This world is constantly grinding away at eroding our internal health, it seems that for many people emotional IQ has been tossed to the wayside.
Hoisting the flag of accusation, offense, and angry has become a virtue in our culture. Too many people within our culture lack the understanding that an outward display of judgment, offense, and anger is a full revealing of the void of internal health and emotional IQ.
This portrayal of being offended at everything is a recipe for disaster. Being frequently and easily offended is a revealing of the person carrying the offense having a massive void of intelligence surrounding how to govern their own thoughts and emotions.
Proverbs 4:23 So above all, guard the affections of your heart, for they affect all that you are. Pay attention to the welfare of your innermost being, for from there flows the wellspring of life. 24 Avoid dishonest speech and pretentious words. Be free from using perverse words no matter what! (TPT)
When a culture models low emotional intelligence as the norm they pave a path for the following generations to live out judgment, anger, and accusation on greater and greater levels.
When kids grow up with a deep ridden internal unhealthiness it creates stress, confusion of identity, stress leads to unhealthy habits that promote physical health issues, and these poisonous bread crumbs more often than not lead to a doctors prescription of a narcotic more potent than street drugs.
The prescription (legal drugs) bring a strange new counterfeit comfort. This new feeling is a brief internal peace and comfort. One they may have never felt or encountered because living offended with an accusatory posture is not conducive to a peaceful and comforting internal reality.
This drug-induced and fleeting internal peace, that came without doing the work to host a high emotional IQ, is now a prescribed dosage away and the death grip of addiction slowly sinks its teeth in. The fact that so many people want their “pills” for relief proves that we as humans were created to live in peace, a true living and breathing internal reality.
But as a society, we have portrayed a way of living that promotes internal chaos, gossip, and bitterness. So when the foreign reality of euphoria, joy, and peace present themselves within us we say, “wow, I need more of that,” and dependence to a drug that brings a false peace and joy opens a door to the death march of addiction.
I believe that our skyrocketing overdose statistics, addiction numbers, suicide rates, divorces, and so on would plummet substantially if teaching emotional IQ (instead of political agendas) was mandatory in public school systems.
My educational upbringing never taught me how to sit down and respectfully converse with someone that holds an opposing view. I wasn’t taught how to love and honor someone that lives in a lifestyle I didn’t. Even though this is true, I still take full responsibility for any actions of disrespect or dishonor I’ve ever shown towards anyone at any time.
If kids grew up knowing how to manage their inner world and emotions the trail would less seldom lead them to the moment of drug consumption, and if drug consumption did occur the fake euphoria would instantly feel wrong and unhealthy because kids would have already experienced real internal peace and health.
Would this eradicate drug use, no, but I believe it would dramatically decrease the alarming statistics of addiction and its fruits.
How can we better model respectful and healthy living for our kids and those close to us?
Even if I'm right about a certain topic, if I have to be disrespectful and rude to make sure others know I'm right I end up being very wrong about having to be right.
The following generation is learning how to live from our examples, from what we let them watch on TV, how we talk about people we disagree with, and how we handle conflict. Now more than ever we need to model a way of living that empowers a following generation into a healthy and high emotional IQ.
We are choosing the direction the following generation is heading towards, it’s our example that paves that path.
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Erik is a certified Life Coach and Recovery Coach. He has been coaching people into recovery and more of their life purpose for years.
