February 12, 2013
“Just as your body was designed to extract oxygen from the earth’s atmosphere, and nutrients from the foods you ingest, your body was designed to love. Love – like taking a deep breath or eating an orange when you’re depleted and thirsty – not only feels great but is also life-giving, an indispensable source of energy, sustenance, and health. When I compare love to food and oxygen, I’m not just taking poetic license. I’m drawing on science: new science that illuminates for the first time how love, and its absence, fundamentally alters the biochemicals in which your body is steeped.” (P4)
Barbara Fredrickson has been researching love for two decades. In her new book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do and Become she presents the idea that we all need to “upgrade” our idea of love. During her research she found that love is not exclusive, unconditional or long lasting. Instead love’s time scale is incredibly small, “it is best measured in seconds or minutes, not months or years” (p16) but is endlessly renewable.
“Although you may subscribe to a whole host of definitions of love, your body subscribes to just one: Love is that micro-moment of warmth and connection that you share with another living being.” (P10)
To fully maximize this fact we need to begin to understand love as our bodies do, as a warm connection that lives between two people, as an experience that we feel when we connect with another person, no matter if we have just met them or if they are our life partner.
“The new take on love that I want to share with you is this: Love blossoms virtually anytime two or more people – even strangers – connect over shared positive emotion -be it mild or strong.” (P17)
Fredrickson talks about “connecting over a shared positive emotion” being like a Startrek mind meld with more heart. Eye contact is essential for this connection to occur. Touch, conversation and smiling all add to the experience but eye contact is the most essential physical component to allow our bodies and brains to align and connect with another person. This means each time we allow ourselves to get on the same wavelength with another human by sharing a laugh, a sense of awe, delight, kindness or amusement we each get a little jolt of chemical goodness that affects us positively and this spirals to those around us.
“The sensory and temporal connections you establish with others through eye contact, touch, conversation..are not in and of themselves, love. ..Yet in the right contexts, these gestures become springboards for love. The right contexts are those infused with the emotional presence of positivity.” (P23)
Finally, love is not something that we experience on our own, it lives only between people. Our bodies don’t understand or register love when we think about it or remember it. We have to physically connect with another person or their voice for our bodies to register it. Love lives in connection with others, not as our own.
“Love, this new view tells us with some urgency, is something we should recultivate every morning, every afternoon, and every evening. Seeing love as positivity resonance motivates us to reach out for a hug more often or share an inspiring or silly idea or image over breakfast. In these small ways, we plant additional seeds of love that help our bodies, our well-being, and our marriage to grown stronger.” (P36)
All of this information points to how important it is to allow yourself moments to make eye contact, smile, find something to laugh about and allow yourself to connect with the humans you interact with. It reminds us that the ones you really do love need to be actively paid attention to, that we need to reach out, connect in person, on the phone or video chat preferably. That being in touch really does allow love to stay alive within relationships. It will make your life better, and theirs too. It reminds us that love doesn’t stay present once a ring is on a finger, but that the love between the two of you has to be constantly tended to each and every day. Each small act of laughter, hugging or “shared positive resonance” reminds both of your bodies that you share love. It is important, in fact, I’m pretty sure nothing else is as important as those moments.
“You can work as hard as you want, but if you are not connecting, you are not going to be successful or happy.” (P194)
The knowledge that we can create more love by taking a few more moments and connecting with those around us is an interesting and powerful piece of information that you get to decide what to do with.
Do you experience more love when you share micro-moments of connection with another?
Does this feel hopeful to you, like there is a pathway to creating more love in your life simply?
Does it make you want to recommit to adding in certain behaviors with those you love?
What are 3 small things you could do to create more love in your relationships? With whom and what will you commit to doing?
I’d love to know in the comments!
Hoping you experience a little more love this week, by peppering in a few extra good laughs, hugs and eye contact with the ones you love!
With so much love and a good strong hug!
Charlotte Mia Rose
January 30, 2013