“If we can’t handle uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure in a way that aligns with our values and furthers our organizational goals, we can’t lead.”
Dr. Brene Brown, Atlas of the Heart
The ability to understand emotions leads to a quality life
Many of us seem to be stuck living in black and white. We simply don’t understand emotions. Imagine only being in your brain with no body to provide the information that guides your thoughts. Your world would be pitch black. No sights, laughter, tears, or sensations to learn from or help you make meaning of the world. You would not enjoy art or music. You would never belly laugh. You would not love so deeply, because loss would not make you sad.
In reality, your brain processes incoming information and sends signals to the body to react. We often forget that the body is telling the brain what is going on at the same time. It’s a conversation – a full color display instead of static grayscale.
When we minimize our emotions out of ignorance or ego, we severely limit our brain’s ability to figure out what the heck is going on. Without our gut feelings, breathless moments of awe, tight cold anger, and frivolous moments of joy, our world slowly becomes black and white. People don’t want to follow black and white leaders. We want full color, making emotional understanding a critical leadership skill.
If you’re not familiar with the color wheel, three colors mix to make all the others. Artists use red, yellow, and blue to make every other color. When you mix all three though, you get shades of brown.
There are times, like when my daughter runs to hug me at school pickup, when I have one clear emotion – joy. When I am run out on a rock climb with sketchy protection, I feel mostly fear. The other 80% of my life is a muddled ‘brown’ though. At a moment I might feel a touch of happiness, a little envy. A bit of anxiety mingles with excitement and gratitude. When people (like me) ask you questions like “What emotion do you feel and where do you feel it in your body,” it’s no wonder that you might have trouble answering. I sure do. It is hard to understand emotions when they typically come all muddled together.
Three primary issues make it hard to understand emotions. We are out of touch with our bodies. I can’t actually feel my heartbeat… can you? That is a key test for people’s introception or ability to tune into their body. We also don’t have much literacy around emotions. Most people can name about three of the 87 emotions when put on the spot! Finally, we don’t really understand what emotions are or where they come from.
To understand emotions, understand the cause
The APA defines emotions as physiological and behavioral changes triggered by a subjective experience. Physiological change means our body changes (heart rate, hormones, sweat, and facial expressions shift), and behavioral changes mean we do something different. Emotions are not always feelings. Feelings can be emotions, but feelings can also be simply cold or hungry. Emotions are not moods, which don’t have a clear trigger and could last for a longer time. Emotions typically last for about 90 seconds after the cause is removed unless we ruminate on the situation. Once the snake goes away, you stop reacting to fear. That’s not to say you are not left with an anxious mood, but your body is no longer experiencing the emotion of fear.
Find the cause of the emotion and work backward to identify your feelings
If emotions always come from experiences, we can start figuring out how we feel by reflecting on our day. (This works well for others too.) Psychologists know the basic experiences that cause emotions. Put these on a cheat sheet to reference later.
Happiness: a need or desire has been fulfilled.
Joy: you have achieved something.
Sadness: You have lost or anticipate losing something.
Anger: You experienced something unfair.
Disappointment: Your expectations were not met.
Disgust: Something physical or moral is repulsive to you.
Fear: You perceive a threat.
Surprise: Something unexpected happened.
Build literacy to label your emotions
Understanding these fundamental causes can help decipher your feelings. For example, I might be driving home from a big rock climb feeling numb (brown mix of emotions). In reality, I achieved something – joy. I also did not completely meet my expectations – disappointment. I feel like it’s unfair that I have to race home for another commitment – anger. I am losing time in the mountains – sadness. No wonder I am not clear on my current emotional state. The power here is that I can now choose the emotion to focus on, and for me that would be joy.
This helps A LOT with others too. When I tell my six year old that I can’t go to the park after all, she screams in my face about how she hates me. I could:
a. Interpret the screaming as anger, feel unfairly treated, get angry myself, and escalate the situation… OR…
b. Think about what caused this screaming (unmet expectations), realize that she is disappointed instead of angry, apologize, and deescalate.
If you are a parent you know which one you would prefer, and which one you would more than likely end up with.
Get granular with an emotion wheel and the mood-meter
If we on average can name three emotions, or even 10, our vocabulary can’t keep up with reality. First, read Atlas of the Heart. It’s an amazing book with descriptions of all of our key emotions. You’ll thank yourself. Then go back to Kindergarten. My daughter often labels her mood… “Dad, I am in the red zone today.” This practice is research-based and super helpful for all of us. Wouldn’t it be nice if your boss shared their red zone status before unfairly yelling? Then perhaps we could have more empathy! Read more about it in another great book – Permission to Feel.
Imagine a quad chart with energy on one axis and quality on the other. You can be energetically in a negative quality mood, maybe furious or terrified. You can be energetically in a positive quality mood – ecstatic or excited. This is the mood-meter, and it is super helpful!
Putting it all together, work backward. What happened and what basic emotions might that subjective experience have caused? Perhaps you felt threatened when people laughed at you. Now that you have a basic emotion identified (fear), look one level out on the emotion wheel and get more granular. This feels like insecure. Now note your energy and quality. Low energy might mean you are just worn down and a little dejected. High energy could mean resentment. Now you can do something about it… stay tuned for tips on regulating emotions in the next article.
Now let’s get out of our heads
Annie Murphy Paul argues that we have unnaturally bound our thinking to our brain. In her book The Extended Mind, she shows how our cognition is linked to the spaces we are in, the electronic devices we use, the social groups we interact with, and importantly here – our bodies. Stock traders who can feel their heartbeat, that is have high introception, actually outperform others. Many studies show hands move toward better options before our thoughts catch up. We have memories buried deep in our emotional brain areas and bodies that we cannot access without being in tune with our bodily sensations.
In Western culture at least, business leaders seem to struggle with this. We avoid expressing emotions, preferring to tamp them down. We even research emotional labor, the work of suppressing and faking emotions prevalent in service industries. Sorry, it’s unlikely that your barista is happy to see you every morning. To be a better leader and frankly just be a better adjusted human being, you’ll need to change this. I get a lot of blank stares when I ask executives where they feel an emotion, but when we cultivate this ability, we develop an early warning system that allows us to outmaneuver our competition.
Key steps to understanding emotions
To get better at labeling and understanding your emotions, start reflecting on sensations as you identify emotions. Work backward from subjective experience to your emotion and get granular on the mood and emotion you feel. Name it as accurately as possible. Then pause to consider how you feel in your body. Are you tense anywhere? Do you notice tightness or relaxation anywhere like your shoulders, face, stomach, or throat? Do your fingers and toes slightly tingle?
Once you get good at recognizing the physiological sensations associated with different emotions, you will be able to more quickly identify your emotions and choose an intentional response. You will know what event caused what feeling, and you’ll be able to choose what to do about it. Go to our next article to learn what to do once you understand your emotions.
Want more? Check out my favorite resources on the topic below, and check out other blogs in our Emotional Intelligence series.
The Extended Mind Book about introception and thinking broadly.
Atlas of the Heart Book to help understand and label emotions. A few pages on each of the 87 common emotions we experience!
Primal Leadership Book about emotional contagion and using emotions as a leader.
EQ 2.0 Book with tips on improving in all four domains of EI.
Permission to Feel Book that details the RULER method for understanding and regulation emotions.
How Emotions are Made Book about the social influences on our emotional experience.
Permission to Feel Podcast with key points from Permission to Feel book.
Why You Should Not Trust Your Feelings Article arguing against completely trusting your feelings – a counterpoint.
Emotional Intelligence Has 12 Elements. Which Do You Need to Work On? Article arguing for a more comprehensive understanding of EI than “being nice.”
Emotional Intelligence is a Trainable Superpower Podcast episode discussing ways to develop EI.
1990 EI Article from Salovey and Mayer The first academic article on EI, and a different way to understand the concept from the way GOleman popularized it.
Emotion Wheel on Medium Wheel of emotions useful to label with granularity.
Mood Vs Emotion Quad chart using energy and quality to help identify particular moods.
