Forever Love

Calvin Copeland: Thank you for clicking on the video. I'm Cal Cope. Won't you like and subscribe and enjoy the video?

Welcome back to Forever Love. I'm your host, Cal Cope. I'm so glad that you can be with us. This is the final episode of this series, and today we're going to talk about emotional intelligence.

First thing I need you to understand about emotional intelligence is that it can always grow. Unlike our IQ, where many people say by the time you turn 25 you're about as smart as you're going to get—you can have the debate about that if you want to—one thing that I am clear about is our emotional intelligence can always grow. It grows because of the connections that we have in relationships.

Emotional intelligence, once you understand what it is and how it is broken down, then you begin to have the kind of healthy interactions. You will find that your intelligence around relationships will continue to grow in the place of your awareness of who you are and who you are not. I need you to understand that when we talk about your emotional intelligence growing, it doesn't mean you're going to change from being an introvert to an extrovert. It means that you'll become more aware, you'll become more discerning, you'll become more observant, and you'll be able to identify how to have relationships that are safe, nourishing, and flourishing for you.

So, with that being said, let's go ahead and talk a little bit about it. Once again, we're going to talk today about the skill set that most relationships need the most, healthy relationships, and that's emotional intelligence. A lot of people think relationships fail because of lack of love, but that's not the case. Many times it's actually a lack of emotional awareness. Emotional intelligence helps us understand ourselves, understand others, and how to respond instead of react.

Once again, I know sometimes this stuff can almost feel like, "Didn't he say that already?" Well, I need you to understand this is a lifelong journey. I myself, my emotional intelligence is growing all the time. Literally, just these last couple of weeks, there was something that I became aware of about me that I am now understanding was a blind spot relative to how other people saw me and how other people see me. I get excited when I get those new revelations and those new understandings because we always have the opportunity to grow.

I'm going to ask you again: do you want to grow? Do you want to get better? Do you want to be better? If you're not a person who wants to get better, this is probably not something you need to be watching. But if you want relationships that are healthy and nourishing and safe, come on along with us for the ride.

Let me break down this emotional intelligence. There's actually four areas that I want to talk about relative to emotional intelligence. The first one is your self-awareness. You've heard me talk about this, like yourself and like getting better. You want to be aware. This is the ability to recognize what you're feeling and why you're feeling it. Before you blame your partner, ask yourself what's really going on inside of me. Am I hurt? Am I insecure, frustrated, or afraid? Self-awareness keeps us honest with ourselves.

One of the biggest things that you'll find that will be so refreshing in relationships is when you and the person you're in relationship with can be honest with themselves. I know that sounds like a novel concept, but you'd be amazed at how often people are simply not honest with themselves, primarily because they have come out of relationships or they're even in relationships where it is just more comfortable to live the illusion.

I'll be a little self-disclosing. I'm an optimistic person, and so I always think about things and the good that can come from them. One of the things that I'm learning is that oftentimes my optimism can communicate that I don't see myself honestly. There probably are times that I'm not seeing myself as honestly as I should. But I will tell you this, I like when safe places and safe people share that truth with me in love.

When they share that truth with me because they want to see me get better, not because they want to judge me, not because they have some aught against me, but they genuinely want to see me be better. Thankfully, I have learned enough discernment to identify when that motivation is healthy. The other thing that's really nice is the better I get at being self-aware, even when somebody's intention isn't purest towards me, I can still see the truth even in their inappropriate motivation.

That is becoming more and more familiar to me, and I actually enjoy it. I enjoy being able to get revelation and breakthrough even when people don't mean it for my good. Isn't that something to think about? But that's what emotional intelligence will do for you. It will allow you to get whatever you need from wherever it comes from so that you can be better.

It leads right into this second segment that I want to talk about with regard to emotional intelligence, and it's self-regulation. Just because you feel something doesn't mean you have to explode with it. Emotional maturity is learning how to pause, to breathe, and respond wisely. Healthy relationships are not built on perfect people; they're built by people who know how to manage their emotions.

Oftentimes when I'm coaching, what typically happens is one person is a talker and wants to fix everything immediately, and the other person is a processor and needs time. So, when you learn how to self-regulate, the person who needs it immediately, obviously that person is going to be challenged to learn how to walk in patience to allow the person who needs to process the time they need to process.

But it's important that the processor really is going to do the work of processing. It makes it easier for me to wait if I know that you are really doing your work someplace else, if you're really trying to identify something someplace else. Mutual relational deferred gratification is the key. Mutual relational deferred gratification is healthy relationship.

Once again, it'll take some time. But self-regulation, are you showing up in relationships in ways that bring life? Are you showing up in relationships in a way that feels safe? I'm not talking about you're going to make a person wait because that is your tactic of manipulation and control. I'm not talking about you need to fix it now because you lack patience and you don't want to be kind enough to allow someone to do their internal work before they interact with you. Can you self-regulate?

The next thing is social awareness. This is empathy, the ability to recognize what someone else may be feeling. Sometimes your partner doesn't need a solution; they need understanding. Listening with empathy creates emotional safety. This level of emotional intelligence really does challenge our instinct to be selfish. Will I deny myself to focus and care for what's going on with you? Will I stay long enough to communicate to you that I want to know what's going on for you? Or will I be judge, jury, and sentencer?

It requires an ever-increasing level of emotional intelligence to want to create an awareness in your environment that promotes healthy communication, safe places. Being in substantive, meaningful relationships that add to people's lives is not for the faint at heart, but the rewards are invaluable. I don't know where you are in your journey at learning how to have effective relationships, but I certainly hope that you have someone who will model for you this understanding of a social awareness and will communicate to you that they can empathize with you.

They will stay present with you until you know that they have an understanding of how you feel. Then my request of you, my expectation of you, is that you'll begin to do that for someone else. You'll begin to be the source of somebody's empathetic listening. Once again, definitely should happen in marriage, but it can happen in your schoolyard, it can happen in your workplace, it can happen on the playground as you continue to build your emotional intelligence.

When you see emotional intelligence grow, it is such an exciting and memorable experience. To see someone's emotions begin to connect again to them, to see them begin to embrace emotional connection, there is nothing like it. Finally, emotional intelligence will help you manage relationships much more effectively. This is where communication, conflict resolution, trust, and connection all come together.

Strong relationships require intentional effort. It's not about winning arguments; it's about progressing in connection. It's so important that we understand how to have relationships and how do we have dispositions where we're always looking for everybody to win. I know if you've been living in this world, that sounds like an absolute fairy tale. Somebody's got to lose. I don't know that that's all the way true. I think that when you understand the value of emotional intelligence, what may have been perceived as a loss in the past, you can begin to show people it can be a win.

Here's the real truth: emotional intelligence can turn conflict into growth, pain into healing, and relationships into safe places for love to thrive. So today ask yourself, how emotionally aware am I in my relationships? I want to remind you, it's a lifelong journey. But I want to let you know that if you get in this race, you'll get your second wind and you'll begin to learn and love the journey.

As we finish up this series, once again I want to remind you that forever love, it's not a fantasy. It is absolutely formed.

Thank you for clicking on the video. I'm Cal Cope. Won't you like and subscribe and enjoy the video?