Over the past 6 months I have explored the huge colourful world of emotions. Here are 5 things I have learnt on my journey…
Lesson 1 & 2: Emotional granularity could be the key to managing life
Harvard psychologist Susan David wrote that people who increase their emotional granularity ”do much, much better at managing the ups and downs of ordinary existence than those who see everything in black and white”. At first, I didn’t understand what David was getting at, let alone believe it. How can articulating the exact feeling you are experiencing help you manage life’s ups & downs better? I have cruised through life using those dominant emotions ‘happy’, ‘sad’, and ‘angry’, and I was getting by just fine, or was I? Would I manage my life better if I had a greater emotional vocabulary?
I imagined what it would be like to have greater emotional granularity when my Mum passed… was I feeling sad, or was I actually feeling alone or afraid? When Bow, my daughter, died, was I actually feeling hopelessness, despair or grief but couldn’t articulate myself? When my health deteriorated, rather than feeling angry, was I actually feeling powerless and disgust?
How can increasing our emotional granularity help us manage life better? Well, I have experienced a lot of sh*tty moments in my life that I haven’t really coped that well with. So, what better place to start then to look at myself. I began to practice properly labelling and articulating my own emotions and I discovered two things…
- I started to understand myself more and what I was feeling and what this feeling meant to me. I was also able to explore the thought that led to this feeling.
- I started to connect with people in my life that I felt I had lost connection with.
When my friends or family asked how I was I turned into a complete robot giving them the same answer regardless of how I was actually feeling. “I’m ok”. But I wasn’t, I was far from ok. And where do you go from ‘ok’? How can friends, family or colleagues take steps to connect and understand you when all they get is ‘ok’. They can’t, and the conversation quickly changes.
When I started to increase my emotional granularity, I found a greater connection was made between myself and others. My friends asked me hard but helpful questions, and we talked. They were able to understand how I was actually feeling and they were then able to practice empathy and provide the support I needed.
Alongside this practice in my personal life, I brought the focus on emotions into the workplace. I worked with leaders to increase their own and others emotional granularity and everyone reported back that this improved relationships, and provided greater emotional regulation and psychosocial well-being.
Lesson 3: There are a lot of emotions out there
On my quest to increase my emotional granularity I was thrust into a world where there are more emotions than pantone colours. And it turns out… I didn’t know that much. Suddenly, I was no longer annoyed any more. Annoyance was replaced with Jealousy or Envy (meanwhile I had always used jealousy and envy interchangeably – it turns out they are completely different, and I could no longer be ‘well jel’ of anything!). Understanding these granular differences between emotions allowed me to articulate feelings on a whole new level. It was like the moment Dorothy stepped out of sepia into the vibrant and colourful Oz.
Lesson 4: No one makes us feel anything… we are the makers of our emotions.
I grew up with my sister and the phrase ‘she made me do it’ was my childhood mantra. I believed my sister was the reason to blame for a lot of things, including how I felt. I believed her actions (and the actions of others) directly influenced how I felt. But this is not true.
A whole crowd can be witness to the same situation or experience and every single person will feel something different. This is because we see something, we have a thought, which creates an emotion, which influences how we act (or don’t act). I realised I am in a lot more control of my emotions than I first thought. Sometimes, it’s helpful to understand the emotion and ask yourself ‘what thoughts do I have about myself/the situation/that person to make me feel this way?’.
Lesson 5: Pull up a chair and sit down with your undesired emotions
I don’t know when it was in life when we were taught to quickly move away from undesired emotions. Was it in our upbringing? Did our parents quickly try to calm us down to make us smile and laugh again? Did we get taught those undesired feelings have no place in school, at the dinner table, in the workplace? Why have we become so eager to manage these undesired feelings and quickly replace them with desired feelings?
An emotion is simply an internal physical feeling. Sometimes we are in such a rush to rid ourselves of this feeling we do not take the time to understand the feeling and what thought got us here. We are so desperate to change this physical internal feeling we are short-changing ourselves of the opportunity to learn about ourselves. So, the next time you are not feeling so great, pull up a chair and grab yourself a cuppa.
I have learnt a lot over the past 6 months, and I believe I am a better person for it. I am now working with leaders to increase their own emotional granularity and that of their team. I am helping people understand that there are emotions present in every interaction and setting and how to talk about these feelings in a safe and supportive way. So, the next time someone asks how you are, reach for an emotion beyond ‘fine’ and ‘ok’. How do you really feel?
Here are a few ways you can learn more about The Emotional Culture Deck:
- Visit www.theemotionalculturedeck.com
- Download a free Lo-fi PDF version of the deck at the website, click here
- Complete The Emotional Culture Deck Online Masterclass course like I did here
- If you still have questions, feel free to contact me here for a chat
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