You're hardwired for connection.
Brene Brown says that every person is hardwired
for connection.
I really agree with that.
That we long for connection in our life.
It's interesting, even when they do studies on mice
and do studies on laboratory animals,
even animals are hardwired for connection with each other.
I'm an elk and deer hunter, but especially with elk
high up in the mountains, you're hunting herds of elk.
And usually when you hear coyotes,
it's a group of coyotes.
When you see a den of foxes, it's a group of foxes in a den.
So we're made for connection.
I think the main way that connection happens is in family.
God put everyone in a family.
And in God's design, there's a father and there's a mother.
And then there's children and there's a close-knit family.
And that's because we're wired for connection.
It's why orphans and those who didn't have a family
struggle so much, is because they never had the intimacy
of a family because their wiring got crossed.
They don't have that connection in their life anymore.
And we need that.
We all need that.
If you talk to anyone who's been through a divorce
and you ask them, what's the hardest thing you've ever
been through, I promise you nine out of 10
will say we're going through a divorce.
Because here was someone that you were connected to,
that something happened in the relationship
and it was broken.
Maybe there was a betrayal.
Maybe there was a sickness.
I mean, who knows?
Every divorce has its own story.
But you got disconnected.
And with that disconnection, it broke trust
and it broke a relationship.
Because we're wired for connection.
And so I want to talk about today why,
four reasons why this way of God of love
in relationships is so healthy.
And why EQ, developing your EQ,
developing your emotional intelligence
can make you the happiest person on the face of the earth.
Or if you don't develop your EQ,
you could be one of the most depressed people
on the face of the earth.
I want to read from the Bible, 1 John 4, 7.
1 John 4, 7 reads,
Beloved, let us love one another,
for love is of God.
And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
He who does not love does not know God,
for God is love.
In this, the love of God was manifested toward us
that God has sent his only begotten son into the world
that we might live through him.
In this is love, not that we love God,
but that he loved us and sent his son
to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also ought to love one another.
So when I speak of EQ,
I'm talking about a God who gave you EQ.
Your EQ comes from him,
and the greatest commandment in all the Bible
is to love the Lord your God
with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength,
and your neighbor as yourself.
So God designed even the great kingdom mandate
of loving him with all of our heart, soul,
mind, and strength to not stop just there
in a vertical love relationship,
but also in a horizontal love relationship
with other people.
So the greatest sign, the greatest symbol
that you love God with all your heart
is that you love others.
So whenever you see someone who calls himself
a Jesus disciple, a Jesus follower, a Christian,
but they have no love for others,
then that means there's a problem
even with their vertical love.
You can't love God without loving others
because God made you with that kind of connection point,
that wiring in you.
PsychCareMD writes,
neuroscience suggests that we are neurological wired
to connect with others.
Mirror neurons in our brains are stimulated
when we're interacting with other people.
Literally, when you are talking to someone,
pathways in your brain light up
to mirror the emotions and behaviors
that this other person is conveying.
We are hardwired to interact and connect with others.
In other words, when you get around a positive person,
a person who's smiling a lot,
a person who's pretty joyful,
your neurons, you have mirror neurons in your brain
that start to mirror that into you.
So you become more joyful.
You start smiling more.
By virtue also of that relationship,
you might be with someone who's depressed,
sad, they never smile.
And when you get around them,
you might come in to the room
or you might come into the relationship
pretty joyful, pretty happy.
You get around someone who's just like,
everything's terrible, kind of a Eeyore.
sort of complex, it doesn't take long for the neurons in your brain to start taking
you into depression and taking you down.
This is why it's often important to realize who are your friends and you become a mirror
of the kind of friends that you have.
If you tend to have people who are pretty pessimistic about life, if you're hanging
out with them a lot, that's going to become true in your life.
Now you could say, well, I'm, I'm in those relationships to pick them up, to try to pick
them up.
That might be fine and dandy if you can do that, but most of us can't.
So pick your friends well, pick the kind of people that you want to be around that you
believe mirror the kind of person you want to become, even if you're not all there yet,
because nobody's all there yet.
But PsychCare has done the research and that's what they found is that we have these mirror
neurons and it, you know why?
Because we're wired, again, we're wired for connection.
So the connection point is going to be positive, negative.
It's going to be full of faith.
It's going to be full of fear, according to the crowd you're hanging out with or the person
you're around.
Neuroscientist, Dr. Matthew Lieberman, director at UCLA Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab,
has found that a person's need to connect with others is stronger than even one's need
for food and shelter.
That's radical.
Can you believe that?
If you were in eighth grade and you took Maslow's Hierarchy of Need in your sociology class,
he had a pyramid, if you recall, and in the pyramid at the very bottom was food and shelter,
at the very top was self-actualization.
It appears that studies now show that even more basic, even more of a foundation than
food and shelter is our need for community.
So Dr. Lieberman continues and says, some studies would suggest that the greatest predictor
of happiness is the level of one's community and mutuality with other people.
Amazing study.
Phenomenal study.
Again, showing EQ is so important, that if we can mutually connect with people, if we
can be in community, enjoy people, work through conflicts that come with people, that means
a high EQ, you're going to be happy.
You're going to be so happy.
And that's what this talks about is why that's important.
But the opposite is also true.
So in my work as a counselor and a pastor and a leader, I deal with people who are going
through divorce or thinking about divorce.
I go through people who have been through a divorce.
I deal with people who have suicidal ideations.
Each case, they're isolated.
Isolation will kill you.
Being isolated from strong, committed relationships with others can literally, literally kill
you.
And this is why in the military, they have a buddy system.
It's why in the military, they have platoons and they have teams that go in and do a job
because we need each other.
It's not just because more heads are going to make more success, but rather that the
hearts and the minds of everyone on the team and the sense of community and mutuality bring
success.
So it's that community that we need.
So we desperately need each other, men and women, working.
This is important.
If you're taking notes, you ought to write this down.
Working on mission as a team is the healthiest thing you can do.
Working on a mission, working on a vision with a team is one of the healthiest things,
if not the most healthy thing that you can do with your life.
If you're in a job, in the work that you do, if you're in a job where you're not on a team,
man, you're big time missing out.
That's super important.
And you probably won't last long at that company.
We need teams.
Teams bring joy, teams bring conflict, but again, that's why you're going to develop
your EQ factor because you can't develop your EQ factor by just saying, I'm going to develop
my EQ factor or reading a lot of books about it.
No, the EQ factor is developed by being in EQ factor relationships that force you to
grow.
So let me give you four reasons, four reasons to build healthy relationships at home and
at work.
Number one, healthy relationships make you, well, more healthy.
So healthy relationships make you healthy.
So EQ, the joy of EQ, the joy of growing in the EQ factor is that it's healthy for you.
One author on health writes, quote, the quality of our relationships may have more to do with
how often we get sick and how soon we get well than our genes, chemistry, diet, or environment.
I think it's totally true.
Most of the time, our stress levels are related to people.
issues in our life and the healthier those relationships are, the healthier
you are physically, emotionally, and spiritually. So it actually makes you a
healthier person to have healthy relationships. Leonard Syme, professor of
epidemiology at the University of California Berkeley says, quote, the
causes of our health problems are often attributed to industrialization,
urbanization, technology, pollution, smoking cigarettes, and the fast pace of
life. But the Japanese have all of these. Indeed, they smoke more than any other
nation in the world. They have the worst problems in all of the areas mentioned,
almost in the entire world. But despite these health hazards, Japanese have the
highest life expectancy in the world, the lowest heart disease in the world.
Dr. Syme continues with this. What is it about the Japanese, in spite of all of
those liabilities, why do they have the longest lifespan? Why are they the
healthiest people in the world? He calls it Amai. Amai is a Japanese word for
characteristic that they value in Japan. Amai emphasizes a belief that the
well-being of the individual depends on cooperation with others and goodwill
from a person's group. In other words, social support is central to the values
of Japanese practice and continues to provide resistance to disease, end quote.
So Dr. Syme found in that study, because of Amai, the idea of relationships, the
idea of being in a group and taking care of each other was huge in the
Japanese system. And because of that, they could overcome disease. They could
overcome huge amounts of air pollution. They could overcome lung cancer and lung
diseases through smoking. Again, because I think what's happening
there is a relationship with each other that presents a well-being into one's
body. You know what I'm talking about here. I mean, all of you that are
listening to this have had this happen in your life where you're in love with
someone, or you're excited about a relationship, or you're excited about a
group you're in, or you're excited about the church you're attending. And you have
the same issues that week that you have every week in relation to stress and
maybe even potential depression. But you overcome it. You just find that you're
just able to overcome it better. It's because you're developing a higher EQ.
Your EQ is higher. Your EQ quotient is higher. And you can fight off disease. I
mean, you just don't let stress get to you as much. And this is why men and
women that America is struggling right now with mental health, probably one of
the biggest problems in our country, we're too isolated. Our neighborhoods
here in our cities are more about the proximity of our houses, but not the
proximity of our hearts. And so people just drive in, open up the garage, go in,
close the garage. Neighbors don't know each other. There's no sense of community.
And I lived forever for almost 10 years in Japan. And I was in the middle of
Tokyo where I lived. And way more crowded. Way more crowded than here.
Everybody knew each other. So there was just this sense of community. And
everybody was always talking to each other in the streets. It's quite a hubbub.
You know, you would come home and you'd see all the neighbors out talking because
that's part of Japanese culture. They really value talking and connection and
having friendships in their life. And it was pretty challenging as an American
who tends to be individualistic to be involved in a culture that's so
group-oriented. But I learned a lot. And it was very valuable in my life. So in
the next episode, I want to go through the next three healthy factors that
happen when we have a high EQ. So check that out.