November 22, 2016
Interview with Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, author of the book Love 2.0
Mike Carruthers:
Scientifically speaking love is the result of micro-moments of shared positivity.
Dr. Barbara Fredrickson:
We have data to suggest that the more moments like this people have in their day the healthier they become in terms of their cardiovascular functioning. And the more they grow and change and become better versions of themselves.
Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, author of the book Love 2.0, says when you put your mind to it you can come up with a lot of ways to have more shared positive moments with people.
Some of them are as simple as taking time at the end of each day to think through, “Who are the people that you spent the most time with?” Ok, now thinking of that set of people how connected and attune did you feel to them? When people ask themselves this question every night for a month we see improvements in cardiovascular health.
What often gets in the way of creating more positive moments with people is our tendency to focus on the negative.
There’s a boatload of research in psychology that goes under the banner that bad is stronger than good. Negative things just grab our attention. And if we don’t recognizes that asymmetry between bad and good we can become overcome by the bad.
Dr. Fredrickson’s research suggests that we might want to shift how we think about love.
Taking on this new concept of finding love in a moment rather than finding the love of your life just changes the way you interact with others.
