Have you ever been angry at your coworker?

image: The Junto Institute

But what are you really? Are you actually enraged or just irritated?

Why do I ask this? Because it matters to be specific about your emotions.

It matters to have more concepts to pull from your brain than just "angry", as anger can also be contextual, and will depend on the situation.

With that, I wanted to share this wheel of emotions by the The Junto Institute to help you create new concepts in your brain, so you can pull the right ones when you are feeling an emotion.

This comes as a follow-up to the post I made about the book How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett - where she proposes the theory of constructed emotion, which argues that emotions are not universal and hardwired but are constructed by the brain using concepts learned through experience, culture, and context.

Concepts are mental representations that help us categorize our experiences, including emotions.

Our emotional experiences are shaped by these concepts, so the more you feed your brain, the better it will be at knowing which concept to take when you are in a particular situation, and help you with that emotion of "Anger" vs Irritation for example.

❓I am curious if you already do this, or if you can share emotional concepts you use to go beyond say anger, fear, or joy at work.

Robert

P.S - if you want to see more of the books I recommend, check out my book list.

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