Today’s Wednesdays’ weekly article on emotional and relationship development talks about Our Common List of Emotions in Life.
The Significance and Definition of Your List of Emotions
Our list of emotions that we experience on a daily basis rules our life. Emotions are often the underlying cause of all decision making. Learning to master our list of emotions in life will substantially improve our life. Do you know your own list of emotions in life?
Dictionary.com describes emotion in its noun form as “an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness.” Given this context and definition, it is plausible for us to create a list of emotions for ourselves.
How Does Your List of Emotions Affect Your Life?
Your list of emotions is basically the feelings we have whenever we encounter or experience something. They trigger physiological responses in our bodies through hormonal changes. These could lead you to laugh, cry, frown, looked downcast and so on.
When you experience victory in a competition, you are likely to feel the following emotions: happiness, joy, pride, contentment, fulfillment, achievement, etc. Conversely, if you experience the lost of a loved one, the list of emotions you feel could be sadness, loneliness, distress and even anger.
Anything that can help us experience good feelings or avoid lousy feelings can be classified as emotions goals. But in order for us to set good emotion goals, we need to clearly understand what the list of emotions we commonly face is? Without this awareness and understanding, it is very difficult to set clear and specific emotion goals to improve your emotional state.
Our Common List of Emotions
Here is a list of emotions that I have compiled that humans tend to experience everyday in their lives. I have classified them into either positive or negative emotions. Are there common emotions that you see in this list of emotions? Do some of them have a strong association with you? What other emotions can you add to this list of emotions?
The Discrepancies in Using the List of Emotions
This list of emotions is by no means complete. The English language has more than 3000 words that can describe an emotion. 1051 words describe positive emotions, while another 2286 words describe negative emotions. Twice as many words describe negative emotions compared to positive ones.
Out of the more than 3000 words describing emotions, a typical person will only regularly use about 12 of these words from this huge list of emotions to describe their everyday emotions. This is not at all surprising.
As we evolved as a species through time, it is a natural human tendency to focus more on the negative side of things than the positive side. Consequently, more negative emotional words are crafted to create this list of emotions. It is no wonder that the human race is saddled with so many problems currently.
Even the types of words we use to describe our list of emotions are limited. Just think about the last time someone asked you, “How is your day?” What words came out of your mouth to describe what was asked? Was it simply something like “OK”, “Good”, “Not bad”, “Fine”, etc?
Or did you use something more powerful like “Fabulous”, “Superb”, “Outstanding”, and “Fantastic” and so on? If we can learnt to use more powerful words in our everyday language to describe our good list of emotions, and less powerful words to describe our negative list of emotions, our lives will eventually reflect that.
Your Take on Our Common List of Emotions
What is your own list of emotions? Is your positive list of emotions longer than your negative list of emotions or vice versa? How is your vocabulary associated with your list of emotions?
Hi Jimmy,
Very interesting post. The first step to manage emotions is to become aware of what kind of emotions we use. We humans are habitual creators and we tend to stick what we know.
The nice thing is that once we are aware of our ‘common’ used emotions, they can easily become extended by changing their characteristics. For example, if we look at ‘anger’, it can be amplified or decreased and it can range from ‘irritated’ to ‘ angry’, ‘furious’ or joy can range from ‘amused’ to ‘feel happy’ to ‘excited’, …
Some years ago I took acting classes and that was a great opportunity to learn to recognize and act with emotions. It was really very interesting to learn to label and use them.
Understanding our emotions is so important and a very powerful tool once understood. It is our primary feedback system from our body about our experiences and very useful to make decisions.
Thanks for sharing!
marc van der Linden recently posted..loving vs liking
Marc,
You could not have said it better when it comes to minimising our negative emotions. The ideas of Anthony Robbins, certainly rings loudly in your suggestion. These ideas are certainly very valid to improve our lives.
Hey Jimmy,
I have experienced all of the emotions on your list. I do find that when I keep my body healthy and balanced than I am less likely to experience negative emotions.
Justin | Personal Growth recently posted..Mazzastick.com’s Guide 4 New Bloggers eBook
Good advice Justin. I can testify to the fact that having the healthy and balanced body will reduce these negative emotions. I have stopped my runs for a while, maybe that’s why my state is all over the place. Got to schedule them back in again.
Emotions are very wide ranging things Jimmy and often dependent on what’s playing out in our life. Personally I read many gurus and coaches advocating looking for positive feelings when times are tough but I don’t get that or agree. I believe we should honour what emotions well up and accept them. We are all light and shade, dark and bright, happy and sad, and being true to this helps us live naturally without denial or despair. When we own our emotions they don’t own us!
John Sherry recently posted..5 Reasons Why You Should Never Blame The Referee
John,
You brought up something of great values here. We are not saying that avoiding emotions totally is the way to go. Emotions make us truly human and we should be accustomed to feeling these as much as possible. What’s important to bear in mind is to know that negative emotions does influence and impact our decisions adversely. The key is to feel those emotions and while we are in this mood do not do anything silly. If we stay in such states for too long, then nothing gets done or bad decision are made. Many of the emotional management strategy helps us to get back to optimal state for optimal living.
Hi, Jimmy,
Insightful fact about the # of positive emotions vs. the # of negative emotions. I’ve not heard that before. It does correlate with this fact, though…
If you are upset or feel cheated by a merchant or store owner, most people will share their story with 20 people. If you are thrilled because you received exceptional service, you will share that news with 5 people.
Your fact and my fact goes to show you that most people are more comfortable being victims or being negative.
As for me, I prefer to see the glass half-full and to see my perspective through rose-colored glasses, because where your attention goes, energy flows! I’d much prefer positive, energizing energy coming my way!
Connie
Connie Lee recently posted..Which of These are You Most Afraid Of?
Hi Connie,
Welcome to Life Architects.
It is quite amazing isn’t it, knowing that the majority of people prefer to feel and talk negatively than otherwise. This certainly does explain why the world is in such a bad shape today. But I am also hopeful. Because I see more and more people like you and myself coming forward and making change for the better. We will reach the state of positivity really soon and than great things will happen.
So true – The Power of the word and the emotion goes hand in hand for sure. Think about someone asking you, “How are you?” so many use the word, “fine”, “good”, “ok”; I personally like to say “grateful”…….
Thanks for another wonderful post,
In love, light and bliss,
Nancy
Nancy Shields recently posted..ONLY TIME CAN REVEAL IF IT’S REAL……
You have a fabulous flair for great words, Nancy. No doubt that people in your circle will be always uplifted and blessed all the time. Even online, I can feel you wonder vibes for life.
Hi Jimmy,
Without “emotion”, Life would be a desert…..that’s desert not dessert. If we can control, master, manipulate then what would we be? Certainly identifying the emotions that “hurt” us and trying to minimise them can be helpful. I think that using our full range of emotions is a healthy thing. Many are not able to/willing to be emotive…..I think that’s sad.
be good to yourself
David
David Stevens recently posted..4 Simple Goal building steps that can be truly Life Changing
Hi Steven,
You made the same point as John. Nothing wrong really. Emotions are part of life experiences and should be enjoyed. But they should not be allowed to disempowered us by causing us to make foolish decisions in life.
Hey Jimmy, I love this article. Language is such a fascinating thing.
It doesn’t surprise me that there are so many more negative words for emotions. Even in the Bible, for example, there is a certain passage describing the blessings and curses of god. There are something like four times more curses, lol.
It’s just human nature I suppose, but we can take language proactively into her own hands and modify our daily behavior with it. A powerful principle indeed.
Fred Tracy recently posted..The Most Important Law of Attraction Secret You’ll Ever Find
Hi Fred,
Have not been chatting with you for a while. Hope things are fine with you. I am just overwhelmed by things at moment. Wedding plan and some key presentations for me coming up. That’s why my blogging activity has slackened a little.
Anyway, thanks for your bible note on curses. I did not know that there are four more times more curses than blessings. Speaking of this, I think the dictionary and bible and all are all created by us right? So we are the ones inventing and using more negative words. Just a thought; don’t you think we can change that as well? Maybe have books that have more positive words than negative. That would be great right? How foolish of us to embrace all the negative words in life.
Hi Jimmy,
When we talk about emotions, we have to talk about thoughts as we can not have an emotion without first experiencing a thought in our head. Emotions are complex, but if we learn to control our thoughts, we can control our emotions so we won’t experience anxiety, stress or worry among other emotions on a regular basis. Thanks for sharing
Dia,
You just suggested a fantastic strategy for people manage their emotions. The key is thought in our mind. I find this perplexing too. How can we actively monitor our thoughts better?
I would like to share a thought! Every time when I have some negative emotions am trying to chase them away buy thinking or saying , that every negative emotion helps you improve your perfectness. Thus even when I am sad, I am not angry because of that. I just keep saying to myself that I am reaching closer the perfectness:)
(dofollow)
Anna recently posted..Dental crowns – Is it worth destroying your teeth for?
Hi Anna,
That is a very sound way to deal with negative emotions. Holding onto our journey towards perfection surely shifts our pattern towards positive thinking.