And contrary to the psychology industry’s biological notion that we choose our mates based on a biological desire to keep our species going, we actually come together on a psychological plane. What actually happens as we mature into adults, and experience relationships that do not lead to marriage, is we develop an unconscious picture of this soul mate. Anyone who has met that one person understands that falling in love is not a biological experience but a mental one, that falling in love happens at a speed unimaginable to those who have not had this most wonderful experience.

But now comes the hard part, trying to figure out how to develop a life together. While the falling in love part happens beyond any imaginable time frame, the falling out of love happens at a turtle’s pace. What is needed to understand is this change in the relationship that takes someone from “for better or worse” to it’s over.

As it turns out, we develop our emotional perspectives from birth, by the examples given to us by our parents. In marriages where the couple struggles between sticking together and splitting up these influences can determine the outcome. What cause those conflicts in so many marriages are these negative insecurities from our past that cause us to fear the same result from our partner today.

What we are doing when we introduce anger and arguments into our marriages is projecting these past insecurities onto our partners, fearing those same results that we have seen before. This is where the wedge in the marriage comes from. What eventually happens after we project those insecurities enough times is we transfer those negative emotions from our past relationships onto our partner causing us to decide to get divorced.

The secret to success is confronting our demons and slaying our dragons, as the sayings go. And this takes courage. For us to be able to look at our partners from a clear, objective perspective we must understand and overcome those influences from our past, we must forgive those who we believe have caused us to be fearful of our current relationship. In psychological terms this is called catharsis. What we must do as individuals is realize that we can look anew at our perspective of our own insecurities. Only then will we be able to develop a marriage where we can stick together throughout whatever life dishes out to us.

To give an example, I forgave my parents when I was 25. I had a conversation with a friend where each was trying to outdo the other on who had the worst childhood, only he still loved his parents. I realized after that conversation that I was wrong in the anger I had built up towards my parents. I admitted for the first time in my adult life that I was wrong. Admitting your mistakes gets a lot easier after that first time.

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In recent years, society has all but relegated the pursuit of the collective interest to the world “as it ought to be,” a pursuit given lip service at religious services, political rallies, and during half time at sporting events as coaches try to motivate their teams.  Meanwhile, we have grown to accept self-interest as the real world of making a living and paying the bills, and of running a political machine.  The thought that, outside their own immediate families, people are motivated by anything other than ambition and greed is considered naïve.  To see the world as fundamentally Machiavellian is considered rational.

The problem with these assumptions is not only that they are simplistic and misleading, but that by accepting them as factual, we perpetuate a tyranny of low expectations, and we fail to employ other levers for cooperation and human advancement that are at our disposal.

Humans are an obligatorially gregarious species, meaning that we have always lived in social structures in which our survival is heavily dependent on one another.  According to the “social brain hypothesis,” the driving force behind the evolution of enhanced intelligence was the need to manage the intricate social bonds that kept us alive.  The line of hominids that led to us branched off on its own distinctive path as much as seven million years ago.  During 99.9 percent of that vast expanse of time, the interest of the individual and the interest of the family or tribe were so tightly intertwined as to be almost indistinguishable.  Even if a brutal egoist could survive for a while at the expense of those around him, without a healthy and sustainable framework of social bonds to protect them, rarely if ever would his heirs live long enough to reproduce.  Thus the genes that survived as part of our biological heritage are heavily biased toward the formation and attentive maintenance of human attachments and collective efforts.  That is evidenced by how social context “gets under our skin” in profound ways: Loneliness, for instance, can alter the DNA transcription in your immune cells.

I don’t buy the justifications for greed, either from the school of “rational self interest,” or from the “they’re all a bunch of crooks” school that simply abdicates responsibility and looks the other way. Top down efforts to constrain self-interested behavior—legal sanctions and moral codes—can only do so much.  The most effective lever for improving human behavior is bottom up: it lies in what we as individuals envy, expect, accept, and celebrate.

– John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick

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Conversely, what can bring us down the most – if we let it – is rudeness, indifference, and other negative words and actions from others.

So here is a simple but powerful and transformative – that is, intense – experience for you.

First, make a list of the people you don’t like who impact your life.

This can include those in your professional and personal world, and those in the public eye, who rub you the wrong way or who — if you didn’t believe in kindness and compassion or at least in avoiding jail — you’d flat out enjoy punching in the nose.

Surely a few folks spring to mind.

Consider each person on your list in this regard:

What is it about this person that is worth emulating?

Instead of focusing on their disagreeable qualities, that is, for each person shift your perspective to what their best qualities are … more particularly, to the aspects of their character YOU could learn from and perhaps use more of.

Everyone has something worth emulating. Though certain people may deserve to be jailed or impeached, even they have qualities worth appreciating and emulating.

It is our reactionary egos that are prone to completely trash those who seem to have a negative influence in some way on us.

Our egos are primitive; if somebody strokes them, that somebody is good, and if somebody kicks them, that somebody is bad.

This lingering reaction creates the notion of dislike, or hate, which blocks our mind and heart from focusing on anything but the negative. But by focusing on the negative, we are doing by far the most damage to ourselves.

Honing in on what we don’t like in people won’t change them, but it does make us far less peaceful, productive and happy. It becomes a habit that perpetuates the self-damage. Plus it makes us considerably less attractive to others.

This is not a call to accept being taken advantage of by people; if changes need to occur to avoid those circumstances then by all means do what is ethical to make those changes.

But it IS a call not to let those people – really, your own ego – pull you down into discord where you don’t deserve to be.

The key then is not to let your ego rule, but to try to focus on what is worth emulating in those “unlikeable” people.

And the second step is to extend that practice to daily life.

The next time you encounter someone who seems disagreeable or worse, don’t focus on what makes him or her so lousy. Focus instead on what it is about this person that is worth emulating. Keep striving to do this until it becomes a habit you don’t even need to think about.

You will be quite surprised at how this shift in your perspective reduces your overall anxiety and enables you to achieve more … and achieve it happily.

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We don’t listen to words. We don’t believe “controlled” facial expressions. Our primal knowing cuts through social masks to feel the fear. Within seconds, we communicate our feelings with each other – intensifying whatever feeling we have. “Some stress is healthy and necessary to keep us alert and occupied,” says researcher, Spencer Rathus. In fact, “Most people do their best under mild to moderate stress,” finds Janet DiPietro, a developmental psychologist at Johns Hopkins University.

Unfortunately, since our brain is wired to help us survive, we feel fear faster, more intensely and longer that any positive emotion. Plus we spread it faster.

Worse yet, research shows that we least like the person in the situation who looks or sounds most unhappy. That’s a downward spiral that isolates the most vulnerable person in the herd while making the rest increasingly upset and reactionary.

That’s why Emotional Freedom author, Judith Orloff believes that “Fear is the mother of all negative emotions.” It is often expressed as anger, blaming or frustration. “Fear renders intelligent people dumb. They are not clear-headed or intuitively in synch enough to make brave decisions,” found Orloff. Consequently, when you first begin to feel fearful or angry, change the channel in your mind. Rather than catastrophizing about the future, focus on your current situation. Your best bet is to immediately:

1. Breathe deeply and slowly, inhale and exhale – even for just a minute.
2. Think of what you can do – even a small thing – towards making the situation better.
3. Take that action, then plan the next one.

In effect, you are viewing the source of your fear as an obstacle not an insurmountable wall. As Nelson Mandela said, “Fear is contagious, so is fearlessness. The sooner you act to change your mood and behavior the less damage you’ll do to yourself or your relationships – and the more options you’ll have.

With practice this three-step Mood Channel Change Habit will become second nature. Inevitably that leads to a happier life with others.

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