Comments on: Love is … (according to Fredrickson!)

By: Kathleen

Kathleen — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:10:21 +0000

‘I believe I can fly, I believe+I+can+touch+the+sky…’
http://www.flickr.com/photos/96437739@N00/173945422
Edit image: in house or using Picnik
Loved this photo! Thanks!

By: andreea

andreea — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:57:09 +0000

As adults we sometimes mistake love for a wide range of emotions we feel. I thought of wedding day pictures, of expressions of tender love… But there’s nothing like the closeness, trust and connection between a mother and her children. The undenying commitment to the well-being of another human being… so I picked this one http://www.flickr.com/photos/42346519@N00/311887065

I really like the contest and i think it’s hard to pick a winner, especially since as the article suggests, love comes with a surge in other positive emotions, so you can encounter shades of them in different facets of love, such as tender amusement, joy, gratitude and even inspiration!

By: Gayle

Gayle — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:37:37 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25894944@N07/2680135195

Here’s a photo that shows a very joyful love…and suggests how deep the roots go in us.

Great article, fun contest–thanks, Dave!

Gayle
Positive Psych Expat Coach

By: aaron jarden

aaron jarden — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:05:39 +0000

PHOTO COMP
I know it’s one of the first photo’s to come up, however having jsut got married, it’s hard to imagine a time of life being more in love with my beautiful wife…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7228825@N05/1045750850

By: David Kincheloe

David Kincheloe — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:35:10 +0000

From graffitist to renowned artist, Keith Haring’s celebratory humanism expressed love and happiness for all.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47473221@N00/2392510543

By: Dave Shearon

Dave Shearon — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:05:45 +0000

Louis, I suspect you could use the picture of you and your twin to talk about Fredickson’s concept of experiences of positive emotion within a safe relationship as love. You could identify times when you’ve experienced joy, gratitude, interest, serenity, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, and awe within the context of that relationship and how that was “love.” Am I right?

By: Dave Shearon

Dave Shearon — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:02:00 +0000

LRM, great! I hope you’ll let us know in a few weeks how your experience with LK Meditation is going. I love it when folks take action!

By: Louis Alloro

Louis Alloro — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:40:42 +0000

Dave,

Thanks for this fantastic article — and thanks for calling us to action with this task of finding an image to represent love, which I found was not so easy to do.

At first I google-imaged “love” and was dismayed with what I found. Then, I looked through the image folder on my computer. Still, I couldn’t find it. And then viola, from my last article on PPND, where I talked about our relational responsibility, here is the image that helps *me* see & feel & be love:

http://positivepsychologynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/louischristine.jpg

It’s a photo of me and my twin sister, Christine. In that article, I said:

“Perhaps I take relational responsibility so seriously because I have a twin. When I think about the dynamics of our inception, I get goose bumps: two sperm winning the race at the same time. A true win-win in a Wrightian sense of nonzero sum.

My twin sister Christine also happens to be my best friend. When I see her becoming a better person, I want to become a better person. This year, she launched her own business, and is working tirelessly each day to ensure its success. In a sense, her success is my success. Her love is my love. It is shared energy.”

By: LeanRainMakingMachine

LeanRainMakingMachine — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:05:12 +0000

Kathryn and Dave:
Thanks for the leads and links. Already started LKM….
Best
LRMM

By: Dave Shearon

Dave Shearon — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:45:12 +0000

Christine — yep, I’m looking for photos that would somehow illustrate to a general audience Dr. Fredrickson’s suggestion of love as the other nine positive emtions within a close, safe relationship. Photos with idiosyncratic meaning would be great for a positive psychology portfolio on love — Dr. Fredrickson discusses these in her book, drawing on James Pawelski’s experience and the assignment he gives in MAPP — but might not immediately communicate to a general audience.

For example, if you click on the picture above for inspiration to see a bigger version, or even use the URL under that bigger version to go to flickr and see an even larger version, you will see that written on this poster are statements evidencing the inspiration that it caused in others. (And one cynical, skeptical statement that might have been written by a lawyer!)