How to understand your emotions

Have you experienced some form of emotion that you are not sure what it means or how you even got there? it’s not every day that we understand our emotions. This happens especially when we are dealing with an event in our life that leaves us in an unsure state.

Once or twice you must have said; “I’m not sure how I feel”. On the other hand, there are times you have said, “I feel happy”, “I am passionate about this”, “I am bored”, “I hate this”, “I am depressed”. The latter shows you know how you feel which is a good thing.

You can learn to understand your emotions by learning the emotional guidance scale and developing emotional intelligence.

What are emotions?

Emotions play a major role in our well-being. They determine how we feel hence creating some balance in our lives. When you are experiencing negative emotions, your life is less aligned. When experiencing positive emotions, you are more aligned and in control of your life.

The emotional guidance scale

The emotional guidance scale shows how you can spiral from a happy emotion to a moment of depression unworthiness. This however does not happen at once; it is a process.
Abraham-Hicks developed a scale of 22 emotions that indicate how we are feeling at one point or another. These are;

Joy/Empowerment/ Freedom/Love/ Appreciation
Passion
Enthusiasm/ Eagerness/ Happiness
Positive Expectation/ Belief
Optimism
Hopefulness
Contentment
Boredom
Pessimism
Frustration/ Irritation/ Impatience
“Overwhelment”
Disappointment
Doubt
Worry
Blame
Discouragement
Anger
Revenge
Hatred/ Rage
Jealousy
Insecurity/ Guilt/ Unworthiness
Fear/ Grief/ Depression/ Despair/ Powerlessness

As indicated in the diagram, the upward spiral indicates how one rises from a level of contentment to joy and appreciation. The downward scale indicates how we can move from a level of boredom to despair and depression.

Understand how thoughts lead to emotions

Our thoughts determine the emotions we feel. Emotions are feedback from what is happening in our system. When you control your thought, you can change your emotion from one position of the emotional scale to the other, climbing upwards. A negative emotion is an indicator or a warning sign that we are focusing our thoughts on things that are not helpful to us. To feel better, we must focus on thoughts behind the emotion.

Working your way to feeling better

This is not as easy as it sounds. First, we are all at different levels of the scale. You cannot tell a person at the lowest level experiencing despair to raise their chin up and appreciate life such that they’ll feel pure joy. No. They must work their way up the scale. They must identify the source of their despair, and what caused that. For example; if one is experiencing depression, identify what caused it. If it is guilt, what caused the guilt? They should dwell at the emotional feeling of feeling guilty so that they can move to the upper step.

Sometimes, when rising from one emotion to the other, one may jump a step or two depending on their situation. However, it is very unrealistic that one can jump from the lowest step to the highest stop. In such situation, there is a psychological disorder involved such as depressive disorder or bipolar disorder.

How to use the scale

You can use this scale to position your emotion on the scale and understand where you stand and what you are feeling. Using the scale, you can work your way up the scale to feel better. The better you feel, the more aligned your life is and the more you are in control.
Identifying signs of downward spiral early enough can also prevent you from getting to the most negative of emotions. For example, when you are bored, then it turns into pessimism, you can catch it early enough and work your way up to the level of optimism.
How do you feel right now?

Want to read more about understanding your emotions? Check out Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence book. You can buy on Amazon or get the key lessons from the book in a 15 minute summary on Blinkist.