For Christmas, I bought a dictionary and went through it, highlighting all the definitions that describe him or remind me of him.

“Every morning before I get up, he leaves two folded towels in the bathroom for me for when I take a shower — one big towel for my body and a smaller towel for my head.

Aron, who is a professor of psychology at State University of New York (SUNY) Stony Brook, has been researching the impact of love on the brain for three decades.

Several years ago he and longtime pain researcher Sean Mackey, MD, PhD, began talking at a neuroscience conference and conceived the idea for the study.

Mackey is chief of the division of pain management and an associate professor of anesthesia at Stanford University Medical Center in California.

“He was talking about the neural systems involved with love and I was talking about the neural systems involved with pain, and we realized there was a lot of overlap,” Mackey says.

They recruited couples in the first few months of romantic relationships for the study by posting notices around Stanford University. The researchers specifically focused on the euphoric, obsessive phase of early love rather than more mature romantic relationships.

“Our subjects fit into this category of recklessly, widely, passionately in love, and it was the easiest recruiting we ever did,” Mackey tells Rebuilding Relationships. “The fliers asked ‘Are you in love?’ and within hours we had a dozen couples beating on our doors.”

The hypothesis was that love affected the brain in the same way many addictive drugs do, by targeting the “feel good” chemical in the brain known as dopamine. This reward system has also been shown to be critical in pain management.

The majority of people have very low standards in life therefore they don’t achieve much. They don’t dream big because they think it’s unrealistic. So they only expect to have an average life and average life they get.

It’s easy to see how much the person will achieve in life by looking at his standards. If the person hopes to someday own a second-hand car, that shows that he has low standards. Such poor standards will never allow him to see any opportunities for buying a new car.

Settling down for the second best should never be anyone’s goal. Everyone can and is entitled to get only the best, yet because most people don’t raise their standards, they keep experiencing average stuff in their lives.

Raising standards means refusing to accept something that is not what you want. That should by no means be interpreted as pushing against that which you don’t want, because that will keep you stuck forever. It only means that you no longer agree to tolerate something that you’re not satisfied with and you focus on and demand better conditions. It means burning bridges to distance yourself from the average life and reaching for the better life.

Raising standards means distancing yourself from the people you no longer resonate with and being open to more enriching relationships.

Raising standards means quitting your job and focusing on building your own business to experience real freedom.

Raising standards means moving out of the environment you never liked and having courage to move into much more pleasant surroundings.

Raising standards means refusing to buy cheap stuff that makes you feel average.

Raising standards means being able to say “no” when you want and not feel guilty about it.

Raising standards means knowing your worth and refusing to settle down for things that don’t appeal to you.

I raised my standards by refusing to work for someone else. I didn’t care if that would mean having no money for some time, I just couldn’t put up with being someone’s slave anymore. To me, working for someone else meant loss of freedom and being used as a tool for someone else to succeed. Life eventually gave me what I was asking for – it always does, just some people don’t wait long enough to receive what they asked for.

I get a lot of emails from people asking me for advice for one particular problem – they do everything right, yet nothing seems to change. They visualise, they think positively and do all the other stuff that is necessary to improve their lives, yet things remain exactly as they were. So here’s my solution to this problem: you need to give some time for everything to change. Nothing can change instantly in your environment when you start thinking positively. Give some time and you will definitely get what you demand.

Anyone who succeeds in whatever they pursue do so because they refuse to accept less than what they want. For example, R. Kiyosaki (self-made millionaire) absolutely refused to work for someone else.

(By the way, his story really inspired me and contributed to my self employment. Some of my friends became self-employed too after reading his books. If you haven’t read his first book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, you definitely should, especially if you want to work for yourself.)

He and his wife were even on the streets once, yet they still continued to build their own business. Then they lived in the basement of their friend’s house (as far as I remember), but they still refused to work for someone else.

They also tithed and paid themselves first whenever they earned some money. They refused to give all their money to pay bills – they tithed and paid themselves first, and only then paid their bills. It was really tough but they continued to build their own business, tithe and save. And finally both of them became extremely successful.

With Love and Respect…Rebuilding Relationship..

Ken and Robin

Love Ya,

Ken & Robin