emotion wheel emotion wheel descriptions

The image below shows the variety of actions that our emotions can guide us towards.įigure 2.1: Our emotions motivate our actions. We don’t have to act in the way our emotions suggest, but everyone has had the experience of wanting to do something. Emotions make us want to act, and different emotions guide us towards different kinds of actions. Have you ever had the urge to shout at someone who was being infuriating? Or the urge to give someone a hug when they were really sad? Have you ever really wanted to take the last piece of cake? All of these urges are driven by our emo- tions. Different emotions motivate us to act in different ways Much of what we do is motivated by a desire to change or maintain a feeling-state – to hold on to good feelings or to avoid bad feelings. The world around us (and the thoughts in our heads) trigger emotional reactions all the time. Our emotions help to guide the decisions that we make every minute of our lives. How would you decide what to do that day? How would you know what’s important and what’s not? If you didn’t have any emotions would it feel ‘nice’ to be in a warm, comfortable bed? Would you feel excited about going to work? Or worried about what would happen if you didn’t go? What if you had managed to get up and were crossing the road – would you bother to hurry if a car was coming towards you? Why bother to do anything at all? Imagine you woke up one day and didn’t have any emotions. The purpose of emotionsĪ: Emotions motivate us, they make us want to do things

In this chapter we’re going to learn why emotions are important, and think about some of the ways they can interfere with our lives. Our job becomes one of making sense of how we can inhabit these minds and bodies that are designed for survival instead of happiness, and to live the best lives that we can. If that’s true then it changes the rules of the game a bit. One popular theory in psychology is that human beings are not evolved to be happy, but instead are ‘designed’ for survival. We all want to live happy lives, so why do we find it so hard sometimes? Everyone is at the centre of their own story, with their own heroes and villains, plot twists, struggles and successes. Have you have ever just taken the time to watch the people around you? If you have then you will have contemplated the fact that everyone has a rich inner emotional world. The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own – populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness – an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.Įxtract from: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Emotion wheel emotion wheel descriptions