Love 2.0 (14 page)

This surprise finding inspired a key part of my student Bethany Kok’s dissertation. To gather definitive data on whether the one-minute thought exercise of considering how “close” and “in tune” people feel when interacting with others in fact generates important emotional and biological changes, Bethany randomly assigned working adults to reflect daily either on their social connections in this manner or on the three tasks on which they spent the most time that day and to evaluate how “useful” and “important” those tasks had felt to them. Remarkably, here again, we observed increases in day-to-day positive emotions and end-of-study vagal tone, but only in the group assigned to reflect on social connections. Clearly something powerful was embedded within this simple thought exercise.

Bethany and I suspect that the real active ingredient runs deeper than merely the end-of-the-day reflection. We speculate that the daily
question serves as a subtle cue that reminds people that each of their social interactions is indeed an opportunity for something more than just an exchange of goods or information. With this in mind, people may begin to approach each interaction with a bit more presence, aiming to cultivate heartfelt connection rather than miss out on it. This speculation merits direct test, because it’s also possible that people don’t change their behaviors at all, but simply become more sensitive to the positive connections that already exist for them, more likely to notice and prioritize them.

I encourage you to try this exercise out for yourself. A small shift in attention like this could well lead to large changes in your overall health and well-being.

Try This Micro-moment Practice: Reflect on
Your Social Connections

Each night, for a few weeks, review your entire day and call to mind the three longest social interactions you had that day. Thinking of these three interactions all together, consider how true each of the following two statements is for you:

Rate the truth of these two statements on a scale from 1 to 7, on which 1 =
not at all true
, and 7 =
very true
. You may record your responses anywhere, for instance in a notebook or computer spreadsheet that you create. Or you can use the online recording tools on the website that accompanies this book by visiting
www.PositivityResonance.com
. One benefit of recording your responses online is that you
can also choose to rate your emotions each day, and thereby, as the weeks progress, you can see whether your positivity ratio rises in step with your greater attention to social connections.

Donna’s Story

Not long ago, I shared this preliminary finding on the impact of merely reflecting on social connections with Donna, a friend of mine who for years has been trying out new tools for increasing well-being. At the time, Donna had been facing a series of setbacks and disappointments at work and had lost some close, work-based friendships. Being single, she also felt emotionally isolated. With her stress levels at an all-time high, she was losing sleep, feeling lethargic, and had little remaining self-confidence. She was feeling her absolute worst at a time when she needed a lot of strength just to get through a workday. Over breakfast, I shared with her that Bethany and I had serendipitously stumbled upon what we thought might be a bouillon cube version of our loving-kindness interventions: a condensed, minute-long thought exercise that might well yield comparable results.

Having tried out several other positive psychology interventions, Donna was immediately curious. She asked more about the technique. I shared that what our participants had done was extraordinarily simple—just answer those two questions about their three longest social interactions of the day. Donna soaked up our fresh data with great interest and wondered how her own life might be different if her three longest interactions each day were life-giving rather than life-draining, sources of strength rather than disappointment. Right then, she transformed our accidental finding into her own, self-styled well-being intervention. She set herself a new goal of seeking out at least three interactions each day that held positivity resonance. While she could hardly control the influx of uncertainty and setbacks in her
day-to-day life, she could strive to cultivate more loving connections each day.

As someone who lives alone, Donna’s new goal was challenging to pull off. But the initial payoff was high enough to keep her engaged. While she’d never kept up with the “three good things” exercise commonly used in positive psychology, in which you write down at the end of each day three things that went well that day and consider why each happened, she did stick with her own “three loving connections” exercise. Several weeks later she wrote me a note to say that she found it made a “huge difference” in her life. She also found that love breeds confidence and strength. The more loving interactions she had, the better prepared she was to face her difficult days at work.

Donna observed that her self-styled “three loving connections” activity did two things for her. First, it made her look for people she enjoys being with and inspired her to enhance those relationships. She shared with me, for instance, that after a particularly stressful day, she now would often call her twentysomething niece, just to see what she’s been up to lately and share some giggles. As her phone calls to her niece became more frequent, their relationship grew deeper and stronger. Other family and friends became closer and her relationships with them became more healthy and helpful. The other effect of her “three loving connections” activity was that she now found herself looking for ways to make the difficult relationships in her life better. Her positive and powerful relationships with family and friends had become the new normal in her life, and she strove to make even the difficult relationships in her life better. She had a strong foundation of loving relationships to support her in this endeavor.

I had the chance to have lunch with Donna nearly a year later. I asked how she was doing, and she said she was doing great. Her demeanor concurred. She seemed far more relaxed and cheerful than she had during that breakfast at which I first shared with her my lab’s
serendipitous discovery. Later, I learned that setbacks and disappointments were still streaming into her life. As I listened to her recount them, I thought they might even be worse. The difference, she said, was that now she was able to let these recurrent sources of negativity simply roll by. They didn’t get under her skin. With her decisive focus on cultivating three loving connections each day, she’d created more spaciousness in her mind and generosity in her heart for facing these ongoing difficulties. Although still single, she discovered that love comes in many different forms. She knew she was a special part of her family, even if they were miles away. She had also cultivated special relationships with a few families in her neighborhood. And she had found that not all of her work relationships were doomed to be difficult, but discovered some good friends there, also.

Try This Micro-moment Practice: Create
Three Loving Connections

Recall how energizing and rewarding it can be to really connect with somebody, sharing a flow of thoughts and feelings with ease. As your day unfolds, seek out at least three opportunities to connect with others like this, with warmth, respect, and goodwill. Opportunities may spring up at home, at work, in your neighborhood, or out in your community. Wherever you are, open toward others, freely offering your attention, creating a sense of safety, through eye contact, conversation, or, when appropriate, touch. Share your own lighthearted thoughts and feelings, and stay present as the other person shares theirs. Afterward, lightly reflect on whether that interchange led you to feel the oneness of positivity resonance, even to a small degree. Creating the intention to seek out and create more micro-moments of loving connection can be another tool for elevating your health and well-being.

Loving-Kindness Meditation

Back in
chapter 1
, I first underscored the power of a particular meditation practice, known as loving-kindness meditation, or LKM. LKM is an activity, honed over millennia in various Buddhist traditions, designed to condition your heart to be more open and loving. Although Buddhist in origin, LKM can be used to deepen any faith tradition, or be practiced without one. Here, throughout part II, I show you the ropes for how to practice LKM yourself. In each chapter, I introduce one or more facets of LKM, each designed to stretch your goodwill in new directions. Before I turn to the first meditation activity, however, I offer a few framing thoughts to help you get the most out of LKM, especially if you are completely new to it. As a preparatory tool for creating positivity resonance, LKM is well worth trying out. My research program confirms that it can open up many fresh possibilities for you.

First and foremost, LKM helps you recondition your habitual ways of responding to others. Odds are you cruise through much of your day wrapped up in a cocoon of self-absorption, tightly woven with all of your wishes, plans, and goals of the moment. You consider what you’ll wear, eat, and do, and where you’ll go. You prioritize things on your to-do list. You puzzle over what you’ll say in an upcoming encounter that you suspect may be difficult. You, after all, are the lead character in the play that is your own day and life. Others play bit parts. They are not particularly consequential to the overall arch of your plotline, and by consequence they often undergo little character development in the script that your mind follows. You sometimes even treat them as though they were mere props, inanimate objects that populate the setting, yet bear no real importance to you or your day. Why wouldn’t it be this way? The play is all about you.

You see where the illustration is going. Each person is, after all, the star of his or her own play and day. If you dropped the script of your
own day and picked up the script of another person’s day, this other person would suddenly undergo considerable character development. You’d come to appreciate his or her own wishes, plans, and goals. You’d understand that this person isn’t merely a bit part or prop, but rather fully human, like you. Just like you, this person is full of yearnings and strivings, hopes and insecurities. This is true of every person. It’s equally true of all those with whom you cross paths, as well as all those you’ll never meet, not even once.

LKM opens the doors of perception to break you out of your cocoon of self-absorption and restore others to their full humanity. It challenges your natural tendency to treat others like props or thinly developed characters who play only bit parts in your own self-centered play. By widening your awareness, LKM opens your eyes, mind, and heart to seeing others more fully, with warmth, kindness, and tender wishes for their well-being. The practice expands your outlook in ways that help you create the safety and connection between you and another that can seed positivity resonance.

Like other meditation practices, LKM involves quiet contemplation in a seated posture, often with eyes closed and an initial focus on the breath and the heart region. You might start by setting an alarm to chime softly after ten or so minutes, so that you can experiment without concern for the time. As the practice becomes more familiar and comfortable, you can experiment with longer meditation times, aiming for twenty to twenty-five minutes of daily practice whenever possible. I’m not suggesting that you become a monk. Keep in mind that randomized controlled trials from my lab and others have revealed a wide array of benefits after just a few months of practicing LKM for an average of sixty minutes a week, which translates into three to four times a week for just fifteen to twenty minutes each.

LKM is a bit like guided imagery, although the practice targets loving feelings more than visual images per se. You encourage those warm feelings to rise up by repeating a set of phrases—silently, to
yourself—each of which is a wish for another’s well-being. To some, LKM may at first blush seem fake, like saccharin, or unrealistic. Or it may feel forced, like your smile when you’re getting your passport picture taken. These are understandable misimpressions of the practice. Although it may seem as though your goal in LKM is to fabricate positivity, the truth is, that’s not even possible. You can no more conjure up an emotion directly out of thin air than you could right now, sitting as you are, conjure up pain in your left shin. What you can do, however, is set the stage for positivity. You do this by contemplating certain thoughts and wishes and then being open to the positive sentiments that may arise out of those thoughts and wishes. You set your intentions and then see what follows from that.

Some people, when they first learn of the science of positive emotions, think they should make their motto “Be positive.” I advise against this, strongly. When you enact this motto, even with good intentions, you can inadvertently create a toxic insincerity that is harmful to both you and others. It’s like papering over the messy reality of being human with a simple yellow smiley face. Indeed, studies show that striving too hard for happiness backfires. Better than making your motto “Be positive” is to lightly adopt the mind-set of positivity. I find “Be open” to be a better motto. It can serve as a touchstone for attitude adjustment in most every circumstance.

Openness is especially important to the practice of LKM. Although you might begin a session of LKM intending to create warm and tender feelings of care, it’s important not to cling to this goal too tightly. The idea is, instead, to be open to whatever arises. Sometimes it may actually feel as though your heart is expanding within your chest, overflowing with tenderness and concern for others. Other times you might feel next to nothing. Both responses are normal. The best way to avoid the damaging effects of insincere positivity, or an oppressively saccharin LKM session, is to accept whatever feelings authentically arise within you. Pay special heed to the feelings that arise from within
your body. Your mind, after all, can all too readily fall into a trap of wishful thinking. You may so dearly wish to feel loving feelings that your mind fools you into thinking that you do. Your body isn’t so tricky. As you practice LKM, learn to trust the sensations within your body more than the thoughts within your mind.