EQ and PMH, an overview

Emotional intelligence (#EQ) & Positive Mental Health (#PMH), an Overview
by Matt Perelstein

Here’s a quick TOC.
– Intro
– Examples
– EQ Training & EQ Healing
– Pasta-bilities
– MCP, MCP
– Now What?!?

———– INTRO ———–

EQ is like Magic!
I believe we can change the world, from the inside out.
I believe we can create world peace… maybe in our lifetime.
I believe that, with EQ, we can create a fundamental shift in human consciousness toward emotional and personal responsibility that will change Everything.

… and to do this, we don’t have to buy anything, make anything or build anything… nothing.
it can all be done thru teaching/showing/explaining/enlightening/sharing, of EQ!

We are a pro-left-brain, anti-right-brain society… and that’s not working!

The key lies in some basic emotional concepts that most people do not know. It’s not their fault that they don’t know… nobody knew this stuff ’til now… we’re just learning and growing and our industry is just in it’s infancy. What we do know is that it’s astonishingly simple, and more astonishingly effective.

Ready?

No one has ever made you angry.
No one has ever hurt your feelings. ever.
No one has ever made you sad.
… not without your permission.

NO MATTER WHAT is happening outside of us…
… getting slapped in the face
our parents abandoning us
getting fired from a job
(even being in prison for 30+ years, per Nelson Mandela)

We can CHOOSE whether we get angry,
or not.
We can CHOOSE whether we get hurt,
or not.
We can CHOOSE whether we get sad,
or not.
We can be joyously Happy, or friggin’ Miserable,
It’s totally up to us.
And we get to CHOOSE happy or sad, positive, or negative, loving or hateful, victim or powerful
every minute of every hour of every day, for the rest of our lives.

Once people hear this, once they Realize that it’s true… that no one MAKES us angry… we really CAN control/effect/manage/succeed with our own self, our own feelings, are emotions, are thoughts, and especially our beheviours (everything we do, say or have), Then, and only then, do we truly have control over our lives!

So, why aren’t we all wildly happy all the time?

2 soldiers are in combat, sitting right next to each other, and WHAM, a bomb goes off in front of them, and people are hurt and screaming. One has life-long debilitating PTSD, the other goes on to manage his life and his business and does an anti-war non-profit on the side… what’s the dif?

Dr. Martin Seligman from UofPenn, just finished training ALL 41,000 of our US Army drill sergeants on “Resilience” (an awesome EQ skill!). The idea was to train-the-trainers and have them take it back to teach it to the 1.1M soldiers under their command. The main dif. between the 2 guys above is often just one thing… an internal, core belief that they’re either a Victim or their Powerful, Responsible or outta Control. Yes or no. Take your pick… are you a victim or not? This decision is critical because if I am a victim, I might be horrified at what I saw, have nightmares, an intense startle reflex, hypervigilance, paranoia and night sweats. I’d be unable to sleep, unable to work, jumpy and therefore semi-dangerous to be around. I might have to quit the Army, go on disability (with extra PTSD pay at $1,200/mo), and be dependent on meds, and the VA, the rest of my life (and complain loudly the entire time about it all).
But, if I REFUSE to be a victim, I will find answers, not excuses. I’d deal with all my feelings and meanings AROUND the horrible events I witnessed, I’d turn my horror and pain into justifiable, motivational Anger, and use it to motivate myself and others. I’d seek the latest advances in treatment for PTSD, reduce and replace those pictures in my head, so ensure that I turn out Stronger, braver, more loving, and yes, even more positive, in spite of, and because of, the horrors I had experienced. I’d make sure I made my life look, and more importantly Feel, as cool as I possibly could, grateful every day that me and mine were safe and sound, and I was not being shot at. Dr. Seligman says of the difference, rather than allowing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, we create Post-Traumatic Growth!

“First, you have to Want to change. If that’s you, we can help.
We CAN help.”

~ Dan W. video

The opposite of Victim is Emotional Responsibility!

What we’re finding is that this Emotional Responsibility (ER), then leads, quite naturally, to PR or Personal Responsibility.
If I’m in charge of my thots and feelings, I want to find/create/attract/allow/generate/imagine/solicit/enjoy good feelings, so I:”
– handle my sh*t
– learn to work and play well with others
– create some income
– get a grip
– etc.

… and being Personally Responsible leads to SR or Social Responsibility
– Help selves, others, the planet
– give a damn
– be kind, reach out
– don’t have wars
– etc.

People with high EQ tend to be kinder, more loving, more aware, more successful, more at ease, more liked and likable, get sick less, whine less, commit suicide less, live longer, have less insurance claims, are less addicted, have less violence, screw up less and hardly ever kill anyone!

Sooo, since ER leads to PR, then to SR, and some day, to Social Reform and world peace, I make the statement that EQ can, in fact, change the world, from the inside out.

Thus, our mission statement.
2GetHelp is a 501c3 non-profit whose mission is to create world peace and harmony by making a fundamental shift in human consciousness, changing the world from the inside out. Significant evidence and results now show that adding right-brain emotional intelligence (EQ) to our left-brain intellectual education (IQ) could lead to social reform around the globe! EQ is already having significant, measurable impact on education, mental health, business, families, military, entertainment and more, and provides a social framework that elicits cooperation and connection, at a core level. As a society, we learn left-brain knowledge in school and at home, but there is little or no formal education for critical right-brain concepts, emotional literacy, self-management, and basic life-skills. As a result, we (especially men) make behavioral decisions based on incomplete or incorrect information… we know what we think, but we do not know what we feel. This fundamental breakdown has lead to many of our current social problems — including addictions, suicide, mental health, divorce, crime, abuse, violence, even war — all largely due to a lack of training to effectively understand, manage and control our internal thoughts, our feelings, and especially, our behaviours. Our mission is to band together the many like-minded organizations, caregivers and aware citizens to spread EQ through inexpensive educational techniques, powerful role-modeling and mentoring programs, and a concerted, organized effort to bring emotional intelligence awareness, education and environment to the masses, with the goal of having these concepts and skills effect large-scale social change.

We now have tremendous amounts of data to show the overwhelmingly positive statistics on people learning EQ and improving their results, their relationships and their lives — compassionate and informed leaders, child-building parents, transforming business and customer service, healing and recovery in mental health, reduction in crime and decreases in recidivism, inspired teams breaking sales and scoring records, enhanced academic performance, increases in pro-social behaviors/decreases in anti-social behaviours, and more… much more.

EQ is HOT… and I believe this will be one of the hottest industries in the next 5-20 years, as people figure out the MAGIC of EQ.
‘what is eq’ was searched on Google 2.7M times in April, Josh had 30,000 signups for eWeek, the LI-EIN group has 45,000 members… people are starting to listen… we need to speak up!

EQ Changes Lives, Quickly, Inexpensively, and Permanently
Every single Behaviour we do… every action, every word, every decision we make… is based on at least one thought and at least one feeling. We know some about our thoughts, but as a society, and especially us guys, we don’t know squat about our feelings! In fact, we not only don’t know and understand them… we hate ’em! They’re mysterious and seem uncontrollable. They’re mushy, and uncomfortable, and confusing, and unclear. Feelings are disrespected, hidden, lied about, denied, act-like-we’re-angry-when-we’re-really-just-afraid, we add Ego where it doesn’t belong, we’re macho, we use our strength to overpower and induce fear in others, and we become control freaks, or we disconnect, and feel alone, and apart from (rather than a part of). Based on social issues, that plan ain’t working very well.

But, once understood, accepted, appreciated, and managed, we can change our negative feelings to positives!

I now have numbers to show that people with positive emotions:
Have lower disease risk
Fewer symptoms and less pain
Have less DOVs (doctor office visits)
Live longer
Earn more (about 33% more!)
Do better in school
Have more satisfying relationships
Enjoy more satisfying social networks (a key factor in longevity)
Better decision-making (better info employing both our left- and right-brain)
More flexible thought processes
Improved memory
More creative and innovative problem-solving
Improved performance and achievement
Have more fun!
… and so on…

———– EXAMPLES ———–

Here are examples of huge areas of life that are effected/affected by EQ:

Education:
Are you familiar with the term SEL – Social and Emotional Learning? That’s what EQ is called in the academic world. They just got legislation to REQUIRE SEL training for kiddos in the core curriculum in US public schools (yay)! And a recent meta-analysis of over 200 schools who already teach SEL/EQ showed an 11% increase in academic test scores (!!) AND, lower absenses, suspensions, problems. With EQ training, pro-social behaviours went up 9-10%, including:
– Attendance
– Behaving well in class
– Liking school
Anti-social behaviours went down the same margin:
– Drug use
– Violence
– Bullying
… and the kicker is that Academic achievement scores went up 11 percentile points!

Military
Realizing the debilitating issues with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), are now researching this thoroughly (the VA is one of the fastest growing segments of the US Govt, and not in a good way). They found that some people, having fought side by side and experienced the exact same traumas, some get PTSD and some don’t… why?… resilience (the ability to ‘bounce back’ from difficulties, to find good in what they do, and to even come out emotionally stronger despite overwhelming odds). Rather than PTSD (a disorder), they taught PTG (post-traumatic growth), a way to heal, and actually get stronger, because of what they’ve been thru. Sooo, the US Army commissioned the UofPenn, and using Dr. Martin Seligman’s Positive Psychology to teach the soldiers resilience (EQ). Rather than try to train all 1.1M troops, they trained the trainers… the drill sergeants… all 41,000 of them… in intensive EQ skills. It went very well. (rated at 4.9 out of 5, as the “best training they’ve ever had in the army”)

Healthcare
Kaiser hospitals did a thorough study on the physical effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and found that a child with four or more adverse childhood experiences is 5 times more likely to become an alcoholic and 60 percent more likely to become obese… a boy with four or more of these experiences is 46 times more likely to become an injection drug user than other children. The researchers found that the effects of trauma are cumulative, but that some of these effects can be offset by acknowledging and discussing these issues. Doctor Office Visits (DOVs) went down an amazing 11% just by asking new patients on the intake form if they have had one or more of these adverse experiences, and DOVs went down a staggering 34% if the patient was asked by a human, out loud! (can you imagine the amount of $$ saved by that big of a reduction in DOVs?!?)

Parenting
A poll by USA Today showed that, when asked what they most wanted to change in their children’s schools, a full 75% of all parents asked for emotional literacy (though not by name). Parents’ most frequent request (36%) was the desire for more school counselors – a need alleviated by Emotional Literacy education. The second greatest request (33%) was the desire for emotional diagnosis of our kids before it was ‘too late.’ The third most prolific desire was to ensure our kids are taught not to hate (18%).

Business
As I’m sure you know, EQ is the bomb in business! Customer service, employee retention, sales, motivation, marketing, branding, teamwork, leadership, supervision, vision, mission, control, power, results, commitment, cooperation — sooo much of it is EQ-based. Six seconds, the world’s leading EQ trainer with offices in 11 countries, has collected dramatic numbers on the benefits of EQ on Leadership and Financial Performance, Sales and Customer Loyalty, Star Performance and Retention. Conclusion: Leaders are learning that emotional intelligence isn’t just a new label for sales techniques or a repackaging of feel-good aphorism they’re coming to recognize emotional intelligence as a core skill set, grounded in science, which underlies performance, and they’re committing to bring these assets on board. http://www.6seconds.org/2010/10/06/the-business-case-for-emotional-intelligence-2010/ “Companies don’t just want kids with technical skills, they want kids with technical skills who know how to get along, who can cooperate and be good team members, who relate well to customers, who manage their emotions well, who stay motivated, who take initiative — those are social-emotional skills. We need to get over the mindset that sees this as something extra, something unnecessary.”

Mainstream
People are starting to REALize that EQ is magical! We can’t really do much about our IQ, but we can RADICALLY improve our EQ, quickly, profoundly, permanently, and at a VERY low cost of delivery! EQ is really just Ideas, and concepts, and conclusions, and attitudes, and a lifestyle choice to have ER/PR/SR, so it can all be taught, spread, injected, enthused by word of mouth, or in pictures, or videos and audios… the fun stuff.

IQ + EQ = LOL !!
This may sound flippant, but it’s actually quite true (LOL = Laugh out Loud, or Lots of Love!), and in many ways,
EQ IQ
… and people are starting to figure this out!

In fact, look at Facebook nowadays… by far the most popular thing (at least among my peeps) is those Pictures with cool sayings on them, right? Those cool sayings are all EQ!! quotes, life-advice, feel better, a dif. perspective, Go for it, Choose love, Rock on… etc. And, I’m sure you know this way better than I… a lot of the new company tag lines for advertising are about the Customer, not the product… so they’re often EQ-based! Nike: “Find your greatness”, Agilent: “Dreams Made Real”, ATI Technologies: “Get In the Game”, Cadence: “How Big Can You Dream?”, Dell Computer: “Get More out of Now”, IFI: “The Power of Choice”, J.C. Penney: “It’s all Inside”, McDonald’s: “I’m Lovin’ It”, Sony: “Make. Believe”, Yahoo!: “It’s you!”

———– EQ Training & EQ Healing ———–

Mental Health (aka Emotional Healing, our/my specialty)
We’re not therapists and we don’t do therapy… we’re Much faster, Much cheaper, More bold, and way more fun!

Get In, Get it Out, Get On !!
We can’t Heal what we Can’t (or Won’t) Feel!
IQ + EQ = LOL !!
#NameIt2TameIt
#SpinIt2WinIt
#FeelIt2HealIt
#GetAGrip_GetAClue_GetALife !!

The New Directions Workshops we have been teaching for 35 years now (3 generations), “Goes right to the Heart of the Matter”, and a 3-time, Lt. Col, Vietnam vet called it an “Emotional Bootcamp”. And it is… we don’t pull any punches. We do everything, Everything, with love, so that gives us room to maneuver, and be very, very real with people, and their feelings. We ask people in class 3 simple questions…

• Who or what hurt you the most?
• Who or what are you angry at?
• Who or what are you afraid of?

The answers, and the healing, of these 3 basic questions, is the basis of emotional healing, and can (and usually does) change lives!

As I’m sure you know, most try to avoid their feelings — in healthy ways: with medications, affirmations, meditation, yoga, (even some forms of therapy), and unhealthy ways: addictions, self-medicating, escapes, stuffing, denying — but we do the opposite. We go right FOR the feelings! We’re about facing them… facing ourselves… head-on. We face down our worst fear, and BEAT IT. Get to the Root of our anger and rage and ame it. Sink to our deepest, darkest depression, rest a bit, then come back stronger than ever, turning it to Personal Power! If our ego can allow us to be a basket-case, to let our body feel and release whatever it wants to, for one weekend, to expand, to (re-)activate your right-brain, to stretch, and to heal. People leave feeling Courageous, and Accomplished, and Encouraged, and Hopeful, and Rejuvinated, and Free. it’s pretty cool to watch and incredible to experience.

In fact, the workshop could/would make an awesome Reality TV show(!) — meeting the people beforehand, semi-clueless, shut-down, afraid — then watch them learn what they need, PUSH through their Fears, BLAST out their Anger, and lay balling on the floor (sometimes), and then COME THRU it all, victorious, vulnerable, but proud, and hopeful, and free, and forever changed for the better. (people could follow participants’ lives afterwards, and see how things are changing, how they Apply their new higher EQ, the new decisions they get to make, the new heights they get to reach.) The biggest new thing that I have seen is Love. NDers LOVE, a LOT! The first thing to come out is pent-up Love. They/we go, ‘Yay, I’ve finally found omeone and some place where I won’t be judged for my feelings and who I am… I feel safe to be real around you guys… I love that. “ND is my safe haven.” (heard many, many times, and its mine, as well… tho’ I’ve also gotten good at making myself feel emotionally safe there or almost anywhere these days… what a relief!). It’s not about me trusting them, it’s about me trusting me.

Dan, I don’t know if you’ve done any/much of your own childhood emotional work, but if not, I gotta tell you… you’ve heard about pillow-pounders, and we’ve all heard plenty of sarcasm and criticism about how people who are enoucaged to get really angry tend to get really angry MORE OFTEN — well, that’s true…. if they want to. And, there’s plenty to be angry about in our world. You want edgy, you should hear me in class! Ever seen Dr. Phil? I/we do much the same ‘confrontation’ as he does, only I come from love (rather than trying to embarrass them, or make them look foolish for their stupid behaviours). My job too is to build people up PISS PEOPLE OFF, more than they’ve EVER let themselves be Pissed before, and do it in a way where they get relief and release and can change their negative core belief systems while they’re at it… oh, and come out hugging me (and everyone else in the room) afterwards. It’s wild… man, I could tell you some stories… (lol)

What we’re finding is that if we can get in touch with our own inner child, and find Empathy, and compassion, and caring, and Love for that little person (us), first, then we can have/allow/create true empathy and compassion for others! How can we love others if we can’t even love ourselves? So yeah, when people Realize how much of who they are today is a direct result of decisions they made in the past, people are shocked to find out how a traumatized little kid is running their/our lives! So, here’s the GOOD NEWS: Since we ‘decided’ all these things about life/us/our family/how we fit in/or didn’t… we can Re-decide ’em… and heal, and get better, and do better, and make better decisions, and balance our IQ and our EQ, and grow up, and be a kind, loving, strong, powerful person from here on.

Since we’re getting such good results, why not change the Therapeutic model, while we’re at it?
We’ve partnered for over 20 years with a therapist in Fresno, Myron Doc Downing, Ph D, LMFT (love those credentials), and he is friggin’ great at this! Like Rudolph Dreikurs did for Alfred Adler’s work, he has taken Perls, Dreikurs and Gestalt, and has a way of summing them up so that it’s super clear, makes sense, is easily understandable and applicable, and reproducible. So, he (and I, and Paula) took it to the classroom, the most amazing human laboratory, took the very most popular (and fastest and cheapest) kinda therapy, CBT or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and Enhanced it, improved on it, adding the right-brain Affective component to make it CABT… a more complete (left- and right-brain) intervention. It’s more thorough, more profound, a deeper cleansing of the soul, a release of our negative feelings from childhood and re-deciding of our unconscious negative/limiting/debilitating childhood belief systems. It’s about going back to see where we ‘split off’ from ourselves, from others, sometimes, from reality. We’re not diagnosing, or advising… we’re just helping people identify, separate, appreciate, acknowledge, understand, and accept their own pain/anger/sadness/fear/guilt/shame, deal with what happened to us as a kid, and how that’s STILL affecting us now (in many big and little, conscious and unconscious ways), and help people CHANGE IT… change it all. It went in us via our right-brain, it is retained in our right-brain, and it needs to be released/replaced/re-decided by our right-brain. Strictly left-brain talk therapy can work, to a point, but there’s more… so much more… waiting/stuffed/stressing us/ready to explode/available, on the right-side of our brains!

The premise of CABT goes E – M – F – B
EVENT – shit happens to us as kids, good things, bad things, horrible things… doesn’t matter… feelings trump severity.
MEANING – we ‘decide’ stuff about ourselves, about life, about how we fit in (or not), who we are, what matters to us, and how to survive
FEELINGS – based on the Meanings we chose, we often feel pain, anger, fear, etc. as a kid, but we had no way to express or deal with it, so we internalize it all, cut it off and stuff it away, inside us.
BEHAVIOUR – we act, based on our thoughts, or meanings (whether conscious or NOT) plus our feelings (that very often run the show). Behaviours = Actions. Actions create Results (good or bad)

The key to understanding ourselves, and having empathy and love for ourselves, is to accept and appreciate what we, as a kid, went thru/endured/battled/lived thru. The key to emotional healing is to work the EMFB model backwards… look at our current behaviours, check out the feelings and meanings that are behind, underneath and around our behaviours (one of our favorite questions in class is, “so how’z that working for you?!?”), deal with the feelings — honestly, powerfully, boldly and completely — and CHANGE/modify/enhance/improve the meanings/belief systems/generalized decisions about ourselves, to ones that work better for us. (like “I’m not lovable”, and “I’m dirty and no good”, and “I am powerless”, and “people leave me”, etc.) We can change sooo much of what we ‘learned’, so quickly. This stuff is incredibly simple but it ain’t easy, or painless… it may be some of the hardest work we ever do in our lives… but oh so worth it)

Doing childhood ‘inner child’ work is pretty magical just in itself… check this (I just thot of these last week)
– all empathy starts with self-empathy
– all love starts with self-love
– what we’re finding is that if we can get in touch with our own inner child, and find Empathy, and compassion, and caring, and Love for that little person (us), first, then we can have/allow/create true empathy and compassion for others! How can we love others if we can’t even love ourselves? So yeah, when people Realize how much of who they are today is a direct result of decisions they made in the past, people are shocked to find out how a traumatized little kid is running their/our lives! So, here’s the GOOD NEWS: Since we ‘decided’ all these things about life/us/our family/how we fit in/or didn’t… we can Re-decide ’em… and heal, and get better, and do better, and make better decisions, and balance our IQ and our EQ, and grow up, and be a kind, loving, strong, powerful person from here on.

Recently, we’ve found that once we activate the right-brain, we can actually CHANGE the nastiest memories inside us that haunt us — the pictures/sounds/smells/tastes/touches — all right-brain stuff… and the good news is… it’s all changeable!
The VA put out a $240M grant to help manage PTSD, because “we are losing the war on PTSD” (not verbatim, but close) with over 40% of deployed soldiers returning home with a diagnosable mental disorder. They went on to say, what we know works, such as:
– Exposure Therapy (like CABT)- where they take people back to the event, let them feel the complete impact of what happened, bring them to closure, discover what they ‘decided about life’ during those pain-filled moments, and Re-imagine the event, the pictures, the feelings, the decisions, the conflict… all of it. We have seen semi-amazing retractions in sleeplessness, meds, hypervigilance, and The US Army recently realize

For our workshops, I don’t have the numbers I need to show that it’s an “evidence-based intervention”. sorry. needs work. What I do have tho is gobs of subjective data, from the mouths of the folks who experienced it. We have hundreds and hundreds of unsolicited testimonials, and almost 100 video and audio testimonials from our graduates who want to SHOUT OUT how amazing this simple, loving, rejuvinating workshop experience was for them (in fact, I just got an email this morning from a long-time grad who said “ND was the single most changing agent I have ever experienced.”- Valerie G.) For me, and most of my best friends (a nice side benefit of this work is that I have lots of friends, and people who actively, vocally love me and my fam) will tell you that ND was the ‘best thing we ever did for ourselves’. seriously. If you haven’t been to the depth of your anger, and the core of your fear and sadness, there’s whole parts of you that you have never met, and whole parts of your heart, childhood and your soul that remain unexplored!

some examples:

• When Feelings go up, Logic goes down
• Anger is a secondary emotion… we always feel something first, before we feel angry.
• Depression is anger turned inwards (Sigmund Freud), or mine, which is: Depression is anger without enthusiasm!
• There are two kinds of Guilt, Productive guilt and Punishing guilt.
• Thou shall not Should on thyself.
• There are two kinds of Shoulds. Shoulds we agree with and live by, Shoulds we don’t agree with, but they’re stuck in our heads from others.
• Whenever we feel guilty, we will set ourselves up to be punished.
• Be angry, and sin not. (ok, I stole that one from this really Good Book I read once)
• Guilt is 100% optional.
• So is Shame.
• So is Anger.
• All anger is manufactured. We are not born with anger, we learn it. all of it.
• Anger is 100% based on our thoughts… there is no ‘natural’ anger.
• We gotta Feel it to Heal it.
• Name it to Tame it.
• IQ+ EQ = LOL !! (laugh out loud, or lots of love)
• Use “I” messages and talk about your feelings, and you’ll never get in a fight again.
• Opinions are debatable. Feelings are not.
• Hopelessness is based on Powerlessness.
• #1 Communication Skill: Shut up and Listen!
• #1 Most Important Relationship: my relationship with me
• If we don’t like the pictures, sounds, smells, tastes or touches that are stuck in our right-brain, we can CHANGE them (thanks to NLP). Yes, even horrible, recurring, PTSD-type nightmares can be changed, completely… as our mind doesn’t really know the dif. between real and imagined. We can start a picture going, and then POOF, Re-imagine it… however you wish… melt it, have the people change into bunny rabbits, get lighter and fade away, get darker until they’re gone, explode into snowflakes… your right-brain ‘imagined’ it the first time you experienced it… and it can quite easily re-imagine it, and the new overlays the old, and all the Feelings/meanings/powerlessness/trauma/victim of it all, disappears along with it. Oh, and it can take as little as 5-10 minutes (try it some time… just take a yucky picture and change it, however you wish.
  Emotional healing really works!

———– Pasta-bilities ———–

“Every dollar we’ve ever made,
and every dollar we ever will make,
is based on a relationship with someone else.”

I believe people are hungry to learn how to live happier, in less pain, with better results, and they’re seeing that giving works wonders, so the time is ripe for us to lead the charge, set the example, create the environment, and make it happen! The target market is astoundingly large, there are numerous, highly profitable income stream possibilities, and people are dying, quite literally, to know what we know about EQ.

My EQ expansion model includes:
1. Awareness – Share the good news and magic of EQ (most folks are still quite clueless in this area)
2. Education – Teach/show/model/explain/empower folks to learn and practice this new language/attitude/skills/life
3. Environment – Setup a safe place, with EQ-centered people, where we can Connect, Learn, Grow, and make Stuff happen, together

Awareness
I want to teach people how to have relationships — first with themselves, then with others — how to listen properly, how to connect, how to open the heart, how to balance the mind and heart, how to ‘process’ and ‘get over’ negative feelings and how to redirect people’s belief systems from powerless to powerful, from victim to leader, from me to we. Let’s give away the basic concepts — via social media, thru entertainment, thru advertising, in the press — to let everyone know that Happiness is a Choice, that Feelings Matter, and that IQ + EQ = LOL !!.

“Where people go 2GetHelp with their Lives!”
I imagine a way that we can compile, coordinate, standardize and organize the many, many EQ offerings that are happening world-wide, and become the definitive resource for all things EQ. People don’t know where to go 2GetHelp with their lives, online or locally, in-person. People don’t come looking for coaching or workshops… they look for solutions to problems, like relationships, marriage problems, depression, anger, career, how to handle difficult people, and so on. So, we offer a solution-based site where they can drill down to their particular problem or issue, then branch out to the many solutions offered for that problem. (ex: Depression: read books, take a class, see how the brain works with depression, causes of depression, coaching, therapy, medications, warnings, tips and tricks, a community to discuss depression, support groups, my journalling area, jokes about depression, stories of hope and healing of depression, etc.

Environment
I envision a world-wide network of the most extensive, and effective(!), emotional support ever built.
I believe we can build a network of peers (volunteers) and pros (vendors), with a database of all types of EQ resources offered, who together can/will provide 24x7x365 emotional support world-wide, using all four of our main ways of communicating these days… online, by phone, mobile and in-person. 2GetHelp- for folks who want help, we teach people EQ, for free, then we introduce them to the support environment where they can share/learn/connect/discover/practice/learn/grow/love/find love. 2GiveHelp – volunteer $$ worldwide are down, but volunteer Hours are up, dramatically… why? People WANT to give, they’re seeing/feeling/tasting the wonderful joy found only in the service of others (which makes it a kinda selfish activity right?

Members join our “family” at a low, one-time fee — like a family, you join and you’re in, for life, unless you choose to get out, or be an ass enough that we kick you out. Then, for additional services, I see a profitable gym-type, pay-monthly, membership area with a global network of both peers and pros, givers (2GiveHelp.com) and getters (2GetHelp.com), supported by affiliate marketers (2SellHelp.com).

Education
I want to see us train as many people as possible on EQ, for free. I also want to teach people how to have relationships, that work, for free. But this will also be a profitable income stream… here’s my idea: for each area, we create an upbeat, interactive, online EQ training and awareness class for folks to get started on – EQ-101: It’s all about Me, the basics of EQ. Then, we collaborate with other providers to offer specialized trainings, products, reading materials, support groups, etc. which are off-shoots of the EQ-100 series (most of which will be affiliate-based, where everyone wins). We also create EQ-201: From Me to We: EQ Communication Skills. So, EQ-101 is free, then EQ-102, 103, 104, etc. are not. EQ-201 is free, but EQ-202, 203, 204. are not, and so on.
EQ-100s – Me, I. self-awareness, self-esteem, self-care, feelings and emotions, head/heart/hand, Know/Choose/Give IQ + EQ, balance, etc.
EQ-200s – We: empathy, relationships, communication skills, boundaries, compassion, SUAL (shut up and listen), etc.
EQ-300s – Us: Teams, commitment, goal setting, intention, fitting in, etc.
EQ-400s – Organizations, change management, sales, employee retention, personal power, etc.
EQ-500s – Leaderships, training for trainers, individuals, groups, business, government, speaking, communicating, global impact, etc.

EDGY-ness
Let me put it in your EDGY language:

• Extreme Behaviour
• Disciplined Activity
• Giving Mindset
• human StrategY

EDGY

• Extreme Behaviour: Our classes exhibit extreme behaviour. We work with feelings at a deeper and more core level than anyone I’ve ever seen (and being manager of the LI-EIN group, I’ve seen a Bunch!) We have had the police called on us more than once because of the blood-curtling screams of anguish and pain that come from our walls. We have had classes go all night, from 9am Sunday morning to noon the next day, non-stop, so that everyone could experience the joy and release the same as their classmates, no matter what. I sleep very little, as I am fanatically trying to bring this critical info about EQ to the world…
• Disciplined Activity: Although discipline is not one of my strong points, I believe that consistently teaching these classes, in people’s faces, and holding them as they raged, or bawled, for 25 years, thru thick and thin, thru deaths and births, for 3 generations, and raising our kids with high EQ, and having hundreds of people in a high EQ community who are not just surviving, we’re thriving, and healing and trying to tell everyone about what we’ve found, for this long… takes a lot of discipline, I think.
• Giving Mindset: I honestly don’t know how I could be any more giving than I am. I believe my intentions truly are pure, to genuinely help my fellow man/woman feel better and do better and be happier, and more loving, and more successful in life… because if they do, I win, me and the people I care about are safer and do better, and we all enjoy a better life experience!
• human StrategY: My strategy is to love people as much as I know how, share my life and love and pain, and fears with them, honestly, boldly, consciously, transparently, in a way where everyone wins. I want all our products and services to be priced as low as possible, so more can take advantage of it. I’d LOVE to be funded (corporate or non-profit), or be making enough income in other areas that we don’t have to charge AT ALL for EQ training! I’d love to (and plan to) quit my job in SF, to devote my life to what I know is my passion and calling, as soon as I am able to replace the income.

I could go on and on… and I have. My personal log file is over 300,000 lines long (I had to split it up, so I could carry it with me, 20Mb .TXT file).

I will never give up the notion that I am here to spread EQ to the world, one way or another.

———– MCP, MCP ———–

Let me talk about me for a minute… (you can skip this section, if you just wanna jump to the Conclusions, below)
(I’m not sure if this part goes under Extreme Behaviour, Displined Activity, or completely nutso, but here goes…)
I’m not arrogant, I’m experienced.
I’m not pushy, I’m motivated (or motorvated)
I’m not cocky, I’m just sure this stuff works.

For some reason, this stuff just makes sense to me. People make sense to me. I’m not that great at business, but I am seriously good with people, and feelings, and emotions, and behaviours… for some reason I ‘get’ people really well, and I can help them feel, and identify and separate and accept their feelings, and themselves, with love, care and empathy (even through their own roadblocks and blocks that they’ve been telling themselves their whole lives) and this helps them heal, in amazing ways. People give me permission (in class) to be radically honest with them, and help them dig out their deepest, negative feelings, and discard them, to feel better… much better… often permanently.

We have our weekend ND workshop every 6-8 weeks, for 25 years now, in 4 states, with over 2,000 happy(er) graduates. We’ve done 3 rounds of a 2-year instructor training course. I’ve written over 800 blog posts on EQ and 4 email-based tips and quote sendouts, I have 58 notebooks full of EQ writings (that are currently being transcribed, yay), I have 6 websites, 3 twitter accounts, 6 facebook pages, scoop.it, pinterest, and youtube (with hours and hours of ND testimonials, informercials and teachings).

I have over 3,000 facebook friends (and I actually know most of ’em), 700 on LinkedIn, 1,500 on Twitter, I am one of two primary moderators for the largest EQ group we know of (LI-EIN), I’ve single-handedly run the most amazingly-loving, supportive, positive, friendly, happy (but real feelings, too) support group of over 200+ ND grads for over 12 years, I run an emotional support group by phone every other Wednesday evening, we’ve created 3 half-hour TV segments of “EQ-101, The Art and Science of Emotional Intelligence (EQ)”, I’ve been on the radio and Tv numerous times, edited 3 books in print, I’m a certified Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Crisis Counselor, a certified Nurturing Parenting course instructor, a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP, which are the same as my initials already, so I’m actually “MCP, MCP”), I’m a Microsoft Office User Specialist (MOUS), and I’m on 2 non-profit Boards, have 3 grown kids and 4 high-school-aged grandkids (whom I hang out with a lot, and go skiing with, and took to Arizona over New Years to my parents’ home, and love dearly), I run an an extremely profitable side-business uniquely supplying fresh Eucalyptus to pet birds and sugar gliders (EucProducts.com, we’re #2 on Google and Yahoo!, #1 on Bing for ‘fresh eucalyptus’), since 2004, we’ve shipped over 2,000 orders, almost pure profit (all product is free on our property, and all boxes are free from the USPostOffice!)… oh, and I have a full-time job… and 2 side-jobs as a computer consultant, mostly programming in MS Access and SQL Server (I’m on my 84th job, my resume is 11 pages long, working for feds, 2 states, 4 cities and counties, businesses and non-profits, large and small).

We have a for-profit (Directions Unlimited, who has put on the New Directions Workshops for 25 years) and a non-profit 501c3, 2GetHelp, Inc. I’m applying for a foundation fellowship offered by the philanthropic arm of an extremely successful VC firm in SF… Draper-Richards-Kaufman. They only fund projects that seek to create social reform ‘at least’ in the US, and preferably, the world. ($100k/yr for 3 years)

———– NOW WHAT?!? ———–

Conclusion

EQ is HOT, and it’s going to get hotter, much hotter!

The Movement has started to spread the good word about EQ.

What if we were able to inspire business, and entertainment, and sports, and military, and media, and politics, and some day, government to lead with their heart?
What if we could teach EQ to people for free?
What if all kids in schools were taught EQ/SEL?
What if we got grants and/or corporate sponsorship to build the most effective emotional support ever, spanning the globe both virtually and in person (world-wide ‘franchises’ of 2GetHelp Therapy, Wellness and EQ Training Centers)?
What if we were able to make a HUGE impact on the world, with a totally free, totally natural, totally God-given resource that is available in unlimited quantities INSIDE of us?!?

We can do this!

Whatchathink?
– Matt

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