Transcript:

OK guys, I have been getting a lot of questions about how to use the emotion wheel and emotion tracker in this course, so let me explain my version of the emotion wheel. 

There are no positive or negative emotions, emotions are meant to help us get motivated to take action or resolve problems. That doesn’t mean that we should act on all emotions that we feel, some emotions are distorted, others are fueled by faulty thinking, and some are comfortable and some are uncomfortable. 

But for us to figure out which emotions are helpful for us and what to do with them, the first step is just learning to notice them and name them. 

So at it’s most basic level, the emotions wheel just gives you a huge list of emotions, organized by category. You can use it to help you explore which emotion you are feeling, find a name for it, and then write it down in your journal or mood tracker. 

If you want to take your understanding of emotions to a deeper level, you’ll notice that each of the categories, on the outside of the wheel, indicates what type of action that emotion may be suggesting. 

At their essence emotions just ask a question “Hey, do you want to act on this?”

I go into a lot more detail on this in Skill #3, The Function of Emotions, but the main idea that I'm trying to express is that emotions serve a function, they happen for a reason. So for example, connection is really really important, so we may feel attraction when there's a new relationship, or grief, at the loss of a relationship.  

An emotion like boredom may indicate that we need to freshen things up, try something new. And an emotion like excitement may indicate that we’re going down a promising new path to learn new things, and an emotion like fear may indicate that we’ve gone too far past safety and need to return back to more familiar ground. 

the other thing i get a lot of comments about is "How come there is often a "negative" emotion paired paired in the same category as a "postive" emotion?" 

When we live a full and valued life, we won’t only experience “positive” or comfortable emotions, to live a meaningful life we will usually experience a broad mixture of emotions. For example, if you love playing soccer, you’re going to feel joy and excitement when you win a game and sadness or discouragement when you lose. But the only way to not feel sadness is to either never lose (aka stop playing soccer) or stop caring about soccer. You’d have to cut soccer out of your life. So to express this idea defeated and uplifted are in the same category. So is Bored and Purposeful. I hope this wheel helps you explore how feeling lots of emotions is part of a valued lifestyle, and when you get better at feeling them, they don’t hurt you so much, they don’t mess up your life, instead they inform your choices and help you live a vibrant, purposeful, wholehearted life. 

So as you explore this wheel, use it to find names for the emotions that you are feeling and consider how these emotions may or may not have a message for you.