Emotional Well-Being:

Preface Writing this book was a natural family collaboration. Our interests and expertise converged on the topic of emotional well-being. George is a psychologist in private practice and a retired university research scientist and adjunct professor. Miriam and Corey are two of his children. Miriam Stanford-Cusack is a long time science educator and a Doctor of Natural Health. Corey Stanford holds a MBA and is an internationally certified personal and professional development coach. We wrote this book for you if you choose to actively pursue well-being. We intended for it to be a valuable resource for that purpose. You will benefit most from this book by pondering and practicing the principles and skills described in it. It took us years to synthesize them, and will likely take you a lifetime to fully incorporate them into your daily life. For years we reviewed every major line of research pertaining to emotional well-being that we could find. Our goal was to develop one approach to emotional well-being that represents the big picture and share it with you. We wanted to discover and describe the single best model to account for the common elements in all of the theories and practices we could find that have been confirmed by solid research. We tried to restrict the model to the smallest number of powerful concepts we could select to take into account the majority of scientific variables related to emotional well-being. It is not necessary to have a complete understanding of these basic concepts the first time you read about them. As we use them throughout the book, they will make more sense and become more useful. We have taken a number of steps to make the book accessible to most readers. Many key concepts are found in bold for your easy review of their meaning. Our description of our model is supplemented by lines of research and science inserts. Lines of research are stories about the collective efforts of many scientists to clarify a particular piece of the puzzle. Science inserts are more technical descriptions, for those that are interested, of the psychological and biological issues that underlie the science of emotional well-being. Admittedly, this endeavor did not produce a book that is designed to be read straight through. Rather it is material to be pondered and used. It is written in a concise manner that is packed with information, much of which is new to most readers. The resulting model is even new in some places to most researchers and mental health professionals. To make the book as useful as possible, we make references available to you in their most current and complete form on the companion website. This allows us to stay current with related research. If you have an extensive interest in research on emotional well-being, most of the references on the book website are links to PDFs of the full peer-reviewed research articles upon which much of the book is based. In many cases, the reviews of previous relevant research in the articles are as important to the topics in the book as the specific research findings reported. Table of Contents Preface Part I: Creating Positive Personal Experiences Chapter 1: The Origins and Nature of Emotional Well-Being Chapter 2: The Cycle of Personal Experiences Chapter 3: Creating Transformative Personal Experiences Part II: Maintaining Emotional Stability Chapter 4: Balancing Your Reactive and Reflective Minds Chapter 5: Calming Distress and Impulsivity Chapter 6: Seeking Emotional Resolution Chapter 7: Problem-Solving Distressing Circumstances Part III: Cultivating Loving Human Connections Chapter 8: Understanding Basic Human Attachment Chapter 9: The Upward Spiral into Loving-Kindness Chapter 10: Living in Gratitude Chapter11: Responding with Compassion Chapter 12: Choosing Forgiveness Chapter 13: Cultivating Loving Human Connections Part IV: Pursuing Meaningful Purposes in Life Chapter 14: Aligning Your Self with High-Benefit Core Values Chapter 15: Understanding Personality Resources Chapter 16: Conscious and Unconscious Self-Evaluation Chapter 17: Practicing Self-Examination Chapter 18: Pursuing Challenging Goals Chapter 19: Adopting Beneficial Lifestyle Practices Conclusion