When we first fall for someone, we become enamored with everything about that person. We gush. We create things to commemorate their specialness. We feel so connected, we fill in the blanks about what we don’t know. We assume we will like the rest of that person just as much. That’s just human.

If we then fall in love, then that early, rosy view of the adored one’s perfection may last just six months. That’s why Democrats who, (like MIT’s Henry Jenkins and behavioral-economist Dan Ariely) believe there’s a fan-like fervor felt by many Obama supporters, have reason to worry the longer this “bitter” Clinton vs. Obama battle rages on. Then there’s the “familiarity” problem. What sways you?

Here’s five quick lessons we can glean from this Fandom Effect for making wiser choices in our work and our social and personal lives. When you are drawn to someone you’ve just met, remind yourself of these phenomena:

1. People Like People Who Seem Like Them
Two suggestions:

• Define Yourself Before Others Do.
Years ago, I recall a radio commentator saying, “Presidential candidate George W. Bush will be active in making pronouncements in the coming weeks. He wants to define himself before his opponents do it for him.” (Don’t we all.)

You can bring out the best side in others as you attract them to you, starting with how you define yourself for them. Here’s how. Demonstrate the part of you that is most like the person you are around. Then you will feel positively familiar to that person and he will project onto you the qualities he likes in himself and thus be more likely to like you.

• You’ll Prove Yourself Right…at First
Conversely, the more you like someone you’ve just seen or met, the more you’ll magnify in your mind the qualities you like. Plus you’ll blind to those qualities that are discordant with yours. Men, tend “to trust people who’re part of a group with them” while women are “more likely to trust strangers who share some personal connection, such as a friend of a friend.”

2. Recognize the “Confirmation Bias”: Ah, He Acts Right – Like Me
To confirm your initial perception, you will seek and find in what that person says and does, the reinforcing evidence that the person feels and thinks like you.

3. Deepen Which the Ruts in the Roads of Your Brain Maps?
The more actions you take on behalf of that initial positive view, the more deeply you will believe and defend that view. Whatever you most remember, repeat and practice become your strongest beliefs and habits. Because of the brain’s extreme plasticity, we now know we’re capable of remarkable changes in belief, health and behavior – at any age.

Recognize, by the way, that the opposite effect – reaction against someone – is a stronger, felt emotion. That is, if you instinctively dislike someone you just saw or met you will react sooner and more intensely against that person than if the first feeling was positive. Plus you’ll also look for confirming evidence. It is more difficult to change from a negative to a positive feeling than vice versa.

4. Don’t’ Be Stopped by the Feet of Clay Effect
The more actions you have taken in support of that wonderful person, the more upset or even betrayed you feel when that inevitable point comes – when that special person doesn’t act “right” like you. He exhibits either a conflicting opinion or way of behaving. Your hero has feet of clay, as do you.

5. Find the Sweet Spot From Which to Build a Mutually-Beneficial Relationship

That is the relationship’s first turning point. Now that you can see more of the whole person, you tend to flip, focusing more on what you don’t like than what you do. It is the brain’s naturally protective mechanism.

You usually have two choices.
• You can continue to focus on what you don’t like in the person, finding confirming evidence, and spiral down into more reaction and conflict until your views harden and the relationship dissolves.

• Or you can look at the size of the sweet spot of mutual interests – where kindred feelings and values coincide.

Is that sweet spot sizable enough to cultivate, and continue? Then speak candidly to that area of mutual benefit, in your conversations with that formerly special person. Does that other person see that sweet spot as you do?

Then there’s hope. Your shared time together is not for naught. You both recognize that you’ve built the foundation for growing the relationship. Your differences in temperament and talents can serve you both. Bonus benefit? Just ten minutes of positive interaction with another person can improve your memory and mental acuity.

Both of you can experience the upside of being unlikely friends rather than the downside of mismatched, former friends, lovers or partners. Next step? Pledge to keep a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions (or better) with each other. If this ratio is an accurate predictor of happy marriages then it’s probably a reliable indicator for other kinds of healthy relationships. Bonus? You’ll become more resilient.

• Life Favors the Optimistic So Learn to Be More So

Since it appears we are each born with an emotional set point, along the range between being deeply pessimistic to invariably optimistic, it pays to know where you are on that continuum. If you tend to be negative, for example, you are probably hard on yourself and chided by others about being downbeat.

For you, the relationship-building, life-affirming, success-attracting approach odescribed above is especially arduous. But you can make it easier, research shows. Here are three tools that have helped me:

1. Discover your set point and then practice ways to be more resilient and upbeat by reading Marty Seligman’s Learned Optimism and taking the test. (Hint: pessimistic people see a present problem as pervasive, personal and permanent).

2. Then gain clarity about your strongest talents and most attractive temperament so you can recognize the kind of work activities at which you excel and the people with complementary talents and temperament – so you and the people close to you can become happier and higher-performing. To discover your strengths, read Marcus Buckingham’s Now Discover Your Strengths and take the related test.

3. To put the insights from the above two books to work in forging positive, productive relationships with others, learn the approach taught in my ebook, LikeAbility. Contact me if you’d like a copy of this $15 ebook.

One morning over his breakfast cereal, life forever changed for a twelve-year old Canadian boy. He flipped through the pages of his morning newspaper to find his favorite cartoons. Instead he was stopped by a headline, “Battled Child Labour, Boy 12 Murdered”. That was back in 1995. Craig Kielburger asked his brother Marc and then others to join him in what’s become a child-to-child “Me to We” movement.

Now they write a column for The Toronto Star. Marc is executive director and co-founder of Free The Children. (He also graduated from Harvard, then became a Rhodes Scholar with a law degree from Oxford University).

Beginning on March 25th you can get an eBook version of the Kielburgers’ book, Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World.

Like Buried Life, four other Canadian youth, Marc and Craig believe that anybody can make a difference in others’ lives – and thus live a more meaningful life. Once you read some of the everyday actions and inspiring stories they collected you may want to re the “blueprint” they offer in their ebook. (Who’s your hero?)

Perhaps they can expand involvement by partnering with Sergio Lub’s pay-if-forward community, favors. Maybe Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire at MIT can involve them in creating the Me to We games to teach children. Yes, sometimes good things do happen to good people.

So says Smart Mobs author Howard Rheingold in this 19-minute talk at the Ted conference. He believes it is instinctive to want to participate in a compatible group. Of course, we are only as strong as the weakest link. Hear how to be a part of collective action and participatory media. It may lead you to hearing more and reading this chapter of Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth.

From raunchy to celebratory, every single minute, YouTube users are uploading six hours of their new videos. More than 100 million people are viewing them. And that was last May.

Yet even the founders probably didn’t imagine that their Main World Channel would eventually provide the most accessible way to see some of the brightest thinkers of our time. By making YouTube a “no-brainer” to use, they ensured that great minds can speak to more of us.

Watch such diverse luminaries as a best-selling author describing The Botany of Desire, the most famous living Latin American artist talking about his Abu Ghraib paintings, six Nobel Laureates advocating energy self-sufficiency and four researchers warn of the politics of obesity. All thanks to the customized YouTube channel for UC Berkeley “Discover Cal.” (And many new people are.) Yet, with the rapidly growing flood of audio and visual ideas, action, news and “facts” it has never been more vital for all organizations to be more transparent and interactive. And it is crucial for people of all ages to learn how to search for the full story and to be independent, critical thinkers, as Stephen Abrams advocates.

From the Slobberknockering changes in pro wrestling to the appearance of Cartoon Network clips on YouTube “entertainment” is changing. Some fans are becoming co-creators. New kinds of businesses and individuals are now distributers. What role would you like to play?

Want a window into the future of entertainment? Attend next year’s Futures of Entertainment conference at MIT. The 2007 conference just ended this weekend. “You see entrepreneurs mixing with educators, admen with game-world architects, artists with engineers,” notes Jesse Walker of Reason magazine.

“In 2006, at the Friday night reception, I sat between an officer in a small gaming company and an anthropologist studying Firefly fans,” Sam Ford told me. He’s with MIT’s Convergence Culture Consortium, the conference sponsor. he adds, “A couple chairs down was a fellow journalist — she was interviewing people for Spellcast, a podcast devoted to the Harry Potter fan community.”

Rather than a meeting of peers from this same profession, this conference attracts wildly different kinds of people. What they share a passionate interest in entertainment and what’s broadly call culture. And where their interests converge they have exciting opportunities to collaborate. It’s the only place on the planet where, “academics, creatives and industry professionals …” gather to compare notes on “games, comics, television, transmedia storytelling, alternate reality games, user-generated content and fan cultures.”

“It is one of the few conferences that gets the big-brained academics and big-money industrialists to share,” notes Marisa Gallagher.

“The line between producers and consumers is no longer as clear as it once seemed to be,” observes Ford. From Cult Media to Fan Labor to Mobile Media, read living blogging coverage of the conference. In this podcast hear more – and, perhaps contemplate how you might participate.

This kind of conference reflects another kind of trend. The desire to expand one’s world and find fresh ways to collaborate by mingling with bright people in other kinds of work. See, for example, the TED Conference and Renaissance Weekend.

Take one step and you can power two 60W light bulbs for one flickering second. Not much. Yet a rush of fans at a concert or commuter walking through a commuter train station could create the energy for the signs they pass.

How?

Where crowds walk, build, “a responsive sub-floor” of blocks that slip against each other from the pressure of the steps. This “generates power through the principle of the dynamo, a device that converts the energy of motion into that of an electric current” according to two MIT grad students.

James Graham and Thaddeus Jusczyk suggest that this flooring be built into buildings where there is considerable foot traffic. Somehow dubbing this invention a “crowd farm” seems rather drab.

The duo’s other idea depends on bar crowds. Bounce up and down (between gulps of beer) when you sit on their MIT-designed bar stools. Your weight makes a “flywheel to spin, powering a dynamo — or electrical generator — and in turn, four lights.” The Holcim Forum in China gave this stool design “the top prize.”

So I guess if you care about world energy conservation, you’ll get energetic at your favorite watering hole. Imagine walking into a bar for the first time and seeing a crowd of people bopping up and down on their seats as they talk.

Some lower-tech and less expensive ways to generate energy from human power are already in use. The non-profit, Ecosystems designed a pedal generator that’s used in remote parts of Nepal for lighting, water sterilization and more. Each one can produce enough electricity to provide minimum light for 200 homes, or light a schoolroom and run a television and DVD for students. Also cyclists are using headlights that are powered by their pedaling. Hikers’ backpacks are designed to use their walking to charge their cell phones and MP3 players.