Oxytocin only increases as a result of stimuli. Left to their own devices, our oxytocin levels naturally hover at a baseline that’s around zero.

As you focus your attention on what’s bothering you most, your MPI, ask yourself questions like, When I think about this issue, what do I feel in my body? Do I feel tension, pain, tingling, buzzing, heat, or cold? Emptiness, numbness, or nothingness?

“We think if we can beat vulnerability to the punch by imagining loss, we’ll suffer less.”2

Being positive then becomes a skill we can consciously choose to hone every day.

When you think about telling the truth about what’s happening in your life right now, do you feel any physical tension, pain, tightness? Do you feel anxious or fearful?

What’s most challenging about looking at the truth is not the process itself but how vulnerable it makes us feel.

Nothing and no one and no place or circumstance outside ourselves can give us peace. Only we, ourselves, can choose to pursue it.

most people will do more to avoid loss than to benefit from an equivalent gain.

They don’t need to come from a significant other. Anyone you care to hug counts!