Love 2.0 (27 page)

The path toward getting these new ideas on love from my mind into yours began when Brian McCorkle invited me to serve as a Templeton Research Fellow for a series on religious and psychological well-being at the Danielsen Institute at Boston University. With funding from the Metanexus Institute and the John Templeton Foundation, the Danielsen Institute invited me to deliver a series of six lectures at BU in early 2010. With appreciation, then, I acknowledge Brian and my hosts at the Danielsen Institute for planting the seeds for this book and supporting me to write it.

Richard Pine, of Inkwell Management, is my agent and so much more. He stepped in to serve as my initial editor, helping me to shave off the excesses of academic language and theory.
Love 2.0
would not exist without him. Also of Inkwell, I thank Lyndsey Blessing and Charlie Olsen, for helping get my ideas translated for foreign language readers.

Caroline Sutton, of Hudson Street Press and the Penguin Group,
has been an extraordinary editor. She was quick to see my strengths and weaknesses as a writer and to work with them with respectful equanimity. Also of Hudson Street Press and the Penguin Group, I thank John Fagan, Liz Keenan, Courtney Nobile, Ashley Pattison, and Brittney Ross for shaping and promoting
Love 2.0
in their various ways.

It’s one thing to study love and another thing to live it in the moment, wholeheartedly. I humbly admit to being more novice than expert when it comes to putting these ideas into action. Yet I’ve been blessed with many teachers, formal and informal, who have guided and inspired me to live with more heart each day. Among my formal teachers, I call out Sharon Salzberg, Guy Armstrong, Mark Coleman, and Sally Armstrong for the teachings they offered during a weeklong silent retreat on loving-kindness meditation that I sat in January 2010 at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. That experience was nothing short of soul-stirring. I also thank Rita Benn, Jeff Brantley, Mary Brantley, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Yun Lu, Sandra Finkel, Libby Outlaw, Jaime Powell, and Sharon Salzberg (again) for helping me to learn, both as a scholar and a human, about the practice of meditation. I’ve also learned so much about love, compassion, forgiveness—and color—through my lifelong friendship with my sister, Jeanne Gallaher. Plus I thank those who shared with me their heartfelt experiences of living with love through difficult passages—Donna, Erika, Laura, and Jeremy. I hope that their stories, which I present in part II of this book, will move and inspire you as much as they move and inspire me.

Still my most cherished teachers—my two sons, Crosby and Garrett, alongside my husband and soul mate, Jeff Chappell. We four have now been joined by my boys’ two “kitty boys”—Zeus and Apollo—who seem to know an awful lot about positivity resonance already. Every day I learn something new from my family about how to open my heart to love.

Singularly most inspiring and important of all, Jeff has, from the day we first met in that strawberry patch, taught me how love really works and opened my eyes to the poignant limits of my entrenched ivory tower habits. His natural gifts for seeing and acting from his heart, together with his courageous honesty, have taught me, year by year, to fully trust his instincts and wisdom, so much so that he was always the first to read and critique each word and chapter of this book. Just like our beloved ocean, my love for Jeff crests and renews endlessly, reinforcing our lifelong bond.

Recommended Reading

Brach, Tara (2003).
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha.
New York: Bantam.

Brantley, Mary and Hanauer, Tesilya (2008).
The Gift of Loving-Kindness: 100 Mindful Practices for Compassion, Generosity and Forgiveness.
Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.

Cacioppo, John T. and Patrick, William (2008).
Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection.
New York: W. W. Norton.

The Dalai Lama (2001).
An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life
. Boston: Little, Brown.

de Waal, Frans (2009).
The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society.
New York: Three Rivers Press.

Ehrenreich, Barbara (2009).
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.
New York: Metropolitan Books.

Fredrickson, Barbara L (2009).
Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive.
New York: Crown.

Germer, Christopher K. and Siegel, Ronald D. (eds.) (2012).
Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy: Deepening Mindfulness in Clinical Practice.
New York: Guilford.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja (2008).
The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want.
New York: Penguin.

Neff, Kristin (2011).
Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind.
New York: William Morrow.

Nhat Hahn, Thich (2007).
Living Buddha, Living Christ
(10th anniversary ed.). New York: Riverhead Books.

Salzberg, Sharon (2002).
Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience.
New York: Riverhead Books.

Salzberg, Sharon (2011)
Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation
. New York: Workman.

Index of Practices

Micro-moment Practices

Meditation Practices

Notes

Chapter 1

3     
The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow:
Margaret Atwood (1972).
Surfacing.
New York: Simon and Schuster.

5     
having at least one close relationship like this is vital to your health and happiness, to be sure:
James S. House, Karl R. Landis, and Debra Umberson (1988). “Social relationships and health.”
Science
241(4865): 540–45. See also Ed Diener and Martin E. P. Seligman (2002). “Very happy people.”
Psychological Science
13(1): 81–84.

8     
the two anchor points for my broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions:
I first introduced the broaden-and-build theory to the scientific community in 1998. It has since become the most widely cited scientific explanation for why we humans have positive emotions in the first place. Barbara L. Fredrickson (1998). “What good are positive emotions?”
Review of General Psychology
2: 300–319; see also Barbara L. Fredrickson (2001). “The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory.”
American Psychologist
56: 218–226.

8     
my first book
,
Positivity
:
Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive
(2009). New York: Crown.

9     
lies within momentary experiences of connection:
My focus on connection is inspired in part by the work of my colleague Jane Dutton, who has persuasively
highlighted the importance of “high-quality connections” within organizations. She and I share the view that good interpersonal connections have vital physical correlates that contribute to health, although she and I differ on whether it’s fruitful to identify such moments as instances of love. See her 2003 book,
Energize Your Workplace.
Jossey-Bass. See also Emily D. Heaphy and Jane E. Dutton (2008). “Positive social interactions and the human body at work: Linking organizations and physiology.”
Academy of Management Review
33(1): 137–162.

10   
casting love as shared positive emotion doesn’t go nearly far enough:
In
Positivity
(2009), I only scratched the surface by identifying love as any positive emotion shared within a safe interpersonal connection.

10   
crosses emotions science with relationship science:
From emotions science, I draw the view that love, like all emotions, is a momentary, biobehavioral response to changing circumstances, whether real or imagined. In other words, love is not lasting. I depart from traditional emotions science, though, by elevating love above other emotions, calling it our supreme emotion. There is no precedence for this in emotions science, which takes specific, discernable emotions—fear, anger, joy, pride—as roughly equal-status categories, each holding value for human survival in its own unique way. Under this democratic logic, no emotion is set apart as on an altogether different plane or scale of importance, not even love. That’s an idea I draw from relationship science, which unabashedly positions love relationships as larger, more special than ordinary relationships. Yet as I’ve suggested already, I part company with traditional relationship scientists by not defining or confining love to enduring or intimate relationships.

10   
invested in this other person’s well-being:
Kevin E. Hegi and Raymond M. Bergner (2010). “What is love? An empirically-based essentialist account.”
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
27(5): 620–36. Not all attention paid to others is so benevolent. Earlier in my career, I articulated and investigated the damage caused by a very different form of other-focus, one I now see as the polar opposite of love. This was sexual objectification, which you could describe as investment in the
physical appearance and sexuality
of another person for
one’s
own
sake, one’s own pleasure. See Barbara L. Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts (1997). “Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks.”
Psychology of Women Quarterly
21(2): 173–206. See also Barbara L. Fredrickson, Lee Meyerhoff Hendler, Stephanie Nilson, Jean Fox O’Barr, and Tomi-Ann Roberts (2011). “Bringing back the body: A retrospective on the development of objectification theory.”
Psychology of Women Quarterly
35(4): 689–96.

11   
a yearlong interdisciplinary faculty seminar on integrative medicine:
This was spearheaded by Dr. Rita Benn, director of education at the University of Michigan’s Integrative Medicine Program. Encouraged by my friend and colleague Professor Jane Dutton, I joined the Integrative Medicine Faculty Scholars Program in 2004–5. It was through this program that I was introduced to the work of Sandra Finkel, a longtime meditation instructor who eventually became my research collaborator.

12   
warmed their connections with others:
Barbara L. Fredrickson, Michael A. Cohn, Kimberly A. Coffey, Jolynn Pek, and Sandra Finkel (2008). “Open hearts build lives: Positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
95(5): 1045–1062.

12   
these connections that most affected their bodies, making them healthier:
Bethany E. Kok and Barbara L. Fredrickson (2010). “Upward spirals of the heart: Autonomic flexibility, as indexed by vagal tone, reciprocally and prospectively predicts positive emotions and social connectedness.”
Biological Psychology
85: 432–36. See also Bethany E. Kok, Kimberly A. Coffey, Michael A. Cohn, Lahnna I. Catalino, Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk, Sara B. Algoe, Mary Brantley, and Barbara L. Fredrickson (in press). “How positive emotions build physical health: Perceived positive social connections account for the upward spiral between positive emotions and vagal tone.”
Psychological Science
.

12   
a steady diet of love influences how people grow and change:
See the randomized controlled trial that my colleagues and I presented in Fredrickson et al. (2008).

13   
Your upward spirals lift you higher and faster:
Lahnna I. Catalino and Barbara L. Fredrickson (2011). “A Tuesday in the life of a flourisher: The role of positive emotional reactivity in optimal mental health.”
Emotion
11(4): 938–50. Stay tuned also for Lahnna Catalino’s emerging doctoral dissertation work on prioritizing positivity.

14   
age, measured as time since birth, provides no guarantees for maturity or wisdom:
See work by Paul B. Baltes and Ursula M. Staudinger (2000). “Wisdom: A metaheuristic (pragmatic) to orchestrate mind and virtue toward excellence.”
American Psychologist
55(1): 121–136.

Chapter 2

15   
Love is brief, but frequently recurring:
François de la Rochefoucauld (1959).
Maxims.
Translated by Leonard Tancock. London: Penguin Books.

16   
you can revive them later through conversation:
Bernard Rimé (2009). “Emotion elicits the social sharing of emotion: Theory and empirical review.”
Emotion Review
1(1): 60–85.

17   
or cheer at a football game:
Some scholars have singled out experiences of mass euphoria as unique. Jonathan Haidt and colleagues, for instance, suggest that such experiences reveal that humans, similar to hive creatures like bees, at times follow a “hive psychology” in which they benefit from losing themselves within a much larger social organism, like the crowd at a football game, music festival, or religious revival. While I share Haidt’s appreciation of the self-transcendence that can emerge from the “group love” experienced in small or large crowds, unlike Haidt, I see this as an extension of the oneness that also emerges within micro-moments of positive connection experienced within pairs. For additional descriptions of “group love” see the 2006 book by Barbara Ehrenreich,
Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy.
Metropolitan Books.