iguanamountain blog

THE HARD LESSON

Blog City Prompt: Emotional intelligence.If you were to design teaching emotional intelligence in schools what would your curriculum include?

It starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from and with the point of view whether at the moment realized or not, that you are the source of what you are, what you do and what you have. This point of view extends to include even what is done to you and ultimately what another does to another.

This involves responsibility for and of self. Responsibility is not fault, praise, blame, shame or guilt. All these include judgements and evaluations of good and bad, right and wrong, or better and worse. They are not responsibility as they are all beyond a simple acknowledgement that you are cause in your own experience.


How can anyone operate successfully in this complex world without being aware of how so many others are not even aware of their non-responsibility for their emotional responses. And to be aware of their own emotional responses and know they do have control of their own experience---they do not have to run on stupid automatic. A very hard lesson.

It sounds so simple, but the free, undisciplined flow and expression of emotions sometimes drift very far from intelligence, logic and reason. To each person, this simple understanding is the basic, core element of Emotional Intelligence.

I fear that too often, the primary aim of education in emotional intelligence is to manipulate others. As you can see, we are bombarded every day with advertising and propaganda styled news to play on our emotions to buy, vote and approve (or obey) their agendas and promotions.

And how many very young children do you see while they are learning language, they are also learning and having it reinforced that they can have anything they want---and if denied, a strong emotional response will get what they want plus the leaning of how to trigger emotional reactions from their parents. Just like their language, they never forget EVERYTHING they have learned. For young parents, it may come back to bite you when the child reaches thirteen or fourteen years of age.

A great part of Emotional Intelligence Education is to break down and re-learn these deeply ingrained emotional attitudes and total lack of responsibility for their personal behavior and thinking.

What a different world we could live in...>>>iggy

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