Information, Interpretation, Intensity

Join host Juliet Clark and Greg Stewart on a transformative journey into the heart of emotional growth as they explore Greg’s powerful principle from his book I³ Information, Interpretation, Intensity. Greg discusses the reasons we cling to negative emotions and their impact on our lives, highlighting how they can derail our goals. Drawing from 30 years of experience, he shares insights on mastering our emotions, assessing our mental models, and recognizing the rational, healthy paths toward emotional goals. Tune in to reclaim control over your emotional state and discover the strength that lies within.

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Information, Interpretation, Intensity

Our guest is one of our authors and you’re going to hear from him about the book he released and he has a new one coming out in February. I’m so super excited about both of them because when you look at what he’s doing, it just makes so much sense. Before we get started, I want to remind you, folks. We have a sale. We have a bundle and that bundle is designed to help you market like a literary rockstar. You can go over to AuthorBuzzBuilders.com.

We have six courses for you. Normally, a $3,000 value but through 12/31, we are offering it for $9.97. What’s in it? Content development, social media development for authors, email marketing for authors, AI platform building, and build your author avatar. There’s one more and I can never remember the other one, but it’s all super good stuff. It will help you be able to put together your funnels. I know that’s a dirty word for authors, but the truth is you need them to gather an audience. It’s a must-have for any author out there.

You get this set up way before that book comes out because there are literally 100,000 or more books that come out every single month. If you’re thinking you don’t need to do this work and your book will just sell. The chances are, it won’t. Again, AuthorBuzzBuilders.com. Grab that and make it your 2025 guidebook. Learn the ins and outs of putting all this marketing together. Our guest is Dr. Greg Stewart and he lives in Rockwall, Texas and is currently a full-time Telehealth Counselor Executive Coach and Consultant.

He has a BA in Organizational Leadership, a Master’s in Divinity and an MA in Counseling and a PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision. His dissertation was the relationship of emotional intelligence to job satisfaction and organizational commitment. These books, I can’t even tell you. They are so amazing because if you’re having communication problems or you’re in some dysfunctional pattern. This is going to be the key to doing the work to getting rid of what’s no longer serving you. Stay tuned for Greg.

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Greg, welcome.

How are you?

I’m great. How are you?

Excellent.

The Book’s Relevance

I’m excited to talk about your book because it’s such common sense for those people who want to heal conflict in their lives and whatever dysfunctional relationships. We all have them but some of us hold on to those things because they serve us until they do not. Would you agree with that?

There’s a variety of reasons why underneath that while we hold on to our negative emotions. I write in the book that it ends up hurting us trying to achieve our goal, for sure because it doesn’t pass the test of rational healthy wise. There’s a lot of reasons why we hold on to those neighboring emotions when we shouldn’t.

They’re definitely is. Can you summarize the core message of the book? What inspired you to write it?

I’ll begin with the former or the latter question first. What inspire me to write it is simply my culmination of 30 years of work with clients. I came up with the IQ principle of information interpretation intensity just as a walkthrough of how to assess situations many years ago. Ever since that, I said, “I love this idea. It would make a good book.” Time passes in the like, so it came from a culmination where I always say this book ran through this system of Greg first.

When I give the clients the information of the book about emotional management and the deeper stuff about identity value and worth and working through trauma. It’s all gone through my own personal application because I begin the book with, “You can’t impart. We don’t possess.” I believe in that. When I advise others on how to heal, respond to emotions like I better have applied it myself. Basically, the book is about our emotional experiences.

I get into the psychology of what emotions are. We have emotional goals, and then in order to achieve those emotional goals, we pick up path to achieve the emotional goal. The emotional goal is always good but we have to assess the path to see if it’s rational, healthy, and wiser. A most simple example is when I’m experiencing a lot of stress. I want to reduce stress, emotional goal. I start drinking alcohol to cope. That’s not a rational, healthy, and wiser right path.

Distinguishing that and then figuring out that we have to retrain our mental models, which is standard like psychology stuff but it goes into the amount of negative emotions. I picture that we’re standing outside our house and the house is our heart. In front of us are all these people that are triggering us. what we do is, we just camp there and burn all this emotional energy processing them. We may have something legitimate to address with them because they did do something wrong. However, the inflation. We should not have this much emotional energy.

It’s just way too high for the situation. That is our cue to figure out what is going on inside of us. I say we got to turn around and walk into the front door of the house of our heart and figuring out what’s going on. I work through the emotions, security, anxiety, fear, worry, anger, and depression. Other than that, in the basement is the deeper stuff like identity, value, and worth because we can inflate emotions because we believe a lie about the situation like, “I’ll never get a job.” That inflates our emotion.

Let’s say we’re in relationship and somebody confronts us or they say something negative about us. Our emotion is inflated. Why? It’s because we take it personally. When we take it personally, what is that saying? We’re allowing it to impact our value and worth instead of dealing with the criticism or negativity on its face value like, is this true or not true? We get defensive and it expands. We have to address, again, are they worth? The other thing is, over in the basement and in the corner of the seller is trauma.

I’m not trying to like official diagnosable trauma of threat of loss of life. It can be any negative experience like a divorce or loss of a job, that when we go into a situation, our mental models scooped up the emotion from that experience and plop it on the situation. We need to heal. It’s not just about emotional management. It’s going into. That’s why it’s unlock the inner strength behind your negative emotions. Once you go in there and you start doing this healing work and it’s not just healing. It’s empowerment and strengthening of your core identity and worth, what that results in is.

I say the goal is you take all the power away from the environment. Nothing bothers me unless it should. That’s the end game, is to have absolute power and control. It’s like emotional intelligence over our emotions but the pathway is hard meaning dealing with a deeper stuff. That’s like in a nutshell long answer but that’s the nutshell of the book.

Emotional Intelligence

That was my next question, define emotional intelligence for us. I remember in my daughter’s work, something happened and her boss said, “You lack emotional intelligence.” She came home and told me. I was like, “The person who told you that you lack emotional intelligence lacks emotional intelligence for saying it.” Can you give us a divided? Tell us what that means.

I did for my PhD and my dissertation on emotional intelligence. The simplest definition that’s very accurate, it is simply being aware of emotions in self and others and being able to manage the emotions in self in others. That’s the most simple. The idea became popularized by Daniel Goleman back in 1995 when he wrote the book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ because very smart people can do very dumb things but the dumb is emotional. Not IQ based.

There’s other schools of EI that has more to do with our IQ and critical thinking, which is fair. It’s about that emotional management process like being aware of my emotions. Not only that but why I have them. That’s the deeper stuff in my book and then being able to manage my emotions. I talked about the EI skills of impulse control and delay of gratification. Along with the words like resiliency, which it’s the emotional strength of not being bothered by small things. I’m resilient. I can persevere, and then tough mindedness.

My tough mindedness says that I’m not just going to respond emotionally. I’m going to think through it first. There’s a bunch of different subcategories to EI but it’s related to self-awareness then self-management and then others awareness, which I call it situational awareness which is the most powerful piece of this because it’s the brick wall.

The situation calls out and says, “There is a right way and effective way to respond to me whatever the situation is.” We need to mold ourselves to it because it will not mold itself to us. This is more of the IQ piece, critically thing to read the situation emotions, and the like of situation and then being able to respond to it the most effectively, which is others management or relationship management or social intelligence.

Personal Growth And Awareness

First of all, there are those people who can’t wait to tell you how aware they are. “I’m so aware,” but then you observe them and it’s obvious that those are words and they are so unaware of who they are and how they show up. Is that pretty typical? I love to know how this all relates to personal growth because, to me, that’s someone in denial and there’s no personal growth that’s going to happen. The second part of that is, the younger generations. We’ve been having a lot of discussions about how there seems to be this lack of critical thinking. They’re completely running on emotion. Can you address those two? Can those people engage in personal growth in those states?

IQ and EQ. EI is almost like a skill set and there are techniques to improve our EQ for sure. IQ is about processing speed. It’s about rate of growth. The answer is, yes. Everybody can grow in these things. Now, in the first couple of chapter in my book, it’s almost like this is the prerequisite for all growth. It doesn’t matter who you are. The prerequisite for growth is basically understanding that our mental model. My mental model is formed from, I’d say DNA, which is my personality and my gender, like men think differently than women, so DNA, life experiences, and personal choices.

It just that data going into our minds. It’s basically made up of information, data facts. Secondly, formulas. Those formulas of our basically how to interpret the situation and then recognizing that. A long time ago, it was very easy for me to conclude that I lack a lot of information from every situation. Secondly, my formulas for interpreting and processing things, it’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. I don’t trust my formulas.

It’s that understanding of humility that the way I think might be right in areas but I’m always very apprehensive to automatically validate that the way I’m interpreting it is correct. If you automatically assume that you’re correct, then you’re going to be much more resistant to change. That’s one piece. Teachability is being open to that mind and mental model needs some work, but then I say you have to be proactive in the teachability for this one other component called the blind area.

The blind area is simply is things that you see about me that I don’t see about myself. If I don’t see it about myself, how am I going to fix it? Proactively, I need to go to people and say, “Help me grow because I need to grow.” I think our generation that we’re experiencing now that there is so much validation and encouragement poured into them. I think there’s an automatic assumption that their mental model is A-okay because of the second piece of emotions that everything is about the emotional goal.

Basically, I like joking around saying that the ultimate enemy is to feel bad because feeling bad like results in depression and all this other stuff. We’ve taken it way too far because negative emotions, which is all part of my book. It’s almost like people say, “You made me feel bad, so that means your bad.” Not at all. The understanding that my mental model needs improvement. Secondly, my emotions however field the end goal in any moment is, I need to feel good. If I don’t feel good and you’re making me feel bad, then you need to change, which is a lot like with the transepts they have that their entire emotional happiness is, I need you to change you in approached me in such a way that you validate me.

I need your validation, your approval, and your support. In my book, it is just the opposite. I say we got to separate every other human being from my valiant worth. Remove my happiness or my whatever. My emotional state is not contingent upon the environment. That’s why I think it’s happening in this generation.

When they have the emotional goal of love and empathy, which are good emotional goals. The most goals are always good. The pathways that they choose to get there, let’s say the trans. It’s like saying, “A couple of years ago, everybody on Earth said, ‘this is not a rational healthy wise and right path to achieve the emotional goal of love and empathy.’” Now, if we say, “This is not a rational, healthy, rise and right path. Our current culture has merged half with goal.”

When we say, “This is not a healthy path.” They’re saying, “You don’t want me to achieve my goal of love, so that means you hate.” That’s where they merge it. We have to separate the emotional goal from path and that’s another piece of it. Everything you do to achieve because the emotional goal is everything. Whatever pathway you take to achieve love and empathy, do it. That’s the huge weakness of our goal.

I like talk about grace and truth, where we want to show grace and empathy. Grace and empathy without truth and boundaries is enablement. Our culture has swung way this way. Why? It’s because honestly, we went through a season where it was truth and boundaries without grace and empathy is toxic. A lot of us grew up in that feeling. That’s not healthy. This is toxic. Where is the grace and empathy?

As everybody does, we go from one extreme to another and now it’s just about grace and empathy but thankfully, you see it happening. Our culture is starting to wake up from it. I had a conversation with a gal who is a lesbian and I talked about our culture where even in that community, they’re starting to show separations saying, gays against groomers. There is a moral line. This is too far.

We’re now against. Now, there’s a moral line whereas before it was just about that. We’re starting to see it in a good way. Even the breakdown of DEI and organization because we’re realizing the ramifications from that only focusing over here is damaging a lot of people. Now, it’s going to start swinging the other way, hopefully.

I agree with. The conversations we’ve been having is this generation that experienced it. It also had social media which is a big validation loop for the most part, like, “Look at me, I posted this,” and then comments. The other is, I don’t think they’re teaching critical thinking skills in school. I know our generation had. There’s not that stop point where you can say, “My emotions are running wild. I don’t have that critical thinking piece to pull me back and say, emotions, you’re going way overboard here.”

Critical thinking can be labeled as objective thinking. Subjective is my opinion, my world, my beliefs, and my whatever. To look objectively is to step outside of myself and say, “Greg, I understand why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling.” That’s the second part of I IQ information interpretation. The key thing with interpretation is, is there any other way of thinking about it? Is there any other interpretation other than yours? There are.

There’s multiple truths ways to look at it and that’s the critical thinking piece. Look at it objectively instead of validating the emotional experience. The emotional experience is the litmus test for success. Now schools are saying, we don’t fail kids. Why? It’s because it makes them feel bad and that’s what it’s about because it’s about a breakdown of knowledge and objective truth. It’s all related to traditional.

What traditional links back to is traditional Christian values, religious values, which means objective truth. In an answer to the limitations that God and the Bible puts on us, how do we get rid of those limitations? We say that the subjective experience like my truth is. We pull away from that and in order to do that, we put the focus on the subjective emotional experience as the moral compass.

Negative Emotions As Catalyst For Growth

It’s like making myself the core of the universe versus having a higher power is basically I think what you’re saying. One part of your book that I love is you emphasize that negative emotions can be the catalyst for personal growth, which I know every time I go through a gross because something negative has happen and I’ve just come in like, I can’t live like this anymore. Can you expound on that?

For instance, on my personal stories. I talked about in the book that back in 2011, I had an emotional fair. Out of that, I was a pastor in a marriage counselor, my complaint was that I felt like I pursued everybody harder than they pursued me. It was out of that gap of experience. It’s like, why aren’t people pursuing me? I had these negative emotions which then related to, am I not worth being pursued? Am I missing something about myself? It turned into where the whole identity whole discussion of, I need other people to pursue me and validate me to have a solid value and worth.

When recognizing that the negative emotions were not going away and they could not go away. Why? It’s because those negative emotions became contingent upon something I did not have control over. The issue of the negative emotions and how do I saw these negative emotions? It is out of me granting the solution and the control to the environment, which I had no control over in order for me to feel better. Something was off there. In the process of walking into the negative emotions, insecurity as a great one.

If I’m insecure because let’s say, you criticize me and I get defensive. In the book I talk about, when I was a teenager, I told this girl, “You wouldn’t get so ticked off of it wasn’t true.” I was for fourteen, but it was at epiphany for me and I turned it on myself. I said, “Greg, every time somebody criticized you or trash talks to you, the only way for it to work is that there’s truth to it.” The issue is not them pointing it out. The issue is me resisting it.

This one gal said at the at the hospital, “Dr. Greg, she’s pushing my buttons.” I’m like, “Uninstall your buttons.” What are the button? What are our buttons? The buttons are insecurities that you can do something or say something that’s going to control my emotions. Why? What do you do on security? If it’s true, I own it. I said, “Girls, trying to trigger me.” They say, “Dr. Greg, you have a big nose. Your hair is thinning. You have a dad bod. You’re so ADHD extra.” Was that funny, Juliet?

I responded with, “Girls, everything you said is 100% true. I own it.” Now what? Nothing. Once you own the truth, then the environment has no more power. Insecurity is either true and I don’t want to own it, so the answer is to own it or we believe lies like it’s not true, but I believe it to be true or can have one somebody’s got to me. It’s walking into the negative emotions are a doorway to something deeper that culminates in this. The issue is not what they think of you. The issue is what you think of you. Right there it is that if you need like, I need you to compliment me and validate me. Why? It’s because I don’t think enough of myself to fill that myself, I need you to fill that hole in me.

I can’t do that. You have a dad bod.

We can talk about that all blind Greg but that’s the issue. Building your identity and worth and figuring that out is so crucial but that’s honestly what it’s exposing. I don’t need anybody to pursue me. I want them to but I don’t need them to and that’s the key.

What’s the biggest misconception you’ve run across with those negative emotions? What are the biggest things that people think about negative emotions that surprised you?

It doesn’t surprise me because it’s natural to humanity. Since birth, we frame negative emotions as, 1) Bad. 2) To be avoided. 3) It’s other people’s responsibility to solving. Even as an infant or two-year-old who can I have a sucker. You can’t. They throw a temper tantrum. What do we do as parents? We say, not okay. I understand your emotional goal. Your pathway of expression is not okay. What do we all do? It’s like, didn’t work. Is there a healthier way?

The two-year-old says, “Why do I want the sucker so bad?” We already do this process throughout childhood. It’s just something happens when we become teenagers and adults. We don’t do the process anymore. We go right back to the environment being the ones who are in charge of my emotional state, but it’s a very human thing. I even talk about what identity and worth that we talk about children. Where does that come from?

We say, if a child’s coming from a heart home, that child has a low self-worth. We say that, but what’s the natural experience that every human being on the face of the earth ever has gone through? It’s that, if a child feels pursued by his or her parents and that pursuit is unconditional love. The pursuit is honestly investing in helping us to recover from failure. “Get back on the horse.” “Get back on the bike.” “It’s okay.” Also, that pursuit is equipping us to be successful in life.

That is the process I believe God has set up. Why? There’s not a human being that cannot go through that process. Basically, as a child and with our parents, our valuing worth is contingent upon our parents doing that. There’s a whole spectrum of healthy versus unhealthy parents. As we grow because we’ve already been trained that my value worth. It’s like I don’t know what to think about myself. My parents start giving us formulas for how to interpret ourselves and interpret others.

We get to the peer stays of adolescents and that’s where it starts going off on others meaning if I feel pursued and validated by my peers, I’m popular. My value in worth is high, then it plays out with other contacts like teachers, bosses, coaches, boyfriends, and girlfriends. It culminates with their spouse. Hence, the next book about IQ for couples going to the same process. Very natural process for every human being ever.

That’s why I say that there has to be a conscious choice by the person to remove every other human being from that formula because my identity and worth cannot be contingent upon other people pursuing me or I’m going to live a miserable life. I walk through them. I’m going to now walk through, how do you do that? How do you successfully move through? As I said when it comes to you, I don’t need them to pursue me. I want them to. It doesn’t change the definition of relationship., so safety and pursue.

In marriage, it does not change the standard. It does not change the expectations. What it changes is the degree of negative impact on me if it doesn’t occur. Right there is the answer. It doesn’t mean you get zero emotion because as I say with my wife, I can now objectively talk to her and say, “I’m not feeling pursued here,” versus if it’s my value worth is tied to her pursuing me and trying to get into emotional salvation mode, “I need you to” and “why aren’t you?” We get our emotional and the inflation.

How do we decrease that to make it more objective from need to want? Whenever that doesn’t occur, it goes from devastating to just disappointing. I’m not devastated as I say roll that principle. I don’t need. I only want. Roll it all the way back to mom and dad. Even adults just have this weight on them like, “When’s mom and dad going to own it? When are they going to apologize or when are they going to start being healthier emotionally?”

It just weighs on them even as adults. Once you go to this process, I’m no longer devastated by my mom and dad in what they did. I’m disappointed. Why? I’m disappointed because they were not as healthy as they should have been as parents, but I’m going to adult now. I’m in charge, so I’m not devastated by it any more. I’m just disappointed and that is where we should be, having that removal where we control it.

Family Dynamics And Change

You’re breaking a pattern here and I’m just going to put this out because I’m sure people get into this work and then they take those steps to break a pattern. A pattern doesn’t involve you. It’s everyone else in the dynamic. How do you respond to people who start to do the work and then the family, the toxicity unit wears back because they’ve just changed the dynamic? How do you handle that and stay in integrity with what your goals are breaking that pattern and keep your sanity?

Are you saying that once you start getting healthy and there’s not this codependency among family?

Let’s say you’re in this toxic relationship. I had this experience, where dad and my daughter would push buttons because they were aligned together. One day, they came to me and I was like, “I’m exhausted. I can’t do this with you guys anymore. I’m going on a trip. See you. Bye-bye.” You guys solved it and you’re perfectly capable and that was the first time I never tried to get involved. The blowback I got was incredible. “You don’t care.” There was that emotional manipulation to draw me back into that toxic behavior.

We talked about codependency and stuff. Let me come at it from a principal that came from a book back in the ‘80s. It’s called the Battered Wife Syndrome. Where the big question is, why do they keep going back to the abusers? The principal that comes out of that book that applies to all of us is that we are much more committed to what’s familiar then what’s healthy. The husband is abusive. It’s not just like the physical. It’s in all areas like control the finances. Leaving that situation produces more fear and anxiety for the wife than staying in it.

The same thing there with family, when we disrupt it because there’s a family system like it’s based upon expectations. When I say this and do this, you respond this way. When we start doing healthy, which means we set boundaries of, “Not okay. I’m not going to respond emotionally to that anymore.” It’s now a brand-new world that’s unfamiliar and it rocks. They don’t know how to respond now. Again, because they’re emotionality is contingent upon you. That’s where they get angry and attack because they’re trying to. I need you to come back to the expectations even though it’s unhealthy.

By setting those boundaries and start doing healthy, they have a choice to make. Initially, there’s going to be a lot of pushback and attacks but that’s proof that it’s working. It’s also proof like rational, healthy, wise, and right. I am not going to do something that’s irrational, unhealthy, unwise, or wrong, because you emotionally need me to. That’s the whole thing. Your emotional state is not contingent upon me, so I’m not going to say a lie by calling you a different gender when you’re not.

You need to work that out in yourself. By setting those boundaries, you have a choice. I’m not going to do what’s irrational, unhealthy, unwise and wrong in order to make you feel better because it’s crazy. That person has a choice. They either start doing rational, healthy, wise, and right or they’re going to continue to be in turmoil.

That’s true. I went on vacation, came back and they had solved the problem. It was like this epiphany like, “If I just be quiet and don’t engage, they’ll go solve it on their own and I won’t have that emotional turmoil,” because I would give them a solution and then they come back and yell at me about the solution.

That’s perfect because you equip them, which is what we need to do. It’s not like totally disengagement but secondly, when there’s a quick win, then it’s like a quick win for them. It’s like, it worked. That starts breaking that pattern where it starts now forming into a new healthier pattern but we need a quick win. When you left and then came back and they saw that on their own. They say, “I can do this.” That’s our influence in our control and no control column.

Our influence, let’s just keep doing rational, healthy, wise, and right and they have to make a decision on a response. There’s a verse in the Bible, Romans 12 that says, “As much as it depends upon you, live at peace with everyone.” Control column and no control column. As much as depends on you, it’s always right to do right. It’s always healthy to do healthy. You don’t have control over them, but as much as it depends upon you, that’s where you’re going to find your piece. Do rational, healthy, wise, and right and they’re going to respond how they’re going to respond. That’s the beauty of those words. There’s so much peace in doing that and so much turmoil in doing what’s irrational, unhealthy, wrong, and unwise.

Greg, where can we find you and your book?

I’ll just say go to ICubedBook.com. It’s automatically linked to my main website BecomingMore.com. You’ll see the book and the information and stuff there. If you go to Amazon, search for my name Dr. Greg Stewart and you’ll find the book. It’s too hard to search for I Cubed. That’s where you can find me and I’m all over social media, too.

He’s on Instagram. He’s doing a great job on Instagram. Greg, thank you so much for being on.

Thank you for having me, Juliet.

Important Links

• Author Buzz Builders
• Dr. Greg Stewart on LinkedIn
• Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
• Battered Wife Syndrome
• I Cubed Book
• Becoming More
• @Dr.GregStewart on Instagram
• I3 Information, Interpretation, Intensity

About Dr. Greg Stewart

Dr. Greg Stewart lives in Rockwall, TX and is currently a full-time telehealth counselor, executive coach, and consultant. He has a BA in Organizational Leadership (Cornerstone University), a Master of Divinity (Grand Rapids Theological Seminary), a MA in Counseling (GRTS), and a PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision (Regent U). His dissertation was The Relationship of Emotional Intelligence to Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment.

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