Hi, I'm Gil Crosby and this video is about neuroscience and emotional intelligence. There has been an explosion of research in the past few decades about the brain and the role of emotion in the brain. So you have a marvelous piece of equipment in your head. Here it is represented on this fine graphic by a friend of mine who does illustrations for Paul McCartney albums, Norman Hathaway. And so this part of the brain right here is the emotional center the limbic area. It lights up if your head was in a brain scanner, it lights up like a Christmas If there's intense emotion going on, if you use your thinking center to identify that emotion, you will immediately start to shift the activity from the limbic Center, the intensity will go down there in the neocortex will begin to light up.

That is, the goal of emotional intelligence is to be able to think clearly about what you're feeling, and then choose behavior. If you do not think about what you're feeling, then your feelings will run your behavior. So the first step is awareness. You're having some sort of physiological reaction to the situation. Your blood pressure is going up your pulses racing and If you can notice those physiological symptoms and save yourself, oh, I'm feeling something there, what is it? You will be getting just by focusing that way to calm yourself down.

Now there's many other ways to calm yourself down, like taking a deep breath that literally releases calming metabolism into your system, so that you can then think clear, slow, deep breaths. The opposite hyperventilation is what happens when people are anxious and that of course increases adrenaline increases the intensity of the emotional experience. The neocortex is the most complicated part of our brain, it's also then the slowest. What's fastest lightning fast is down here, the brainstem and I'm gonna say more about that in a few moments, but it gets activated. for survival, if you think you're threatened, the brainstem leaps into action, the reptilian or primitive brain, this whole segment here is known as that. And it will definitely start running your behavior, it'll run your thinking.

So even in a dangerous situation, it's important to recognize your own reaction, and calm yourself so that you can make smart decisions about what to do not just panic in a theater because there's a fire and join a stampede, but rather, think calmly and figure out how to get yourself and others out safely. So we want the neocortex engaged in emotional situations. We want the prefrontal cortex engaged, that's the part of the neocortex that helps you make decisions, think ahead, anticipate problems, solve problems. So in in the best scenario your neocortex is running the show your prefrontal cortex is fully engaged. If you are tense and you stay tense because you're unaware or unsure of how to decrease your intention, then this part of the brain the anterior cingulate cortex, it's like a switch or a valve. When you are tense, it is tight, and it's harder for the different parts of the brain to clearly interact.

It will make it so that you only see what you expect to see you only hear what you expect to hear. If you imagine the worst and your anterior cingulate cortex is tight because of tension. Then, no matter what someone else says you will perhaps hear it as evidence that they are criticizing you or blaming you or whatever it is, you feel You won't be able to hear the other possibilities. So you have to again, relax yourself to enlarge in the anterior cingulate cortex so that your thinking brain is better able to understand the emotional center and the data that's available to you there. That's important data. The whole range of emotion is in your emotional center.

None of your emotions are bad. If you have that belief, toss it, it doesn't do you any good. every emotion is there for a reason they serve a purpose. And it's better to notice you feel anxious, and then take a deep breath, calm yourself some, but also put the anxiety to work. Okay, you're anxious because you want to perform well. Great.

Now what do you do to perform well, well prepare. Think ahead about what you want to say or do or don't get stuck in a habit. If you're interior Look, cortex is tight because you're tense, then you're probably not going to be a good listener. And if you want to resolve issues, you have to be willing to listen for understanding, not just listen because you want to get ammunition to debate. But listen to make sure you really understand what the other person intends with their messages. So all of this stuff is tied together.

It's all related to level of intensity intention. in any situation, you can calm yourself some in think clearer. That's the goal of emotional intelligence. And that's what the brain physiology clearly shows us is possible. The amygdala here is going to take signals, either from the primitive brain, Danger, danger, danger, it's going to ramp up your system, flood your system with adrenaline and lead you more into quick action. Sometimes that's good.

If you are walking down the street and you're going to cross and you step off the curb and you hear a bus, you want the amygdala to alert the reptilian brain, the primitive brain so that you go into freeze or flight step back. You want those quick reactions, those are survival reactions. However, in interpersonal relationships and work relationships, you don't want that part of the brain to ramp up all the time. You want to catch it when it's ramping up and with your prefrontal cortex. Take control of the situation, calm things back down so that you can be effective interpersonally HIPAA, Campus is where we store emotional energy, emotional memories, self from the very time we were born again, I've said this in other videos, we all start small. We're all dependent on adults.

We all begin to adjust our behavior based on the feedback we're getting from those adults. This is all before we can even speak with words or think with words. We have a lot of early emotional experiences those experiences may make it easy for you to trust others. Those experiences may make it so that you have a habit of distrust. I some distrust is wise. Some trust is wise.

Too much trust might get you in trouble but too much distrust will get you in trouble. You can't delegate well for instance, if you have too much distrust, you'll end up doing the work for others that they really ought to be doing. Or you won't trust that you can have difficult conversations and have them turned into positive results. So all the emotionality in the hippocampus floods into the present, when there are circumstances which remind the brain of those past experiences. When you have intense emotion, just know that part of what's happening is you're being flooded with that past emotionality, and it really has little or nothing to do with the person you're dealing with. Especially if you're dealing with an authority figure, you likely will get flooded with anxiety, whatever other feelings you have and beliefs you have about authority, how they should be how you should be.

All of that complicates the present. So a core emotional intelligence skill is to recognize it when you're starting to get flooded with intensity. And again, to calm yourself, decrease the intensity, separate the past from the present, so that you can hear people in the moment. Maybe you've had a difficult time with a person over the last few weeks or perhaps four years, then you really have to concentrate to see them as they are now to hear their message and fully understand it as they intended. Otherwise, you'll be only hearing what you fear and drawing conclusions about their intentions based on your past conclusions. You have to free yourself of that to be effective in the present to be effective now to create effective relationships.