Know Your Emotions
How to give meaning to our emotions and build deeper self-awareness
Our emotions influence almost everything we do in life. How we show up, make decisions, perform work, and engage in relationships. Ultimately, emotions control and determine the quality of our lives. We seek specific things for the feeling we believe we will experience once we obtain them. Positive emotions can accelerate the path to our true potential, while negative emotions can disempower us and hold us back. Name your emotions when you experience them to gain a deeper understanding and meaning. Periodically measure your emotions to consciously touch long-standing feelings that may hold you back from envisioning a compelling future, re-creating a new identity, or performing at your true potential.
This post is part of a collection of strategies in the Career Strategy Framework.
Overview
Inspecting our emotional state can provide insights into the emotions and experiences we want to feel more or less of. But what exactly are emotions in their meaning and interpretation?
The book Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown, provides an authoritative reference of eighty-seven emotions and experiences organized into groups.
Accurately naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power – it gives us the power of understanding, meaning, and choice.
By understanding the definitions of each emotion, we can use it to build deeper self-awareness and choice.
“Language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning and self-awareness. Having access to the right words can open up entire universes. When we don’t have the language to talk about what we’re experiencing, our ability to make sense of what’s happening and share it with others is severely limited. Without accurate language, we struggle to get the help we need, we don’t always regulate or manage our emotions and experiences in a way that allows us to move through them productively, and our self-awareness is diminished. Language shows us that naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding and meaning.”
📈 I have compiled a spreadsheet of 87 emotions and experiences from Atlas of the Heart for you to self-discover where you are emotionally. Think of it as an “emotional check-in” that you could do weekly. You will then be able to identify the empowering and disempowering emotions that are influencing your life. With this deeper awareness, you can choose what emotions you will commit to that will change your path and trajectory to your true potential.
Exercises
What emotions and experiences have you felt in the last week?
What emotions do you want to feel less?
What emotions do you want to feel more?
Imagine you are now feeling more empowering emotions and fewer negative emotions. What are you now able to do?
Resources
Books
Chapter 5 - Emotions Create Habits