Maybe the Whole Ocean: Exploring New Metaphors for Navigating Feelings and Relationships

Just as the ocean covers most of the planet, relationships compromise the majority of life. Strategic navigation of relationships occurs as people consider a cognitive understanding of emotions, e.g., that feelings are more governed by thinking than by circumstances. This is foundational for explaining how most interpersonal problems can be minimized and how new levels of freedom and joy in relationships with others can be experienced.

Using additional metaphors, fourteen topics related to relationships are explored: emotion, freedom, human nature, competition and cooperation, motivation, grace, communication, anger, sadness, happiness, fear, connection, forgiveness, and virtue. Each topic is discussed with an emphasis on a cognitive model of emotions as well as reflections on various relevant Bible passages.

Overall, this book attempts to show, through various principles, acronyms, analogies, and examples, that a simple idea (thoughts determine emotions) can make a significant difference. This idea is essential to understanding how people can be more emotionally responsive than reactive, which in turn will result in interpersonal dynamics that are characterized more by opportunity than obligation, cooperation rather than competition, and thriving rather than just surviving.