Grass Roots! Let’s Make It Happen!

American democracy is under assault. The perpetrator? Toxic divisiveness. I’m not taking political sides here. There are various elements of the political spectrum that have discovered the power of misusing EQ. They use empathy skills to figure out what will frighten people. Then they play on those fears for personal or political gain without regard to the long-term damage that is done. “A country divided against itself cannot stand.” Research done by a Columbia University psychologist found that: 86% of Americans are sick to death of these tactics. But there is no organized voice for them. Outrage is addictive. It lights up the same parts of the pleasure center of the brain as does heroin. Many people seek out their daily fix. In my community of Roanoke, Virginia, some of us have formed a group which seeks to give voice to the 86%. We call ourselves The Roanoke Collaboration Project.…

Using EQ to Deal with Different Views

These days, it seems we are often called upon to deal with people whose beliefs may be in strong opposition to ours. A colleague working within a large university-based medical center asked me for a blog piece dealing with this challenge. Like every medical center in the world today, hers is struggling with COVID. Not only because of the overwhelming number of cases their center has to deal with, but also because so many colleagues and patients have differing ideas about COVID, based on different sources of information deemed acceptable to their way of thinking. Pretty much everybody thinks their way of thinking is right, and other people’s views are ridiculous. What to do? Step One – Acceptance of the person, and of our shared human frailty: Approximately 100% of human beings have some beliefs that turn out to be accurate, and other beliefs? Not so much. Humility is a…