

 

I'm so glad that this book and these conversations have re-ignited and re-inspired you to push through the fear about the changes in the next steps you're looking at. It's definitely micro-shifts, and some triggers help too! 

 

Thanks as always for sharing so much of your journey and path -- appreciate you so much!

๏œ๏ธ Aylon Pesso, he/him
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