PNTV: Love 2.0 by Barbara Fredrickson (#354)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another episode of Philosopher's Notes. TV Today, another great book, Love 2.0 by Barbara Fredrickson. Love 2.0 subtitle Creating Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection. Barbara Fredrickson is one of the world's leading positive psychologists. She wrote a great book called Positivity and this one she studies the science of well being. So she's looking at things like how joy and hope and gratitude and love affect our lives and our well being. I've read a lot of books. Obviously this one is on the top of the list of books that have most personally transformed me as an introvert who can easily exist within my cocoon, which we'll talk about in a moment. This one really opened me up to the possibility of what Barbara called micro moments of positivity resonance, which brings us to our first big idea. So Philosopher's Note, bunch of big ideas, five of my favorites here. Let's talk about the difference between love 1.0 versus love 2.0. So love 1.0 is everything our culture tells us. It's all the songs on the radio, all the TV shows and the drama and the idea that our love is basically exclusively for people in our family, our spouse, our kids, our best friends. That's love 1.0. This idea that love is somehow connected to that dynamic. Barbara tells us we're actually wired for love. We're wired for connection and for warmth. She calls those moments when we connect even with a stranger in a positive, warm way, micro moments of positivity resonance. And she says the science is unequivocal. It changes our very biochemistry, our minds, our hormones, oxytocin and our vagus nerve, which we're going to talk about down here in significant ways that significantly boosts our well being. It's very simple. We're wired for love. But again, not just in this love 1.0 way, but in this love 2.0 way that there are moments within our lives that exist basically all day, every day. To experience these connections. That's our big difference here. We're going to talk about the details. So what gets in the way of that? Those moments of positivity resonance? Well, smartphones would be one short answer. If you're constantly looking at your phone and checking in there and you're not even present to the possibility of making connections with people, you're going to miss those opportunities. If you're in the checkout line and you're too busy looking at your screen to see what's going on there. That you're not even connecting with the individual who's helping check you out. For example, you miss a moment, a micro moment of positivity resonance. And those micro moments are really, really powerful. What Barbara tells us to think about is that we often exist within what she calls a cocoon or of self absorption, whether it's on a smartphone or in our heads, which is my preferred place to kind of distance myself from being connected. For example, before I read this book, I would go on my trail, and I read this now, I don't know, a year, maybe a year and a half ago, even two years ago now, I would go on my trail hike, right? And I would kind of be in my mind and just really focused on getting done. So I'd start, and I'd kind of go through my routine, Boom, done. I'd say hi to people. I wouldn't be rude, but I wouldn't take the moment to really connect. I read this book, I realized, wow, I spent a lot of time in my cocoon of self absorption. How do I get out of that and create these micro moments of positivity resonance? And it's been amazing for me to actually make it a practice, which is our final big idea here. And the theme of the book is learning to create these moments of positivity, resonance, of connection and warmth. A skill. Love is a skill that can be practiced. So I wound up deliberately looking for these opportunities to love. And as a side note, in our Movement 101 class, we talked about Michelle Seeger's idea that you want to find opportunities to move, right? And we talked about the fact this is a bit of a tangent, but there's movement, there's exercise, right? So we want to find movement opportunities all day, every day. Opportunities to move. OTMs is what Michelle Seeger called him. Well, for me, after reading this book, I thought about otls opportunities to love. How do I find these little micro moments of connection? So I literally actively sought them out, which is what Barbara recommends we do to make this our prevailing desire to live from a place of openness and connection and love. Again, long story, a little shorter. Among many different little micro moments, one of my favorites is a group of women who hikes in the morning on the same trail that I do, and they're there almost every single morning, just like me. And we often meet each other at the exact same time. Now, the old me before this book would have said hi, but I wouldn't have really made an effort to connect, right? I would have seen him in passing, but the new me with this book, I slowed down a little bit and said hi. And it's been amazing to me. It's been over a year since I started this practice with them. And to see just the sweetness. It's still never more than like maybe a minute, two, three, four, five minutes maybe that we connect. But there's just this sweetness of connection that's really grown over that period of time and demonstrated to me the power of taking the time. I do little things. We live in a town that's kind of a vacation spot. I like to. When people look a little confused, they're looking on their phones and you can tell they're kind of trying to figure out where they want to go. I deliberately say, hey, do you need any help? Little micro moment of positivity, resonance, a little bit of warmth, a little bit of connection goes a very, very long way. So we want to exit our cocoon of self absorption, find those otls, the opportunities to love throughout our day. There are two different types of love. A lot of different types of love, obviously, but two types that Barbara talks about that struck me the most deeply. One is compassionate and the other is celebratory. So compassionate love is something we can practice often as well. Oftentimes people are struggling. We're all struggling in one way or another. A good thing to remind ourselves of, right? And oftentimes it's apparent, either in people with whom we're close or people we might just see passing on the street. We might see someone who's clearly having a rough day, or we can use that as an opportunity to give them compassionate love. And Barbara has a number of beautiful mantras. May you be happy, may you be healthy, et cetera. And actually beaming them. Love, compassionate love. Then there's celebratory love, which I love. Barbara describes this as gratitude's generous cousin. So gratitude, we know, is a very, very powerful emotion to experience, right? Keeping a gratitude journal, even just five things you're grateful for or once a week, boosts your happiness significantly. Gratitude is huge, and you appreciate the things that are awesome in your life, she says. Gratitude's generous cousin, celebratory love, is celebrating the things in other people that are clearly going well. So if you see someone walking who's got a spring in their step, they're looking good, they look pretty happy. Beam them. Love. May you continue to experience that level of joy and awesomeness in your life. Or maybe in an intimate relationship, your spouse or your kids are excited about something. Celebrate them. Celebrate their awesomeness, right? Gratitude's generous cousin. We're not in this cocoon of self absorption. We're celebrating other people's awesomeness. And again, you can do that all day, every day. When we make it a conscious practice. And we want to know too, that how we deal with someone's success actually a more important litmus test for the quality of the relationship and the health of the relationship than even how we deal with their challenges. We want to meet our spouse and our kids and celebrate them and be that inspirational source of continued support. So celebratory love, compassionate love. Fourth big idea is our vagus nerve. So Barbara walks us through the science of how creating these micro moments of positivity resonance. Yes, I know I'm repeating myself. Changes your physiology again in your brain, your hormones, oxytocin, etc. And your vagus nerve. So your vagus nerve is your tenth cranial nerve, right? It comes out of your brain stem and it wanders. So vagus literally means wanderer. So your vagus nerve wanders throughout your body and it literally goes to your heart, to your lungs, to your gut, et cetera. The point that Barbara makes in the book is that your vagus nerve literally connects your mind and your heart. It's just it physiologically connects your mind and your heart. And when you practice these micro moments of positive resonance, these opportunities to connect and be warm with people in everyday situations, you're literally improving the connection between your mind and your heart. You're improving what's called your vagal tone. And your vagal tone is connected to everything that you want. Your ability to deal with life's challenges, to meet life head on, to act creatively, etc. All the things that you want to see in your life are going to be correlated to the health of your vagal tone. You can improve your vagal tone through meditation throughout, through deep breathing and through your nutrition. We're going to talk about this in an episode soon. Your vagal nerve goes obviously down, but it also goes up. And there's actually, I think, something crazy like nine times more fibers going up from your gut to your brain than the other way around. So you truly have a second brain that's going up via your vagus nerve. But in this context, we want to focus on the fact that, that when you open up, you put your smartphone away and you look for actively opportunities to connect, you're improving your vagal tone, which is a very, very wise thing to do. Which leads us to our final idea here. So Barbara has some great wisdom in the book. One of them is that you can't make this a once in a while thing. She talks about nature, acting on certain things in the world. Right. If it's a once off thing, if you actually do this once, okay, great. That's like eating one piece of broccoli. That's not going to improve your health. Right? But if you make this what she calls your prevailing desire, your prevailing desire is to live from a place of love. Magic happens and her very specific exercises. Look for three micro moments and opportunities today to connect with somebody doesn't need to be a big deal. Just slow down, say hi, and find opportunities to connect in very, very small ways. Again, we're talking like 15, 30, 45, 60 seconds. But science is unequivocal. It's going to change things in a way we want to. We're going to feel more alive, more vibrant, more connected to others and to the world. So look for three things you can do today if you're feeling it to, to create those connections. And again, the number one thing obstacle is your cocoon. Oftentimes our cocoon has that smartphone in it. Put your smartphone away deliberately. Look for opportunities that can be compassionate, it can be celebratory. You're gonna get your vagus nerve toned up and you're gonna practice love 2.0. There you go. Quick look at this great book. Highly recommend it and and I hope you enjoyed it. I'm sending lots of love your way. I appreciate you and your support and I hope you have an awesome day. See you. Isn't it a bit odd that we went from math to science to history, but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch up. But if you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life so you can actualize your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on how to optimize your life and pull out the big ideas that can really change your life. You know those sections, you underline an asterisk and mark all up. Then imagine that guy me connecting those awesome ideas to other great books and helping you actually apply the wisdom to your life today. Well, that's what I do with something we call philosopher's notes, where I've distilled hundreds of great books into 20 minute super practical summaries. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in hour long Optimal Living 101 classes on everything from productivity, purpose and confidence to nutrition, goal setting and conquering procrastination. Helping you optimize every facet of your life so you can actualize your potential. You've got a personal trainer. I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient wisdom, modern science and practical tools. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. If you're feeling it, we'd love to have you join us.