I encourage you to consider how you come to your conclusions, and how practicing EQ can help you build better habits of thought—and even start fresh if you need to.

I dig into what it really means to think—not just react.

I talk about how our brains handle the countless events we face each day, and why choosing to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively makes all the difference. I share what I’ve learned from neuroscience, especially the idea that our minds often operate on best guesses based on past experiences, and why that matters when we’re absorbing information in today’s media-driven world.

I challenge you—and myself—to blend critical thinking with emotional intelligence, and to be willing to reflect, question our assumptions, and admit when we get something wrong. It can be tough, especially with all the bias and team-like mentalities out there, but it’s essential for healthier decision-making. In this episode, let’s dive in and start thinking in a way that’s true, reflective, and uniquely our own.

Moments

00:00 "Patience, Perception, and the Brain"

05:50 "Bias and Critical Thinking"

10:19 "Facing Loss and Truth"

14:19 Embracing Discipline Over Blind Ambition

17:34 "Embracing Healthy Selfishness"

18:26 "Optimism Amid Life's Urgency"

Here are three key takeaways:

1. Our Brains Run on Best Guesses: Our life experiences “write the script” for how our brains interpret events. But thanks to neuroplasticity, we can intentionally develop new ways of thinking—especially about topics or situations we’ve previously only reacted to.
2. Admitting We’re Wrong Is Strength, Not Weakness: Culturally, we’re conditioned to avoid “losing,” but owning our mistakes or lack of information only helps us grow—and fosters respect with others.
3. Emotional Intelligence Is Your Ally: Practicing EQ means blending thinking and feeling, regulating our responses, and being willing to say, “I don't know” when we don’t have all the info. This genuine approach helps us stand out, even if it feels awkward or uncomfortable.

In each episode, Jeff and Eric will talk about what emotional intelligence, or understanding your emotions, can do for you in your daily and work life. For more information, contact Eric or Jeff at info@spiritofeq.com, or go to their website, Spirit of EQ.

You can follow The Spirit of EQ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Android, or on your favorite podcast player.

New episodes are available on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays every month!

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This podcast was created to be a tool to primarily help you to discover and grow your EQ. Science and our own lived experiences confirm that the better we are at managing our emotions, the better we're going to be at making decisions. Which leads to a better life. And that's something we all want. We're glad that you've taken the time today to listen. We hope that something you hear will lead to a breakthrough. We'd really appreciate a review on your podcast platform. Please leave some comments about what you heard today, as well as follow and subscribe to the podcast. That way, you won't miss a single episode as we continue this journey.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the show. I have been thinking a lot about thinking, and in our current age, I think there's some big gaps as it relates to that. And I want to talk a little bit about that today. So before we start going into the sort of the root of my sort of quasi off statement of what I want to talk about, I'm going to talk a little bit in more detail about how our brain works. Now, as you all know out there, I am not a neuroscientist, I'm not a clinician, so I may indeed get some of this wrong from a science perspective. So I'm going to speak to it from my experience and some things that I have learned. So from the perspective of our brain, right, the typical process that happens to all of us every single day is that we wake up in the morning and we encounter all kinds of different events.

Some of those are good, some are bad, some happy, some sad, some are expected, some are unexpected. But there's one thing that all human beings have in common, and that's we're all going to encounter these various events. And typically, since our brains, one of its top priorities or functions is to look out for us, right? Keep us safe, to protect us, we're going to either react or respond to those events. And in a pretty consistent pattern, right? And it goes like, ultimately there's an event, okay, as I mentioned, then there's going to be a thought and then an emotion will follow. And then in that key moment or time, there's going to be a choice. We're familiar with the two choices that typically come, right? The choice of reacting or the choices, choice of responding. And we all would probably agree that we would like to be in the responding category because that's typically where the optimal and most preferred choices come from, right? Because, and this is the science Y type part that's giving our prefrontal cortex, that part of our brain where decision making happens. And when that's online and able to sort of dictate the direction, we typically make better decisions, better choices.

If we react as soon as we're going upstream, and most of the time it's not going to lead to that optimal decision. And I think all of us could look back on our lives, right, and go, yeah, if I just would have given a little more time or if I would have just waited before I said, I think we all are in that tribe, right? So with that, there's a great neuroscientist professor of psychology, I believe, at Northeastern University, Lisa Feldman Barrett and I saw her, heard her on a podcast, and she kind of said that the brain operates on a series of best guesses. And I thought that was really profound because I'm thinking, wait a minute, it's our brain, you know, it's complex. It's got all this stuff to do, and it managed so many different parts, it's certainly not going to be guessing. Well, there's something behind that, right? So all of us, as we were growing up, our formative years on into adulthood, we've basically given the script to our brain as to how it can protect us, how it can keep us safe. And I like this analogy, like, of the dog, right? Let's say that you and I are on a walk and we encounter a large German shepherd, right? And I grew up where German shepherds had been aggressive with me, right? And maybe. And in my case, I did actually, I had. My mom would warn me about staying away from them because we had them in our neighborhood.

So my brain is going to figure out that, okay, you see a German shepherd, be afraid, resist, run, panic, right? But let's say with you, you might have grew up around German shepherds, You might even have had one growing up. But they were great dogs. They were loyal, they were kind, you know, all of the above. A great dog. You encounter that same German shepherd, your brain's going to operate in a totally different way. Now, the beauty of this is that we're not slaves to this process because of all the neuroplasticity. Boy, I can't speak today. Neuroplasticity that is in our brain.

So if I'm afraid of German shepherds, I can build a new neural pathway that makes them not this object of panic and fear. I can grow into a new way of thinking about them that's much more optimal. I think we need to understand this as we start to think about where I'm going, right? About the thinking thing. Right. And in our current age, our current time, and I'm speaking of specifically the United States, you have maybe two, maybe three different types of media, and all of them are presenting information to us. And I get it. There are some outlets that are more honest than others. I know there are some that truly are just wanting you to get the information and you make up your mind.

But if you're like me, you kind of go, whether you're on the right or if you're on the left or in the middle, wherever you may be, in your view, there's a bit of bias, a bit of opinion in that information that's why I kind of term it as what's been presented to you. Right. And I think what has happened. And again, of course, this is my opinion, it stunted our ability to truly think, to truly reflect and examine what we believe, how we interpret and digest information, whether it's presented to us or whether it's acquired by us. And I think that puts us in a pretty dangerous place. I was thinking about it just today. I hear information coming from multiple sides about things that are happening in a social realm, maybe social and political. And if you've read the news, and I don't know at the time this episode will be released, but there was a lot of stuff happening in the city of Minneapolis.

And this is not a show to go into the details of that per se, but a lot of people, whether they're in the news business or whether they're outside of it, everybody's got an opinion. And I read the opinions and I go, well, how is it that you actually know that? And where is the information you're getting? How is it being presented to you again? And what happens? I'm seeing okay, And I'm not speaking for you. Maybe it's different in the world that you run, but there's this consistent. It's almost like a team sport thing. It's almost like, my team wins, your team loses. And I'm a fan of this team and you're a fan of that team, and you can't say anything bad about my team. And I won't, you know, on and on and on. Right.

And I don't hear them being willing to go, oh, I got it wrong. I didn't have enough information. I respond, I reacted, I responded. I didn't. I didn't really think it through. It's almost like, throw out the opinion and then keep moving. It's just throwing out an opinion, another opinion, another. Another opinion.

And I wouldn't. I'm not here to rob anybody of the right to have their opinion. And I'm not saying that that needs to stop. I'm not going there. But I would ask you to think about it. How are you coming to your conclusions? And here's the dangerous and maybe actually optimistic part. What do you do when you're confronted with something that is contrary to your belief and it turns out to be true, with a capital T, meaning it's a fact, but it goes absolutely against what you were opining on? Right. What do you do then? I see far too many just going silent and moving on to the next thing I Believe it's healthier, and you can do this just inside yourself.

I'm not saying you have to post something on social media to declare that you have, that you were wrong about something, but I think internally, you got to be willing to go, you know what? I was wrong. I was incorrect. But you remember that thing I was just talking about, the sports team thing? It's kind of like an infection in the United States because everything is like a competition, it seems. Everything is about who won and who lost. And the reality is, if you're operating under that kind of model, the idea of being wrong is like a loss in a big game. And many people will not. Will not admit to it because they see it as defeat. They see it as losing.

And hey, humanly speaking, who wants a loss? I mean, I use the sports analogies a lot, but I mean, think of, you have a favorite team in whatever sport. How do you feel when they lose? I mean, that's the ultimate measurement of truth, right? There's three seconds left, and you're down by fill in the blank points, and then the clock goes to zero. You, your team has lost, their team has won. I mean, how do you feel? Well, depending on how committed you are or how much of a fan you are, it can be devastating for some. And maybe that's understandable in a sports, you know, entertainment type of situation, but that's not what we're talking about. This is just life. I actually believe that those that are able to go, I didn't get it right. I rushed to judgment.

I should have waited. I respect them a whole lot more than the person that doubles down and tries to pretend like they never said it or, hey, I'm just moving on to the next thing. There's strength in the admission of getting it wrong. And of course, yeah, hopefully you learn from it, and hopefully you move on. And maybe you take a little more time before you express your opinion because you want more information. And you know what? Here's an interesting part. If you don't have all the information, you can just say, I don't know. I don't know.

I don't. I don't know enough. I don't have enough information. Who's going to fault you for not having all the information? And who's going to fault you for admitting that you don't? But again, this infection of I got to win, I can't lose, it stunts people's ability to do that. It hinders their ability to do it, maybe paralyzes them. So I'm not Coming to you next with answers, as in, here's how you fix it. But here's what I think can help it. And of course, it has to do with eq.

It is that idea of effectively blending what we think and what we feel, our emotions, to make the optimal decision. And it really does come down to paying attention, you know, being aware of what's going on inside of you. You know, maybe as that information is coming out, maybe you're noticing. I just want to believe it because I want it to be true. Well, emotional intelligence will help you to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. This is not about what you want to be true. Is a matter of is it true? And I get it. It's hard.

But see, that's the beauty of EQ as well. It's about growing that muscle and making it, at some point, a rather effortless process. Yeah, you had to work on it, you had to build it, but then you begin to practice it with some mastery where you're able to go, okay, this topic makes me nervous. Or, oh, this information about this person, I don't really like them. But hold on. I can't just use my if I like them or don't like them as my measuring stick for whether it's true or not. So EQ can be your ally in that there's another aspect of it as well, and that is understanding that there is something going on inside of me that requires some regulation. Right.

And that regulation is really, in some respects, it's discipline, it's management, but it's making sure that you're not running off the rails. Because the dangerous part about not having sort of that management and process is that you'll begin to run over people. You'll begin to be flying. And you think that you're with a good number of people, supportive people, but you might find you're flying alone. It's a big blindside. So that ability, again, to go, hey, I don't know, I don't have enough information, or, hey, I got it wrong. This approach is one of the most healthy things you can do. And it flies against this culture that continually messages us about being right and having the answer and not losing and always winning.

That's a deception. That's a deception. So, hey, here's some warnings maybe, or cautions to think about that could come by you becoming more of someone who knows how to think versus what to think. I didn't say that at the beginning, but that's really kind of where this boils down to. Do I know how to Think. Do I know how to think critically? And can I combine that with this practice of eq, Right. One thing that certainly is a chance could happen. You're going to stand out because unfortunately, than what we've been discussing here or what I've been throwing out to you is that there's a.

There's a significant number of people that are not practicing eq. And they are not. They are. They're thinking what they're told to think. They're told what to think. They're operating with confirmation bias. They're operating on personalities, all right? And I'm not judging them. Everybody's got their journey.

Everybody's on a certain path. And my hope for them is that they would find maybe a healthier path to go by. But it's their life, it's their responsibility, not mine. And who am I? Right? Because if we had a longer show, I could tell you about some of the ways I was kind of told what to think. So another thing, and that is you might be isolated. You might be considered to be something that you're not. You might make some people uncomfortable with your thoughtful way of doing it. Right.

The. I'm practicing how to think now. I suggest you do everything you can to assure someone that you're not judging them. You're not trying to be superior. You're not trying to be someone that would be considered unsafe to be around, to be with. But you're only responsible to a certain level. You can only go so far with that. And you need to be aware that that could.

You could make people so uncomfortable that they may withdraw. But this is one of the healthiest forms of selfishness, in my. My opinion. This is a big one for me personally, and I probably practiced this and felt this 30 years ago. You don't have time. You don't have as much time as you think you do to be locked into the information you've been presented, to be locked into a certain ideology that is truly not a fit. That is truly not consistent with your values. Because, see, there's the one thing we can get involved with, our opinions and we can absorb information or digest information, whatever you want to call it.

And you'll notice the clock keeps ticking. And eventually we're going to come to a point where the clock will stop ticking. And I'm not going morbid on you here, but I'm being optimistically urgent. You should be very careful about what you're occupying your mind with, because if you're not careful, it might start to take over. I know people who. With these events that are happening in the United States, it is the predominant, I don't know if I want to say it this way, fixation. It's the dominant force driving how they think, their mental health, their well being. Some of them find it difficult to be optimistic.

And I want you to please understand me. I'm not judging anyone who's having a difficult time. Please understand that what I'm saying is this is your life, and you got a certain amount of time to live it. You need to fight for you and all of the things that are flying around. Who's gonna fight for you? Because if you're waiting for someone to come into the rescue to do it for you. I'm gonna steal this quote from Barack Obama. I'm not even sure he was the original, but I remember it coming from him. We are the ones we've been waiting for.

So you are the one you've been waiting for. You can start today and build a new neural pathway. You can start today to be more reflective. You can start today to say, hold on, I got it wrong, or hold on, I don't have enough information. It can start today. And that's what I'm hoping that you'll do. Take care.