Gregory Dickow - The Power of Emotional Intelligence
The power of emotional intelligence now it may sound like, wow, that's a that's kind of a secular worldly phrase, isn't it? But no, it's really not. It's really a biblical phrase. And it's a biblical principle to have the mind of Christ, the intelligence of Christ factored in to how you handle your emotions, how you process your emotions and how you how you how you allow your emotions to move you. Because emotion, if you take the word emotion, is really is the word is literally translated as internal emotion. Emotion is internal emotion. In other words, it's it's it's motion inside of you that moves you to an action. It's emotion inside of you that moves you to an action or you pause and you refuse to let it move you to an action. But it's it's trying to move you to an action.
Our emotions are not our emotions. Don't consult with us before they act, but we need to consult with ourselves before we allow our emotions to act. OK, so I'm going to get into this. If you grew up well, and I don't I don't want to insult anybody's parents, including my own. I don't. But but my goal is not see, we can't be focused on people's feelings never being hurt. We have to focus on what's going to help you grow and not at the expense of somebody else. But you can't constantly put people's feelings above your own maturity and above you. You can't let people intimidate you into behaving a certain way that protects them when really what you're responsible for is yourself. If that makes sense.
And there's a scripture in that I love and romance after 12, verse 18 and it says be at peace with all men as much as it has to do with you, as much as it has to do with you. In other words, what we often focus our energy on is the other person and trying to get them to be at peace with us rather than as much as it has to do with you. Be at peace with all men. Now, whether they are at peace with you is not your responsibility, but whether you're at peace with them is your responsibility as much as it has to do with you, where it no longer has to do with you anymore. You wipe you wash your hands clean of it, and you say, I've done everything I can, but you can't say that when you haven't done as much as it has to do with you.
So be very careful not to assume that you've gotten to the point where as much as it has to do with you, you've been at peace with all men because chances are you haven't done as much as it depends on you. Like there is a certain amount of responsibility in Romans twelve. It depends on you. Now, there comes a point as much as it has to do with you, where it no longer has to do with you. And you've got to be you've got to be mature enough and self effacing enough and humble enough to recognize when you've done everything that you can do. And at that point, you move on in a different direction from a person or a business or a job or situation when you've done everything that you can do, not everything you know, to do everything you're capable of doing.
It's on us. It's on me to figure out what I can do, not just say, well, I don't know what else to do. We'll have I researched it, have I studied it? Have I asked somebody else who's gone through it? Have I researched what the Bible says about it? Like in other words, we can't cop out by saying, well, I don't know what else to do. If you just Google it, you'll probably know what else to do. You know, it doesn't really take that much to figure out what else to do. Most people just aren't willing to do it. You'd rather hang our hat on an excuse? We'd rather hang our hat on an excuse.
I wonder if I'm in the right place. I wonder if you're maybe you're maybe you're looking at how I was looking for some encouragement. I don't want to. I don't really. I can't. I can't. I got a dodge responsibility. Don't dodge responsibility. It's going to find you one way or another. Master it and you won't be mastered by it. OK, so it's emotional intelligence. It's resilience. Growing up requires three things emotional intelligence, resilience and the basic mechanics of healthy relationships like these three things, the basic understanding of what it means to have a healthy relationship. And you'd be surprised if you. Probably aren't surprised, but the majority of people really are not good at the basic mechanics of healthy relationships, the majority of people are unhealthy in their soul, therefore they're unhealthy in their relationships.
They don't grasp. Most people don't grasp self-awareness enough to be healthy and contribute health to a relationship. You think about it ahead of an ornament of grace, a crown of glory, promotion and honor. All from what? Embracing understanding, which is essential in healthy relationships not being heard. But hearing you say, well, if I'm hearing, then doesn't that person need to hear too? If I'm understanding. Well, what about them? It's as much as I do with you. You're responsible for you. You're not responsible for them. You can't take responsibility for somebody else. If you take responsibility for you, you will have peace. You will have peace. You can't have peace unless they understand me. No, you will have peace when you understand them. Understanding you is a force. It's a it's a it is a mirage of peace. It's not real peace.
Somebody's understanding you is not real peace. You understand, because you can't control you can't have your peace depend on something that is not within your control. There is no peace there because somebody can take it away any time they want. Our peace needs to depend on what we can control. And I can't control you, but I can control me. I can't control how you react, but I can control how I react. Now, that doesn't mean I do all the time. But I but I, I have the ability and the responsibility to do such. And so do you about you. My God, if we could get to the place where we stop trying to get other people to understand and instead seek to understand, then we I mean, you're not going to have so many, so many. You're not going to have fights and arguments and elevating the voice like you have to raise your voice to be like, why? Why? Because you don't feel you're being heard.
So you have to raise your voice. Your job is not to be heard. It's to hear and to understand the human that has ears. Let them hear. The Bible doesn't say to him that has a tongue, let him speak. It says to him, that has ears. Let them hear. I'm just trying to help tonight a little bit. Listen, so healthy relationships are built upon listening and understanding, respect and kindness. And empathy, these are the building blocks of healthy relationships, empathy, and I'll get to that because that's that comes through self-awareness, which I'll get to. So what is self-awareness? Let's look over in Luke, chapter six, verse forty two. How can you say to your brother, brother, like, you know, when you know, when you call somebody brother, you know that you're already off brother.
Let me tell you something, brother. How can you say to your brother, brother, let me remove the suspect that is in your eye. But he says. When you yourself do not see the log that is you in your own eye. Beloved oh, he doesn't say beloved there, he says hypocrite first remove the plank, the plank, like picture this. So he's comparing you think the other person has the plank in like a plank. Remember, the old pirate shows and pirate movies walk the plank or you're going to walk the plank. It's like this long diving board kind of vibe and versus a speck of dust, a speck. So he's saying, look, you you think the plank or the log is in their eye and and the speck is in yours. But he's saying, no, you need to take the log out of your eye.
You say, why do people why does everybody think the log is in the other person's eye? Because your log in your eye is so long, it reaches to the other person to the point where you actually think it's coming from them. And this is self awareness. This is self awareness. This is emotional intelligence right here. Right in this verse, he's saying he's saying stop trying to blame the other person as if the log is in their eye. You take the log out of your eye. He doesn't say take the speck out of your eye. He says, take the log out of your eye. In other words, it may be that you both have the same problem. And this is not reserved for marriage. This is for any relationship gang. This is for any and every relationship. This is our relationship.
Like, I'm not here to to find logs in your eyes. I'm here to take the log out of my eye like I'm living to take the log out of my eye so I can see clearly to take the speck out of yours, not because we're flawed, but because we're not willing to admit where we're flawed. It's not see, it's not like, oh, I'm we're all human. We're all flawed. Yes, we're all flawed. No, you you've got to you've got to zero in on your own stuff. You cannot do this. You listen to me. You cannot do this. Don't do this at home without righteousness consciousness. You need to have a consciousness of the righteous that you are the righteousness of God in Christ.
Like what empowers me and enables me to see my flaws for what they really are? They are like I'm like I'm screwed up in some areas you're screwed up. In some ways I've got some issues. You've got some issues. But what gives me the what empowers me to be able to see it, face it, admit it and confront it in my own life and let the Holy Spirit, you know, molded and shape it and change it and even let people weigh in on it. Like like I don't care if you saw or see my flaws because I'm not afraid of them for one reason, because I know that I'm the righteousness of God in Christ. So I don't crumble at the awareness of my flaws because I'm established in righteousness consciousness that I am a son of God. I am a joint er with Jesus Christ. I am everything he says I am inside.
So what I wear, my flaws reside ah in my own renewed soul, not in my heart and spirit, but in my own renewed mind. That still needs to be transformed through the renewing of my mind. And it's like, it's ok. It's cool. It's like it's easy. Like you got to be with your soul, like you are with your tooth at a dentist. Like you're not, you know, the dentist. Oh man. There's a cavity in there. We got to fill that. Nobody's like, no, it's not. I don't have no cavity in there. That's your opinion. Like you just are like, OK, fill it up. Yeah. Why? Because you trust a professional. But when it comes to our soul, we're like, oh, I don't know, look, look, this is what I do. But trust me, I'm not like trying to come up with something to talk about tonight.
How long? I don't know, self-awareness or emotions like this. These are the building blocks for success in life, in any role, in any endeavor and in any and all relationships. This is essential. And and, you know, we all think of ourselves as independent thinkers, but and we all think that our reasoning is based on facts and evidence. But the reality is our brain. This is what you have to realize, like you're the righteousness of God. So you can you've got to be able to accept.
What I'm about to say is studies show that our brain spends most of its time defending and explaining what our heart has already decided and declared. And therefore, there's no reasoning with with a person like that, because you you think you're basing your emotion on facts and evidence when, in fact your brain is working so fast because that's how God made us your brain's working so fast that it goes ahead of you to defend your own behavior and justify and rationalize rather than just stopping for a moment and taking personal responsibility for why you got angry and why you lashed out and why you're basing your happiness on somebody else and how they treat you or what the promises they make.
See, this is the elixir to all of this. The the the remedy the antidote for any of what I'm talking about is having this relationship with God, where where your trust is in him, not in anybody else, where you can trust God, but treat people with respect and with kindness, because you're not you're not you're not needing anything from them. See, when you treat a person a certain way because you want to get something from them, that's manipulation. That's why God is my source. God is my source. I, I'm telling you, God is my source. He's my source for happiness. He's my source for fulfillment. He's my source of where I get my understanding from. I'm not saying that I don't won't learn from you. I can learn from you too.
But I'm not depending on you performing or behaving in a certain way in order for me to be happy. Like, I accept your flawed self. For one reason, and here, here you can't accept a flawed person, you can't accept. We don't accept flawed people in our lives until we first accept ourself as a flawed person and only in that self-awareness of I'm flawed. I get it. Manam, we all have these self-justifying defense mechanisms and you got to let those things down and you can only let those things down. You can only legard down and let your self defense self justifying like well I had reason to do this and there's a reasons and you made me and you know, now what I'm doing is I'm lacking self awareness because I'm showing my emotional unintelligence.
If I can give you some words that rhyme so you can remember some of these things that emotional intelligence is, I would I would describe it like this. Emotional intelligence is framing. It's it's framing, naming and shaming your emotions, framing, naming and shaming your emotions. It's framing, framing your emotions, like seeing it in a frame like like like seeing the seeing the real picture, like not taking 50 selfies until you get one that you think looks like you. They all the other forty nine look like you two. You just didn't like them. Like what? So you have to you have to so emotional intelligence is to be able to frame your emotions and say, you know what, I have and I got to deal with this anger.
I got to deal with this pride or I got to deal with this anxiety or whatever it is, whatever the whatever the emotion is, depression, addictive tendency. Like whatever it is, it doesn't matter. Like God already forgave it all. Now, what we need to do is frame it like see it. That's self-awareness. Frame it, name it. OK, that's that I'm being defensive. Like I admit, I'm being defensive. Like, why did why did I raise my voice and begin to give a list of all the good things I've done that's called defensiveness, like you have to be willing to call it what it is. When Jesus met that demon possessed man, the first thing Jesus said was, what's your name? What's your name? Frame it, name it. And then you containment. That's emotional intelligence in three words. Frame it, name it, tame it. Everybody say it, frame it, name it, tame it.
Now, what is the opposite of emotional intelligence? You can call it whatever you want. You can call it ignorance. You can call it unintelligence. You can call it emotional stupidity. You can call it emotional immaturity. You can call it whatever you want. But I got three words for that. Emotional immaturity or where where we lack emotional intelligence is when we shame. When we blame. And when we maim, OK, so we feel the shame. Emotional unintelligence is I feel shame for what for for what I've done, but I but because I'm lacking intelligence about it, I now blame somebody for it and now I blame them to the point where it hurts them, that's maiming them. Maiming is to injure somebody to hurt.
So this is what emotionally unintelligent people do. We we we we shame ourselves or somebody else. We feel the shame or we or we or we project shame. It's shame and then it's blame. We blame somebody else. And then it's main. We hurt people when we blame them like nobody like like whatever. Whatever whatever mistakes that my parents made raising me. Are no longer on them. They're 100 percent on me.
Here's what I've learned about God: he doesn't accept excuses, but he gives plenty of grace. And when you get a hold of that, you stop making excuses and you start running to the throne a lot more, and then you stop judging people and you stop getting anxious about others and you stop trying to get them to change and you stop trying to get them to have peace with you. You just be at peace with them as much as it has to do with you. And now you're rolling, frame it, self awareness, name it, don't be in denial and tame it. You will master your emotions, and you will not win every argument, you'll avoid every argument by solving it before it becomes that.