What emotions are and where they come from

Why emotions are important

How to leverage the power of emotions

1. What are emotions

2. Where do they come from

3. Why are they important

4. How do we deal with them

In short, emotions are the physiological expressions of the meaning we give to our experiences. They are much like “thoughts” in that they are the chemical results of our brain processing what it experiences. Having emotions is very good. Emotions themselves, however, are neither good nor bad. It depends on the context. For example:

Feeling afraid is good when it causes you to prepare for an impending threat.

Feeling afraid is not good when it causes you to prepare even though there is no impending thread.

Sorrow is good as the result of a painful experience of loss.

Sorrow is not good when it is the result of the unwarrented expectation of loss.

So to summarize, we come back to the idea that

But where do they come from?

To understand where emotions come from ... let’s start with an experiment.

I’m going to show you a picture. Take a moment to determine what it is you see.

(This experiment is from Lisa Feldman Barrett’s TED Talk on emotions)

Give yourself a few moments to give it a good try.

If you can’t see a pattern, you are in a state called “experiential blindness.” This means your mind is unable to recognize a pattern from anything it’s seen or experienced before.

And now ...

Cool ... right?!?! Now look back at the black and whitef image above. Do you see the snake now?

Because you have a frame of reference for it! You mind is able to look at that image and by comparing it to the image below, it fills in the gaps that were there before.

Feldman goes on to make the case that our brains are in many ways “prediction machines.” We evaluate a situation or event by comparing it against previous experiences and then our body generates a feeling based on its prediction of what the situation or event means.

This is a crucial lesson about emotions:

There are a couple observations to be drawn from this:

1. The SOURCE of our emotions today are driven by the events and interpretations of our past.

2. The SOURCE of our emotions in the future are driven by the events and interpretations we make today.

3. The SOURCE of our assessment of the emotions of others is driven by the events and interpretations of our own past as well!

Like thoughts, emotions are a critical component of

1. defining who we are

2. contributing to our ability to live out our purpose

Positive emotions such as love, joy, peace, optimism, confidence, and hope contribute to our ability to define and accomplish our purpose.

However, emotions based on a negative interpretation of our experiences and our actions will lead to negative emotions about ourselves and our life. These emotions like anger, hatred, disgust, and more can have a context in which they are helpful, but when we own them as how we feel about our self, they do far more harm than good.

Another way to describe how we feel about ourselves is our “Self-esteem.” Self-esteem is

1. How I feel about myself

2. How I treat myself (which is driven by how I think and feel about myself)

Thus, when we say someone has “low self-esteem,” we mean that they have negative thoughts and emotions about themselves. When we have low self-esteem - i.e., when our emotions about our selves are negative, it becomes almost impossible to fully lean into and acomplish our purpose.

And yet, we all struggle with negative emotions.

My take is this:

Negative emotions are meant to protect us from harm. As human beings, we default to self-preservation. Negative emotions are the prediction from our minds that things are going to be bad. If we’re right, we’re prepared. If we’re wrong, we’re pleasantly surprised (though not fully trusting)

Positive emotions are vulnerable. Positive emoitions are our brain predicting something positive, a win, something good. If we’re wrong not only are we disappointed but we may be at a disadvantage or worse. If we’re right, then it goes as planned.

We, as human beings, don’t like that kind of risk and can often lean towards the negative. This is not a binary scale. It is HIGHLY dependent on context, past experiences, skill, and chance.

It means that our emotions are ultimately created by us ... and therefor can be recreated by us as well.

This is great news - we have control over our future emotions (and thoughts)

It is also difficult - knowing we can affect our future emotions means we must deal differently with them today. Our choices and effort in the matter of our emotions is materially relevant. We are responsible.

So ... how do we work with our emotions?

First, it’s important to recognize:

Barrett (from the snake experiment) notes that “this is not a magical type of power. But, if you change the ingredients you use to make emotions, you can transform your emotional life. Changing the ingredients today is teaching your brain to predict differently tomorrow.”

Once we embrace the reality that we can influence our emotions, we must become aware of what our emotions are. This is not easy. It is painful and uncomfortable and often a completely foreign experience for many of us.

In fact, trying to avoid dealing with our feelings is what drives all manner of addiction and harmful behavior.

Mandy Saligari, in her TEDx talk, describes addiction as:

In short, it’s avoidance. We don’t want to face and embrace our emotions, so we give that job away to illicit behavior. This is perhaps the best definition of addiction and emotions I’ve ever heard.

If we are going to find emotional health, it is imperative that we first start wtih an honest (and ruthless?) emotional inventory.

Having taken time to slow down and really discover our emotions and the reality of our ability to have control of them, we need to next look at what our emotions mean.

What are they telling us about

* How we perceive the world? Our self? Our situation?

* Where does this perception coming from?

* Why did we choose this interpretation? How does it protect us?

This will likley require going back to the sources of your current interpretation of self, situation, or world. It can be painful. DO NOT be afraid or hesitant to get help from others if you need it. You are worth the investment.

It is important that each of us has a strong foundation of positive value for our self. There can be many places people look to accquire this. But whatever it is, it must be greater than the negative messages and experiences you have had. It must enable you to rise above the source of your current negative “predictions,” and give you the ability to see yourself as the unique and infinitely valuable human being you are.

You will want to bring those positive thoughts, truths, and interpretations to your current situation - in effect retraining the prediction machine of your mind to create new evaluations of you, your experiences, and the world around you.

As you do this, you will start to make progress to owning a positive interpretation of your self, your experiences, and your world and you will begin to find that positive energy can be aligned with your purpose and thoughts to drive more wholistic action.

Fear • Uncertainty • Stress • Shame

In my experience, there are four key negative emotional states that cripple people. They all have a poisitive correllary but wind up as an anchor to our soul.

1. Fear: while this can be helpful when we are at risk, many of us today live under the burden of fears that will never - and likely would never - materialize.

2. Uncertainty: There are things we just don’t know ... and that’s ok. But when that overwhelms our ability to have confidence in anything, it renders us unable to act. This reinforces the idea that we don’t know what to do. It also creates a feedback loop with the fear of failure.

3. Stress: The human body needs stress to grow ... but that stress must be followed by adequate recovery. When stress - or a worry about what might happen - is chronic, we burn out our emotional circuits.

4. Shame: Guilt is helpful as a means to let us know our behavior is harmful to our self, others, or both. When we feel guilty, we identify something we’ve done that is “wrong.” Shame, however, turns our mistakes back on us as something that we are. We are WRONG as a person ... rather than merely having done something wrong.

From here, we are going to look at your physical energy quotient (or NRG quotient - i.e., your NQ). This is where you decide whether or not you will have the ability to DO what matters most to you and to LIVE OUT your purpose.

Here are a couple exercises you can use to begin to work on your EQ

1. Start a journal (or app, whatever) to capture your emotions. As you capture an emotion, take some time to look at what beliefs are behind it and where those came from.

2. Identify a source of positive evaluations of your self. This could be faith-based, someone who cares about you, or any other source that helps you see the infinite value you have as you are.

3. Find ways to take a negative emotion, look at it’s root cause, and then replace that meaning with one that is positive. Keep track of these to see how you grow.

Take time at the end of every day to write down things you are grateful for.

When you look in the mirror, say positive things about yourself to your self.

Feelings: Handle them before they handle you | Mandy Saligari | TEDxGuildford,

Mandy Saligari

You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them | Lisa Feldman Barrett - This was both practical and really enlightening. Great resource IMO.