Summary

In this conversation, Matt McCarthy discusses personal development, emotional intelligence, trauma, and goal setting. He shares insights on integrating emotional intelligence into coaching, understanding trauma’s impact on achievement, and techniques for increasing emotional intelligence. Matt also emphasizes the importance of setting meaningful goals, building fulfillment, and preparing for setbacks. He offers an assessment for understanding trauma’s impact and encourages reaching out for further support.

Chapters

00:00 Understanding Emotional Intelligence in Personal Development
03:22 Addressing Trauma and Achieving Personal Growth
16:37 Meaningful Goal Setting for Fulfillment and Preparation

Transcript

Melissa Aarskaug (00:00.592)
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast. I’m excited to have Matt McCarthy here to talk about personal development and overcoming barriers. Welcome, Matt.

Matt McCarthy (00:13.582)
Hi Melissa, thanks for having me on.

Melissa Aarskaug (00:16.688)
I was doing some research and the Talent Smart case study told me a little bit about 90 % of top performers and leadership roles possess very high emotional intelligence. As a personal development coach and founder of Questful Consulting, can you share a little bit about how you integrate emotional intelligence into your coaching and why you believe it’s

It’s very important when we work in personal development.

Matt McCarthy (00:51.086)
Yeah, so emotional intelligence takes on a couple of characteristics for me. One is in understanding the people around you, being able to observe their emotional state so you can best lead, manage, work with those others around you. The other part that I think it’s lost sometimes is understanding our own emotions and being aware of where we are.

when we’re interacting with others or even just throughout the day by ourselves. Many times our emotions, we may not recognize them in our brains and we may have to actually examine our body to understand where our emotions lie. Are we tight in certain areas, our jaw? Are we feeling tingling? Are we feeling?

various things that may actually be indicating you’re having some sort of stress emotional reaction. And when you’re in that situation where you’re feeling stressed, you’re more likely to react, poorly may not be the right word, but not suboptimally. So I’m teaching clients to be aware of their bodies, to be aware of when they’re feeling.

various emotions. You can also look at it from the other side. When they’re feeling positive emotions, they may have something like a warmth in the chest. They may have certain feelings in their, in their head region. Things that show them, hey, you know, I’m feeling excited in a positive way. And to utilize that leveraged that into just accelerating what they’re working on.

Melissa Aarskaug (02:43.152)
So are there specific tools or strategies you use to help people increase their emotional intelligence?

Matt McCarthy (02:52.462)
So I typically am not focused directly on emotional intelligence. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to get into really what the focus of my research and coaching has been over the past several years. Would that work for you? So, so I myself got into the area of coaching and understanding barriers to achievement because I was running into barriers myself just to.

Melissa Aarskaug (03:07.184)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Matt McCarthy (03:22.126)
Truth be told. So I embarked on a lot of research that was looking at a number of areas to figure out where I’m, again, suboptimal in terms of getting things done. Why am I feeling blocked in some areas? Why am I feeling like I’m not getting the traction that I needed to? And I went through a number of different areas.

that this expert says this, this expert says that. Is it nutrition? Is it the amount of activity? Am I setting the wrong kind of goals? Am I just not bringing on enough grit, growth mindset? But I came across an area of research that’s a little bit more recent, and that’s the area of trauma. So,

Trauma, we can get into a definition later if we would like, but trauma actually carries some residual results in your body and in your mind that keep you from accomplishing what you were working on. It can also keep you from having that understanding of your own emotions. And it’s a very physical response in addition to the…

emotional, mental things that you might think of when you hear about trauma. So that’s what I focus on with my clients is helping them understand where trauma is creating blocks in them. Are they recognizing a tendency to fight, flight, freeze, fawn in kind of the stress response? And if they are,

to understand how to utilize simple techniques that will reduce that stress level so that they are able to start stepping forward again.

Melissa Aarskaug (05:32.24)
great. So can you share with our listeners some of these techniques that you’re speaking of?

Matt McCarthy (05:38.414)
Yeah, certainly. So some of them are ones that you develop over a longer term so that you’re having fewer of these outside stress responses. But for short term, like in the moments when you’re in that immediate stress response, one of the first things that I teach to do is it’s simple. It’s one breath, one thing.

What that looks like is you feel yourself stressing up, you feel your body tensing up. Okay, take a moment, close your eyes if you want, and breathe in through your nose, usually four, five, six seconds, however long you can make it go. You’re gonna hold it for a couple seconds, and then let it out as slowly as possible. And by the time you’re done with that,

You may not be fully out of that stress reaction, out of that alarm reaction as I like to call it, but you’re certainly at a lower state from that stress perspective. And then immediately do one task related to whatever that stressor is. And you get double benefits. One, you get that reduction of stress, but two, you actually get a little bit of a.

dopamine hit because you accomplished something, you’ve moved yourself, maybe it’s a baby step, but one step closer to what you’re trying to accomplish. So it’s a simple technique that I like to get people started.

Melissa Aarskaug (07:20.752)
So breath work is a common technique that one breath, one idea. So is that…

Like one of the top techniques, there’s some other things that you use with your clients. So mainly just breath work or is there other things you could share?

Matt McCarthy (07:40.91)
So it’s the first thing that I teach and it’s the beginner slope, if you will. If you have experienced trauma in your past and are getting the anxiety or stress or panic responses that are common with a trauma survivor, you have to have some real quick hit techniques to be able to…

Melissa Aarskaug (07:44.4)
Okay.

Okay.

Matt McCarthy (08:09.326)
to get yourself out of that in the short term. Kind of thinking about it like somebody with asthma who uses an inhaler. This is your rescue inhaler. You know, one breath, one thing. But as you know, to keep that asthma metaphor going, if you have asthma, you’re also looking at how can I reduce the number of occurrences? How can I reduce the intensity?

And that’s where everything else is centered. That becomes a large number of techniques and changes that I recommend going through. However, the sequence and the actual techniques that are used will depend on the person, their background, their goals, what they’re trying to accomplish, if that makes sense. But I can go into a few examples if you’d like.

Melissa Aarskaug (09:06.)
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that’d be great.

Matt McCarthy (09:10.894)
So one of the things that I talk with my clients about is nutrition. And that sounds very basic, boring, but for somebody who’s experiencing a lot of anxiety, there are some real big physical benefits. So it’s a long list. I’m just going to try and pick out a couple of areas. One would be sugar. So blood sugar spikes.

If you, if you’re having a lot of sugar as either part of a meal or just as part of a snack, your blood sugar will go up. Okay. That’s great. At the moment that it’s going up, your body’s going to do its best to utilize all that glucose in your body as energy, but you’re not likely to use all of it. And so what happens is your body overcorrects and you go into what?

Many people call it crash. When you’re in that crash, you have brain fog. You can’t think clearly. You’re physically less able to move well. So just by doing that, you’re creating a little bit more, just by eliminating sugar or at least reducing it, you’re reducing those spikes and crashes.

You’re gonna be more even, your body will adjust to it better, you will actually be in a better mood. If you think about a kid on Halloween, they go out, they collect all the candy, they eat as much as they can of it, they’re hyper for a half hour, hour, whatever it is, then they crash. They’re not only tired, they’re grumpy, they’re cranky, they feel terrible. That kid’s not going to be able to finish homework after doing that.

right? Think about yourself in that same position. If you’re eating sugar on a regular basis, drinking sugar, the same thing. So that would be one example. A principle that I’d like to bring in. So whereas reducing sugar is a tactic, this second one is a principle. And that’s in creating space in four particular areas in your life.

Matt McCarthy (11:39.566)
And when I mean space, I’ll give you a couple of examples on it, but it’s allowing yourself a little bit of a buffer or a little bit of wiggle room in these areas. So one area is going to be your time. One area is going to be emotions. One area is going to be mental and one area is going to be financial. So I’m going to hit financial because it’s a lot easier to understand.

If you’re running your personal finances on a day -to -day basis and your finances are always tight, the minute something unexpected happens, you will go into a stress response. Okay? You get an unexpected bill and you just finished paying your bills and there’s not enough left over and you don’t have room in your credit cards and…

and you’re going to go into a panic. What am I going to do? Well, the panic is going to spill over to every other area of your life. You won’t function as well doing whatever it is you were supposed to be doing that day. However, if you’re that same person, you have a savings account, maybe it’s, you know, five, 10 ,000, 15 ,000, 100 ,000 in the bank, that unexpected bill comes. Okay.

That’s fine. It’s a bummer, but I can handle it. You don’t get the same stress response and you’re able to move on with your day. Now, most people who are living paycheck to paycheck aren’t instantly able to build up a 5 ,000, 50 ,000 savings account quickly. But doesn’t mean you don’t do it. You work on it slowly.

and you work on various ways of eliminating things that may hit your cash flow so that you can start saving. So that’s one application of this principle. Another might be time. Again, another easy one to understand. If you’re running back -to -back meetings all day, you don’t have time to react when something unexpected comes up.

Matt McCarthy (14:03.118)
And in fact, you’re probably really not running optimally anyway, because oftentimes after a meeting, it’s helpful to process what was talked about, take notes, you know, any action items afterward. You have no room for that. And again, some new task comes in. You just don’t have time.

Now, if you’re creating a buffer, even by having five -minute blocks at the end of each meeting, it’s still a lot more meetings than I personally prefer, but that five minutes can be enough to give you time to relax, to take down notes, take a minute and look at the agenda of the next meeting or purpose so that you can at least reposition yourself. If that time is a two -hour block,

where you have time to decompress, get lunch, chat with a colleague or a family member, friend, that’s even more beneficial. It creates space. And like I mentioned, emotional and mental space is also super important.

Melissa Aarskaug (15:19.873)
Yeah, I love it. I think, you know, and I think a trauma, everybody has some form of trauma, some is greater than others. And I think of it like a muscle as well, right? So we’ve all, you know, we are going to go through some form of challenge in our life. And I think kind of what you were saying at the beginning and is learning how to deal with it through, like you were mentioning, breath work or

other tools and I look at it like a muscle as well. So you need to practice doing the breath work and getting the right nutrition that’s going to keep you with the same blood levels and then just creating space in your life. Absolutely, I think those are great points. When we take trauma and we layer on kind of goals, so getting to really your goals. If we talk about trauma and layer in

some key components of goal setting. What do you talk to your clients about? So maybe their goal tying it back to nutrition is to lose weight, but they have gone through a lot of trauma with their health. How do you help them achieve the goal that they’re going after while working with them and any traumatic things they’ve been through?

Matt McCarthy (16:37.07)
Yeah, so that’s a really good question, Melissa. When it comes to goals, one of the first things that I ask my clients to do is I ask them to list out their goals. And it brings up something interesting. It’s usually a long list. There’s something around health, maybe several around health. There’s going to be something around financial, something around careers, something around…

maybe they run a business and they have seven goals that they are trying to achieve. Somebody who’s gone through trauma will not have the bandwidth to be able to attack that many goals all at once. And so gently, I work with them to pare down their list of goals to preferably one to three and want to take the time to help them focus on.

those one to three goals for a period of time. That’s one, that’s creating emotional space, mental space. So we’re back to that area again. The other thing to think about is when you have that many goals, you’re not going to be able to achieve them because there’s just not enough time of the day, not enough bandwidth or money. And if you fail,

As a trauma survivor, you’re going to end up usually bullying yourself a bit or beating yourself up and maybe a bit is understating it. You’re traumatizing yourself again.

So it becomes a vicious loop by trying to aspire to too much at a time. If you think about it, the people who are the top performers in their field, they typically have a narrow focus. I mean, you think of, say, a basketball player, a golfer. I mean, people that come to mind, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, you have

Matt McCarthy (18:47.502)
You know, in business, you, I mean, you might have an Elon Musk, but he’s probably kind of the exception to the example since he’s in everything. But I’ll just take Tiger Woods for a second. During his primary golf career, what was he doing? He was playing golf. He was playing golf. He would work on his fitness so that he can play golf. He’d work on his mindset.

so that he can play golf. He wasn’t trying to accomplish a million different things. Sure, he probably had people working with him on his finances and just various areas of life, but he’s outspacing a lot of that so that he can focus in on his golf. That’s how he got so good. So if you’re a trauma survivor, you’re not going to have any more bandwidth in your life than Tiger Woods did.

So put it into perspective and narrow down the number of goals that you’re focusing on. Then when it’s narrow, then you can start to lay out steps that it takes to get to those goals and work on those steps, the tasks underneath those. And if you don’t have a million different things competing for your time and attention, you’ve created the space, you’re able to get through those tasks or practice or…

whatever it is that’s going to get you to what you’re trying to attain.

Melissa Aarskaug (20:23.329)
Yeah, I would absolutely agree. I think a lot of times as a type A person, I’m guilty of setting a lot of goals in various different buckets. But when I’m setting goals, I think something that I do very well is set some that are achievable, so I’m achieving things, and some that are more stretch goals that may need to go to the next year. And I know several different people I mentor. I always tell them, if your goal is January and you’re trying to lose weight,

and you need to lose 100 pounds, start with 10 pounds first and then ratchet up the number. Don’t start with that large number right out of the gate because as we know through all the historical data, gyms usually by the end of February, people are no longer going to the gym and they’re back sitting on the couch and not moving their body. So I absolutely agree with what you said is setting goals that you can focus on and make them.

in a way that there’s some that you can check off where it’s not going to trigger or re -traumatize you that you’re not achieving the goals that you set out to do. So I love that. I want to switch gears a bit and talk about being empathetic when it comes to people that have gone through really challenging things. Maybe they lost a spouse or they’ve lost a job and they’re trying to get back in the marketplace.

How does that show up for people if you’ve gone through a very traumatic thing, you’ve lost your last two jobs and you start a new job and your mindset is sometimes that, my gosh, I hope I don’t lose this job. How do you retrain people to really focus on the future, not so much on past trauma or what they were or what has happened to them?

Matt McCarthy (22:19.502)
So.

I’m going to dodge your question a little bit, just to be fair. When it comes to somebody, I’m going to use your specific example, but I’m going to put it on steroids. Said lost a job or two. I’ve lost five through corporate cutbacks in my past. And I think,

When it gets to that point, it’s kind of that adage, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I think oftentimes if we are putting ourselves in a position where we are, I guess, tied to corporate interests, and it’s disproportionately tied, they need us as resources.

We need them for our entire livelihood. I think when we’re in that position, we need to be looking out for what our situation is more than we are for the company. Now,

I want to make sure that this doesn’t come off the wrong way because that can often sound like quiet quitting or lack of integrity at work. And that’s not what I mean at all. It’s that as an employee, if you’re getting a paycheck, which is, this is the characteristic we’re describing. If you’re getting a paycheck, you have to understand that you are at will employed. That means that house of cards could come crashing in any moment.

Matt McCarthy (24:04.846)
And if you remember that financial buffer we were talking about, that’s where that becomes health helpful so that you can have yourself in the mindset that, okay, I could lose this job. I’ve been working there for five years and there’s kind of writing on the wall going on. it’s, you know, and the next day the headlines come out 10 % of, XYZ company is being laid off and.

You can say, all right, well, I prepared for it. And in fact, my first layoff, I was actually prepared for it. I had been doing side work. I was in IT at the time. And I’d been doing side work as an IT consultant for small businesses, just doing it during off hours. And I had built up enough business that it didn’t necessarily cover my entire monthly need, but…

It was fairly close. My, my soon to be future boss was crying and she was letting me go. And I was just saying, I’ll be okay. I had built up a buffer in cashflow.

So.

winding forward, the more of those that hit, the less buffer you’re able to hold on to. And it does become this repeated financial trauma. A recession hits or a personal thing happens. And suddenly that financial, I use the term house of cards quite a bit, suddenly that comes crashing in.

Matt McCarthy (25:52.238)
To me, that’s where it’s super critical for each person to be building in the space in their lives, the financial, the time, the emotion, the mental space, because things will happen. Things that we don’t prefer will happen. There’s even a mindset space that you can build in. I hear it referred to as rather than having attachment to an outcome,

have a preference. And then if your preference doesn’t come into play, it’s okay, I wasn’t attached to it. And you’re able to move forward. So the time when you have to think about these things is one, before you get laid off or before that big thing happens. And two, taking care of yourself once it has happened. Now, once you get that next job is you’re kind of,

the direction you were going once you get that next job. Usually it comes with kind of a burst of enthusiasm and the sense of, okay, we’re back on track. And it’s usually an easier time to go through, but that’s also again, when you need to continue to look at building that space.

Melissa Aarskaug (27:17.569)
Now, do you ever work out, let’s say you’re setting a goal or just stick with the job. Do you ever work out worst case scenarios where, okay, what if I lose a new job or I lose my new job? What’s the worst case scenario? So a lot of times I’ll do things like what could be the worst case situation with whatever the situation is and.

A lot of times I find that what I think is the worst case situation isn’t really that bad after all. So what if you lose your job, you find a new job and what if you lose that job, you find your next job. And I think sometimes it’s really, you know, a mindset as well in being comfortable with the challenges or.

or I don’t want to use the word trauma, but the challenges that come up in life, because there’s going to be challenges and there’s going to be setbacks. And then the day that you think you have everything organized, then maybe there’s a recession or the COVID pandemic happens. And so I think kind of what you were saying is preparing yourself for what if you lose your job. So like you were saying, preparing for a savings account, save some of your money.

What other things are you interested if you do lose your job? Maybe you wanted to take that vacation or drive to a different city or, you know, paint, whatever those things that you say I’ll do when I retire or, you know, all these things that are on our bucket list or our to do list. And so just kind of enclosing some final thoughts or any other tools that you want to share with our listeners that they could use in working through trauma and obstacles in their life.

Matt McCarthy (29:06.99)
Yeah, so I think one thing that I would land on in terms of a wrap up, but new thought is the idea of what are the goals that we’re setting and are they ones that are truly meaningful for us? Because I think particularly after the recession and particularly after COVID, culturally, I think we had the sense of lack of fulfillment.

I mean, culturally, most people just observationally at least. And if we look at a lot of the goals that people are setting, you know, it’s that lose 10 or 100 pounds or it’s that promotion or, you know, reaching X amount in sales or maybe it’s, Hey, I just want a new car or a different house.

Those are the goals a lot of people are setting. But if you look at how that impacts or doesn’t impact as the case may be your fulfillment, it becomes a treadmill that we get ourselves on setting these goals, getting them or not. And when we do get them, that’s the peak of the happiness. It just tapers downhill from there, which is kind of a…

a sad state. And so I try to encourage goals around things that bring fulfillment. And those are also some of the tactics that or principles that I’m teaching as a coach. So some of them are community, just being part of a tribe, contributing back into the tribe, doing things that

You might want to call altruistic or selflessly. That brings fulfillment. Getting into places where you have a sense of awe. Some people do it through religious or spiritual practices. Some it’s getting into nature, but it’s understanding that we’re one of right now, eight billion or so people on this earth. And we’re one of maybe trillions of creatures on this earth. And.

Matt McCarthy (31:34.318)
We’re just this little part. And it’s actually a fulfilling sense to know, look, there’s so much more. So working with clients who, in a way that helps them get into that sense of fulfillment rather than that sense of simply hustle, achievement, accomplishment, that’s temporary.

Melissa Aarskaug (32:04.449)
Yeah, that’s very well said. I would absolutely agree. You know, going back to the car example, you buy the car and then and to your point, you’re like, Okay, I got the car. Now I want a new house and then you get the house and now I want to or whatever the next thing is. And I think you have a really good point there is leaning into things and paying it forward, which is funny enough, Matt, that’s why I started this podcast is to pay it forward. And so this is

my gift to the world with my network. And I think you’re spot on with leaning into things that give back and give into because materialistic things, like you said, that it’s only a temporary high. And then eventually over time, the car, the brand new car feel goes away. So I love, and I think that’s a fantastic point. And…

Any other final thoughts or anything you want to share before we close up?

Matt McCarthy (33:05.422)
Yeah, I’ll share one more thing. So getting back to the trauma, I know some people may not really know what to think of their background. Do I have trauma? Was it really trauma or was it really having an impact? I created a quick assessment that I’d like to share to your listeners if they’re interested. They can just text the word assessment to the number 33777.

and it’ll come out to you by email. It’ll let you walk through a set of questions to help you understand whether trauma is having an impact on you and to what degree. And certainly if it’s…

Appointed enough at you. I would highly recommend Reach out there’s a link at the bottom of that assessment goes to my Calendly get on my calendar I’d love to talk with you about it. And then lastly, I also speak at organizations events and if anybody is listening is interested They can reach out to me at info at quest full dot life life

Melissa Aarskaug (34:20.513)
Thank you so much for being here today, Matt. And thank you so much for sharing your time. And that’s the Executive Connect podcast.