How to Analyze People

HOW TO ANALYZE PE OPLE : PHYSCH OL OGICAL TECHNIQUES TO CONNE CT INSTANTLY INFLUENCE PEOPLE UNDETECTED, AND BUI LD MEANINGFUL

RELATIONSHIPS

ALL WITH YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE

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INTRODUCTION From time past, a lot of contemporary scientists have been able to come up with a conclusion that the quality of feeling and emotion that we experience in each moment is rooted in the underlying state of our subconscious and physiological processes. The essence of their idea then still stands, we call certain emotional feelings ‘positive’ and while we conclude on the others to be ‘negative’ because we believe these experiences reflect directly on the impact of the fluidity or strain of our life processes. The experiences we assume to be negative turn out to be indicatives of body states in which these life processes struggle for balance and even at the end chaotically get out of control. By contrast, the feelings we assume to be positive actually reflects our body states in which the regulation of the activities going on in our lives become efficient, or even optimal, easy and free- flowing. While there is a geometric appreciation of this general understanding in the scientific study of emotion that is being reared in our subconscious minds and that dictates how we build active relationship with people around us, I have decided to deepen this understanding in three basic ways. First, our approach would be based on the notion that the physiological, cognitive and emotional systems are intimately intertwined through ongoing reciprocal communication. For you to get a deeper understanding of the operation of any of these systems, I believe it is important that we view their activity as emergent from the dynamic, communicative network of interacting functions that encompasses the human organism. Second, we are going to be looking at ways in which you can successfully adopt an information processing perspective that views communication within and among the body’s systems as occurring through the generation and transmission of patterns and rhythms of psychological activity. This places its focus on a fundamental order of information communication- one that illustrates different emotional states at each level, operates to integrate and coordinate your entire body functioning, and also connects the body to the external world. And last, we emphasize on the concept of coherence from the chemistry of signal processing to understand how different patterns of psychological activity influence bodily function. Efficient and optimal functions have been discovered to result from a harmonious combination of the interaction among the elements that influences the subconscious mind. Thus, a harmonious order in the tone or pattern of psychological activity indicates a coherent system, whose efficient function is directly related or linked to the case and fluidity of life processes. Later in the coming chapters, we’re going to be discussing the concept and meaning of coherence in various psychological contexts and also talk extensively on how coherence within and among the psychological, physiological, cognitive, and emotional systems is essential in the creation and maintenance of a healthy relationship, emotional stability, and optimal performance over a long period. We’ve resolved to call emotional coherence- a harmonious state of sustained, self-

proclaimed/ modulated positive emotion and also a primary driver of the critical changes in psychological function that result into improved performance and overall well- being. Based on some studies that I have carried out personally, I also propose that the heart, the powerful instrument of rhythmic information patterns in our body and also acts effectively as the global conductor in the body’s symphony to synchronize and bind the whole body system. It’s important to also understand that the consistent and pervasive influence of the heart’s rhythmic patterns on the brains and body does not affect our physiological health, but also significantly influences perceptual processing, emotional experience and feeling, and of course our intentional behavior. There is enough evidence to believe that our emotions tend to alter or affect the activity of the body’s psychological systems. In this book, we will also discuss how sustained positive emotions enhance and facilitate an emergent global shift in psychological and physiological functioning which is denoted by a distinct change in the rhythm of the heart activity. This global shift in the long run brings about a state and position of optimal function characterized by increased synchronization, harmony, and efficiently in the interactions within and among the psychological, physiological, cognitive, and emotional systems. Our main aim is to work on how to shift your whole psycho-physiological system up into a state of global coherence and try to sustain it to generate vital benefits on all levels and also transform your life. Sit back and relax, it’s all within you to believe that everything gets better! Happy reading!!!

CHAPTER ONE THE MENTAL MACHINERY- THINKING ABOUT THINKING Of the numerous problems that affect accurate intelligence analysis, the ones inherent in man’s mental processes are definitely among the most important and most difficult to deal with. Intelligence analysis is basically a mental process, but getting to understand this process is impeded by the lack of conscious awareness of the workings of our own minds. People have been making a lot of reports about the cognitive psychology and its experience of what happens in the mind. A lot of functions tagged with perception, memory, and information processing are evaluated prior to and independently of any conscious direction. It’s important that you get to know that what appear spontaneously in consciousness are the result of thinking, and not the process of thinking. Weakness which include shyness, low selfesteem and biases inherent in human thinking process and can be demonstrated carefully through designed experiments. They can also be alleviated by conscious applications of techniques and tools that should be present in the analytical kit of all intelligence analysts. When we talk about improving one’s mind, then you’re actually referring to the acquisition of information or knowledge, or the kind of thoughts one should have, and not to the actual functioning of the mind. We spend little or no time monitoring our own thinking and comparing it with a more complex idea. Thinking analytically also is a skill, just like driving a car or carpentry, it can be learned, it can be taught, and one can improve on it with practice. However, you don’t get to learn these skills like many other skills. One important key to learning is motivation. You have to be determined that you’re ready to step ahead a bit outside your comfort zone; a central focus of this chapter is to illuminate the role of the observer- you, in determining what is observed and how it is interpreted. A lot of people today construct their own part or version of ‘reality’ based on information provided by the senses, and obviously do not have an idea that this sensory input is mediated by complex mental processes that determine the type of information that is attended to, how it is organized, and the meaning attributed to it- hence, what determines your relationship with the people you relate with. What yo perceive, how readily you perceive it, and how you process this information after getting it are all strongly influenced by past experiences, education, cultural values, and your mindset, as well as by the specifics of what your subconscious mind is saying at that time. This simple process may be visualized as perceiving the world or a part of it through a lens or screen that channels and focuses, and therefore may affect or distort the images that are seen. Before analysts can achieve the clearest possible image of the USA for instance, they’ll need more information on the USA, and will also need to study and understand their own lenses through which this information passes. These lenses are known to be many terms- metal models, mindsets, charisma, and biases. The problem now is how to be sure that the mind remains open to alternative interpretations, and how you’ll prevent your mindset from controlling your perception so that you won’t be among the last to see what is really happening when events take a new and unexpected turn.

Why it is difficult to see what is there to be seen? The entire process of perception aims to link people to their environment, and this is critical to the accurate understanding of the world about us. Getting a better relationship and lifestyle require an accurate perception. Yet studies into human perception shows that the process is beset by many pitfalls. Moreover, the circumstances surrounding perfect relationship with people are precisely the circumstances in which accurate perception tends to be most difficult. A lot of people think of perception to be a passive process. We are able to see, hear, smell, taste and feel stimuli that impinge upon our senses. We try to envisage that if we are at all subjective, we can record what is actually there, yet perception is demonstrably an active rather than a passive process; it tends to construct rather than record reality. Perception entails understanding as well as awareness; it’s a situation of inference whereby people construct their own version of reality on the basis of information obtained from their five senses. As discussed earlier, what people perceive and how readily they perceive it, are strongly influenced by their past experience, and majorly by the stimuli recorded by their receptor organs. Many studies have been conducted to show the extraordinary extent to which the information gotten by an observer depends on upon the observer’s own assumptions and preconceptions.

We only te nd to pe rceive what we e xpe ct to pe rceive A proposition of this principle is that it takes more information, and even more unambiguous information, to recognize an unexpected phenomenon than an expected one. Now let’s make use of the playing card as one classic experiment to demonstrate the influence of expectations on perception- some have been gimmicked so the spades now are red and the hearts black. Pictures of the cards were the flashed briefly on the screen, and needless to say, the test subjects picked on the normal cards more quickly and accurately than the anomalous ones. After the test subjects became aware of the existence of red spades and black hearts, their performed with the ones that have been gimmicked improved but still did not approach the speed or accuracy with which the normal cards could be identified. This little experiment shows that our patterns of expectation become more deeply embedded that they continue to influence perceptions even when people are alerted to and try to take account of the existence of things that do not fit their preconceptions. Trying to be objective does not yield accurate perception. The position of the test subject identifying the playing card is analogous to that of the person trying to make sense of what you’re trying to say. What is actually perceived in your conversation, as well as aw it is interpreted depends in part, at least on the other person’s pattern of expectation. The tendency of an individual to perceive what they expect to perceive is more important than any tendency to perceive what they want to perceive. In fact, no real tendency may appear toward wishing thinking. Different circumstances tend to bring or evoke different set of expectations. People tend to be more attuned to hearing footsteps behind them when walking in an alley at night than along a city street in daytime, and the meaning attached to the sound of

footsteps will vary under these differing circumstances. Pattern of expectations tell people, subconsciously on what to look for, what is important, and how to interpret what is seen. These patterns then form a mindset that predisposes you to think in certain ways. What the simple definition of a mindset? It’s just similar to a screen or lens through which one perceives the world. There is a tendency that one thinks of a mindset as something bad, to be avoided. According to this tune of argument, it’s important that one have an open mind and is influenced only by the facts rather than by preconceived notions. That seems to be an unreachable ideal. There is no such thing as the facts of the case; there is only a very selective subset of the overall mass to which one has been subjected and that one takes as facts and judges to be relevant to the question at issues. Actually, mindsets are considered to be neither good nor bad; they are ust unavoidable. I would say you have no conceivable way of coping with the volume of stimuli that impinge upon your senses, or with the volume and complexity of the things you have to analyze about yourself, or the people you’re trying to establish a relationship with, without some kind of simplifying preconceptions about what to expect, what is important, and what is actually related to what.“There is

actually some truth in the otherwise pernicious maxim than an open mind is an empty mind” yo cannot achieve objective analysis by avoiding preconceptions; that would result to be ignorance or selfdelusion. Objectivity can only be achieved by making basic assumptions and reasoning as explicit as possible so that they can be challenged by others and people, can themselves examine their validity.

CHAPTER TWO WHAT MAKES US WHO WE ARE? For us to answer this question, effectively there are certain things you need to understand in relation to your physiological makeup. In this chapter, we are going to be laying emphasis on the interacting capacities and domains that collectively contribute to defining who you are and also explore the potential influences relating to psychological capacity that makes you who you are. Once you get to discover these things within you, then you can conclude on where you stand and what you are lacking. In the first chapter, we talked briefly about your thinking and its influence, how it affects your judgment and relationship with others, it’s quite beyond that, but you won’t understand what you get to discover the real “you”.

Cognitive capacity Cognitive capacity is all about how efficiently we sure able to use our brains. We prefer to break it up into different domains for ease of reference, and this has been able to work perfectly because many domains are connected with distinct areas in the brain. This of course makes them, to some extent, both conceptually and physiologically distinct, but it is, however, important to understand that there is considerable overlap, and many parts of the brain contribute to each domain. The proper or efficient working of any of the domain is likely going to require the involvement of a network of brain areas and also rely on other domains to work effectively. For instance, memory for words will require language and memory domains to work together perfectly. There is an important exemption to this section. For us to understand human behavior, we have to try and simplify and categorize aspects of human existence in to component parts. This means we will argue on some points; That the capacities highlighted here do not comprise an exhaustive list. It is impossible in any case to identify every capacity that goes in to making us the individual that we are, but even if it were possible, everyone is greater and more complex than the sum of his or her component parts. That there is, to some extent an infinite variability between individuals because everybody possess a unique, interacting combination of capabilities and relative strengths that have been shaped by a unique mix of determinants or factors that shaped them. That there is a great deal of overlap such that many of the capabilities highlighted could be grouped or categorized differently or merged. That memory constitutes our capacity to learn, integrate and remember things when required, sometimes many years after. These which include memory for facts and experiences, as well the methods to perform task and different actions.

That attention refers to our ability to concentrate, at any one situation, on what is important and selectively ignore the other information which is constantly being provided by other senses and thoughts. That language refers to our ability to communicate to other people both by using sounds, symbols and movements and also our ability to understand what others are trying to say. That perception, as discussed earlier is primarily the capacity we have to dictate, interpret or make sense of the information provided by our vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste. It can also include making sense of the information reaching out from within us- both bodily sensations and thoughts. That praxis capacity is the way we are able to put our thoughts into action. That capacities are engaged automatically, most of the time and its executive functions give us the chance to consciously direct what we do or stop doing, regular behavior, make choices and judgments, solve numerous problems and engage in abstract thought with our subconscious mind.

Personality/ character In our everyday life and going with everyday terms, personality or character basically encompasses who we are or what makes us a unique human and therefore combines all the capacities described in this section. However for both physiological and psychological purposes, it is more narrowly explained as our characteristic and generally permanent ay of responding, across a wide range of different situations. A considerable part of personality is attachment style- the way we humans respond to feelings of abandonment and our need to be close to other people; that is establish a perfect relationship.

Emotions We know lower animals experience situations such as fear and anger, but humans on the other hand appear to experience a much complex and greater range. The term in questions simply refers mainly to what we feel in response to an internal event; like a thought or an external event; like a loud bang. Therefore, they can be short- lived in nature or intensity but some emotions can turn out to become lasting states, such as a general sense of well-being, or conversely, anxiety, low self-esteem or low mood. If these latter states are extreme and impinge on daily life, it might result in to mental health problem which out rightly affects your relationship with people. Emotions are inextricably intertwined with thoughts, motivations and behavior.

Thoughts

Fundamentally, a thought is known to be a mental activity where some aspect of life comes into consciousness. For instance, this could be an internal event, that is, a memory instantly becoming a salient, or a response to an external event, that is, consciously noticing someone approaching you. Thoughts are therefore connected to attention. When we think, we are able to consciously manipulate information in a logical way, sometimes for a long period of time, to solve problems and also make plans.

Motivations I remember talking about this at the beginning of this book, as one of the things you need to become a better person; let’s now talk about it as part of the components that make you up. They are called the processes that drive behavior, which includes thinking, which makes us do what we do, when we do it. They go from basic drives, such as the desire to eat or drink, up to the motivations that lead us to improve our own lives. It’s important to understand that emotions, thoughts, and executive functions are heavily involved in motivation.

Behavior Obviously, engaging in complex thought is known as behavior, but for the purpose of this book, we will define it as anything we do or say, anything that involves observable motor movement. The extent to which we are able to control our behavior is highly important. This encompasses initiating behavior, such as getting started on an activity, as well as inhibiting behavior; for instance, stopping ourselves from doing something dangerous or inappropriate. How we regulate our behavior is influenced strongly by our emotions, motivations, thoughts and executive functions.

Now the question comes in; what has influenced our psychological capacities to make us who we are? There are quite a number of influences that affect the nature and strength of the capacities that interact to make every one of us a unique being. Our genetic inheritance is fixed and relatively also strong. Other influences can continue to be relatively stable from early adulthood until later in life, but they are subject to change in specific circumstances, meaning that our capacities and abilities may also change, sometimes turn out dramatically.

Our biological/genetic inheritance It is quite obvious that we inherit all the basic characteristics which make us human, just as other lower animals like dogs, inherit their characteristic ways of what we are. However, there is massive variability in what we inherit from previous generations and, ultimately, from our parents’ genes at birth. We tend to inherit a unique combination of characteristics, strengths and weaknesses including: Physical characteristics which include our height, body shape, hair and eye color. Our susceptibility to different medical and mental conditions. Our susceptibility to many psychological factors like personality traits. Demographic factors including longevity and a host of others. It's not possible for us to show our individual genetic inheritance but that is clearly not the only factor that actually makes us a unique being. Through our executive functions, we are uniquely self-determining, flexible humans, who experience and learn from many influences throughout our life. Similarly, many environmental events tend to affect our bodies, and also our genes.

Our life e xpe rie nce s We've known for a very long time that life experiences and the environment have a profound effect on making us who we are and what we turn out to become. Not only that, even events before we were born, in our mother’s womb, have an effect – most obviously, factors such as poor diet or toxic exposure, but also psychological factors such as high stress in the mother. The most obvious and rapid changes take place as we grow through the development phases from birth, to childhood and adolescence to early adulthood. This is natural maturation in conjunction with the multitude of environmental influences and events which make up everyday life. Thus, we learn that we do not need to become distressed or worried when our mom is out of our sight. We learn how to socialize with other kids when we go to school, or even before that. We learn to harness our cognitive and motor skills to undertake highly complex tasks, such as driving or controlling netball. Later, we learn from experience in relationships, including close and/or sexual relationships, how to attain a feeling of belonging and not being alone. It is important to note that life experience and environmental events continue to shape us throughout life, even in extreme old age. A little appreciated fact is that many major life events showcase in later life, including multiple losses in relationships, capabilities, options and health.

Our health and its effect Health psychology examines the relationship between biological, environmental/ experiential and physiological variables. The relationship is somewhat complex. At an obvious level, health has a

profound effect on our psychological characteristics, over and above the social effects of disease such as being unable to work or go out. For instance, a delirium severely affects memory, concentration, perception and other thought processes. Pain or tiredness affects at least concentration when interacting with people. Many medical conditions increase the risk of mental health difficulties, especially depression. Depression affects memory, concentration and motivation. Similarly, the lifestyles you choose affect your health and there has been a concerted effort over the years to encourage people to change their lifestyles in order to improve their psycho physiological health, which include; not smoking, taking exercise and eating healthy food. However, there is another less obvious relationship, psychological state affects health. For instance, older people who are depressed are at greater risk of disability or even death, than the ones who are not depressed. It is known that depression affects the immune system. Less obviously still, there is strong notion that psychological variables such as social status, level of education, degree of social support and loneliness influence the extent to which people are healthy or unhealthy and also our lifestyle, environment and relationships. The word lifestyle has been able to attain vogue status over the years with an implicit meaning of a healthy way of living; it sometimes even mean home-furnishing! In psychology, it retains a much wider meaning. It is the way an individual lives and the environment in which this takes place, including relationships. The term describes how we deal more or less efficiently and safely with the many complexities of the everyday world. It is however an important component of identity, the sense of whom we are as humans and also our place within the community. Therefore it can encompass where and how you live, how you pass our time, what kind of food you eat, what habits toy have and the kinds of relationships you with have with people within and beyond the home. A specific lifestyle can be just individual, family, or at community/society level, but there are always individual differences, however little, within a family, or between families in a community. There is an element of choice, but the degree of choice is variable. In general, the more favorable your circumstances, that is sufficient income, education, health, the more lifestyle choices you have. If it is a

struggle to get enough to eat, to

accomplish physical tasks, to care for your children, or motivate yourself because of illness, the number of lifestyle options you've got left is much more limited. These are also more limited if people have minimal experience of other possibilities and/or are innately conservative. This is even more common in communities or societies which frown on or are even actively hostile to lifestyles different from their view of the norm. Lifestyle is an interactive process. We live in a given way partly because of our psychological make-up, including the

experiences we have and the way we live which largely

determines the nature of what we experience and what we view as normal. When changes to lifestyle and the environment in which we live are forced on us by circumstances, certainties about who we are and our place

in society drops, making it difficult, and

sometimes impossible, to adapt. Later life is

commonly such a time, when enforced changes may be experienced. Consider the influences that have

made you who youare today. To what extent has your genetic inheritance affected the way you look, your personality, the way you think, the way you behave, the way you express emotion?

Reflection • What about your life experience, your health and your lifestyle? How have these helped you to shape who you are? • How does who you are influence your lifestyle? Getting older With regard to physiological capacities, the ageing process usually does not lead to significant changes. Contrary to popular belief, memory itself does not decline significantly. The most consistent finding has been a slowing of the ability to process, learn and act on new information. For some years this led to a belief that intelligence declines later in life, but it was eventually realized that all intelligence tests contain items where the person involved has to perform against the clock. When older people are given time, they perform nearly as well as younger people. That is, the ability to learn and remember new information remains intact as we get older; it just takes longer. Slowness in processing can affect other domains, such as attention and lifestyle. For example, even without hearing problems, older people may start to avoid larger social gatherings because they have difficulty keeping up with multiple conversations, or screening out competing stimuli. Even in one to one situations, for example when a waitress asks an older person which of 15 coffee options they want, it may take longer for them to understand and respond to what she is saying. Psychomotor slowing means that thinking processes may slow but, for older people, thinking remains logical, personality remains intact and emotions are experienced as intensely as before. Overall, while there can be some problems such as occasional difficulty recalling names or the odd memory lapse, the critical point is that usually, our cognitive capacity and all the components that make up the individual person we are, remain largely intact. It follows that many older people retain the same motivation to continue to grow, to enjoy and make sense of life and their relationships with others. Thanks to advances in health care and nutrition, they may now have many more years in which to do this during what is often called the Third Age – the years post work when the person may pursue interests and preferred activities. The University of the Third Age, started in 1973, is perhaps the best known structured example, but there are countless examples of people well into their 80s undertaking activities like learning (or teaching) a new language, learning to make furniture, taking up a musical instrument or learning to maintain cars.

Ge tting Older; think about older people You may have been involved with who do not have dementia. Have you ever talked to them as though they are qualitatively different from you or seen others do this? For instance, have you observed someone raise their voice when they address an older person– automatically assuming and concluding that they are deaf or slow at information processing? Do people make assumptions that people are inferior or less intelligent just because of their age? How often does this happen in front of your eyes? This is called ageism and we all fall into it sometimes – even me. Think about some of the birthday cards we have all seen in shops, that draw attention to stereotypical beliefs regarding getting older and becoming an older person. The only cure is to remember and keep remembering, that this person was once as young as yo and is still an intelligent person with thoughts and feelings that should be acknowledged. The only difference is that this individual was born before you and, probably, their body doesn’t work as well as it used to and their thought processes may be slightly slower. Changes we should be concerned about it follows that many changes which are often considered to be the inevitable effects of ageing are in fact the result of processes which are not part of the usual ageing process. These changes are not unavoidable results of becoming older; they are consequences of events which are more common later in life, but are not exclusive to later life. Many of these are prevented, treated, or at a glance, they can be ameliorated and their effects reduced to the barest minimum. Unfortunately, due to the lack of understanding about the impacts of ageing, a lack of resources and less priority being shown to the needs of older people at times, treatable aspects of an older person’s calling can remain untouched. Most times, we prefer to use the term excess disability to explain the results because, without intervention, the people in question are more disabled and discouraged by these factors that they need be.

CHAPTER THREE ENVISAGING THE POWER WITHIN- YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND Your mind, as described by philosophers, happens to be one’s most precious possession, because you’re always carrying it on with you. One important thing to understand as you go on to talk about this is that your mind’s most amazing powers will be yours only when you have learned how to make use of it; this simply implies that you follow me with your mind throughout this chapter, and of course, to the end of the book. I’m sure we might have read or learnt or about this- that there are two levels to your mind; the conscious or the rational level and the subconscious or likewise the irrational level. You get to think with the first part; your conscious mind, and whatever you get to think about habitually sinks down in to your subconscious mind, which according to the nature of your thoughts then creates itself into thinking and reasoning, and then to actions. Your subconscious mind rests as the seat of your emotions; it is also the creative mind. So if you’re out there thinking good, good will definitely follow as the actions that you’ll yield, and if you think evil, evil will follow. This is simply the mathematics behind how your mind works. The most important point to note is this; once your subconscious mind agrees to accept whatever idea, it begins to execute it. It is an astonishing and subtle fact that the law of subconscious mind works for both good and bad ideas alike. This law, of course when applied in a wrong or negative way, causes failure, frustration and unhappiness. However, when your habitual thinking appears harmonious and constructive, then you’ll get to experience health, success, prosperity and of course good relationship with people in the outside world. Surely, peace of mind and a fulfilled body and soul will be inevitable once you begin to think and feel in the right way. Everything you claim mentally and feel as true, your subconscious mind will take it in and bring forth into your experience. So now, all you have to do is get your subconscious mind to take in your ideas and accept it. Once that’s able to take place, the law of your subconscious mind will bring forth the peace, health, good tidings and relationship that you desire. Yours is to give the decree or command, and your subconscious mind takes it from there and faithfully reproduces the idea impressed upon it. The law of your mind is quiet simple and the same for everyone else: the reaction or response that you receive from your subconscious mind will be determined or influenced by the nature of the thought or idea you hold up in your conscious mind. Psychologists explained that when thoughts are conveyed to your subconscious mind, impressions are made in the brain cells, and as soon as your inner mind accepts any idea, it moves on to put it into effect immediately. Working by collection of ideas, it makes use of every bit of knowledge that you have gathered in your lifetime to bring about its purpose. It acts on the infinite power, energy, and wisdom that are within you. It lines up all the laws of nature to stay upfront and get its way. Most of the time,

it seems to bring about an immediate solution to your

difficulties, but at other times it may take a few days, weeks or even longer. Its ways are past looking out for or finding out.

Differences between conscious and subconscious mind and how it clouds your thinking and actions You should not forget that the conscious and subconscious minds are not two different minds. They are ust two spheres of activity going on within one same mind. Your conscious mind is tagged the reasoning mind. It is that same phase of mind that chooses what is right, who is right to talk to, whom to like and who to shun. For instance, no one teaches you to choose your books, your home or your partner in life. You get to make all your decisions with your conscious mind. However, on the other hand, without any form of conscious choice on your part, your heart is kept functioning automatically, and the important functions of digestion, circulation and breathing are carried on by your subconscious mind through processes independent of your reasoning control. Your subconscious mind is there to accept what is impressed upon it or what you consciously believe. It is not designed to reasons things out as your conscious mind does, and also not to argue with you controversially. Your subconscious mind is just like a bed of soil that gives in for any kind of seed, either good or bad. Your thoughts are always active, they are the seeds. Negative and destructive thoughts continue to work negatively in your subconscious mind; that how’s it’s been designed to work, you cannot question it. Sooner or later, they will emerge and take shape to form an outer experience that corresponds to their content, it’s now left to you to decide how far you want these feelings to go, preferably to cloud the good thoughts? Or bury them not to affect your relationship with people. Don’t forget, your subconscious mind is not in any position to engage in proving whether your thoughts are good or bad, true or false. It basically responds according to the nature of your thoughts or suggestions. For instance, if you consciously assume that something is for real, even though it may not be true, your subconscious mind will take it as true and proceed to bring out results that must necessarily go in line because you consciously assumed it to be true.

What the psychologists are saying about you

A lot of psychologists have performed countless experiments on people that are in a hypnotic trance. Their researches have clearly shown that the subconscious mind does not make the selections and comparisons that are needed or necessary for a reasoning process. Your subconscious mind will accept almost all suggestions, however false. Having once given in to any suggestion, it responds according to the nature of the suggestion given. To show to you how suggestible your subconscious mind is, if a

practiced hypnotist suggests to one of her clients or subjects that he is a Napoleon Bonaparte, or even a dog or a cat, the subject will act out the pan with inimitable accuracy. His personality becomes influenced for the time being. He believes himself to be whatever the operator tells him he is. An experienced hypnotist may suggest to one of her students in the hypnotic state that his back itches, to another that her nose is bleeding, to another that he is freezing and the temperature is below zero and then to another that she is a marble statue. Each one of them will follow through the line of his particular suggestion, totally oblivious to all those surroundings that do not correlate to the hypnotic suggestion. These simple ideologies portray the difference between your conscious, reasoning mind and your subconscious mind, which happens to be impersonal, nonselective, and also accepts as true whatever your conscious mind believes to be true. Hence the reason behind selecting thoughts, ideas and premises that bless, heal and inspire your relationship with people and how you connect with those around you and fill your soul and theirs with joy.

Clarifying t he t e rms obje ctive and subje ctive mind Most of the time, your conscious mind is referred to as your objective mind because it relates and deals with outward objects. The objective mind of course is aware of the objective world, and it’s media of observation are your five physical senses. This objective mind is your director and guide with your environment and the people you get to meet and influence. You’re able to gain knowledge within your five senses to get on with this. Your objective mind learns from observation, experienced gained and education. As previously stated, the most important function of your objective mind is that of reasoning. Imagine you are one of the hundreds of thousands of tourists who go to visit the Grand Canyon every year. You would easily conclude that it is of course one of the world’s most amazing natural wonders. Note this; this conclusion would be based on your observation of its incredible depth, the complex shaping of the rock formations, and the beautiful play of the colors within the different geographical strata. Your objective mind is basically the one at work here. Your subconscious mind is sometimes known to be your subjective mind. Your subjective mind knows about its environment, but not by chances or means of its physical senses. Your subjective mind is able to perceive by intuition. It rests as the seat of your emotions and also as the storehouse of memory. Your subjective mind performs its highest and most important functions when your objective senses are not at work. In other words, that intelligence makes itself visible and known whenever the objective mind is suspended or is in a drowsy, sleepy state. Your subjective mind is able to see clearly without having to make use of the natural organs of vision. It has the ability of clairvoyance and Clair- audience. It’s able to see and hear activities that are going on elsewhere. Your subjective mind has the ability to travel out of your body, to distant lands, and bring information that is often of the most exact and truthful character. With your subjective mind, you can easily read the thoughts of others, see through and read the contents of sealed envelopes, or closed books or newspapers. Once

you’re able to understand the interaction between and of the objective and subjective minds, you’ll be in a better position to learn the true art of prayer.

The subconscious cannot act and reason like your conscious mind Your subconscious mind, for once has not been given the ability to argue or dispute or change what is told. If you’re it the wrong information, it will take it to be true and then work to make that information right. It will gather your suggestions, even the ones that were false, to pass as conditions, experiences and events. Everything that has happened, and that is happening to you is happening because of thoughts impressed on your subconscious mind through belief. If by any chance you have communicated wrong or distorted concepts to your subconscious mind, it’s very important that you correct them immediately. The major way to get through with this is by continuously giving your subconscious mind constructive, harmonious thoughts. When these are frequently repeated, your subconscious mind will accept them. In this pattern, you can form new, healthier habits of life and thought, for your subconscious mind rests as the seat of habit. The habitual reasoning of your conscious mind brings about deep grooves in your subconscious mind. If you have habitual thoughts that yield harmonious, peaceful, and constructive feelings, then your subconscious mind will respond by creating harmony, peace and constructive conditions. Have you ever been a victim of fear, or you’ve fallen prey to worry and other destructive strategies of thinking? The solution is to recognize the power of your subconscious mind and decree happiness, freedom and perfect health. Your subconscious mind, starting to show its creative skills together with your divine source will then start to create freedom and happiness that you earnestly decreed. The tremendous power of suggestion Just as we have discussed earlier, your conscious mind acts like the watchman at the door. One of its most important functions is to guide your subconscious mind from fake/ false impressions. The reason behind this being important goes back to one of the fundamental laws of the mind; your subconscious mind very prone or sensitive to suggestion. As you’re aware, your subconscious mind does not making contracts or comparisons. It does not imagine or think things out for itself. This latter function is for your conscious mind. Don’t get confused here; your subconscious mind simply reacts to the impressions and orders given to it by your conscious mind. It’s noting its way to choose among different courses of action, it simply takes what it is given. Suggestion happens to be a tremendously powerful force. For a moment, try to imagine that you are on board with a ship that is moving a bit from side to side, then, you walk up to a timid- looking fellow passenger and saying; you do not look so hot, your face is actually green and I’m scared for you, because it looks like you are about to seasick. The passenger loses interest and turns pale. The suggestion you have just made about seasickness correlates with her fears and fore-doing. She allows you escort her down the below decks. Once she gets there, your negative suggestions which she had accepted now come true.

Diffe rent re actions to t he same suggestion It is important to realize that a lot of people will react in different ways to the same suggestion. The reason is because they have different subconscious conditioning or beliefs. Suppose, instead of getting up to a fellow passenger on the train, you go up to a member of the crew. You say, "Hey, buddy, you don't look so well. Do you think you're about to be road sick?" Depending on the driver's temperament, its either he laughs at your feeble joke or tells you to get lost. Your suggestion had no power or impact on him, because the idea of road sickness was associated in his mind with his own immunity from it. Therefore, it called up neither fear nor worry, but self-confidence. A dictionary will give you a clue that a suggestion is the act or instance of putting something into one's mind. It is a mental process, by which the thought or idea that has been proposed or suggested is entertained, accepted, or put into effect. Don’t forget, a suggestion cannot place or impose itself on the subconscious mind against the will of the conscious mind. Your conscious mind has the power and ability to reject such suggestion. The driver had no fear of road sickness. He had convinced himself of his immunity, so the negative suggestion you made had no power to evoke fear, but your fellow passenger was already worried about getting sick, which means your suggestion had power over him. All of us have our own inner fears, beliefs, and opinions buried within us. These inner assumptions rule and control our lives. You have to understand that a suggestion has no power in and of itself; its power arises from the fact that you get to accept it mentally. Only at that point do your subconscious powers start to act according to the nature of the suggestion posed.

How autosuggestion banishes fear This term “autosuggestion” simply means suggesting something definite and specific to oneself. Just like any tool, when wrongly used can cause harm, but when used properly can turn out to be extremely helpful. Janet R. used to be a talented young singer. She was invited to check out for an important role in an opera production, she desperately wanted to audition, but she was also terribly apprehensive. About three times before, when she had sung for the directors in charge, she had failed woefully. The reason was simply the fear of failure. Even though it looked like she had a wonderful voice, she kept saying to herself, "When the time comes for me to sing, I'll have no choice than to sound awful, and I’ll just forfeit the role, they’d definitely not like me, and I’ll leave them to wonder how I got the nerve at first to even try it out. I'll go, but I know it'll be a failure." Her subconscious mind took these negative autosuggestions up as a request. It further went to manifest them and bring them into her experience. The cause was an involuntary autosuggestion. Her fears had become emotionalized and subjectified thoughts that ended up becoming her reality. This young talent was able to overcome the force of her negative autosuggestions at last; care to know how? It’s just that simple- she accomplished this by simply countering them with positive

autosuggestion. Three times a day, she would go alone into a quiet room; she would sit down comfortably in an armchair, relax her body, and close her eyes. She would try to still her mind and body as best as she could. Physical inertia favors mental passivity and opens the mind to be more receptive to suggestion. To counteract the fear suggestion, she would repeat this to herself, "I sing just perfectly. I am poised, serene, confident, and calm." At each sitting she would repeat this statement again, slowly, quietly, and with feeling from five to ten times. She had about three such sittings during the day and one immediately before going to sleep. After one week, she was completely poised and confident. When the fateful day came, she gave a beautiful audition and was cast in the part. Sounds like we’re unraveling some mysteries already, yeah?

Some comments on heterosuggestion Heterosuggestion simply means suggestions from another person. In all ages and in almost every part of the world, the power of suggestion has played an important and dominant part in the life and thought of humankind. Political creeds, religious beliefs, and cultural customs all grow and perpetuate themselves through the power of heterosuggestion. Suggestion can be used as a tool, or let’s call it a bait to discipline and control yourself. However, it can also be used to take control and get to command over other people that have not been taught to understand the laws of mind. In its constructive form, it is wonderful and magnificent. In its negative aspects, it appears to be of the most destructive of all the response patterns of the mind. Its results can be enduring patterns of misery, failure, suffering, sickness, and disaster.

Have you in any way acce pte d any of these ? From the day we were conceived, we were bombarded with negative suggestions. Not knowing how to counter them, we unconsciously accept them and bring them into being, as our experience. Here are some common negative suggestions: • You can’t. • You'll never amount to anything. • You mustn't. • You'll fail. • You don’t have a chance at this. • You're all wrong. • It's no use. • It's not what you know, but who you know. • What's the use, nobody actually cares. • There's no point to trying so hard. • You're too old now. • Things are getting worse and worse.

• Life is an endless grind. • You just can't win. • Watch out, you'll catch a terrible disease. By accepting heterosuggestions of this kind, it simply means you agree to bring them to pass. As a little kid, you were helpless when faced with the suggestions of others who were important to you. You did not know any better. The mind, both conscious and unconscious, was a mystery you did not even wonder or care about. As an adult, however, you are now able to make choices. You can try using constructive autosuggestion, which is a reconditioning therapy, to restructure the impressions made on you in the past. The first basic step to this is to make yourself aware of the heterosuggestions that are operating within you. Unexamined, they can bring in behavior patterns that cause failure in your personal and social life. Constructive autosuggestion can break you free from the mass of negative verbal conditioning that might otherwise distort your life pattern, making the development of good habits difficult or even impossible.

You have the chance of counteracting negative suggestions Just pick up the paper or tune to the television news; every day, you hear series of stories that could sow the seeds of futility, fear, worry, anxiety, and impending doom. Once you accept them and take them in, these thoughts of fear will cause you to lose the will for life. However, once you’re able to understand that you do not have to accept them, then choices open up for you. You have the power within you to counteract all these destructive ideas by giving your subconscious mind constructive autosuggestions. Check regularly on the negative suggestions that people make to you. You do not have to be at the mercy of destructive heterosuggestion. All of us have suffered from this in our childhood, in our teens, and in adulthood. If you check back, you can easily recall how your parents, friends, friend s, teachers, and associates contributed in a campaign of negative suggestions. Try to recap the things said to you, closely examine their underlying meaning, and you will discover that many of them were nothing more than a form of propaganda. Its concealed purpose was - and is - to control you by getting fear a home in you. This heterosuggestion process goes on in every home, office, factory, and club. You will discover that many of the suggestions people make, whether they know it or not, are aimed at making you think, feel, and act as they want you to, in ways that are to their advantage, not minding if they are destructive to you.

Suggestions and its wrong impact One of my friend and co-worker some years ago went to a celebrated crystal gazer in India to read his future. The seer told him that he had a bad heart. She predicted that he would die at the next new moon, my friend was aghast. He called up everyone in his family and told them about the prediction he heard. He met with his lawyer to make sure his will was up-to-date. When I tried to talk him out of this conviction, he told me that the crystal gazer was known to have amazing occult powers. She could do great good or harm to choose who she’ll deal with. He was convinced of the truth of this. As the new moon approached,

he became more and more withdrawn. A month before this, my friend had been happy, healthy, vigorous, and robust. Now he was an invalid. On the predicted date, he suffered a fatal heart attack. He died not knowing he was the cause of his own death. Pretty sure a lot of us have heard similar stories and shivered a little at the thought that the world is full of mysterious uncontrollable forces. Yes, the world is full of forces, but they are neither mysterious nor uncontrollable. My friend killed himself, by allowing powerful suggestions enter into his subconscious mind. He believed in the crystal gazer's powers, so he accepted her prediction totally. Let us take another look at what happened, knowing what we do about the way the subconscious mind works. Whatever the conscious, reasoning mind of a person believes, the subconscious mind will accept and act upon. My friend was in a suggestible state when he went to see the fortuneteller. She gave him a negative suggestion, and he didn’t hesitate, he just accepted it. He became terrified afterward; he constantly ruminated on his conviction that he was going to die on the next new moon. He told everyone about it, and he prepared for his end. It was his own fear and expectation of the end, taken as though true by his subconscious mind that brought about his death. The woman who predicted his death did not have any more power than the stones and sticks in the field. Her suggestion in itself had no power to create or bring about the end she suggested. If he had known the laws of his mind, he would have completely argued out the negative suggestion and refused to give her words any attention. He could have gone about the business of living with the secure knowledge that he was governed and controlled by his own thoughts and feelings. The prophecy of the woman would have been like a plastic ball thrown at an armored tank. He could have easily neutralized and dissipated her suggestion with no harm to himself. Instead, through lack of awareness and knowledge, he allowed it to kill him. In themselves, the suggestions of others have no power over you. Whatever power they have, they gain because you’ve given it to them through your own thoughts. You have to give your mental consent. Yo have to entertain and take in the thought. At that point it becomes your own thought, and your subconscious mind afterward works to bring it into experience. Don’t forget, you have the freedom to choose. Choose life! Choose love! Choose health!

The subconscious mind does not argue Your subconscious mind happens to be all-wise. It definitely has the answers to all questions. However, it does not know that it knows. It does not try to argue with you or talk back to you. It does not say, "Yo must not impress me with suggestions of that kind." When you say, "I can't do this," "I am too old now," "I can't meet this obligation," "I was born on the wrong side of the tracks, so I can’t build a happy relationship" "I don't know how to make new friends," you are just impregnating your subconscious mind with these negative thoughts, and guess what? It responds accordingly. You are actually blocking your own good. You are only bringing lack, limitation, and frustration into your life, and I do not wish any of these for you, but you have to understand that when you set up obstacles, impediments, and delays in your conscious mind, you are denying the wisdom and intelligence resident in your subconscious mind. You are

actually saying in effect that your subconscious mind is not capable of solving your problem. This in turn results in to mental and emotional congestion, followed by sickness and neurotic tendencies. To realize your desires and overcome your frustration, affirm boldly as many times as possible a day: The infinite

intelligence that gave me this desire leads, guides, an d reveals to me the perfect plan for t he unfolding of my desire. I know the deeper wisdom of my subconscious is now responding, and what I feel and claim within is expressed in the without . There is a balance, equilibrium, and equanimity. If on the other hand you say, "There is no way out; I am lost; there is no way out of this dilemma; I am stymied and blocked," you will receive no answer or get any response from your subconscious mind. If you want the subconscious to work for you, the only thing to do is that you give it the right request and get its cooperation. It is always working for you. It is controlling your heartbeat and breathing as you’re reading right now. When you hurt your finger, it sets in motion the complex process of healing. Its most fundamental tendency is life ward. It is forever seeking to take care of you and preserve you. Your subconscious has a mind of its own, but it takes on your patterns of thought and imagery. When you seek for the answer to a problem, your subconscious will respond immediately, but it expects you to come to a decision and to a true judgment in your conscious mind. You must acknowledge and be sure that the answer is in your subconscious mind. If you say, "I don't think there is any way out of this; I am all mixed up and confused on how to talk or relate with these people; why don't I get an answer?" you are only neutralizing your powers. Like the marine marking time, you use up vital energy but you do not move forward. You have to still the wheels of your mind.Relax and Let go. Quietly affirm: My subconscious has the answer. It is responding to me now. I am thankful because I know that infinite intelligence of my subconscious mind knows all things and is revealing the perfect answer to me now. My real conviction is now to set the majesty free and let the glory of my subconscious mind evolve. I rejoice because it is so, I’m grateful because it will all work out.

CHAPTER FOUR SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND PHYSICAL AND MENTAL WELL-BEING If evolutionary processes presented humans with biological systems whose purposes constitute the satisfaction of social relational needs, it is important to posit a direct and strong connection between relational success and well-being. As of now, there is substantial evidence that this connection really exists. Research on the health ramifications of relationships started in earnest in the late 70s when epidemiological studies first showed associations between relational circumstances and physical health, long-term prospective epidemiological studies came up with the conclusion that low social integration is a major risk factor for mortality, with an age-adjusted relative risk ratio past that of drinking. A lot of reviews have similarly proved that both morbidity and mortality are substantially influenced by the formation and disruption of ongoing relationships across specific dominions such as social isolation and rejection, network size and density, frequency of social contact, and divorce. In this respect, the deleterious effects of social isolation in humans match similar effects demonstrated in subhuman species, this talking about lower animals, suggesting an underlying evolutionary mechanism. In addition to proof explaining the existence of relationships to mortality and morbidity, relationship qualities also have been implicated. For instance, social support, the individual's subjective assessment of the availability within relationships of resources that may help fulfill important needs and goals, is linked with diverse indicators of health and wellbeing. However there is little agreement as to how the construct of social relationship should be explained, almost all existing research include some of the basic themes or topics involved in positive-quality relationships, such as affection, caring, reassurance of worth, advice and guidance, proximity to caregivers, coping assistance, opportunities to build active relationships and connect with people around you, reliable alliances, and tangible assistance. Relationships are also connected to health in another way: Illness, especially severe or chronic illness, has far-reaching effects that go far beyond the ill person to close relationship partners, basically couples and other family members. In most cases, illness has both affective, for instance threat of partner loss, empathic distress and behavioral consequences, readjustment of everyday activities and long-term plans for partners. The manner in which illness recaptures through the family system tends to be particularly pronounced in the case of chronically ill children, for whom the requisite adaptations fall on parents and sometimes on siblings and other family members also. Health psychologists also have shown that relationship factors may affect health-promoting and healthimpairing behaviors. For example, some reports showed family conflict, cohesion, and organization predicted adolescents' adherence to treatment plans for recently diagnosed diabetes. Coping with and stepping out from serious illness more often than not involve assistance and emotional support from family members or close friends. Health promoting behaviors like exercise, drug abstinence are affected

or influenced by the social environment, both through explicit social pressure and through exposure to the behavior of significant others. Finally, there is growing recognition that the patient-provider relationship is itself an important ingredient of health care. For example, adherence to treatment plans and follow-up tends to improve when providers are perceived to be supportive, caring, and available. Although the relationship between interpersonal circumstances and physical health is well explained, its causal mechanisms have not yet been identified. This is because therapeutic applications actually act on causal knowledge, many see the identification and verification of these pathways as the field’s most pressing question. Three categories of causal mechanism may help explain the health-relationships link: direct biological effects, behaviors that impair or enhance health, and illness-relevant coping and appraisal. These categories comprise of various specific, often interrelated processes, and it seems likely that multiple, interacting mechanisms ultimately will be discovered. Direct biological mechanisms constitute mediate links between your social situation and your internal physiological functioning. There are about three such systems corresponding to the cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, and immunological consequences of social integration and support. for instance , negative behaviors during marital conflict are associated with decrements across several markers of all three systems, the set of people with less diverse social networks are more susceptible to experimentally introduced cold viruses neuroendocrine reactivity to stress is lessened by the existence of affectively satisfying relationships, and positive social attachments, especially these involving affective prospects such as romantic love and social attachment, appear to stimulate beneficial neuropeptides. These last two illustrations are particularly valuable in suggesting that the impact of relationships on physiological well-being may not be limited to the deleterious effects of negative or conflictual relationships or even to stress-buffeting provided by supportive relationships,

participating in positive relationships may have its own favorable effects,

biological and otherwise. Existing theories have tended to focus on the significance of the dark side of relationships (e.g., conflict, social exclusion, rejection, loss) because negative events usually have stronger and more immediate adaptive consequences. Although direct biological effects have dominated recent work, the possibility remains that at least some, if not most, of the obtained link between relationship success and physical health are the result of indirect causes. Social support, for instance, may not be directly beneficial but, rather, may encourage health protecting behaviors. Because these healthprotecting practices are causally relevant in the biological functioning of many important organ systems, an indirect effect would be obtained. Similarly, the third causal pathway suggests that support-health effects may be mediated by appraisal processes. For example, traits such as negative affectivity tend to predispose individuals to assess their health and their relationships more negatively than expected. Another issue requiring concerted attention concerns the relevance and application of existing research to intervention. Basically, significant results may not be clinically significant, especially for biological systems that tend to vary markedly under ordinary circumstances (e.g., immune function, stress reactivity. It is currently not known whether the accumulated impact of small efforts is clinically significant or

whether homeostatic regulation reduces their impact. Whether and how social support research might be translated into interventions also requires scrutiny. The dramatic demonstration of an average longevity increase of almost 15 months among women with metastatic breast cancer who had participated in an emotionally supportive group psychotherapeutic experience has renewed interest in supportive group interventions. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the widespread popularity of support groups for a host of illnesses and conditions, evidence for a beneficial impact of peer-based emotional support groups is tenuous at best. Researchers also need to examine the moderating role of natural social networks, especially families, which may influence or undermine the impact of interventions. Existing research points to the greater effectiveness of indigenous support i.e., from existing relationships than of grafted support i.e., from newly formed or temporary relationships; in part because grafted support typically comes from others with whom there is no ongoing relationship, mental health and happiness. Morbidity and mortality aside, numerous research overwhelmingly supports the notion that "relationships are people's most frequent source of both happiness and distress” and that "positive relations with others" contribute to mental health, subjective well-being, and effective functioning across nearly all domains of life activity. These effects are readily apparent throughout the life cycle, from childhood and adolescence to old age. In large scale public opinion surveys, late-life retrospections and studies of everyday activity and across contexts as diverse as peer relations, marriage and family, work, and community involvement. Family relationships, especially marital relationships, have received the greatest attention in recent years, giving up their status as most people's primary relationship. There have been strong evidence indicating that married persons tend to be happier than unmarried persons whether single, widowed, or divorced irrespective of cultural factors, such as individualism-collectivism and the divorce rate, or of individual differences, such as sex and age. Nevertheless, these factors may moderate the degree to which happiness varies as a function of marital status. Research also has also shown the importance of extra familial relationships as a positive determinant of well-being, notwithstanding the fact that friendships may also be a significant source of distress. Children's peer relationships provide essential resources for socioemotional and cognitive development and, if anything, grow in importance by adolescence. Social isolation, rejection, and antisocial behavior in childhood are major risk factors for later mental health problems. Among older people, the evidence also is strong that the ability to socialize effectively contributes significantly to wellbeing. For instance, in several studies, social relations produced stronger effects on positive mood than any other general kind of activity, and insufficient social involvement is a well-documented cause of loneliness. In general, whatever the adaptive value of relationships during the era of human evolution, it is glaring that sociality remains central today to human health and well-being. However, as with physical health, "there is inadequate evidence of the causal mechanisms responsible and of the types of relationships that are most beneficial or harmful". Because studies showing relationships with happiness tend to be correlational, causal mechanisms are undocumented, leading some researchers to speculate that certain personality factors like negative affectivity and extraversion, perhaps

having genetic background, may underlie both relational success and psychological well-being... Although there is enough evidence that interpersonal experiences affect well-being over and above the impact of stable individual differences, just what aspects of interactions matter most remains to be learned. Much attention to the ecological niches of marital and other relationships also is needed. By focusing on partners' dispositional properties, these which include their attitudes, values, cognitions, or personalities or on the interaction of these properties with one another, existing research has failed to review how the context in which a relationship exists, particularly its wider social context, may influence the initiation, progression, maintenance, and potential disruption of relationships, these effects may be considerable. Finally, better evaluation of relationship science with clinical applications is needed. Contemporary disintegration of marital relationships, with its strong link to family violence and the attendant heavy toll on spousal mental health and well-being, has heightened public demand for couples and family counseling in many parts of the world. Yet, although interventions abound, the scientific basis for such treatments is suggestive at best.

CHAPTER FIVE RELATIONSHIP PROCESSES-RELATIONSHIP COGNITION Virtually everyone recognizes that cognitions about other people and one's connection with them play an influential role in the nature and development of a relationship. Less appreciated is the way in which cognitive processing itself reflects both the central functions of relating to others and the relational context in which behavior comes in. "Thinking is for relating,” social understanding operates in the service of interaction goals, and many social-cognitive processes are "prepared to address key issues in the development and maintenance of relationships, as well as to capitalize on relational interdependence in dealing with major life tasks. For instance, conditional reasoning techniques may have evolved to influence detection of non-compliance with social exchange rules, a judgment with important evolutionary implications. More generally, as described below, it seems clear that much human activity is shaped by cognitions about themselves, other people, and relationships. Substantial and diverse evidence have advanced theoretical understanding of relationship cognition along two broad topics: the nature of relationship cognition and how the existence of a relationship, as well as the process of interacting, influences social perception and cognition.

The nature of relationship cognition. Relationship cognition, by its very nature, reflects the organization of social life around interactions with others with whom one has an ongoing association, each of whom may also have interactions and ongoing associations with each other. Forr instance, because it is important to know who is associated with whom in the social world, memory for acquaintances tend to be organized according to social contexts, and mental representations of others tend to be connected if those persons are thought to be involved in a close relationship with each other. Also, perceptions of others tend to be influenced by impressions of their known associates, an interpersonal example of the "halo effect", relationship knowledge is composed of a self-schema for how one’s self is experienced in a particular social context, a parallel schema for the partner, and an interpersonal script, that is, an expected pattern of interaction that reflects regularities encountered in prior experience, these components are themselves thought to be elaborate and hierarchically structured. Thus, at the highest level, models describing people and relationships in general are represented. The next level constitute exemplars of particular others, corresponding to experiences with those persons and incorporating, in all likelihood, comparisons and contrasts with other people. The lowest level, which has received little empirical attention, contains a series of role- and situationspecific representations, for example spouse-as-lover, spouse-as-domestic-partner. This reasoning suggests that self-models, which are basically construed in fairly dispositional terms, might be better construed as varying across relationship contexts, that is, self-in-this-relationship, self-in-that-

relationship. Recognizing the complex organization that may exist between different levels of mental representation of relationship information provides a helpful framework for accommodating several important distinctions that have emerged. Research has most commonly focused on the highest level of generalization, showing how chronically accessible models of people-in-general may influence and affect interpersonal expectations and behavior. For example, depression, insecure attachment are all associated with more negative interpersonal beliefs and expectations. Less common are studies talking about the circumstances and history of your relationship with a particular partner. Self-discrepancy theory, for instance, describes the self-regulatory impact of guides (expectations) internalized from significant others, and the process by which feedback from roommates shapes self-perception. Activation of a significantother representation similarly leads to shifts in mood and self-evaluation to reflect the self as experienced with that significant other, even when that other is not present and no explicit associations (beyond the new partner's superficial resemblance) are evident. Studies further showed that the individual experiencing transference may deficit from the new partner behaviors that confirm the transference-based expectation, highlighting the important process by which exemplar-level representations of past relationship partners may provide the expectancy seed for behavior confirmation in present relationships. One type of cognition with special importance for relationships is expectations. Contextual model of marital interaction, which is easily applied to interaction with any known associate, view expectations as part of an interaction's distal context, thereby resulting to the spontaneous thoughts and feelings that yo feel during interaction, the proximal context, expectations derived from various sources: personal experience with the target, third-party reports, category-based generalizations (i.e., stereotypes), and personality-based proclivities (acquired in part from repeated relational experiences). Their function is to provide guidelines for moderating one's behavior during an interaction so as to facilitate obtaining the most favorable outcomes. In so doing, expectations may influence partner's behavior as well, thereby exerting fundamental effects on the interaction that transpires and on the long-term qualities of one's relationship. For example, the same behaviors may be interpreted more negatively to the extent that they have negative expectations of each other and even a positive act may be discounted. Expectations add a dynamic, interactive component to what is known more generally about mental representations of others. Checking expectations as cognitive guides for regulating behavior in social interaction implicates the well-known distinction between "controlled" (deliberate, thoughtful, relatively slow and effortful) and "automatic" (reflexive, fast, and efficient) processing. The latter may be particularly important in longterm relationships, which are characterized by several conditions that promote automatic processing, such as repetitive routinized (or "overlearned") behavior sequences; situations that require fast, efficient processing; high emotional involvement; and chronic accessibility of relevant expectations. Although the contrast between automotive and controlled processing have received minimal attention within the relationships arena, the distinction is likely to be important. For instance, chronically accessible expectations activated outside of awareness can induce behavior consistent with those expectations, as

may be seen in the tendency of low self-esteem persons to create self-fulfilling cycles of interpersonal rejection. Automatic activation of beliefs about your partner and the resultant behaviors may help explain why changing long-term relationships is so difficult. Recent advances in cognition research make possible more sophisticated models of relationship-specific cognition. This is a critical area for expanding research. Cognitions specific to a particular partner or relationship (i.e., cognitions that go on beyond general tendencies to perceive others in characteristic ways) are important to relationship functioning, as illustrated by the finding that trust for a particular partner, but not trait levels of trust, contributed to commitment and well-being in romantic relationships. The trait-like models that have dominated relationship cognition research typically assume that others are perceived in fairly uniform terms and, also, that the self is perceived as more or less the same in all relationships. That the field's failure to examine the partner-exemplar and role-specific level of analysis may be misguided is suggested by a longstanding program of research by those who have found that across diverse judgments and contexts, a perceiver's unique impression of another person tends to account for considerably more variance than either the perceiver's general tendency to see others in characteristic ways or the target's personal qualities as they are generally seen by other people. Relationship cognition, in other words, is about relationships with particular persons and not just about chronic tendencies in perceiving others, even close others. Similarly, cognition about the self often depends on its relationship context. To the extent that self-evaluation incorporates social cues and feedback--sometimes in manifest reaction to a partner's behavior, at other times through associations outside of awareness--different aspects of self may be expressed with different partners or during different interactions with the same partner, finding that adolescents' evaluations of their own self-worth differed across relationship contexts (e.g., with parents, teachers, or classmates) as a function of the validation support they reported receiving in that context. In short, although it is clear that relationship knowledge has both generalized and differentiated elements, little is known about how these levels of representation develop, about their internal organization, or about the factors that determine which level becomes activated in which circumstances. Moreover, just how these representations relate to cognition about the self remains to be determined. Instead, self and other nodes are linked, both by the direct connection signifying the relationship between self and other and by indirect connections through commonly shared traits (or goals, activities, emotions, or other characteristics). With such a network, as cognition occurs, activation flows directly across nodes representing self and close other, suggesting a structural basis for a process by which relationships "may deeply influence cognition, affect, and behavior in relationship and group contexts”. We turn next to discussing these influences.

The influence of relationship context on social cognition. The importance of understanding the effects of relationship context on social cognition is given by demonstrations that relationship partners are not simply neutral stimuli to be cognized about in much the same manner as one would cognize about inanimate objects or even hypothetical others. Rather, ongoing, interdependent relationships have significant implications for how most people process information both when thinking about their partners and while interacting with them. In other words, the process and content of social cognition depends on interpersonal goals and involvement. An example of this principle is the well-established fact that active participants in social interaction (and also those anticipating future interaction) often make different judgments than uninvolved observers do. For instance, relative to happily married Couples, spouses in distressed couples typically report lower frequencies of positive and prosocial behavior from their partners and higher frequencies of negative behaviors, even when independent observers see little or no difference. A similar bias has been shown among parents who fail to note differences in their children’s behavior that independent observers do recognize. Perhaps more strikingly, and reflecting the idea that cognitive processes evolved to permit human ancestors to contend with the adaptive problems inherent in social living, relationships may alter the very processes by which social perception and cognition operate. Findings from several representative research areas illustrate the necessity of integrating relational contexts into theoretical models of real-world cognitive processes. 1. In a series of programmatic studies, a researcher and his team have investigated the proposition that in close relationships, people "include the other in the self." Their research has demonstrated that cognition about close others but not about superficial acquaintances tends to resemble cognition about the self. Similarly, other investigators have shown that other-representations tend to be comparable in form and impact to self-representations to the extent that the other is familiar and close. Moreover, participants in committed relationships tend to cognitively encode those relationships in collective and interdependent, rather than individualistic, terms. These effects are not limited to emotionally close dyads. In-groups and important collective identities may also be incorporated into the self. 2. Compared with cognitions about members of one's in-group, cognitions about out-group members tend to be less favorable and more homogeneous and are more likely to reflect stereotypic rather than personal assessments. In other words, social categorization, which often takes place automatically and outside of awareness, influences the manner in which one thinks about others. Among several explanations for these effects is the possibility that in-group representations are mentally incorporated into the self-concept, as social identity theorists srcinally proposed.3. Self-serving biases in social judgment depend on whether the target is a close other or a stranger. For instance, members of close dyads do not exhibit self-serving attributional biases for success and failure, as members of distant dyads do “unrealistic optimism" may apply to close friends as it does to the self, but not to acquaintances. 4. Participation in ongoing

relationships requires social shared cognition. There have also bring reviewed extensive evidence demonstrating that interdependent individuals often share certain cognitive activities in ways that not only facilitate social coordination but also enhance their cognitive products. For example, cognitive tasks may be divided into portions and distributed among individuals, as in the case of transitive memory systems-shared understandings that allocate specialized domains of knowledge to the individual with greater expertise in that domain, thereby enhancing the dyad's overall performance on memory tasks. Small work groups often show similar advantages of specialization. Another example of social shared cognition is "shared reality"--that is, social verification that improves the accuracy and usefulness of subjective impressions. More needs to be known about how cognition about neutral stimuli and strangers is different from cognition about relationship partners. From an epistemic point of view, it is clear that by observing each other's behavior across time and situations, friends acquire knowledge that affords relatively more accurate assessments of each other's personality in general and each other's specific thoughts and feelings at a given moment, compared with unacquainted individuals. Information of this sort is likely to fundamentally shape the process and output of social cognition, yet how this occurs and how particular pieces of information are represented and retrieved are not well understood, nor is the relative role of automatic and controlled processes or of implicit and explicit beliefs. Relationship cognition is not just episternic, however. Interdependent relationships involve motives, emotions, communication, and conflicts of interest, all of which may influence social cognition. How these processes unfold among two or more individuals, each contributing to the interaction while simultaneously being affected by the other's behavior and each representing a history of interaction not only with each other but with other persons as well, is central to understanding the process of interaction within relationships but has yet to receive adequate investigation. In sum, at its core, social cognition is an action-control system designed to facilitate goal-directed behavior. Inasmuch as social interdependence and ongoing relationships are fundamental to many of the most important goals and tasks of everyday life, both evolved and learned processes of social cognition are likely to function most effectively when adapted to relational contexts and concerns. Thus, investigating social cognition from a purely individualistic perspective is likely to misrepresent its complexity and functional significance within the larger picture of human behavior. Emotion and Relationships Like social cognition, emotional behavior influences relationships, and relationships influence emotional behavior. Recognizing this intrinsic link, will make us understand the social communicative function of emotion and its role in the survival of human race. Contemporary emotion theorists continue to acknowledge both the evolutionary role of emotion and its social nature. , for instance , "most emotions involve two people who are experiencing either a transient or stable interpersonal relationship of significance" Emotions, even though their hallmark is the internal state of the individual--the viscera, the gut--are above all social phenomena.

Re lationship De ve lopme nt

All relationships, like lives, have beginnings, all have ends, if only through death, and many have substantial middles as well. Existing research has emphasized the relatively more salient and dramatic fare of beginnings and endings rather than the complex dynamics by which relationships are maintained, are renewed, or deteriorate over time. To understand the influence of relationships on the individual's behavior and development, it is necessary to view relationships themselves in a developmental context, both in their progression from one level of interdependence to another and as a function of the partners' maturation. In this section, we will talk about research on relationship development in adulthood and across the life span.

De ve lopme nt of adult re lationships. Efforts to understand adult relationships have inspired theories of how a relationship moves from a superficial stage to deeper and more interdependent levels of involvement. A key finding is that romantic relationships may follow different trajectories from courtship to marriage and that these varying pathways provide important clues about the nature and future course of the relationship. for instance, couples who commit to marriage relatively early report less conflict and more love and satisfaction as newlyweds than other couples do, whereas those who delay marriage and show more ambivalence about marriage later report weaker feelings of love and attachment and, indeed, are more likely to be separated or divorced 2 years after marriage .Attention to relationship trajectories, in turn, has intensified research on processes that commonly determine pathways in relationships. Prominent among these processes is self-disclosure. Meta-analysis concluded that self-disclosure affects relationship beginnings because people disclose more to others whom they initially like and people like others as a result of having been disclosed to. Once a relationship is established, couples have correspondingly less new information to disclose, and self-disclosure levels are sometimes observed to drop but self-disclosure nevertheless continues to be important to long-term relationships that are not highly interdependent. Self-disclosure is one behavior for which members of an ongoing relationship generally establish reciprocity, although not necessarily within the same interaction episode. Non-reciprocity, in fact, may signal one partner's desire not to deepen a beginning relationship or to pull back in an existing one. Intimacy, another characteristic of relationship development, has been closely linked to self-disclosure, although newer models emphasize other determinants of intimacy, such as perceived responsiveness, shared self-understandings, and responsiveness to nonverbal cues. Although relationship trajectories have long been linked to the extent of conflict, recent research suggests that conflict is normative in close relationships. Indeed, the closer a relationship, the greater the interdependence and the more opportunities for disagreement or lack of convergence between the members of a dyad Canary. Unless conflict occurs at a sustained high level, the manner in which a dyad manages conflict, for instance, whether it escalates or is used to successfully resolve disagreements-- better differentiates well- and poorly functioning relationships than the occurrence of conflict alone. Paralleling most processes within developmental psychology, the

importance of understanding relationship trajectories emphasizes principles of change and not just of global dyadic functioning. Growing interest in longitudinal designs promises to add new insights to this relatively neglected area of research. Two general themes should be addressed in the new millennium: first, normative patterns of relationship change must be better understood. Although most researchers would agree that relationships are dynamic, not static, the possibility that the temporal pattern of change in relationship function may predict its later qualities better than onetime measures do is rarely examined. It is often difficult, however, to distinguish normative changes experienced by most dyads from atypical patterns, dysfunctions, or problematic trajectories. Normative data that takes account of relationship practices and expectations in diverse ethnic, cultural, and regional settings is needed. The advent of growth-curve techniques makes this sort of analysis more feasible than in the past. Second, although traditional group-differential methods have accustomed researchers to thinking about change primarily in terms of valence--that is, as relatively better or worse, the properties and conditions of a relationship may change without subverting the relationship. Many developmental psychologists regard transformations as necessary processes that enable a dyad to negotiate adaptations as its individual members change over time. Thus, relationships may survive and even thrive precisely because they evolve in ways that meet the partners' changing needs and circumstances. Other models and further research are needed to identify the key components and processes of functional changes in relationships. As human capacities, needs, and activities change across the life span, relationships change as well. Some of these changes are voluntary, especially in adolescence and adulthood, when individuals have relatively robust capacities for selecting, maintaining, and terminating social contacts. Early caregiving relationships require virtually no voluntary action by the child, however, and in old age, greater infirmity and dependency often necessitate involuntary restrictions on the selection of relationship contexts. Individuals "tend to construct relationships consistent with their psychological goals, cognitive abilities, and social demands". Considerable research has established that capabilities for social understanding, the nature and forms of internal representations of relationships, and the degree of interdependence in the dyad are powerful components of change. Furthermore, age-graded social and cultural norms impose opportunities, demands, and constraints on the selection of relationship partners and the typical exchanges within dyads. For instance, school-age friendships often depend on classroom and school arrangements; in adulthood, relationships commonly arise in connection with work; and the elderly frequently experience separation from longtime friends by death or care arrangements, as well as by constraints imposed by reduced mobility and residential limitations. Thus, cognitive and social structural factors combine to determine which relationships partners are most influential and also how social networks are organized. Infants' limited capacities for self-care make relationships with parents and other caregivers most salient, but as their capabilities increase, caregiver-child relationships typically are reorganized to reflect more mutual interdependence.