Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining us from the other side of the country is Kris Girrell. You say it, I want to make sure I'm saying it right?

Kris Girrell
Girrell, that's correct. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah.

Greg Voisen
And it's a Learning to Feel the subtitle is One Man's Path of Reconnecting to the Heart of Emotions. For those of you who want to learn more about Kris, I would encourage you to go to Innerworks, i-n-n-e-r-w-o-r-k-s hyphen consulting.com. He also has a podcast show, that will be up there as well. So you can take a look at that. And Kris is going to be speaking with us this morning about this new book. He has quite a few other books too. And I would encourage you to go to his website and check out his prior books. Even though they don't follow a path toward this one, all of them. There is a similarity is the path of my life, you know, yeah, exactly path of all our lives, which is twisting and turning and going here and there. So Kris is Kris's background spans 40 years of organizational consulting, and executive leadership coaching. He's a sought after speaker. He's the author of seven books, which you can learn out that go from marital relations to spiritual and personal transformation. He's a strategic consultant. He's worst worked in elite Boston is Boston business landscape, pharmaceutical companies, legal and financial firms. Across all the United States, South America, Europe and Africa, globally recognized leadership coach in the C suite, lifelong competitor in rugby, taekwondo, and for Boston marathons. His background from an educational standpoint is Bachelor of Science and Master of Education in psychology and counseling from Pennsylvania State University. And he took courses toward a doctorate at the University of Maryland, he received and completed his Master of Arts and theology research at Andover Newton theological school in Boston. And he's certified in a large number of psychological and behavioral assessments, and is a member of the Society of industrial organizational psychologist and National Speakers Association. Well, you have a impressive background and bio, and as you said, I think in the book a couple times, if it came to psychology, maybe you're a little bit over educated. But, but there's nothing wrong with that, Kris, that's good. You know, in this book, as I saw it, was you being quite vulnerable, as a writer, as a human being, talking about your own personal stories, and allowing that vulnerability to actually be the journey and framework for the book, to let people get in touch with their emotions? And I think you did a really good job of that. And I want to start this off with, with the first question, which is really, and you start the book off, you were quite vulnerable about this, the time when Sarah, your wife confronted you about some flirtatious emails you were sending to an old flame, you then speak about doing deep work, and your emotions about not being enough. And I want to pause there for a second. Because that's a big thing that drives people to take actions both positively and negatively. Meaning, you know, not being enough, not enough. You can actually end up being an alcoholic or a drug addict. Not being enough can be a driver to send you to the top of CEO of a company. So the whole concept of just not enough, not enough means, hey, maybe this woman isn't good. I could go get another woman and have an affair. And that's another thing you could address. Right?

Kris Girrell
Which is certainly one of her interpretations. Yes.

Greg Voisen
Speak with us that as it relates to getting in touch with that emotion.

Kris Girrell
Well, so let me just unpack that just a little bit. You know, starting off with that level of vulnerability, you know, was a risk that I've taken all of my books before had been subject matter that I'm an expert on, and so I could write about it, but there's this thing that stuck in the back of my head and we talked about it earlier when we were just having a conversation, where you know, Ken Wilber his good friend David data called him a fraud because he said that will His job was to be at the cutting edge of the human experience and report back. And anytime he wasn't doing that when he was teaching or when he was writing, it was fraudulent, you know, and, and, and, you know, essentially my wife is calling me out as a fraud because I teach emotional intelligence I teach, you know, all I know all about and pig, no emotions, and I could talk at length about them. But did I actually experienced them? And do I know what my experience is? And in this one particular incident that came up where I, my answer to her is, I was, I don't know why I did that. You know, it was back in the days when, you know, when social media was just coming to the forefront, and, you know, people were just connecting, you know, with people, and this old flame had contacted me and said, Hey, how are you doing? And, you know, it just escalated really rapidly. And, you know,

Greg Voisen
she wanted to know what you were hiding?

Kris Girrell
She wanted it? Yeah, well, I didn't hide it. I mean, I know, I'm, I was naive, I am naive a lot of times about internet stuff. And, and so you know, when she was looking for something on my computer, she actually came across the text to my men's team, where I said, hey, I cut it off, right at the right at the root, you know, and, you know, I just wanted to be honest with my team. And she said, what often starts looking and says, oh, my God, you know, there's this, there's this trail back and forth between me and this other woman. And she said, why did you do that? And? And my answer was, I don't know. And that was unacceptable. So I went on this quest to really dig into what is it that causes our emotions? What, you know, what was the emotion that was driving me, because a lot of our actions, a lot of what we do, are not actions, they're reactions. And what we're reacting to, is often a visceral feeling, you know, a gut emotional feeling, you know, that caused us to do one thing or another. So I went on this quest to do that. And, you know, a buddy of mine who's a consultant in and an author, as well said, you know, like, you really ought to write this, you know, this is this is a good story. So it was a real risk for me to tell the story of how do I how I went digging in the dirt to find, what was the source of that?

Greg Voisen
Interesting, you know, you talk about emotional intelligence, and obviously, you're very well versed, versed in this topic, but yet you, you went back to school and got a degree in theology, I'd really like to know what your definition of spiritual intelligence is, huh,

Kris Girrell
what a brilliant concept, you know. So emotional intelligence, and I'll relate that to emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, things like that is the ability to be aware enough of yourself to know what's yours and what's not yours, you know, so that when I'm reacting to someone else, you know, I'm not blaming that other person for my reaction. I know that that came from me, I know what the source of my emotions are. And the important part of emotional intelligence is getting to what's the source code underneath it? Because our emotions come from our beliefs, and our thoughts about those beliefs. So if I have a belief, I'm not enough, my emotion about being scared or, or, or feeling fragile, or needing to compete, you know, you listed my competition to stuff you know, that's all from not enough, but just trying to prove to myself that I am, right. Nobody plays rugby.

Greg Voisen
Where Kris, where Kris, would you find truth? So in other words, you know, if we have a belief and beliefs can change, based upon experience,

Kris Girrell
experience based on our experiences, yeah.

Greg Voisen
So but when most people get involved with religion, and they have questions about that coming up, right, right, they get a big T. I call it the big T truth, the big trick. They can they stand on that platform, as if nothing else in the world existed? How can people not be so aware that they find themselves in that big T and then they find out that that big T is a lie? And I'm not gonna say that about it not gonna point out any religion? No, no, no, I

Kris Girrell
hear what you're asking what it is. Yeah, yeah. So let's reel it back where we learn those big teeth. Truth is when we're children. You know, a lot of us get our spirituality, a lot of us get our beliefs about higher power, or the divine or whatever you want to name that which is greater than ourselves. When we're kids, you know, we either got it from our parents, and we got it in Sunday school, we got it, whatever, you know, if you see if, you know, however, whatever spirituality that you grew up in, somewhere in that you were taught those things, and, and as children, we learn things in absolutes. You know, in developmental psychology, we talk about the first phase of development is fundamental dualism, yes, no good, bad, up down black, white, you know. And so, those things are taught to us as this is the way it is. And we often never, you know, in religions don't do a good job of this, of freeing up the person's mind teasing them to, to question, you know, most religions teach doctrine. And that is unquestionable, you know, like, it is what it is, you know, the, the undeniable truth of the Bible or something like that. And if you haven't, if you haven't studied that subject, or haven't gone into it, it still lives as a truth. But what happens to us along the way, is that we have experiences, you know, my book on the dark night of the soul, is called wrestling the angel. And, and it's about what happens when those big T truths get blown up. You know, we have a belief that God is good and protects little, little children. And suddenly, we see a bunch of children in a school massacred by some idiot with an AR 15. Right? We go, like, how could God allow that to happen? You know, and so suddenly, that belief in a deity that makes good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people gets blown up, if you can't live in that place. And so, some people are gonna get one of three reactions. One is you retreat, the fundamental dualism to you know, you just give it up, you let go, three is you evolve, you know, and what happens in the dark and

Greg Voisen
hopefully, when people read your book, they're going to evolve because this wasn't well, but this book is about evolution. Yes, yes. Journey. And I want to say something you know, you mentioned in the book that you believe that the emotions are emotions. And I would say this even for myself many times, I'm not like I've been doing this shows almost 17 plus years now. Wow. Yeah. And I've heard it all. But you say our emotions are hogtied in the trunk. I love that term. I love that term that you used when?

Kris Girrell
The other way around. I want to correct that. You know, what was it? It's actually that all? Emotions are in the driver's seat and reason and logic are hogtied in the trunk. Okay, I got it wrong, then. Yeah, right. And it's actually from Brene. Brown, I lifted that from her. And I thought it was such a great way to describe it. You know, and what she means, really, and what I mean by that is that emotions often drive our reactions, you know, and, and they override our logic and our willfulness our, our mind, if you will, those more gut level reactions, that our emotional reactions, really, you know, take us down a street that we don't necessarily want to go down. You know, if we were thinking logically about it, if we were making rational decisions and things like that,

Greg Voisen
I wouldn't say today when I see what's going on in the world, you know, where did logical reasoning go? Where did deductive reasoning, you know, is it you know, and this next story that we're going to talk about with you, is an exact perfect example of what I'm talking about. Because it's our perception of reality. Now, here's what happened that you described in the book. You lived in Germany, or in a military base, your family were playing with a bunch of kids with toys. And yeah, it was sold. Yeah, wouldn't it? Well, I mean, like Bruce Lipton says, the first seven years are plugged in. Yeah, literally, you're not going to erase those seven years. Right. Right. So you're playing with these kids, and then they mock you for being stingy, because you're not right. Yeah. Yeah. You recall the story for our listeners. And subsequently. Now this is what happened to it. Yeah. This is the part that people have to get here. It's about the story. It's about the toys it's about, but it's about what you made up and yeah, Have reality as a kid at that point, which just shows you where people potentially can go when they want to make shit up? Yeah,

Kris Girrell
right. And so the brains job is to make meaning, right, and the brains job is always making shit up. And so here's this little kid, you know, four years old, I'm playing out there, the kids start teasing me, I get pissed, I get angry, as angry as a little four year old boy could get. And I looked down, and there are set of stairs that like just three or four stairs to go down, they're made out of bricks, and there's a loose brick on the side. And I picked up that brick and I threw it in, I hit a kid on the side of the head, and it just gushed blood. And, you know, I got scared and ran inside hid under the dining room, or the kitchen table, crying, and I wouldn't come out. So that's what was in my head as the memory. You know, and I'm doing, you know, much later in life. And when I'm, like 35, or 40, or something like that, you know, says quite a while ago, but I'm doing this training, and they challenged us to question our fundamental beliefs about ourselves. And this memory came up. And so my sisters, my sister is two years older than me. And so I call up my sister and I say, you know, like I did I did I tell the story about the you know, that and throwing the brick and the kid and she said, well, I remember, I remember you hiding under the kitchen table crying and not coming out. I don't remember anything about, you know, hitting other kids or anything, maybe you should call mom. So I call my mother. She goes, Kris, this is an army base. The mothers are all hardwired together. If anything like that, even remotely happened, I would have known in an instant, that never happened. My mind went kaboom. And so suddenly, what I recognized was that this four year old little boy got angry enough to want to throw a brick, I don't know, four years old, I don't have the physical acumen to be able to pick up a brick and throw it and hit you actually in the head, you probably would have gone plop in front. But in my mind, I visualized that and it was so clear a memory that it lived as a reality for me. And suddenly my belief about me being a big, you know, hurtful person got blown up? Yeah. You know, just, you know, like, I lived for 35 years believing that I could cause harm. I'm 60. You know, I'm a big guy.

Greg Voisen
That is that what we're talking about, right, exactly how these stories evolve, and then live inside of our consciousness, right? And we believe them. And then you validate it through other people that it wasn't true. It's almost like doing a gestalt therapy, right, but you didn't grow in a little, you didn't go into the other little boy's head and pretend like you were him You didn't need to, all you really needed to do is check with mom. And mom said, hey, could never know when you throw a brick or hit a kid in the head. Exactly. The whole army beats would have been?

Kris Girrell
Yeah, yeah, I would, I would have had some other kind of consequence of

Greg Voisen
crying under the table. I think you and I talked a little bit before we started this podcast. And one of the things I think is important, is, you know, they always say, in mindfulness meditation practices, take a deep breath before you act not react. And this is around our emotions playing in decision making process. I think this holds true whether you're buying a car, buying a house, or you're choosing a mate, right? It's a decision you're making. Sometimes these are very lifelong decisions can be very expensive. Emotions, let's face it when it's love. You said you made two T shirts. One was love three and the other one I'm wearing, which is gratitude, right? So speak with us, because this is a really powerful concept. And I'm gonna relate one thing real quick. There's a, an MIT grad, and she's blind. And she's written these books, about choices, how we make choices. Now, you probably already know this. But she went in and studied. And she I think she's written two or three books. She's been on the show, fascinating woman. About, hey, when you have five choices at the grocery store, and you're trying to make a decision versus three choices, versus two choices, right? And now you have this myriad of choices about making a decision. Right, and how the mind works, the more choices you have the worst decision you actually make, logically, right? So how do you help us deal with these emotions, which are driving our ability to make a decision, whether it be good, bad or indifferent.

Kris Girrell
So I have to inhale, because there's so much to unpack in that. So first off, much of our decision making is not choice, much of our decision making is emotional driven reactions. You know, and, and a lot of those reactions are a lot of those, those what we think of our choices, our neural paths that we've been down so many times that it's, it's habituated. And so we tend to always go this way, when we get to that, that juncture in the in the synaptic pathway, you know, we always go right, or we always go left or whatever. And so we have a lot of those automatic choices. You know, what, in the research that was done in hybrid was Barry Schwartz Renens, called The Paradox of Choice is his book. But you know, and she actually accurately represented that, when we have too many choices, you know, one, we get overwhelmed, and we don't choose to, we tend to, to second guess ourselves our choices, when we have multiple choices. If there's only two choices, you're going to pick one. And you'll be happier with that one, because you picked it because the other one was clearly off the books, you know, off the off the table, you know, but when we have 10, or let's say in the choice of a mate, and there are a million and a half young women on the internet who are exposing various parts of their body and is so seductive ways. Some guys look at that and say, wow, compared to what I have here, that looks pretty attractive, you know. And so their choice making is, is blurred, because they have too many alternatives. What Barry Schwartz says it's like when he gives people a chance to renegotiate their choice, they have less satisfaction with their choice. And more often second guess themselves, if they are not able to renegotiate their choice, they have greater satisfaction, they report, they like their choice so much more. So when you when you choose to get married, for example, when you choose to have a car, you know, buy a car, you know, that buyer's remorse that you have afterwards comes from those multiple choices out there? Unless you say, no, this is my choice. Now how do we get to a decision where we're actually making choice, not reaction? That's how what

Greg Voisen
how do you prevent analysis paralysis? You know, and then people don't make any choice. Right? They're exactly choices. When analyzed so much that they ended up going well, just not going to do it at all. Oh,

Kris Girrell
yeah. And in the original study that the woman was talking about, you know, they literally went to Whole Foods Market in Cambridge, and they put out they put out 10 Different jellies.

Greg Voisen
No, that's the same woman Exactly. Talking about and the

Kris Girrell
butter, and peanut, right. And when people had too many choices, they never used the coupon, they never bought the jelly or peanut butter. You know, when they had only three choices, you know, same store, same population, different time, when they had only three choices, 70% of the people bought one of the jellies or bought one of the peanut butters 3% When they had 10. Right 3% versus 70%. You know, so that overwhelm, you know, and what, what Schwartz calls the paradox of choice, you really don't have a choice there. You're not making a choice, it's overwhelming. And so you get into this, you know, analysis paralysis. So, how we have to get to decision making. And my very first book was written about decision making was a textbook way back in the 70s. But, you know, what we what we have to look at is not what the alternatives are, what we have to look at is what is it that I want? What is it that I need out of this decision right now. And so, what eliminates the analysis paralysis is knowing clearly what it is that I'm trying to do for myself or what I'm trying to do with this decision. You know, so I just bought a new car. And I wanted something bla bla bla bla and I listed out my, my desired outcomes, you know, and, you know, I saw three cars that fit those criteria. And I looked at the, you know, consumer report ratings and things like that, and I checked off all the boxes, and the one that satisfied the greatest number of highest weighted desired outcomes was the one that I bought lot, you know, I don't have buyer's remorse. Because, for me, that choice met all the things that I needed, you know, had I looked at, you know, looking at a rav4 versus, you know, Subaru Forester versus, you know, one of the other key as you know, and, you know, if I, if I was looking at Kia versus Subaru versus, you know, Toyota, you know, then I'm confused out there, those three choices, and they, you know, it's apples and oranges. They're different. They're different creatures. And so my mind was,

Greg Voisen
How are we dealing with inherent bias? Because the read more about what Yes, well, like? Yeah, yeah, you make this choice. Everybody on the internet is trying to create a bias toward whatever it is they're selling, right? Whether it's Toyota or Kia doesn't matter. Right, right. When you're picking a mate, say, well, I like blond hair, blue eyes. Oh, no. But there's a redhead over there, she looks pretty good, as well, right? Or he? I don't want to be bias here on sexist, right, right, sexist. You know, explain, you know, because over time, as we evolve and become older, I see myself today, having biases towards certain things, right, I maybe didn't have as strong a bias for previously. And

Kris Girrell
we also have to be conscious, we also have to be conscious of what we call confirmation bias, which is I have a belief that Toyotas are better than Ford's, or I have a belief that blondes are dumb, and sorry, blondes, but my wife is great. She's not dumb. But you know, I have a belief that this is better than that, or whatever. And so I look for evidence that will confirm that. And so a lot of our a lot of our choice making is confirmation bias driven, not real choice. Okay. And again, you know, the whole process of learning to feel is to try to get at the base code of what are my beliefs that are driving all this not not the emotional level? Because

Greg Voisen
the most important thing you've said, is to get to that level of awareness. Yeah, it's,

Kris Girrell
that's what emotional intelligence is,

Greg Voisen
when we're just, we're exactly when we're just riding on our emotions. And we're not questioning and being aware of the decision we're making. We fundamentally can make some very wrong decisions. Right. Let's go back.

Kris Girrell
I want to I want to go back. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Greg. But I don't want to step over this the whole, you use the term spiritual intelligence? I

Greg Voisen
like your thought your definition was of it. Yeah. And

Kris Girrell
so I want to answer that, I want to answer that, you know, so if emotional intelligence is being aware of your own experience, your own belief system, that's the result of those experiences, and, and trusting that so that you're making choices based on what is there not the emotion that it's it's causing spiritual intelligence is trusting the spiritual experience that you've had. So my spiritual experience is something other than the big T truth that my church had taught me. You know, and what overrides that, that previously held truth is, I trust my experience. So if I've had, you know, a spiritual experience, I've had an experience of, you know, kind of touching the divine what, whatever that is to you. You know, then well, I get to, I get to trust that more than what I've been taught.

Greg Voisen
And I will say this, that every podcast, I wrote a book called hacking the gap, from intuition to innovation and beyond. This was my own way to look at a bigger spiritual world. Every major business person from Warren Buffett to Bill Gates will tell you that their intuition was their best decision making element. Okay, now, you can go look them up on the internet. There's quote after quote after quote about intuition, but intuition now, this is a fascination. Your fascination and curiosity be things that are greater than ourselves, especially religion, you wouldn't have gone back and gotten a degree in theology if you hadn't had huge curiosity. You mentioned that the Bible was rich with lessons, but rife with juicy stories. And if you would, speak with us about how this shaped emotion about guilt shame for you. Because now here's to emotions. Well, you, you grew up in a fundamental background, let's face it, all right, you're not there now because I can see from the symbols and signs on your door in the back of your eye see more of an Eastern bent direction that you've taken. Versus Catholicism.

Kris Girrell
Well, I never was a Catholic. So you know. I grew up Lutheran. Lutheran.

Greg Voisen
Okay, so Lutheran, sorry, but you know, they're not. They're not that they're

Kris Girrell
not that far apart. Yeah, right. There are cousins. So how does that How did the Bible in in stories of the Bible, so I have, like I said, I've been fascinated with religion and spirituality. Since I was a little kid. It was probably the same age as the briquettes that I've still been fascinated by that stuff. There's something in me that was always curious about that. And actually, you know, after my undergraduate, I went to seminary, to become a minister, but dropped out after a semester and a half, I just, you know, wasn't ready. But but I've always, you know, I've read the Bible. I don't know how many times and as a young kid, and certainly as a teenager, there are stories of, you know, in in Joshua, there's a story of, of, you know, Guy traveling to a foreign city with his concubine. And he gets to the city. And you know, he has, he's granted sanctuary by his host. But the concubine was left outside, the men of the town came and said, Let your let your friend out there, because he's not one of us, let us have our way with them. They didn't, but they left the concubine out there, they literally brutally raped her all night long and left her dead on the doorstep. Now, that's in the Bible. That's a story in the Bible. And, and you know, there are people who want to say everything in the Bible is, is God speaking? No, it's actually people just telling stories, you know, and the story that we're telling you there was, was brutal sexuality, it was not a pretty story at all. And yet, as a teenage boy reading that we all went Teehee, you know, so here it is that we're taught, you know, believe the Bible is the Word of God and things like that, and get in there, there's these stories of, you know, reads, you know, Song of Solomon just so erotic literature, you know, beautiful stuff, but you know, it's pretty erotic, you know, talking about woman's breasts, and you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, little testosterone fueled teenage boys studying that stuff. really had fun with it. And yet, we were told that was wrong. You know, so how do you have something that's right, and something that's wrong? That really messes with your brain that, you know, like, how can it be right and wrong at the same time, in dualism that doesn't exist. So you know, things like that actually cause us to progress in our development. So we move from dualism to multiplicity to, you know, to etc, all that all the way down the pike, but, but, you know, it, it played into a lot of guilt and shame, because the church was telling me that sex is bad. Lutherans are very stoic, you know, we don't have pads on the pews in Lutheran churches, because sitting on hardwood is more painful and therefore, you know, a better lesson about what you know, like, this is you know, you're

Greg Voisen
not gonna give any damn cushion. No, no, right? Yeah, because

Kris Girrell
life is hard and God is tough. And you know, all that kind of stuff. So his own stuff. That's

Greg Voisen
the strong Swedes that came from you know, we're your background Swedish.

Kris Girrell
You know, gorilla is actually Danish,

Greg Voisen
Danish well, but it's Norwegian let's Scandinavian. Yeah, that's where it comes from. But look, you say in the book, that teachings of the Masters, most of the Masters all of the masters are founded non duality, that's you're just talking about, right? Much has been written about this concept, but not everybody listening today gets the concept of non duality you said earlier, you know, black, white, good, bad, and that kind of thing. Can you address how the teachings influenced your emotions you started? And your early childhood and your studies from the Bible you just told that story, that great story. But literally now let's fast forward to the Kris of today. Mm. How has that those teachings, the influence and your journey in theology, really defined who Kris is today fundamentally about his beliefs, and how he carries his emotions

Kris Girrell
that marries together a lot of what we've been talking about so far. So first off, throughout all of this time, I have experience, you know, so my life experience, by the time we reach late teens, we're pretty certain that life experiences teaching us more than what we learned in the school. You know, so, you know, when we teach adult learning theory, we teach that you ask questions instead of tell answers. Because, because when you're telling people who are adult learners, you know, they already have so much experience that telling doesn't register anymore. So you ask them what they know. And then you fill in the gaps? Well, you know, through that, through that journey of, of spirituality and theology. You know, my fundamental question throughout my, my youth and young adulthood, and even in today is, why do people believe what they believe? And how did that how did they get those beliefs? And, you know, how does that compare with what I believe? So, so my journey has been one of, of starting to trust my experience as my spiritual experience as the truth that I live by. And you ask, you know, why did the masters always teach non duality because those truths don't live as big T capital truths anymore, they are my truth, and your truth. And so when we get to a place of non duality, when we see that there is no right and wrong, but that I choose this as my path and you choose that as your path, then I have a great deal, a great wide highway of, of room for you and anybody else's belief, you know, what if I believe that, that whatever divinity is, is truly Almighty, you know, all powerful, then I must also believe that that entity that that experience could show up in just exactly the way that Greg voicing needs it to show up. And it shows up exactly the way Kris girl needs it to show up in exactly the way the fundamental jihadist needs it to show up, you know, and suddenly, I realize that there's no right and wrong in here. There's just what that person's experience is. And so I can relate to another person. The fundamental problem we're facing in this divisiveness in our world today is that we don't have room for the other person in our discussion. Exactly. And to non dualism, then, do you have room?

Greg Voisen
Right is saying, I want to tell our listeners in the time remaining, Kris, because it's been really engaging, we could probably do three, we could go for hours. I know. But but this book right here, this the table, right? It leads me kinda to this. I know the listeners can't see it that well, but by the book just just for this. And the reason is, scientifically, Kris has broken down all the emotions of passion depression, into this periodic table, including all of the positive emotions, bliss, humility, pride, Grace, all of them into a periodic table, which is really quite fascinating, actually. And for those of you who can't see, I'm wearing gratitude right now. And he had one on earlier that was love. He did. Here's my point. So

Kris Girrell
yeah, let me just do the backstory to that very quickly. Okay. All right. So it's not a research scientific thing. It's actually something I did because I was training, it was hired to teach emotional intelligence to a bunch of scientific researchers, you know, director of the director of r&d at a, at a pharmaceutical firm, they're all PhD MDs, brilliant off the charts, but had no emotional intelligence whatsoever. And I needed a way for, to open the conversation, they get them to at least say, you know, emotions are important and that, you know, recognizing that somebody who's frustrated is not the same as treated the same as somebody who's, who's angry. You know, those are different emotions, though similar in in looks. So I created I use the Mendeley of chart the layout of the old chemistry chart that we all learned in high school. You know, I used that as a format and then just I put in the emotions, but I did them in a way so that the pure emotions, like the noble gases were at the top the heavy emotions and the unstable ones were down in the, in the in the radioactive area, the lanthanide next actinide series, I, you know, I had periodicity across from visceral motions to more heavy emotions, you know, and so there was a way for me to see it, you know, in relationship and in periodic, you know, levels. And then I tossed in a whole bunch of puns, you know, so a lot of the, a lot of the emotion names the symbol I gave them, our, you know, our puns, like relief is listed as our x, like a, like a prescription, you know, pleasure is Mm hmm. and things like that. And then they also gave them atomic weight. So if you stand up and show your gratitude, the atomic weight for gratitude is 24.7. There,

Greg Voisen
I can't get it back. And it can't get

Kris Girrell
24.7 because, you know, love, gratitude is something you practice all the time. 24/7 You know, love has the atomic weight of 3.14 pi, because love makes the world go round. So I put in all these little jokes like that, which, you know, these guys, you know, once they saw there were jokes, they started looking for them. Right? And and once they started looking for them, they were engaged in the conversation that could start talking to them about emotion. So that's kind of the backstory to it.

Greg Voisen
Well, but regardless of it being a backstory, I think if somebody was to take the chart, and just pin it, I always say, you know, if somebody took a video camera and watched you during the day, would you like who you were? Yeah. And great question. And this, this book, just that chart alone, no matter what the price of the book is to get the chart is actually worth it. Because as much as you say, Well, I did this for a bunch of scientists, everybody at their own mind is they have a degree of logic, they want to look at these emotions, they want to try and better understand it, which kind of leads me to my wrap up question here. Because we are all trying to better understand how these emotions affect us in many different ways. And we know that they do affect you. Physiologically, we know that you can raise your cortisol levels, by having high degrees of anger, we know that you can cause things to happen in your body as a result of too much emotional state, or of adrenaline as oxytocin. We know is that love, kind of chemical that euphoric one, there's a cool, total relationship here physiologically, emotionally, spiritually, to all of these emotions. And that leads me to their behavior, and our behavior. Yeah, you did a great job in pulling all this together in one book, and being personally vulnerable with your stories. The reader learns a lot. What are three big takeaways you want to leave the listeners with today about the book and about Kris, and his journey? And what he's learned about? Emotional Intelligence?

Kris Girrell
Oh, great. Three points. So point number one is there is no good emotion, no bad emotion, all emotions are great. You know, there are uncomfortable emotions that we don't want to feel, you know, and we might label them as bad. But you know, then that takes away the ability to do point number two, that the emotions are the doorway into understanding what your beliefs and your thoughts are, that caused those emotions. And it's really self self awareness that, you know, is at the bottom of emotional intelligence. So we're really trying to get to a place where we can have enough of an emotional vocabulary. You know, when I do workshops, I ask people write down as many emotional words as you can. And I'll give you five minutes and most people have their pen down in two minutes. And then the average number that they write is between 30 and 40 words. And then you say, of all the ones that you've written down, circled the ones that you can say you actually fully experienced that emotion, and what the average is, five, five emotions that we can name as ours. So because

Greg Voisen
we can identify with the name, the name, right, emotion, and there

Kris Girrell
are names but most people

Greg Voisen
most people aren't making a periodic chart of emotion. No, but most

Kris Girrell
people don't have access to the hundreds of different emotional nuances that we have. So So part of part of the whole journey is just to get aware of, of, you know, a better emotional vocabulary. Um, and then I think if there's a third point, it's that you know that you You can get yourself to a level of awareness where you are able to make choice, as opposed to reaction. So much of our work and so much of our living experience is a reaction experience. And in order to get emotional intelligence and understand and have a better emotional vocabulary, so you can say, oh, that's why I'm doing this, then I can, I now put myself in a place of being able to make choice, I can choose to do the reaction, I can choose that, or I can choose to do something else. And freedom is being able to choose. If we don't have that access to the to the substrate, we don't have the language that helps us identify the differences between those those different feelings, then we're not going to see why we're doing what we're doing. And we're going to go on automatic pilot, and most of our lives are lived on automatic pilot, I want people to walk away from this book with choice.

Greg Voisen
You know, and if that's the bottom line, well, and if they read the book, or they at least make an awareness, you've said that in the, in our earlier discussions, create an awareness about all these emotions that we have, even if they can't figure out how to deal with them. They can identify them, right? And I think people will say, Well, I can identify anger, and I can identify love, and I can identify this emotion, that emotion. But there's so many more that you need to understand that are occurring, subconsciously. Yeah. So this man is

Kris Girrell
driving, you're driving you thank you driving your behavior, because it's subconscious. It's unconscious. Its unconscious.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, we I mean, I, I was a my listeners already know this. But I go to hypnotherapist, and every time I go, and we do a session, I literally realized, you know, just how much crap is blocking. You know, they say, you read? What's the difference between your reality and your potential. It's really afraid. Here's my reality. And here's the potential. And frequently you're not accessing the part of your brain, which is preventing the potential to be explored. Right, right. And there's so much more potential than there is current reality. And your book is, everybody should get this book. It's easy to read, look at this. It's not that many pages, go out and go to Amazon, we'll have a link to that we have a link to Kris's website as well, which is inner hyphen, inner works hyphen, consulting.com. He also has a podcast so you'll be able to access his podcast as well. Kris, it's been a pleasure having this really cool discussion, I want to invite you back for either wrestling the angel or Typhon honey. So let's work on one of those two. If you're open for that,

Kris Girrell
I would love to craic. I mean, I really enjoy our conversations. And we always, we always kind of, you know, tend to open up new things and love the way you think and ask questions. So it's a be a pleasure to be back and do that again.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, you know, I I'm trying to remember Phil, the psychologist Phil, that they did the Netflix series about what's his name? Phil? Do you know I'm talking about? Dr. Phil? No. Oh, no. First name is Phil. And he they did a documentary about him as a psychologist, interviewing a guy. And I'll think of it I'll put a link in the blog for everybody. So you don't just go crazy thinking I'm nuts, but fascinating. And it was how he really interpreted and ask questions. And I hope everybody out there listening, thought the questions that I asked Kris today, were revealing of some of the things that you needed to learn. And we want to thank you for listening all my listeners. We appreciate you as much as anything in this process. So Kris, Namaste to you. Have a wonderful day and talk again soon. All

Kris Girrell
Right, thanks, Greg. Look forward to it.