Thoughts are very real things. They can be compared to the elements that create the weather we experience. From clear and sunny to overcast and dreary, your thought-machine mind creates your reality.

Whether or not you are consciously aware of it, you alone control the angles and rotations of the kaleidoscopic mirrors within the workings of your mind. If you don't like your reality, you can always adjust your outlook simply by adjusting your way of thinking. One of life's mercies is that we can retrain our mind.

This guide is an appeal for rational thinking. When all is said and done, there are only three fundamental areas over which you have any real control in your life: how you think/feel (as in two sides of the same coin), how you act, and how you react. When you are unhappy in life or love, the best place to start looking for both the cause and the cure is within the inner narrative of your thoughts. It is here you will find the fountainhead of resiliency from which your strength and well-being flow.

Resiliency in people is not an accidental occurrence; rather, it is the cumulative effect of an individual's decision making. In a nutshell, humans need not always interpret things in the negative, instead, the choice to view things either as "a positive" or as "a negative" is entirely your own to make. The intelligent approach insists you strive to see both the positive and the negative in people, situations, and events. Doing so won't negate the negative, it simply helps to balance it.

The knowledge contained in A User's Guide to Your Mind is threefold: how to live mindfully of your thoughts, how to exercise emotional intelligence in relationships, and how to exercise social intelligence in everyday life. Exercising social and emotional intelligence--along with good old common sense--is essential to soundly managing your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

If you are tired of just talking about making changes and are now actually prepared to do something about it, the guidance within will provide detailed blueprints to get you started in redesigning your life and relationships. Best of all, you can implement what you learn as you see fit, according to your own goals, value system, and moral principles. This book shows you how.

Volume II How to Win in Love & Get Along with Each Other

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Dedication.............................................................................................................................xiAcknowledgements.......................................................................................................................xiiiForeword...............................................................................................................................xivAuthor's Note..........................................................................................................................xxiiIntroduction...........................................................................................................................1

Chapter One

Everyone wants love and affection. The attainment and maintenance of emotional links with other people plays an immeasurable role in all our human endeavors. A simple explanation is that humans have an innate psychological craving for love, affection, attention, and caring that refuses to be denied. That would certainly explain why, for nearly all people at one time or another, love is the most absorbing and interesting subject in existence.

Our need to connect with people is every bit as innate as our need to eat. This only stands to reason, of course, since a great deal of the joy and satisfaction we derive from being alive happens through our relationships with others, including family, friends, coworkers, and fellow members of our community. The desire to connect with the world around us and its inhabitants is a basic human need, as social interaction with the environment is required for growth. Within our very essence exists an extraordinary desire to belong, and correspondingly profound ability to love others of our own kind.

Nothing is more important than human relationships and social connections when it comes to warding off feelings of loneliness, separation, and depression. In order to thrive, we need to feel connected to something outside ourselves. Our heart's hunger for emotional connection refuses to be denied. Without exception, this deep inner drive for connection with people requires of us to develop and practice healthy interdependency with others in order to prosper and flourish. There is no denying it, humans are hard-wired to attach in a non-romantic way.

Being dependent on others is an innate drive and evolutionary advantage necessary for survival. We take care of each other, provide a community, and share responsibilities. The fundemental drive for interdependence is so strong that a combination of their own persistence with the help of other people is what always characterizes people who thrive. We are indisputably social animals who rely upon and prosper from our interdependency, deriving a great deal of meaning in life from engaging, exchanging, and sharing with others.

As anyone who has ever been around toddlers emitting their constant stream of "whys" knows well, we are born curious. People help us to make sense of life through modeling, guidance, education, and inspiration. As humans, we also have a deep-seated psychological craving for approval, recognition, and affirmation from others that leaves us feeling good about ourselves. Very early on as children we develop, and ever after as adults refine, an acute awareness of our separate self as a being perceived and judged by others.

It is by developing mindful consciousness of how others perceive and judge us that we come to recognize our flaws and our strengths so that we might get along better with people. This knowledge helps us in realizing how accurately we value and rate ourselves across a wide range of talents, capacities, and social status. Studies have shown that the desire to feel worthy and valuable in the eyes of others trumps almost any other pleasant activity you can imagine. Feeling well liked and respected by others brings us a sense of happiness and fulfillment like nothing else. As the best moments in life are not those we see or hear, but rather those we feel, building lasting relationships based on mutual respect and affinity becomes vital to feeling happy and successful. Any way you look at it, humans are designed for relationships.

The hunger for approval begins first in our family and expands later into society. We seek out clues from others to learn our worth, our acceptability, and about our own self. Our primal drive for love and affection insists upon fulfillment through the nurturing of close bonds with family and friends. The movement of love is circular, and is not directed to abstractions, but to persons, to our own dear ones, our family, and to our friends and neighbors whom we live by, perhaps if not locally, in life and feeling. Love's power can't be bothered by geographical distance, for love has the capacity to transcend time, space, and circumstances, including physical separation and death. The primacy in life for giving love to and receiving love from others is as irrefutable as it is unstoppable, no matter how we define it.

By any definition, our capacity to give and receive love defines us not only as individuals, but also as a species, especially when pertaining to matters involving pairing off together as a couple. To further your understanding of love's influence upon people and society, to follow are brief descriptions of the most common types of love and their generalized impact upon us: Agape, Eros, Amorous, and Limerence.

Agape, or unselfish love, is defined by feelings of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend. Agape is also the pure and unconditional love that exemplifies the benevolent affection of Eternal God-Source-Nature towards man and man's reverent affection towards Eternal God-Source-Nature. Agape is said to be a selfless love that only wants the best for the other person, bringing happiness to those who bestow it.

On a decidedly more earthy level, eros, or the sexual and erotic type of love, is characterized by deeply infused sexual passion and desire, specifically for a person toward whom romantic or amorous love is felt. This quality of love is distinguished by profoundly tender feelings of sexual desire, attraction, and passionate affection for a beloved person or sweetheart. Eros isn't tranquil—it gives us spikes of happiness rather than a constant feeling of well-being, and can sometimes drive us to extremes.

Amorous, or romantic love, also referred toas "maturelove" or "companionate love," includes favorable thinking and feelings of tenderness, warmth, passion, and adoration, as well as intense love, affection and devotion that underlie a deep and enduring emotional regard for another person. Affection is fueled by a fondness for the beloved that is abidingly tender and calm, embodied by devotion that is sustained by intense love and steadfast, enduring loyalty to a person.

At its worst, romantic love is strongly addictive and is based on projecting onto another person our illusions of what we want in our mate. In short, we are often in love with our projections more than the person him or her self. At its best, romantic love is built upon the solid bedrock of unconditional love and positive regard. It emanates from a loving place that says no matter what you say or do, while I may not like or approve of it, my love for you is without conditions and will not be affected. This quality of love tastes all the sweeter to those long thirsting to drink from its goblet.

More often than not, our deep primal urges for connection first lead us to the romantic sexual kind of love, the so-called "mating mindset," more commonly referred to as the unmistakable condition of "being in love." Generally, we do this by way of joining hearts with our special somebody and entering as one into the pair-bonded unit of couplehood. Of all the many aspects of the human experience we call "love," probably the first association it evokes for the majority of readers is with this erotic, romantic kind of relationship that leaves us feeling "swept away" with passion and strong desire for reciprocation of one's amorous feelings.

Psychologist Dorothy Tennov has described this ultimate, near-obsessive romantic form of being in love in great depth, coining the term, "limerence" to define it. Essentially, limerence is a state of mind typically characterized by intrusive thinking coupled with intense feelings of attachment and preoccupation with the "love object" or "limerent other" (LO). Depending on whether one's feelings are reciprocated or not by the LO, it can either launch us to the moon or crush and bury us in our tracks.

The "limerent reaction," referring to the state of "being in love," begins usually with physical attraction and is typically experienced as an involuntary process. It thrives on hope and adversity, both of which increase the desirability of the LO and the person's preoccupation with them. When coupled with uncertainty—s/he loves me, s/he loves me not—it fuels our greatest pleasure and extreme euphoria even as it inflames our greatest agony and anxiety, namely, our inordinate doubts and fears of rejection.

As it turns out, if "loving attachment" is ultimately to endure and flourish, there needs to be much more besides mutual attraction and sexual satisfaction as the basis of love. Lasting love demands that we gradually wean ourselves from the champagne-fueled intoxication of reciprocation and basic instinct and drink from the thirst-quenching sweet water of reciprocity and conscious loving. Make no mistake, profoundly being in love with someone and loving someone profoundly and are two very different conditions. Being in love is akin to surfing the Big Waves of euphoric emotion, while loving someone profoundly is akin to planting both feet firmly upon the beachhead of reality. While each of these states of consciousness is as real as life comes, the intoxicating former gets more than a little help from Mother Nature's backstage release of the friendly "feel good" hormone oxytocin.

The neural hormone oxytocin—known variously as "the hormone of love," "cuddle chemical," and "the hormone of like"—usually soars within romantic and maternal relationships, and has a calming effect on the brain. It specifically targets the region responsible for emotions such as fear, anxiety, and distrust. In turn, these emotions "trigger feelings of safety, comfort, and empathy," all of which provide a big boost for romantic relationships as well as enhancing social interactions amongst family, friends, and even casual acquaintances. Among other things, oxytocin has been associated with the ability to bond with others as well as the ability to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships and healthy psychological boundaries with others.

Studies have shown that having oxytocin "available" during positive experiences—and not being depleted of it during negative experiences—is associated with well-being in relationships. To spike a surge in oxytocin other than through romantic and sexual touch or childbirth we are encouraged to play with a pet, care for family, friends, and neighbors, or simply call a friend or loved one. Doing so becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the more we reach out to others, the more oxytocin increases our desire and motivation to interact with others. A hormone that actually improves our social life, imagine that.

The condition of being in love is a special case of love as a general human capacity. The "mating mind" is a love with a personal focus in a very intense way. It has elements of obsession, compulsion, and possession as if by magical madness. It is telling that we speak of "falling in love" as if it was something happening outside of ourselves, like falling into a pond. Anthropologists have found that through the ages, varying concepts of love reflect the social structure and cultural practices of that time and place by conditioning all the ways of love. Still, love is consistently seen everywhere as a principle in which forces are exerted for unification and growth against opposing forces of hatred and disintegration.

Anthropologists have also found that throughout human history, underneath the many cultural variations, marriage has been the approved and preferred situation for "fully mature love" to take root. Although we no longer need marriage for economic security, marriage will survive because we need it for a sense of social security, continuity, and belonging. We expect so much out of marriage today, and yet we are often woefully unprepared for co-creating the kind of marriage we want. While all marriages are imperfect, more than ever couples are striving to make theirs more supportive, nurturing, rewarding, flexible, encouraging of growth, evolving, and greater enduring than in the past. That it so happens the holy grail of enduring partnered happiness is forged of these same elements within love's crucible is no coincidence.

For mature love to blossom requires that we first undergo a developmental process in which the limerent or "Eros" stage of love, defined as need-love in which the self and its own demands are emphasized, be replaced with feelings of reciprocity that emphasize each other's needs as much as those of our own. This form of love has been described as a serene love much more akin to friendship, with its reciprocal kindnesses and considerations. Each person loves the other for the happy experiences and pleasures they enjoy together, which in turn create deep-seated shared memories further strengthening the pair-bond in crucial ways. Be advised that only fully mature love makes for long-lasting relationships, and even then, that is assuming that one of the couple doesn't feel nostalgic for the hectic eros and go off to find it with someone else. That is the risk we take to love.

The achievement of mature love insists that our personal needs for independence, fulfillment, gratification, and idealization be transcended by a growing awareness and capacity that matures into mutual taking and giving, as these form the common components for all happy, stable relationships. Anyone who does not progress beyond the need-love stage remains emotionally infantile, as this is love based only on taking, never giving, and hence is unable ever to lead to lasting emotional fulfillment.

The source of love is the growth toward unity in all relationships. The defining element of a healthy and vibrant marriage is one that grows us in love. Development for giving and taking, the reciprocal demands and complimentary interchange of needs and fullness, can only occur within the "maturity of love" stage. Without it, there will inevitably be conflict and unhappiness. For maturity of love to develop and flourish requires that we reconcile our romantic idealism of love and all it brings with the recognition of the needs of others, without becoming overwhelmed by them in the process. As our potential for love is conditioned only by our growth, it is essential that we seek opportunities to develop ourselves in every way—mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually—that assist us to acknowledge and take into account the needs of others.

This requires that we think and act from a mature love mindset that loosens our death grip on self-absorbed needy love. We learn to make the effort to give to our partner out of concern and desire for their happiness that, at times, lead us temporarily to put ourself in the background. When we do it in the name of love, it isn't a sacrifice. Love as concern is care for the whole and not the part; it risks everything to preserve and conserve communal over individual goals, taking care to cultivate healthy interdependence. To succeed in this task requires that we develop empathy by consistently making the effort to view the world through our beloved's eyes as well as our own.

After all, it is only by consistently prioritizing one another's needs that we can become skilled with relating in ways that develop mutual concern and authentic desire to give to one another in a manner that develops, grows, and allows our love to thrive and strengthen our bond. We become each other's biggest supporters, bound by love expressed not so much in grand gestures, but in the sharing of countless, forgettable everyday moments.

Accordingly braced and bolstered in this manner prepares us to meet Love's Destroyer head-on with confidence in whatever form it manifests within our relationship. For assuredly, no matter how strong your bond, even in the happiest of unions, Love's Destroyer and its hydra-headed self will periodically manifest in hopes of wrecking havoc in your relationship-and when it does—you must slay it in its tracks before it slays your love.

Nothing is more effective in preparing a couple to overcome these predictable trials than the ongoing nurturing of all of the wonderful and fulfilling aspects of your relationship that have contributed to shaping and strengthening your bond. When it comes to destroy-proofing a relationship, mutual giving and taking form a shield of mature love that is impenetrable by anything unlike love. If we are to develop a sense of fusion and fulfillment within our union, we must learn to accept the hard facts of existence and mind the practical business of living and loving someone with-surprise!—their own set of needs, demands, and expectations. Alas, many of us never saw that one coming.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Volume II How to Win in Love & Get Along with Each Otherby Michael Ra Bouchard Copyright © 2011 by Michael Ra Bouchard, Ph.D.. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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