People Make The World Go Around

In my work with children and adolescents at the hospital I use an instrument called "Incomplete Sentences Blank" as part of my evaluations.  One of the items starts like this: "People are always..." and they have to fill in the blank.  I continue to be amazed at how many of them (probably 80% or more) respond with, "mean."  Are people really mean?  Certainly, we have all been mean at times but I believe most of us are decent people who prefer harmony to contention.  I use this example to introduce the importance of the social aspect of our lives in emotional fitness.  

All too often we make judgments about people based on very little information, or misinformation, and, consequently, choose not to pursue any kind of relationship with those people.  What's worse is that we begin to generalize this information to other people and pull back from most social interactions.  It has been my observation that those who isolate themselves from others and become reclusive start to think in unusual and unhealthy ways and even exhibit a degree of paranoia.  These individuals are typically not very happy people because they are always expecting the worst from others and rarely experience fulfillment in relationships.  

You can guess what happens when someone starts to become reclusive and have paranoid thought patterns---people will avoid them and not reach out to them in friendly ways.  As a result they conclude that their perceptions about people not being friendly are correct.  

The social aspect of our lives plays a major role in our emotional fitness.  Social relations give meaning to life and give us opportunity to exercise our brain and become more proficient with managing and expressing our emotions.  It's not always easy, initially, and can be compared to exercising our physical body.  As we use our muscles they become stronger and respond much more efficiently.  Social interactions enable us to exercise our emotional muscles and lead us to become emotionally stronger and, as a result,  experience much more happiness in relationships.  The natural outcome is increased emotional fitness.  Reach out to someone today and exercise your emotional muscles.