Hi. So this is a talk, uh, called Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence, which is, um, largely out of the Mindful Geek Book. Okay, so we'll go into how, uh, mindfulness can help you cope with emotions in this talk. Come, it's an iconic moment. The Rebel Alliance is making a desperate attack on the death. As Luke Skywalker rolls his X-Wing fighter in towards the surface of the battle station, the voice of OB one Canobe speaks into his head saying, Luke, trust your feelings.

At first, Luke is confused, thinking he must be hearing voices, but he sees the other pilots failing to hit the mark, and at the same time, obiwan keeps whispering in his ear saying, use the force and trust your feeling. . So finally, Luke folds away his targeting computer and in fact uses his feelings to make the shot.

And as we all know, he scores a hole in one, destroying the empire's shiny new weapon. Thus, the timeless wisdom of Star Wars teaches us that trusting our feelings is a good thing, but is that really true? And what does it even mean to trust your feelings? And how can you know what you're feeling and what those feelings sign?

In this talk, we'll look at emotions, emotional intelligence, and how mindfulness meditation can help you cope much more effectively with your feelings in order to get more out of life. Along the way, you'll learn why meditation won't turn you into a tele tubby. How sitting alone in your room meditating can actually make you more adept in social situations and how Botox injections can actually reduce your ability to connect with other.

And we'll do this from a perspective that is interested in and grounded by science, what I would call a geeky perspective. So as Van mentioned, my name is Michael Taft and I got into meditation Early in life when I was a teenager, I was experiencing debilitating anxiety, super bad anxiety attacks, the kind where you sometimes can't even leave your room.

Um, and I didn't really know what to do about. And there wasn't any help available that I could find, but I had read some books and they said that there was this thing called meditation and that it could help you to relax and calm down. And so even though I didn't have a teacher and they didn't really describe very much how to do it, I just gave it a try, uh, on my own.

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