Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Well, welcome. Welcome to the Speak Your Power Now podcast, a show that empowers women through the transformational art of communication. I'm your host, Cheryl Clark, and I invite you to join us on a journey of self discovery, empowerment, and personal growth. You know, I always say, I'm just a girl from the Bronx. I learned a couple of tools along the way, and I'm here to share them with do. So this weekly podcast is going to be a source of practical tips, inspiring stories, and transformational insights that's going to help you break through to any self doubt. So our mission is simple here. We're going to help you speak Your Power Now because your voice matters. So subscribe now, and let's dive into the world of Speak Your Power Now, where your empowerment begins with your hey, there. Welcome. Welcome to another exciting episode of Speak Your Power Now. I am your host, Cheryl Clark, and I am elated that you have come to join me once again. You know, I always say I'm a girl from the Bronx. I learned a couple of tools along the way. I'm here to teach them to you. So let's get started. But before we do, I always start with the Speak Your Power Now declaration that gets us centered, that gets us prepared to be an opening so we can declare and we can decree, we can be able to move into the space. So come along with me. I want you to begin to sit in a comfortable position and make sure that your feet are on the ground. You're receptive, and you're going to begin to take a nice, long, sold, deep breath in through the nostrils and exhale that out.
Take a nice, long, sold, deep breath in through the nostrils once again and exhale it out.
I want you to repeat silence to yourself after me to Speak Your Power Now declaration.
Today I reclaim my power of purpose.
Today I declare that I have unshakable faith and confidence in my uniqueness. Today I declare that I will not live in fear, but with power, love, and a sound mind. Today I declare that I always communicate with words to empower myself and others. Today I declare to always honor myself by living in the present and living powerfully in each moment. Amen. All right, so let's get started. We are going into our series of emotional intelligence and emotional intelligence. If you want to go back to our first podcast that we did on this series was Emotional Intelligence Impairing. So you want to go back and have a listen to that? It will set the stage of what we discussed about emotional intelligence. And I say emotional intelligence is the cornerstone to healthy relationships, especially if you're a parent. If you're in any relationship, it is the cornerstone. And I learned about emotional intelligence. It's called EQ.
You want to read about it? You want to think about it? You want to learn all you can about it, because that is the cornerstone. I believe in anything. So here we speak your Power. Now, I'm all about mastering our communication. So today's episode, we're going to be talking about and diving into you ready for it? Are you ready for it? Emotional intelligence in romantic relationships. Oh, yeah.
I know we got some questions and some doozies here, so you can bring on your questions, let me know what you want to talk about. But I know that this is a major, major point. And mastering your communication, understanding your emotions, understanding your significant other, your partner's emotions, managing your own. And we're going to be getting all into giving you some resources, some tools, so to strengthen your connection with your partner. So everybody wants a connection.
I believe everybody wants to feel connected in romantic relationships, feeling loved or fulfilled. And that emotional relationship that you have, somebody, it's like the heartbeat.
I would say communication will be the life of the relationship. And when there is no communication, the relationship can go, it can tank. So I'm going to be talking about how emotional intelligence can enhance your ability to effectively communicate with your partner from active listening to how you respond and not react, just to unveil. Some of the things that we talk about with our partners in conversations is a lot about the art of connecting and the art of communication. So we're going to delve into this. I want you to get your pen and paper out. You know how I'll do. I give you some resources here. You can go back and look at it and listen to it. But I give you resources here. I told you, I got a little couple of tools in my tool belt, so I come to share them with you. So in this journey of uncovering, I believe, the secret sauce of emotional intelligence and relationships, the specific focus that I'm going to be talking about, there's different areas that you can touch on, but specifically here at Speak Your Power, now, we focus on communication. So we're going to be discovering a little bit about how to master your love language, how you speak, and to transform your romantic love. And so the first thing I want to talk about, a lot of us hear about, if you haven't heard about it, the Love Language. We throw around that a lot. Love Language is and we hear about, if you don't know, Gary Chapman. Dr. Gary Chapman wrote a book about the five love languages.
I absolutely recommend this book. I absolutely love this book.
I'm going to talk a little bit about the Five Love Languages and what you can explore. It's like the foundation of every successful relationship and how you communicate. So you learn emote. It shapes you. How you talk, how you listen, how you connect with your partner. It shapes you. But you have a love Language and a lot of us attempt to give our love language in the conception of how we feel love to our partner, how we receive love, how we give love, we tend to get it twisted. So I'm going to say you can go and take the test. There's a little free test online that you can go ahead and go. Just type in. Gary Chapman five Love languages. If you haven't heard about it, it's a quick little test. You don't have to pay anything.
It spits out your results and who you are. So let me talk about the five words of affirmation. So these people feel loved when they receive verbal compliments words of encouragement, affirming, statements. So these people love to hear words. So they are very auditory. They like to hear words, they like to be affirmed. And if you have a partner like I have a partner, my partner, my husband of many years, love to be affirmed. He loves to hear compliments words of encouragement. He likes to be affirmed. So that's my partner, the second one, and I don't think it's in any particular order, acts of service, this is action speaks louder than words. So this is my love language.
You do little acts of service for me, boy, you got me, you got it, you can get it.
Yes, you got to learn yourself. But I was doing acts of service for him. That wasn't his love language. So if I cooked, he's all right with that. But if I told him, thank you for taking out the garbage, he will prefer that. So those are the things where you got to look at what you would give your partner that it may not necessarily jive with them. So in removing like that, you got to understand when you are feeling loved. So this person acts of service is they are doing things for them. So if you cook a meal, if you remember them, when you go to the store, you do, you help them with the chores, you put together something, oh, my goodness. If he puts together something, oh, yes, that is my love language. So you got to learn your love language. The third love language, receiving gifts. Some people, they show they love by receiving thoughtful gifts. So showing your partner that you care, that you think about them, that you pick them something up, a little trinket doesn't really have to cost a whole lot, but they love gifts. You got to know it. The next one quality time. So if your lover loves to value undivided attention or your time, so snuggling on the couch with a movie and popcorn, that's meaningful for them, have meaningful conversations with them, spending time with them, eating dinner with them, they love those activities. So those quality time, you got to be in touch with, that.
The next one, physical touch. There are some people that love the physical touch. Now, this goes two ways, because I also talk about myself. My husband wrote a book, The Power Four A's. And affection is one of those things that, in general, across the board, we should be doing physical touch. A lot of times in our relationship, we tend to take that away first. Remember when you used to get in an argument or angry or something, the first thing that goes is usually your sex life.
Or you take away that or you take away your hugs. You take away your kisses. That doesn't work because people need touch. They need the physical touch, kisses and hugs that's in general. Now, if this is your spouse's, your partner's love language, then they probably need more of it, okay? So that's a good resource. Dr. Chapman's book. It explains how you get a better understanding of your own and your partner's love language. So just to have that significant resource can improve your relationship. And I just want to emphasize the importance of expressing the way that your partner resounds with your partner, not you.
Remember, your love language is your love language. So you filling up their tank. He talks a lot about filling up their tank. So you got to look at the relationship. If you want a long term relationship, it requires you to understand your partner's love language, all right? Because then you value them. You value what they believe. You value the dynamics of their love and your love and how you communicate that.
All right? So the second thing I think is very valuable for your emotional intelligence, romantic relationship is the key to active listening. Now, we always talk about active listening. Active listening is more than just you hearing words. It's truly about you understanding what the person is saying, and you get them. I believe that in life that people just want to be gotten. And when people are gotten, people get a higher understanding of, I'm human, I want to be gotten. And if you get me and you hear me and you listen to me, it creates the pathways of being heard. So discovering this powerful empathetic tool of listening, how deep you can deepen this emotional connection, that's emotional intelligence. I don't care if you're in your workplace. I don't care if whatever it is. But today we talk about a romantic relationships. If you listen and give a pathway of hearing, someone, someone being heard in your relationship, that's golden.
So when you get into a space where you can think about when you're very early on in the relationship, just think about this, think about this.
When you're early on in the relationship, that little honeymoon stage, you look at your partner with googly eyes. Oh my goodness.
Everything they do is cute.
Everything they do. Oh, my goodness.
And you love everything about your partner here. She's amazing. They are so amazing. Pitter patter. Oh, my goodness. Fluttery eyes. What an amazing person. And then what starts to happen?
Time you get annoyed by the things you used to get so excited about things that just didn't bother you anymore, they just bother you so much. So then you start to get in a deeper, deeper, deeper thing where now you have blocked your listening. You cannot hear them and it's a mess. So I want to give you the Gottman's. Dr. Gottman. G-O-T-T-M-A-N. They have a book called The Relationship Cure. Told you I'm going to give you some tools today. So in this book it talks a lot about communication. This is what I love about this book because it gives you a sense of it says in the book that communication is 7% of what means of the spoken word while 38% comes from the tone of voice.
Tone of voice and speaking patterns.
So the words that you are seeing, you got to recognize how you are making that happen. So when you are looking at how you are making the words happen for you, it's the patterns, it's what you're speaking, it's how you're speaking it. So this is where you can begin to move into that. This is how you can actually see how you can move into this. Now I want to say this opportunity comes in not so much in an avenue where you can look in how you can begin to move into this spoken word.
How do you now are you sarcastic?
Your tone of voice, it matters. So are you listening to them? So if you are listening to your partner is disrespectful when you go in there and you're not hearing them. So your words do matter, your tone do matter. And when you speak these words you got to begin to look of what are you communicating, how are you communicating them? Your tone of voice is really important. So it correlates with long term success in your relationship. So learning how to use these dynamics are important. So any effective relationship will enhance emotional intelligence, will enhance anything about that. So I want you to go ahead and look at how you can implement that in your life.
The next one expressing your emotions through the art of vulnerability.
Now this is important. Your emotions are important.
Your emotions of how you begin to look at that, your emotions of how you begin to seek that, your emotions about how you could begin to move in, that is important.
So I cannot tell you how important it is for you to have the vulnerability of emotional intelligence which will empower and how you could begin to express yourself authentically. So how you create that is a space where your partner can now do the same. So Dr. Brynn Brown talks. She's a renowned researcher, author and speaker and she has an extensive research on vulnerability and shame and empathy. And when she did that she had an opportunity to come and talk about how you could begin to emphasize the importance of vulnerability. Vulnerability in a relationship embracing that is you being so authentic. You are so authentic that you are now moving in a space of how you can allow yourself to be vulnerable.
And when you look at how you are speaking, how you're moving into this space, it really argues to the factor of allowing yourself the vulnerability to have your timing just right. And this is what I mean by that. According to her research, it is not a sign of weakness, rather it's a source of strength.
Vulnerability helps us to bring a light to our emotions.
Vulnerability is the process that we can go and have the courage to stand in front of the world and have the armor on and be authentic of what we really mean and be connected to our own spaces of vulnerability. The art of vulnerability is us being able to say who we are, where we are and what we're doing. This is your time when you could begin to look at how you are and who you are. Being vulnerable with your partner is the thing how you can build from trust. Sometimes when trust is impacted in the relationship, it can really impact you being vulnerable with your spouse and with your partner. So it's important for you to actually create a space of understanding what that looks like. And after you do that, you can begin to come and see how you can actually understand what that looks like. Understanding what that looks like means that I'm not going to stop, but I'm also going to learn how to be vulnerable with you. But both people have to have that openness because the next thing is building the trust for emotional intelligence to happen. And when emotional intelligence is there, you can trust your partner to create emotional intelligence and foster a sense of security in the relationship. So some secret vulnerability avenues of that. You want to get brin's work, but also when a couple understands and you can look at myself and my husband's book The Power of the Four A's we wrote this book and in this book we talk about how the couple to respect one another in a relationship.
We wrote this book because it means that we really wrote this book because we were challenged in our relationship and we was really contemplating divorced. And collectively, we wrote it in a space where we didn't understand who we were. We were losing pieces of who we were and with all these things and the work that we had to do. The reason why I said that is because the simple fact of us not understanding that we were losing a sense of self. And in the sense of self what we were losing, we didn't understand how to begin to say what we needed in the relationship. So we were coexisting with each other and we had to learn. We went to couples therapy, we learned our love language, we learned how to be vulnerable we learned that the cure for our relationship. So these are the tools along the way that I have for my romantic relationship. And when you are there, you have to understand who you are and who the person in the mirror is.
When your trust level is high, it's important to understand your individual trust level. And collectively, you will have the unit trust level. Respect and trust, they work hand in hand.
Therefore, if you are essentially understanding both how to respect success and look who just came in the office. As we're talking. We're just talking.
He usually doesn't come in. I didn't put the thing on the door that was in session. But this is my significant other, and I was just talking about the power of the four A's and about how we had to build trust again and how we had to understand the tools that we use with the love language. And he came in and he bought me something. He knows my love language is acts of service, so he brought me a little something when he came in. So I want to thank you for bringing me something. And were you going to say something to them about our building trust? That's what our part was on.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Well, building trust is about recognizing that you do not stay in the past, regardless of whatever things that are happening around you or through you, that life will occur. And then when you understand that life will occur in that fleeting moment, you don't stay in fleeting moments. You allow the fleeting moment to happen.
Don't dismiss the fleeting moment. Allow the fleeting moment to happen and just move on. And that's what I would say about trust.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Well, I would say this. So my husband left earlier today, and we had a little spat.
Yeah, I move on, and we moved on. I can't believe we moved on.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Too much energy.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Wasted energy, exactly. Well, thank you for coming in, and thank you for bringing my snack. So that's just what happens. You're in a relationship, we're talking about it, and he just walked into the door. So listen, that is live. That's live.
He walked in. He walked in. But with trust, that is where you could begin to look at how you can build a future love story and coming closer and bridging that with your partner, bridging how you can have an opportunity to move in, that so there's real opportunities here. So the opportunities of your romantic life, having emotional intelligence and communicating a strong sense of how you want this love story to look. It starts with your communication.
It starts with you understanding your own sense of connection. It starts with you moving into a space of the dance. I call the relationship an intentional dance. So I'm a 90s baby.
I'm a 70s baby. I grew up with the music, and if my husband is dancing to hip hop and I'm doing a slow jam guess what? We're going to be off beat and that doesn't work. It just doesn't work. So if I'm jamming and I'm moving and I slow jam, come on. Luther comes on a and then a hip hop song comes on.
You gotta change the beat. Nothing wrong with the song, but you gotta be in one accord if you want to be in the dance floor with that.
I know you got to look at who is in your ear. Firstly, that's another thing.
When you had these relationships that may not have been the best, I should say the best example, like I didn't have the best example growing up. That's why I learned a couple of tools along the way and together we're going to learn how the story would unfold. Together we're going to personally see and share our journey with each other and discover how emotional intelligence can keep you and your partner growing together.
Set your shared goals. Envision the future, envision the now. Stay in the now. Like my husband just said, came in and said that. He said, listen, I don't live in the past anymore. He used to and regurgitate. But you let it go. You connect and see how we can move and build a lasting happy relationship.
So whether you're in a long term relationship or you're navigating the dating world or you're simply just interested in the art of emotional intelligence or heartfelt connections or emotional connecting or emotional intelligence and romantic relationships, just send it to someone else. I hope you enjoyed it, okay? Because if we all can foster emotional intelligence and our communication, we can explore deeper depths of our own emotions. Because the complexity of love and all this other stuff, it can be a challenge, right? But if we all continue to keep an opening for learning, keep an opening for mastering our own communication, then we can begin to have that romantic relationship. We can begin to delve deeper into our own love languages and understanding that our love stories can be. But you got to write it and you got to be a participant in it. So I hope you enjoyed this. Let me know if there's any other topics you would like to discuss. I know this was a good one. We're going to continue the series on emotional intelligence and relationships. And the next time we're going to come up, we're going to have you empowered. I want to thank my listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode. And remember, sometimes your life is defined by one single moment. Let that moment be today. Peace and God bless. Well, thank you for tuning in to another empowering episode of Speak Your Power Now podcast. We hope you found inspiration and valuable insight on your journey of self expression. Remember, the power of communication is in your hands. And by honing on to this skill, you're going to unlock a world of possibilities. Your journey doesn't end here. Stay connected with us on social media where we are going to continue the conversation and share your own stories of empowerment. So if you enjoyed this episode today, don't forget to hit us up, subscribe, leave your review and share it with your friends. Also, feel free to share your thoughts with any questions or ideas you may have for future episodes. Together, we're going to build a community of confident communicators. As we wrap up, always remember that your voice has power to inspire, to uplift, and to encourage and change. Keep speaking your truth and empowering yourself and embrace the power within. Until next time, remember, your life is defined by one single moment. Let that moment be tonight power healing.
