Love ...And the Passion Slaves

What is Love?

Love can be truly unconditional and impossible to measure like that of a love between a mother and a child. Love has also many dimensions to it and can change from one relationship to another. For some it’s a kind of madness, an adrenalin rush of emotions that makes an ordinary life seem less so and if asked to define love they may look to Hollywood for help.

Love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without. If you don't start with that, what are you going to end up with? Fall head over heels. I say find someone you can love like crazy and who'll love you the same way back - Movie: Meet Joe Black (1998)

Love Addiction

The kind of love referred to in quote above is romantic love and it is the most powerful sensation you will ever feel. In romantic love, you develop an intense attachment to another and will do all kinds of crazy things to be with your love, to have their love, to be their only love. It’s staying up all night together talking, and whizzing through work the following day feeling energised and totally hyped waiting to spend more time with your loved one. If you’re feeling this way now about someone be reassured, you’re not completely mad. Scientists tell us these intense feelings of passion have a biological basis to them and when in a heightened state of romantic love your body is literally flooded with amphetamine like chemicals. Your focus becomes finely tuned like a heat-seeking missile with one direction only -towards that of your loved one. You’re constantly thinking about the person you’ve decided is ‘the one.’ You are love addicted

Euphoria

In this euphoric state, you idealise your loved one, bestowing on them qualities and attributes far beyond what any one human being could possess. If, through this fog you see your loved one has imperfections you minimise them, even considering them adorable. At last, you say, my dreams are finally realised; this is the person that will make me feel whole, the soulmate I’ve been waiting for. And because your feelings are so intense you convince yourself that what you’re feeling is real. This madness, this addiction you declare to all must be love.

Burn Out

However, with every high, there is a low and although the euphoric period varies with each couple, it will end at some point. It's nature's way of preventing us from burning out completely. While making all those grand gestures is fun even exhilarating it can become exhausting. And so you enter the next stage of the relationship, the low, the period of disillusionment.

Do I Know You?

For some the period of disillusionment is unsettling and questions surface like, ‘Who is this person I’m with?’ Realisation has dawned that your soulmate sees things differently to you, has opinions that are at odd with yours, and most perplexing of all they can be boring/loud/obnoxious or silly at times. This is a time for you to move on quickly, feeling justified in doing so by a belief that says without the high, something is wrong with the relationship. ‘I got it wrong, he/she wasn’t right for me.'

Acceptance
Others will move from the period of disillusionment into the next phase the ‘mature love’ stage. This is when the relationship takes on deeper meaning; it's a place of calm, friendship, commitment, intimacy and most of all acceptance of one another -just as you are. It’s having faith and trust in one another that if you’re worried, concerned, or vulnerable there is someone who will listen and hear you.

Love - A Decision?

While you might not want to hear this, when you tell yourself “I can’t help how I feel,” the truth is you can! When we speak of love, we tend to think of our heart yet love does not come from the heart it comes from the brain. It is a cognitive process...and it involves choice. 

I am making a decision to no longer love you or

I am making a decision to love you.

Love is not a feeling ...the reality is, it is an action, an activity and it requires courage, effort, wisdom and practice. 

For the passion slaves not realising this, the search for the 'real' soulmate will continue for as long as they believe the problem lies with the person they love rather than their ideas about love or the expectations they set for a partner. Equally, happiness, for them, will remain elusive as it soars and dives with each love addiction. 

Happiness Newsletter March 2010

Welcome to the Happiness Newsletter - March 2010

-From Carole Smith at Type Dynamics

Hi there,

According to Martin Seligman, if we are to achieve happiness in our lives we must recognise there are four key components:

• A Meaningful Life
• Authenticity  
• Purpose in Life
• Strengths (Signature strengths e.g. integrity, kindness)

In this month's newsletter, I am concentrating on ‘meaning.’ Specifically, what is a meaningful life and how does it contribute to our overall happiness levels?

As always, I hope the content provokes questions or thoughts for you but most of all that you enjoy the newsletter.

And don’t forget I very much welcome any comments or feedback you may have.

Regards,

Carole

Email: carolesmith@typedynamics.ie / Website: http://www.typedynamics.ie/

Happiness Newsletter Feb 2010

Hello Again,



As we’ve recently celebrated St. Valentine’s Day I though this month I’d look at some of the ideas we have about a day that is dedicated to lovers the world over.

I hope you enjoy this months newsletter and as ever I am always interested in hearing your comments or thoughts so feel free to email me as I welcome all feedback.


Regards,

Carole

Website: http://www.typedynamics.ie/

Happiness Newsletter Jan 2010

Hello Again,


As we are beginning a new year, a new decade even I want to wish you a truly Happy 2010 from Type Dynamics.

Last year pushed many of us into having to reassess and rethink our views around various aspects of our lives. For some there has been a lot of change, some good, some not so good but as we enter into 2010 there is a sense of some confidence creeping back into our communal psyche. Ever the optimist I am looking forward to 2010 as a year that will bring new challenges and with it growth and new learning for all of us.

This months newletter is about how when we connect with others it can lead to increased happiness and wellbeing.

I hope you enjoy it and as always your comments are always welcome.

Regards,

Carole

Happiness Newsletter Dec 2009

Guess what ....our natural state is that of happiness!


When I first heard this, frankly I was the skeptic (most probably not the only one) within the group who thought the very nice speaker just a little daft to believe this. I remember wanting to say, “So, my natural state is happiness is it? Well, you don’t know me then.” However, as I listened then and many other times since I began to understand what it was I was been gently told.

This month’s newsletter teases out the idea that happiness is in fact our natural way of being. For some it may seem too difficult an idea to embrace easily but perhaps the following might provoke some questions and some insights for you.

I hope you enjoy.

Carole

Welcome to the new Happiness Blog
- from Carole at Type Dynamics

I've been thinking for some time now about putting together a blog and I decided as my favourite subject is around the whole area of happiness I thought why not share what I'm learning with you. Doesn't everyone need a little happiness?

However, as I started to look more intently at this subject I realised how little I knew about happiness and in particular authentic happiness.

When I thought of happiness I linked it with events or people in my life - times that had been
good. If l wasn't looking back for happiness I was looking forward and being hopeful about future happiness. But what about the here and now..... the present?

I then found myself posing the follow questions "Am I happy right now." or "Do I even know what is it to be happy?"

Finding answers to these questions challenged me to research from a wide variety of psychologists and philosophers the true meaning of happiness and as I did it provoked quite a bit of personal introspection and new self-awareness. I'm also still learning!

Carole

Shopping - The New Religion

According to the psychologist Erich Fromm, in our effort to break away from a feudal past we
embraced our new freedom to pursue wealth and comfort believing it to lead to unrestricted happiness. In effect, consumerism became the new religion and happiness equalled “unlimited consumption.”

As a result what became important was not who we were but instead what we had. Happiness was something transient and external to us, something to pursue, wish or pine for.... “I was happy then”....“I will be happy when....”

That brings us back to those mistaken ideas I mentioned earlier. Many of these ideas or beliefs we own begin with the words “If I had ......I would be happy.”

• If I had more money I’d be happier.
• When I find a partner I’ll be happy then.
• If I had that house/car/holiday home I’d be happy.
  

Beliefs similar to those above makes happiness seem elusive to us. It’s somewhere out there in our future, dictated by events, people or circumstances outside our control. And yet what we’re hearing from a new breed of positive psychologists is that happiness is not determined wholly by external circumstances but by our internal influences (Seligman). In other words ......

Happiness is an inside job....or a state of mind!

Yet if that is true then why is it so many of us hold on to mistaken ideas or beliefs about happiness? Is it simply easier for us to relinquish responsibility for our happiness, to blame others instead and hear ourselves complain ’It’s not my fault I’m unhappy....it’s yours.’

Creating Steps to a Happier Life


Step 1 - Letting Go of Happiness Misconceptions

Taking back control of our own happiness is a process and if you’re willing then you’re already on your way to a happier life. But first it means a letting go of those mistaken ideas or misconceptions you have about happiness. To do this you need to learn the art of disputing or challenging your own internal thoughts. You could try using an approach similar to the one below.

Let’s take ‘If I had more money I’d be happier.’

• Look for Evidence to dispute - Be factual
  
• How specifically would I be happier? Get real specific.
  
• How would I look?
  
• What would I be feeling that would be so different to how it is now?
  

Acknowledge reality
For example having more money might very well mean living in a better house or having less stress about paying bills so acknowledge it. Then ask yourself how would I be happier?

After that ......Ask how useful is it for me to hold on to this belief?


Step 2 - Changing Attitudes

Over the past 20 years a new breed of positive psychologists have been exploring the topic of happiness in an effort to find out what makes one person happier than another and discovered it’s got a lot to do with attitude. Happy people look at life differently to those who are sad, viewing set-backs, even sadness as something that will pass. They are hopeful, future thinking and optimistic. By comparison the unhappy person tends to see set-backs and sadness as all-consuming and never ending.


Research has shown that one of the biggest causes of depression is the ruminating over things that went wrong for us in the past. We tell ourselves “I messed it up ...” over and over all the while continually feeding the flames of our negative thoughts, keeping them very much alive and to the forefront of our thinking. However, according to positive psychologist Martin Seligman it is possible to learn optimism and optimism is seen as a real defense against unhappiness.

Using the process described above you can begin by learning how to argue with yourself and dispute pessimistic thoughts as they flood your consciousness. Look for evidence to prove the pessimistic thought is factually incorrect. Think of it as similar to how you would respond if someone shouted abuse at you. Wouldn’t your reaction be to refute, defend or argue your position? Equally the same approach works just as effectively when we are verbally abusing ourselves.

From a health aspect there are other benefits to putting these steps in place because “happiness, positive attitudes, contentment, and emotional well-being all appear to put less stress on our body, permit it to function more healthily and result in fewer physical breakdowns” (Argyle 1997).