The circles of emotions

What is the emotion you feel right now? Is it excitement or apathy? Love or jealousy? Gratitude or desire? No matter what your current emotion is, it is e-motion, or energy in motion. Assume for a moment that we are all energy. We are indestructible, because energy is indestructible. We can change shape, because we are energy. Whenever we feel any emotion, our bodies respond. Even when the emotion is weak, there is some physical response that can be perceived and measured scientifically.

That is energy in motion. Now imagine that you feel a strong emotion like love for your partner. Your body reflects that, right? And your partner responds to a particular look in your eyes or your posture, and you perceive the change in your partner’s body, and you know you are loved. But what if you are not in the same room? How do you know your partner loves you? Do you just know? Or do you know from past experience and nothing has changed? Or is there something else? There is more to it. You are part of an environment, and in fact part of this entire earth. Imagine yourself feeling a strong emotion, such as love for someone. That emotion is energy in motion.

The emotion emanates from you in ever-widening circles. Surely this must impact on people around you? Let us compare the emotion we feel to a small stone that is dropped into a pool of water. You can see with your eyes the concentric circles on the surface of the water. The same concentric circles follow the stone right down to the bottom of the pool. And the circles on the surface form right to the edge of the pool as well, even though they are so faint that we can no longer see then with the naked eye.

That is how we feel emotion from other people even when they are not in the same room. That is how we know that our partners still love us, even when they are not with us. That is also how we know that somebody is in distress and need our help, even before they have contacted us. The scary bit is that this holds for all emotion, including stuff like jealousy, resentment, hatred, and the list goes on. Do you get the picture? When I feel jealous of someone, I put energy with a particular vibration in motion.

That vibration interferes with the love vibration of my body. It also emanates from me and impacts on the world around me, much farther than my eyes can see. The person that I am jealous of will eventually become aware of this, first at a sub-conscious level, and then consciously. I cannot stop that from happening, because I cannot control the direction of the concentric circles of my e-motion.

My jealousy impacts mostly on me (because I am the source of the e-motion), but also on the person that I am targeting it at, and on every other innocent person that happens to be between me and my target, even if they are not in the room with me or involved with me. We all want world peace, right? The only way we will get that is to choose to live emotions that contribute to world peace.

Compared to the size of the earth and the number of people on this earth, we are small, and we may think of ourselves and our contributions as insignificant. But remember what happens when you throw a small stone on a large pond. The stone causes ripples every time without exception, and those ripples change the nature of the pond every time without exception. If we can all take responsibility for our e-motions and live Love, we are one gigantic step closer to world peace.

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Emotional Intelligence - Emotional Self-Awareness

The Emotional Intelligence (EI) model I have worked with for over a decade depicts emotional self-awareness as the foundational competency. Building a solid base of emotional self-awareness is necessary before progressing to develop the competencies of emotional self-management, emotional self-motivation, empathy and nurturing relationships. Many of us are unaware and, therefore, unwittingly accepting of the roller coaster of emotions we experience on a daily basis. Without this knowledge (an awareness of our emotions), the development of other EI competencies becomes difficult.

As we all deal with stress on a daily basis, we become accustomed to the pressures and hardly notice when the heat is turned up. When the coping mechanisms we develop to deal with stress fail, we experience negative emotions, which increase our stress level. While the damaging effects of stress are well-known, it's surprising to realize that many people don't recognize that they are experiencing negative emotions. If you don't know what emotion you're feeling, you don't have the information you need to decide whether to stay in that emotion or change or transform it.

Jane's Story: One of my EI workshop participants, Jane (not her real name) worked in a technical field. The idea that emotions and emotional intelligence were important to performance seemed far-fetched to Jane. Both the company culture and the extremely objective, rational nature of her profession promoted the concept that emotions played no role in her work. This impression also carried over into her personal life. When we had our goal-setting interview before the workshop, Jane told me that she didn't notice emotions and emotions played no role in her work.

She also told me that her colleagues were difficult to work with. Jane was disconnected and didn't see the emotional impact she had on others. Additionally, her boss perceived Jane as causing all her problems. He felt the difficulties Jane was having were due to her distant behavior and lack of emotional self-awareness and insensitivity to others. During and after our first training session, Jane started practicing techniques to help her become more aware of her emotions. At our first coaching session, Jane, with tears in her eyes, revealed that she finally recognized that she did have emotions and those emotions, the negative ones, were hampering her work and home relationships. She realized that distancing herself made her peers feel that she was inapproachable.

Jane confided in her boss about her revelation. Before this discussion, Jane's boss had no idea that she was clueless about her behavior and its impact on others. This understanding shed a new light on what was going on and, with this different perspective, the boss became more willing to listen to Jane and support her. Jane's story is not uncommon. Many of us lack an awareness of our feelings and how those feelings may be affecting our work and our relationships.

There seems to be a cultural predisposition to disregard emotions and focus on getting the work done, especially in technical roles. What we don't realize is that disregarding emotion is detrimental to effectiveness and productivity. Without the awareness of the importance of emotions, we do not have insight into how our responses to negative feelings are affecting us and those around us. Negative emotions, on a personal level, spark a cascade of 1400 biochemical events, some of which result in physiological changes such as increased heart rate, adrenaline, blood pressure and cortisol (the stress hormone).

Your mental clarity, physical energy, and personal effectiveness are negatively affected. As we experience these negative emotions, we may become short with people, defensive and sometimes angry. And when others observe this response, they start avoiding us, and we loose their valuable insights, suggestions and help. Even with the awareness of how important emotions are, people may experience a personal anxiety or hesitancy to openly advocate for developing EI skills.

Some of my workshop participants have reported significant benefits from using the EI techniques I teach, yet, particularly in a technical field such as Engineering, are hesitant to promote an EI program for others. While there certainly is a bell-shaped curve of those who do or don't make a choice to benefit from the development of EI skills, not providing the opportunity is an opportunity lost for everybody. What Can You Do? Start by identifying typical situations at work or at home in which you feel negative emotions such as anxiety, frustration, anger, fear, or sadness.

For example, you may feel frustrated when people who have important information don't show up for a meeting. Or you may feel angry when you see a certain person because he always wastes your time. Or you may feel anxiety when your boss shortens a deadline on a project. Or you may feel depressed knowing that you're going to have to work late every night this week. Identifying these situations helps you realize those events that trigger negative emotions. Next, pay attention to and name the emotions the identified triggers evoke.

Also recognize and name the positive emotions you experience during fun times such as sharing dinner with friends, playing with a puppy, playing a game or just sitting in the sunshine. Start developing an emotional vocabulary and expand upon it as the occasion permits. Create a baseline of where you are expending your emotional energy now. Draw a four-box grid, labeling the two right boxes as positive emotions and the two left as negative emotions. Label the upper two boxes as high-energy emotions and the lower two low-energy emotions. Recall the day's events, activities and interactions.

For each, identify your and write the emotion in the appropriate box on the grid, noting how long you were in the emotion. For example anger would lie in the upper left box while hesitant would lie in the lower left box. Peaceful would lie in the lower right box and excited in the upper right box. Annoyed, depending on your level of annoyance, would lie somewhere in the left two boxes.

When you finish you will have an emotional map of your day. If the frequency and duration of your emotions lie on the right side, you were experiencing peak performance. If they lie on the left side, you are in a stress zone. As you develop your EI skills, periodically recreate this map. Over time you will want to see yourself more frequently in the two right quadrants by choosing to transform negative emotions into positive, productive emotions.

Warning: Your Emotions Can Affect Your Health

Emotions are identified with the overall process whereby low level cognitive appraisals, in particular the processing of relevance, trigger bodily reactions, behaviors and feelings. Emotions of wanting include: greed, hope, envy, desire, and love. Emotions of not wanting include: fear, shame, repulsion, and contentment. Emotions of having include: happiness, pride, guilt, and jealousy. Emotions of not having include: anger, sadness, and distress.

Other emotions: surprise. Emotions have the power to override even the most rational decisions. Health People with good emotional health are aware of their thoughts, feelings and behaviors. They have learned healthy ways to cope with the stress and problems that are a normal part of life. They feel good about themselves and have healthy relationships. However, many things that happen in your life can disrupt your emotional health and lead to strong feelings of sadness, stress or anxiety. Experience Emotions affect your moods. It is clear however, that without the preferences reflected by positive and negative affect, our experiences would be a neutral gray.

Most people have had the experience of feeling overwhelmed by a strong emotion. We also expect that what is stored about present experience will also be differentially regulated. Like adults, children can experience mixed emotions. Exploring the full range of emotions will reassure a child that it is normal to experience conflicting feelings. Problems The following may be physical signs that your emotional health is out of balance: back pain, change in appetite, chest pain, constipation, diarrhea, dry mouth extreme tiredness, general aches and pains, headaches, high blood pressure, insomnia (trouble sleeping), palpitations (the feeling that your heart is racing), sexual problems, shortness of breath, stiff neck, sweating, upset stomach, and weight gain or loss...

Poor emotional health can weaken your body's immune system, making you more likely to get colds and other infections during emotionally difficult times. You may not be used to talking to your doctor about your feelings or problems in your personal life. First, he or she will need to make sure that other health problems aren't causing your physical symptoms. If your symptoms aren't caused by other health problems, you and your doctor can address the emotional causes of your symptoms.

Conclusion Our emotions and our feelings let us know when we are unhappy and when something is missing or needed. If you find yourself dwelling on one of these emotions, or spending an inordinate amount of time "denying" the emotion, it is important to work on a more realistic understanding of the situation. Emotions Anonymous is a twelve-step organization, similar to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Emotions Anonymous is supported and maintained by member contributions and each member and group is encouraged to share in the financial support of Emotions Anonymous. The better we can identify our emotions, the easier it will be to determine what is needed to be happy.

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