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Hey there, Maurechana here, founder of the MindSight Academy, neuro coach to executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, and a neuroleadership trainer using insights from neuroscience to help you deliver results by learning to work smarter, be in control of your brain, manage yours and others' emotions, change behaviors, flourish and exceed expectations. Welcome back to another episode of Lead to Excel Podcast. I am so thrilled to be with you today because we've just celebrated World Mental Health Day, and this is a good opportunity to really touch on mental well-being, emotional well-being from a neuroscience perspective, or let's say from the brain's perspective. So grab your drink, put your feet up and listen in. Your history is not your destiny. I'll start with some questions. How do you perform during intensive times in your job? How focused do you stay when under pressure? Are you the one that can remain calm, clear-headed, and retain mental clarity under any situation? Are you able to make effective decisions when under pressure? Do you thrive or survive in the mentally and emotionally demanding work environment? And finally, how mentally resilient would you say that you are? High rates of mental health problems have recently been documented amongst employees, managers, and even college students. Employee well-being has emerged as a huge priority for organizations because many leaders are now complaining of dissatisfaction and burnout, which is resulting in low employee engagement, an increase of quiet quitting, and the great resignation, as we've come to know it. But what actually is mental health? A good definition is that it's how we process our thoughts, emotions, and actions by determining how we handle stress, relate to others, and how we make decisions. The ability to intelligently manage the emotional brain is a fundamental mechanism in well-being, and developing high emotional intelligence skills plays a key role in this by enabling individuals to cope more effectively with challenging situations, helping you to improve your mental and physical well-being. Mental health problems have become prevalent, and psychosocial stress and the feeling of rejection are strong contributing factors. Many employees are dissatisfied in their jobs with a feeling of not being able to speak up, which results in them leaving or decreasing their efforts while suffering in silence, ultimately causing mental and emotional health issues which negatively impacts on the workers and on the organization. Unrealistic expectations accompanied by excessive workloads and tight deadlines also increase worker stress levels, especially when they have not learned how to control their brains narrative. This is currently leading to many days lost to anxiety, mental fatigue, stress, and depression. The workplace is a community of people with diverse brains. So it's become extremely important for leaders and organizations to understand how to support theirs, that's their own, and their people's mental health for sustained high performance, productivity, creativity, and effective decision making. So let's talk about emotional intelligence and really relating it to its importance in mental health. Research has shown that emotional intelligence can largely prevent symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. That's mental health problems, because those with higher emotional intelligence have developed skills to manage their emotions to typically have more positive moods. This results in psychological, mental, and emotional well-being. So an ability to thrive and not just survive. I still hear people refer to emotional intelligence as a soft skill. And I find myself constantly correcting them. Because once we look at it as an essential skill, we will then realize how important it actually is to develop these skills. A lot of people believe that they have high emotional intelligence. And the amount of times I've heard people say, I'm highly emotionally intelligent. I have high emotional intelligence. Oh my gosh, it's just unbelievable. And the reality of it is that they're not. You see, the right hemisphere of the brain is normally responsible for processing emotions of our thoughts, whether you're happy or sad, angry or calm. So it's become increasingly important to understand the role of emotional intelligence for prevention and also intervention. Emotional intelligence, according to Maya, includes the abilities to accurately perceive emotions, to assess and generate emotions so as to assist thoughts, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions. In my emotional intelligence for leadership training packages, I teach leaders, managers, executives how to first understand their own behavior preferences to enable them to help others do the same. This is because each person has their own way of looking at the world, so that's their perception, and responding to it with their behavior. Those recurring responses, part inherited and part learned, fall into patterns referred to as behavior preferences. And I'm going to do a podcast soon on how to identify your behavior preferences based on how you're wired. Really interesting and fascinating. Emotional intelligence also appears to be involved in the shaping of social functioning. Individuals who are better able to recognize and regulate their own emotions appear more able to establish and maintain healthy social relationships. And we know the impact of loneliness on mental health. Another important thing to look at is that sense of belonging and how it impacts on mental health. An important aspect of social functioning is a sense of belonging because we as human beings are wired to establish a certain amount of stability and develop positive interpersonal relationships. It's also been noted that those with higher levels of emotional intelligence experience a higher sense of inclusion and less rejection, which in turn is associated with lower overall mental health problems. The same person can experience high levels of inclusion and rejection at different times. And our brain experiences negative emotions more strongly and for longer than positive emotions. That's why it's better for leaders to aim to equally focus on reducing the experience of rejection as well as working to improve the feeling of inclusion for better impact. For students, for employees, initiatives that support regular and healthy interactions are highly effective. Let's look at some of these strategies that can be helpful. Leaders themselves need good mental health to enable them to be empathetic. When you feel stressed and fearful from consistent change, challenges, and working under pressure, it's difficult to feel empathy for others because your emotional brain activates the stress response, keeping you really focused on the problems and your survival. But being able to be empathetic under these difficult circumstances is the edge that will make you a great and highly performing leader. When you genuinely care about your people and you're able to understand their perspectives, you build rapport, trust, and credibility. This is where developing emotional intelligence is key to help you manage your emotions, your thoughts, and behavior so that you can then have the mental and emotional ability to care for others. Without this, you run the risk of being an absent, unavailable leader that loses people's trust and your credibility. Minor issues can become magnified in the brain to become major when an individual has not learned the skills to manage their thoughts, their emotions, or actions, which ultimately results in mental health problems. So regulating emotions needs to be practiced consistently, and some common strategies include setting goals, mindfulness practices, developing compassion, self-compassion in particular, meditation, positive self-talk, reflective practices, and a lot more. You can regain your motivation and focus to complete tasks when you set goals the right way. And when I say the right way, I've talked about this before, it's setting goals the way the brain works, not just, oh yes, I'm going to set a goal now, and you start writing the goals down. Because when you achieve your goals, it will enable you to gain or regain your emotional control. Mindfulness enables you to stay in the present. And as humans, we have a tendency to hold on to and ruminate about the past and worry about the future. In reality, we can determine our present because the past has gone and the future isn't here yet. So being mindful will enable you to see current opportunities, set an act on small goals that can be achieved. Self-compassion. Many people get trapped in vicious cycles of having unrealistic expectations of themselves and others, setting themselves impossible standards, impossible tasks, failing to reach them, and living in self-blame, shame, and self-doubt. Self-compassion is the most effective way to eliminate these limiting feelings and emotions by giving yourself the same kindness that you would give to other people. Meditation, on the other hand, can be effective when done appropriately by providing scope and focus, for example, when deep breathing and bodily movement are practiced, leading to increased energy. Lack of energy is a common symptom of mental health, so meditation can help increase in energy and motivation. Positive self-talk is important to eliminate what Daniel Aman describes as ants, automatic negative thoughts. It's an ability to replace these negative thoughts with positive, believable ones. Negative thinking or undisciplined thoughts are formed from bad habits that you engage in because they attack and take over your mind. These negative thinking habits form through a process called long-term potentiation. As neurons fire and wire together, the negative thoughts become an ingrained part of your life to the extent that you start believing that they're actually your reality. You don't have to believe every thought you have. Emotional intelligence becomes important to enable you to develop this skill of guiding and directing your thoughts. This is a key step in developing strong mental discipline. For best results, start with small subtle changes, such as reframing things like I can't do this. Or I can't ask for help. Be persistent and do not allow frustration to undermine your confidence or focus. Aligned to all these strategies is the use of reflective practice. Reflective practice will facilitate your ability to develop mental and emotional well-being. Reflective practice will give you an opportunity to self-assess your thoughts, your emotions, and actions so that you can adjust, shift quickly when required. One very good indicator of progress is the growing practice of appointing leadership or management coaches or even sales coaches to work with sales team members. So having a coach is so important to enable you to develop these skills. So, in conclusion to this podcast, remember that in order to stop yourself from getting into a self-defeating downward spiral, it's important to learn to be kinder to yourself by choosing self-compassion over self-criticism. Practice mindfulness to ride out emotional waves and equip and develop high emotional intelligence skills. If you're inspired to improve your mental well-being, increase your confidence, and develop resilience as an individual or as a leader or manager through skills-based training and neurocoaching, get in touch by sending me a message. My details will be below. And I look forward to seeing you in our next episode. Okay, three things before we finish today. Have you subscribed to this podcast? If you haven't, make sure you click that subscribe button wherever you listen to this podcast. Because once you subscribe, you will not miss an episode. And as usual, if you have a topic you would love me to speak about or bring a guest on, do let me know by leaving a review. Finally, do have a fantastic week and remember that you are limitless. So I look forward to seeing you in our next episode. Bye for now.