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The Sex, Money, and Food Podcast
078: Courage, Conviction and Emotional Intelligence, With Mel Burt-Gracik
For a long time, we’ve known about IQ or intelligence quotient, and it’s always been associated with how smart a person is. But recently emotional intelligence (EQ) is gaining importance in the workforce and in our everyday lives.
On this episode of the Sex, Money and Food podcast, Mel Burt-Gracik joins us to explain what EQ is, why it’s something that can be increased as well as the role it plays in helping us let go of the “heavy deficit” so many of us are carrying around.
More About This Show
When Mel Burt-Gracik was in her mid-30s, she was living a beautiful life by all accounts, but internally she felt like she was running on empty. She felt burnt out and realized she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life when she grew up - not a feeling she expected to have at that point in her life.
With courage and conviction, Mel dove in to find what truly spoke to her soul and to find the type of work that called to her. Through talking and connecting with others, something she loves to do naturally, she met and hired a life coach who changed everything for her.
As a result of that work, today she is the founder of Flourish. Flourish is a company devoted to helping every human do their best, be a part of meaningful work, and have a rich, full life. She is a is four-time Gallup-trained and certified coach who has worked with over 275 individuals on their strengths. She also holds certifications in Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Emotional Intelligence (EQ-i), and is a board-certified coach.
On this episode of the Sex, Money and Food podcast, Mel and I talk about what she means when she says people are carrying around a “heavy deficit” and what we can do to change that for ourselves.
The first way to unload that deficit is to reframe how we work. She says we often feel depleted because of our work culture. We still have the 40-hour work week from the industrial Revolution, but it doesn't fit well with the brain capacity of what we are asking of our knowledge-based economy workers to do today!
But our mindset around work culture today is causing this heavy deficit. Deep down people want to do meaningful work, but many are not. People must be given autonomy and freedom, and constraints must be removed (like the constraints around not taking breaks or naps), then people can share their own brilliant gifts. With freedom, autonomy and no constraints people are able to tap into their own creativity and contribution.
The second thing we can do to let go of that heavy deficit is to do things we are good at every day. Mel states people who are able to do what they do best every day tend to have higher levels of excellence in life.
Doing their best every day means they get to use their natural abilities, their talents, and learned skills that are unique to them. If people are given the freedom to mold their roles to fit their natural talents, they will be happier, they will do better work and feel more fulfilled.
And the third way to relieve the heavy deficit is our own internal positivity ratio. Mel talks about the work of Dr. Rick Hanson, a neuroscientist/psychologist, who shares how and why we need to absorb our positive moments. When we have positive experiences, we need to hold on to them and expand and savor them for 12 seconds. After that, we need to absorb them and feel the feelings in our bodies and soak it up.
This is important because it helps offset our negativity bias. The negativity bias is our animal brains’ programming to pay attention to danger, negative experiences because those things might come up again and kill us.
Even though the world we live in is much safer now than in prehistoric times, the primal parts of our brains still hold on to the negativity bias. So we have to give attention to the positive, our brains don't naturally absorb it.
Also on today’s show, Mel and I talk about how you can grow your emotional intelligence as well as why having a high EQ is correlated with high performers, why it’s responsible for an extra $29k a year for some as well as 58% of people’s job performances.
You’ll want to hear all of that and more on this intriguing and fascinating conversation about emotional intelligence!
Mel Answers the Questions
Q: Rank the following in order: sex, money, food.
A: Food, sex, money.
Q: There is nothing better in life than…
A: helping someone have a better life.
Q: What is your ultimate pleasure in life?
A: connecting with friends, with people I love dearly on a real and authentic level.
Q: What does flourish smell like to you?
A: A rose that has almost like a lemon scent to it.
Q: What is a circumstance you went through that has allowed you to grow and learn and made you who you are today?
A: I have two Master’s degrees and all of my career has been spent in leadership development, most of that in higher ed. I was about five years in to my last full-time job when I realized I was burnt out. I didn’t know what I wanted to be “when I grew up”, I didn’t expect to feel that way in my mid-30s. I had two kids, a husband - a really full, beautiful life but I was running on empty.
Somewhere I heard about coaching and someone I was interviewing with introduced me to their life coach. I hired her for two reasons: I needed support in navigating what was next for me and when I had heard about coaching, I thought it might be something I wanted to do someday so I thought it’d be good for me to have my experience of it. She really changed my life!
Q: What book are you reading?
A: The Steal Like An Artist Journal by Austin Kleon, and The 52 List Project by Moorea Seal.
Tweetable: “ You can grow your emotional intelligence. ” ~Mel Burt-Gracik
Resources From This Episode
- Mel Burt-Gracik’s website
- Email Mel
- Mel Burt-Gracik on Twitter
- Mel Burt-Gracik on Facebook
- The 52 List Project, by Moorea Seal
- The Steal Like an Artist Journal, by Austin Kleon
- Life Reimagined
- Gallup Well-being
- Positivity Resonance
- Asset Talent search
- Subscribe to the Sex, Money and Food Podcast on iTunes
- Get your free audiobook at Audible
