In the previous post, I explained about Emotional Intelligence. If you did not see it, I recommend you visit it before reading further.
The first step in Emotional Intelligence is being aware of your emotions. While it may sound simple, a majority of us don’t pay attention to the emotions that we go through every day. These emotions are caused by various instances that occur in our lives.
Technically speaking, emotions and feelings are different. However, we tend to use them interchangeably. One of the key differentiating things between emotions and feelings is – emotions lead to feelings. While the number of emotions is not many, the feelings run into a few hundreds. Experts around the world differ with each other when talking about the number of emotions that one goes through. For simplicity, I’d go with Robert Plutchik’s list 8 basic emotions:
Anticipation
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Surprise
Trust
Whenever you’re going through a situation, take a moment for yourself and try to identify the emotion(s) that you’re going through in that particular situation.
If you repeat this exercise a few times during a day, you will realize how many different emotions you go through in a short span of time. Upon identifying the emotion, try to associate it with the feeling(s) that the emotion is leading to. You will soon realize two things – similar situation need not necessarily evoke the same emotion and the same emotion may result in different feelings at different times.
Remember, knowing the emotion(s) that you’re going through will help in figuring out on how to deal with it/them.
What emotion are you going through now?
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