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

Hook Up, Make Up, & Break Up With Emotional IntelligenceBy Michael Ra Bouchard

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Michael Ra Bouchard, Ph.D.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-2250-2

Contents

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

Chapter One

Everyone Wants Love and Affection

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...