ABC of Emotions: How to use the FEELINGS WHEEL to develop Emotional Literacy ๐จ| episode 03
[Music]
this video is the basic feeling guide
for beginners the ABCs of emotions and
then we're gonna get more advanced and
go into how to use the feelings wheel as
a guide we're gonna explore the
neuroscience of how emotions shape your
perceptions what people always ask is
how can I have more positive feelings
but in this video we're gonna bust that
myth and we're gonna find out how we can
actually be smarter with feelings by
tuning into all emotions as a resource
to help you reach what's most important
let's start with a basic definition of
what is emotional literacy and then get
into why emotional literacy is important
what we're talking about is learning the
language of feelings and figuring out
what feelings actually mean
neurobiologically emotions are always
present people sometimes say let's be
rational and leave emotions out of it
but actually that's completely
irrational when we look at the
neuroscience what we realize is that if
you try to leave emotions out of it
you're gonna be unconscious the only way
we can actually deal with the complexity
of emotions is to pay attention to
what's really happening and how emotions
are a filter for everything we think and
do the definition of emotional literacy
is naming and understanding your
feelings we're talking about the ABCs of
emotions just like when you're learning
a language you start by recognizing the
letters and then you start putting those
letters together into words and then
sentences and pretty soon you're able to
read poems and books and then you're
able to write a great work of literature
and as we learn the basic emotions we
can use the feelings wheel as a guide to
figure out what emotions mean and how
they combine and how the the meanings of
those are actually built into these
basic feelings the starting point is to
begin to identify that feelings are
something important to tune in and
notice your own facial expressions your
tone of voice
notice that emotions are affecting you
all the time I notice that emotions are
affecting other people all the time we
need to become curious about feelings
we're becoming scientists
observing ourselves that's why we call
our program for schools self science
we're gonna learn how to study core part
of who we are and we're gonna get the
data of feelings by just beginning to
notice them more without considering
that they're good or bad or what we
should or shouldn't feel what I want you
to practice is the attitude of the
scientist oh that's interesting so let's
get into a little bit of the
neuroscience of why emotional literacy
is so important when we name feelings
we're actually building a bridge between
the cognitive areas of our brain and the
felt experience team under Lieberman at
UCLA looked at people in a functional
magnetic resonance imager and what they
did is they showed them a disturbing
picture a video and got them upset and
then they said name your feelings and as
they were naming feelings what they saw
was the amygdala arousal that's the part
of your brain that's triggered by
threats the amygdala arousal went down
as the cortical or cognitive or language
activity went up so just naming feelings
began to reduce the intensity of the
reactivity that's why neuroscientist Dan
Siegel says name it to tame it as soon
as we start naming our feelings or
building this bridge between the felt
experience the affective domain and the
linguistics enters the wrinkly gray part
on the outside of our brains that's
emotional intelligence at work or
bringing together the different parts of
our brain to make sense of what's
happening around us and that is gonna
lead us to make better decisions
sometimes people say well let's leave
emotions out of it and we'll make a
rational decision the problem is that's
just not rational
it's not how our brains work when we're
making decisions emotions tell us what's
important and what to pay attention to
if you look at somebody who's had a
brain injury they're still able to
recite facts and figures there's a
famous story of Phineas Gage who got a
piece of metal pipe in his head the
emotion areas of his brain were damaged
but somehow he was still able to
function he wasn't really able to make
decisions there's actually a ton of
research about traumatic brain injury
and people who have suffered challenges
or Hydro encephalitis and parts of their
brains are no longer functional and
what's intriguing about these tragic
circumstances is that while a lawyer
might still be able to recite case law
they don't know what's important and you
say okay you have all of this data but
which of these facts matters emotion is
what tells us pay attention to this so
it's with our rational brain that we can
make the list but it's our emotional
brain that says this thing on the list
is worth paying attention to another
fascinating aspect of emotions is
something called synesthesia which means
putting senses together
it's how metaphor works in our brain you
know sometimes we can name feelings with
emotion words like worried or sad or
excited but sometimes we express
emotions with a metaphor like it felt
like the sunshine on a cold day in
synesthesia research what we see is that
people have ways of communicating
emotions cross-culturally there was a
famous study where they took these two
words something like and spork and
they they drew two pictures and one
picture was all spikey on picture was
rounded smooth and they asked people
which one is and which one is
spork can you guess well the researchers
found across cultures that people
associated the spiky sounding word
with the spiky picture well why would we
do that it's this synesthesia working in
our brain and it's part of how we make
sense of language and symbols and what
we're seeing in the world around us in
that process of thinking by making
meaning metaphor helps us understand our
experiences and helps us navigate the
complexities of our lives and
communicate our internal experiences
with one another so that we can work
together to solve problems so in the
pioneering work of Peter salome one of
our Weiser board members and Jack Mayer
when they were originally studying
emotions one of the tools they used was
this concept of synesthesia and looking
at how different pictures of VOC
feelings and it turns out that while
there's some cross-cultural differences
there's a tremendous amount of
similarity these concepts are measurable
and and they're important I mean just
for example what if you had an architect
and you said design a building that
makes people feel inspired and and most
people walked into that building and
they felt lonely and sad well the
architect would have done her job wrong
emotions are consensual they're part of
our social construct and as we as we
take in this architecture example we can
learn how people almost universally
respond to certain kinds of images and
shapes and sounds and colors and light
this is synesthesia at work and part of
the emotional basis of our social
construct now let's create an owner's
manual for your emotions and to do that
I'm going to show you how to use the
feelings wheel as a guide robert
plutchik was a scientist who studied
animal behavior and he was curious about
how animals express emotions and what he
saw is that in the animals that he
studied there were some basic emotions
that existed in all of the animals and
those emotions were associated with
physiological behaviors for survival so
for example animals would eat something
yucky and they would spit it out and
they'd have this look on their face
that we call disgust or sometimes
animals would see an obstacle or another
animal in their way and they would get
big and loud and and they'd start
growling and puffing up and that's
something we call anger he developed
over many years
this model of eight basic emotions
linked to physiological signals of
survival and because humans are animals
we have the same basic emotions
anticipation joy trust fear surprise
sadness anger and disgust now there are
a lot of different models of
emotions and different scientists have
created really interesting ways of
understanding emotions but I like blue
chicks model first of all because it's
beautiful and it's just logical it makes
sense because as we look at the
different emotions in this model that
actual model is an ice cream cone and as
we get up to the top of the ice cream
cone the different emotions are very
distinct from each other so we have
these eight feelings that are these
visceral automatic reactions and then as
they become what researchers called more
cognitively saturated please start
thinking about them more and they start
working in our bodies more we get these
feeling states that are increasingly
blurry as we move towards the tip of the
ice cream cone you can see that they
actually are much more subtle in color
ultimately getting to be almost the same
at the very tip now there's a super
important clue there for our owner's
manual two emotions which is that when
our emotions are very intense we tend to
be caught up in one loud one now as
you've seen in some of our other videos
about the neuroscience of emotions you
know we have multiple feelings at any
given time these are chemical cascades
that are that are operating in different
parts of our brains and bodies but if we
have one loud one that we're really
paying attention to we're at the top of
the ice cream cone and we're not paying
attention to the complexity of the
different feelings that we're
experiencing that's not very emotionally
intelligent if we're gonna really use
the intelligence of our emotions we're
going to need to come down towards the
tip of the cone and be able to pay
attention to more than one feeling at a
time now when we take this ice cream
cone and we unfold it you see this
really cool flower where we see these
eight petals representing eight basic
emotions and in the middle of each ring
you see the basic emotions those are the
automatic physiological responses in
every petal we can have more or less
intensity now in the graphic we see
three different feelings blue chick put
the feelings opposite each other on the
wheel because they have an opposite
physiological response
let's take trust and disgust disgust
is that spitting it out kind of feeling
or rejecting were pushing things away
from us where Trust is when we're
embracing and connecting there's an
opposite reaction and so their opposite
on the wheel anger and fear is a
confusing one because many of us have
experienced that we often express anger
when we're actually feeling fear but if
we really get down to the root of what's
happening in our emotions and we can be
really accurate about it the fear and
anger are very different from each other
anger is about breaking through an
obstacle and fear is about a risk
they're completely different in their
physiological reaction anger we get big
and loud and we move closer to a problem
and fear we get smaller and we were
treat and we shrink back to protect
opposite physiological reaction that's
why their opposite on the wheel so this
is true of all of the pairs and this
brings up a very intriguing point
what if our emotions don't exist by
themselves but they actually work in
harmony with our basic human needs if we
start to look at it that way we can have
a much more nuanced and subtle way of
understanding emotions and we move out
of this idea of judgment there are two
more key points one is the idea that
emotions will escalate or deescalate so
let's just take an example in that
purple part of the flower somebody is at
work and they're feeling bored and the
stimulus continues and nothing changes
that boredom will escalate into disgust
and as that boredom escalates into
disgust
the person is going to become
increasingly disengaged in the work that
they're doing and wanting to reject it
more and more now an emotionally
intelligent manager or an emotionally
intelligent employee or friend might
notice this and say hey this person
looks really bored let's help them
engage a little bit more deeply and we
can flip over to the opposite side we
get that light green part of the model
and somebody might start to feel like
sentence they marked either be giving up
on their expectations and accepting the
way things are
or even better they might start feeling
acceptance by others and fill in like
hey this is my place and I belong here
and this this work is part of this
community and then as that feeling
starts to escalate we begin to have
trust and this connectedness deepens and
if you're a manager that's what you
really want to have happen in the
workplace so we can see this emotional
literacy being important in our personal
lives but it's also critical in the
workplace and effective managers are
going to understand that emotions drive
people and people drive performance and
so we're going to need to tune into the
language of emotions to make sense of
the logic of feelings to be able to use
these more effectively let's go deeper
into understanding the feelings wheel
and look at what's in between the petals
what you can see here is the idea that
basic feelings combined now we only see
a few examples on the chart but actually
there are over 3,000 words for feelings
in the English language so we take a
feeling like anger anger anger anger
agitated enraged anger rested furious
annoyed anger fuming explosive grieved
vexed P banger anger there are all these
different feelings that we can make with
variations of anger and perhaps
combinations of other feelings so we
take a feeling like anger which tells us
that our way is blocked there's
something in the way of where we want to
go and it feeling like disgust which
tells us that there's something wrong
and we combine those two things and we
get a feeling like contempt which makes
us angry about the rules that are being
violated and want to break through that
problem so every one of the basic
emotions has a simple meaning that we
can understand and we put together a
chart we'll put a link in the notes so
that you can go and get the chart to
understand all of the eight basic
emotions and they're essential meaning
and then you can start thinking about
how they combined and like this paint
palette or chemistry set you're able to
make every feeling that there is now
when we think about how to
use the feelings wheel this is the key
thing you're having an emotional
experience first you pause and notice it
you identify the feeling and hopefully
you can give it a word
maybe it's disappointment and then
you're able to look at the flower and
say okay maybe there's a little bit of
anger there because there's something
that I wanted that I can't have the way
I wanted it and maybe there's a little
sadness because I am grieving that
something I care about is lost and and
maybe those two things anger and sadness
combined to make disappointment so we
have a whole feeling chart lots of
different feelings then they all have a
meaning and they all have a purpose and
they all have a physiological expression
and as we start to tune into this range
of feelings and we start to associate
them with different parts of the wheel
we start to make sense of all of our
complex and layered feelings
so a lot of things I like about food
chicks feeling wheel but it does
introduce this idea of feelings as
opposite to each other now as I said he
constructed the model based on our
physiological reaction but not based on
the meaning of feelings as we start to
understand emotions in a more nuanced
way it may be more useful instead of
thinking of opposites to think of
complementary aspects of basic human
needs you think about the need to
achieve and sometimes we can't move
forward and we feel angry but sometimes
we do move forward and we feel excited
it's not that anger and excitement are
than opposites of each other
anger and excitement are both
complimentary aspects of this need we
feel a need to belong and sometimes we
feel lonely and sometimes we feel
connected
those aren't opposites of each other
they're actually both signals are both
messages about this need that we have
and what's important for us now what's
important about this is that if we stop
labeling some feelings as opposite of
other feelings we can also stop labeling
some feelings as positive and some
feelings as negative I mean everybody
talks about wanting to have more
positive feelings but what if all
feelings are positive but if all
feelings are data and they're part of
the richness of our lives Rene Brown
says that when you numb one feeling you
numb them all if we turn down the volume
on our feelings maybe we're turning down
this message about what matters when we
feel big feelings it's because we're
perceiving something important we're
perceiving a big opportunity we're
perceiving a big threat and in either
case it has significance to us so what
if we conceptualize emotions as signals
about what matters and that when we feel
something
only it's telling us hey this is
important to you pay attention get the
information learn more wake up and that
is a much more vibrant way to live our
lives so it's not about positive
feelings or negative feelings it's about
feelings that help us wake up and engage
with the world and move forward to
create the present and the future that
we really want so why does all this
matter why does it matter that we have
this definition of emotional literacy
and that we can use emotions as a guide
it matters because it helps us live our
lives and lead and engage in the world
to be more of who we are meant to be to
be more of who we really are now let me
tune into some neuroscience about this
when we have a feeling we're actually
changing our brain chemistry we're
changing our nerve cells and research by
Barbara Fredrickson found that we're
even changing our own DNA emotions shape
our perceptions of the world and they
shape us as you saw in one of our videos
about the neuroscience of emotions the
episode with broccoli when we have more
emotions hitting a particular cell we
actually develop more receptor sites
that match that neural hormone in other
words we become more and more adapted to
process the emotions that we're
experiencing we get good at whatever it
is that we do and that's true playing
tennis that's true playing the piano and
it's true playing our own emotions our
emotions our messages from us to us and
as we listen to those emotions we change
our perceptions and we change our
readiness and ability to hear those
feelings there's some fantastic research
that shows that when we feel a
particular feeling it changes what we
perceive we notice things that match
that feeling State so when we're when
we're sad and grumpy and annoyed and we
walked down the street we noticed the
trash we noticed the broken window but
it's like that
Paul Simon song we're walking down that
same street on the very same day but
we're in a different mood and we noticed
the flowers and we noticed the people
holding hands and we noticed the joy and
the possibilities our mood becomes a
filter for what we perceive and for what
we remember we tend to remember things
that match our current feeling state and
this allows us to have a persistent
emotional experience the chemicals of
emotion only lasts for about six seconds
but our feelings and moods can last for
much longer this is important for our
survival because often we're in
situations where there's not just one
thing to pay attention to but there
multiple opportunities or multiple
threats that we need to tune into so we
have this ability to extend the
information window of the feeling over
time and we reinforce that feeling and
we become more and more attune to it
that's fantastic except it might cause
us to miss other information because
when we focus on one thing
we ignore the others so we need to
become more agile we need to become more
able to tune in to the multiple messages
and as we are able to look around and
notice all of these signals were able to
be more awake in the world we're able to
listen to these messages from us to us
about what really matters and get the
energy to move forward to create what
we're really looking for in our lives hi
I'm Josh Friedman thanks for watching if
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