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Emotions, Moods and Reactions

Aug 14
Love1

Fear, Famine, and Finances

By Emotions, Moods and Reactions, Habits and Strategies

 

Money troubles can tap into the most primitive emotions, including intense fear, and even reactions of flight and panic. But there are ways of using these signals, so we don’t get lost in them.

Matt wakes up in the middle of the night, anxious and troubled. Breathing shallow and high in his chest, thoughts racing… The severity of his financial troubles has just hit him. His investments have dropped significantly, and his spending has been putting him deeply into debt surprisingly quickly.

At least it feels like it was quickly. The habits had been established some years earlier, but he hadn’t modified his spending in relation to the real income he could draw from. For many months the trouble had been building, but credit created a buffer that allowed him to avoid feeling it.

Then one morning, at 3 am, it hits him. He’s in trouble, big trouble. So big that he couldn’t see a way to solve the problem. Panicked and overwhelmed, he soothes himself with a positive fantasy of things turning out okay. This calms him enough to get back to sleep.

When he wakes up, he’s forgotten the urgency, and dives into his day. The soothing fantasy providing a reprieve from the anxiety. Until another week passes, and he wakes up again in a panic…

In this case, the panic is Matt’s friend; his own awareness trying to break through his defenses so he can face the real problems. And there are ways of solving these problems. But nothing happens until he’s willing to acknowledge the reality first.

Why is this panic around money so severe?

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Jun 26
Love1

Savoring the Micro-Moments of Human Connection

By Emotions, Moods and Reactions, Habits and Strategies, Happiness

 

It’s easy these days to get drawn into a variety of small boxes: computers, televisions, ipads, kindles, smart phones… or occasionally even an actual book. There are a lot of wonderful possibilities within each of these (particularly books, but I’m old fashioned), but they can also deprive us, if we’re not careful, of life’s greatest joys: the treasure of human connection.

Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to counter this tendency, and enjoy the benefits of a richer emotional life, and a healthier physical life, as a result. I’ll show you how shortly.

One of my favorite researchers is Barbara Fredrickson, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. One of her books is Love 2.0, in which she looks at “love from the body’s perspective.” She has been studying how the experience of the emotion of love affects your physiology, including your physical health.

Now, when we hear the word “love,” the first form that usually comes to mind is romantic love. But this is only one framework within which we feel the emotion of love. The emotion of love requires safety and trust, and a Long-term, committed love relationship can create the opportunity for feeling the emotion of love often – but it is not the only place. We love our children, we love other family members, we love our friends…

We even feel a kind of love in what Fredrickson calls “micro-moments of connection.” The nice conversation we have with the checkout person at the grocery store; the warm greeting of welcome by a new acquaintance at a meeting; even the moment of eye contact with a stranger who holds open a door. That wonderful warm feeling is something that is much more ubiquitous than we might expect.

It turns out that these micro moments of connection are actually filled with stuff that is good for us, emotionally, psychologically, and in terms of our overall health… like a good meal is filled with nutrients.

The more positive emotions we have, the better our “vagal tone” is. Our vagal tone is the strength and health of our vagus nerve, which connects our heart with our brain and our internal organs. Our vagus nerve, among other things, controls our heart rate variability.

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May 15
Love1

An Internal Pathway for Clearer Thinking

By Emotions, Moods and Reactions

 

I’ve been focusing in these columns on the ways our emotions can interfere with managing our money and investing well. Today I want to talk about the positive state that we want to aim for most of the time – which will connect us with the emotional resources and clear thinking we need to make our best decisions.

Researchers like Steven Porges call it our social engagement system.

When we feel safe, and trusting, and relaxed, our heart rate and blood pressure lowers, and our heart rate variability increases – our heart rate rises a little on the inhale, and lowers on the exhale, and the difference between these is our heart rate variability. Higher heart rate variability is a good thing. This is all very beneficial for our immune system, our cardio-vascular system, our organs, and our overall health. Read More