Is your mood granular enough?
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “outside students” (ID: iquanwai), author: LeO, issued by the authorized parties.
Today’s article, from outside the columnist LeO, a dessert management coach and course designer.
From the perspective of an EQ trainer, he will use the emotional management problems we often encounter as an example to find the best solution for identifying and resolving emotions.
The premise of managing emotions is to accurately identify emotions
First ask you a question: You have worked hard for a month to do the plan, the boss only vetoed after watching for two minutes, how would you feel?
I have done a small research with this question and got a lot of answers: “It’s very uncomfortable!”
When you encounter this kind of situation, I feel very uncomfortable, and there is a sulking in my chest. I always have this thing that makes you “unhappy” in my mind. I always want to find a place to release the uncomfortable emotion.
How to release it? Complain that the boss is stupid X? Or directly to the boss? The result… you know.
At the time of the survey, I also heard another answer: “I feel grievance, anger, disappointment. Because I feel that my hard work has been denied, and I feel that the boss is not serious. Look at this plan! But, I know very well, I can’t change the boss’s thoughts. Then I can only find the reason and find a way to get the solution done.”
When you hear such an answer, do you immediately feel the other person’s calmness, I feel that the other person is managing emotions, not emotional control.
We all know that managing emotions is important, but sometimes it is difficult to deal with emotions rationally.
For example, the boss was criticized by the boss at the morning meeting, for example, the client who immediately confirmed the cooperation suddenly repented…
In these situations, we are confused and become a pot of porridge. How can we stay calm and not be controlled by emotions?
The most critical first step is to identify emotions.
Like the second answer above, when we accurately identify what emotions we have, we activate us.The rational brain suppresses the overactive emotional brain.
And want to accurately identify emotions, you need to refine your “gender granularity”.
Your Is the “emotional granularity” detailed enough?
What is “emotional granularity”? Simply put, it is the ability we recognize and express our emotions, sometimes referred to as “emotional granularity.”
This concept was proposed by psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett. (Remember her name, which will be mentioned later)
It’s like a painter or a designer who has a very detailed graininess and can distinguish many different colors. For example, even if it is only red, it can also be divided into dark red, rose red, burgundy, carmine… Later The names are not enough, you have to use the color number to distinguish.
When the “emotional granularity” is meticulous, you can discern different emotions. For example, if you are now “unhappy”, whether it is aggrieved, angry or disappointed, or which kinds of emotions exist at the same time.
And, according to a study by Barrett and two other psychologists (Kashdan & McKnight), people who are “senticiously granular” can better cope with stress. They are not easily crushed by negative emotions and will not respond in extreme ways, such as alcoholism and overeating.
How do you judge how detailed your “emotional granularity” is?
First ask you a question, can you list a few “happy” emotional words?
You can spend as much as you can in a minute.
……
How? Can you think of more than 10? If you can, it is already very good.
Barrett believes that people who are proficient in dozens of emotional concepts, “emotional granularity” is moderate.
But if you search for “500 emotional words from the Satya Family Institute”, you will find that there are more than 50 words that describe “happy”. In other words, there are more than 400 “unhappy” emotional words, and they are only commonly used.
A person with a particularly detailed “emotional granularity” can have hundreds of proficient emotional concepts. Just as you feel sad and flow back into the river, someone picks up every drop of water in the river and takes the name.
German writer John Kenig (JOhn Koenig) wrote a Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. It is said that there are more than 8,000 words in this dictionary that describe different kinds of sadness.
There is a very interesting word in it, called “Anecdoche”, means “When everyone is talking passionately, you also want to participate, but no one wants to hear you. Say”.
When I first saw the word, I felt the emotion of chaos instantly found the exit…
If you find yourself “emotional granularity” is very detailed, then congratulations, you are likely to be a high “emotional” person.
“Emotional granularity” is the basis of emotional intelligence
Why do you say that? Because “Emotional granularity” is the basic ability of “Emotional Intelligence.”
The “emotional intelligence” mentioned here is not the kind of speech that is usually spoken in various articles.
The concept of “Emotional Quotient” was originally proposed by Peter Salovey. Later, Daniel Goleman wrote the book Emotional Intelligence, and the concept began to ignite globally, so he was also known as the “father of emotional intelligence.”
From then on, “Emotional Intelligence” is defined as five aspects of ability: Understand your emotions, manage your emotions, self-motivate, recognize others’ emotions, and handle interpersonal relationships.
You will find that there are actually two dimensions: yourself and others. The most basic ability of these two dimensions is to understand and recognize emotions.
In other words, the premise of managing emotions is that you can recognize and express emotions, which is why “emotional granularity” is the basic ability of “emotional intelligence.”
When the “emotional granularity” is more detailed, we can analyze each emotion more specifically to find the corresponding solution, which is equivalent to ourThere are more “arms”.
When you are anxious, you can analyze what you are doing to magnify what might happen, and whether you think of “may” as “certain”. And if you are angry, you can take a deep breath to calm yourself and avoid conflicts.
When the “emotional granularity” is rough, there is no way to analyze it. There are only one or two ways to deal with emotions. It’s like Charlie Munger’s saying: “When you have only one hammer in your hand, look at what nails are.”
If you are not happy, go to eat well, and when you are happy, go to eat well…
However, eating only temporarily relieves some emotions, and the emotional problems still exist, and the same emotions will emerge from time to time. So, what if the mood comes out again? Continue to eat (I used to eat so fat)…
So, I want to improve my emotional intelligence, I want to make myself better able to control my emotions, and the key thing to improve is the ability to recognize and express emotions, that is, to make “emotional granularity” thinner.
Can the drama also refine the “emotional granularity”?
How to improve? Barrett gave a very simple way to learn more emotional concepts. It is like learning the 500 emotional vocabulary mentioned above to distinguish and refine similar emotions.
For example, it is also angry. In addition to “anger”, you can also have “irritation”, “anger” and “outrage”…
For example, it is sad. In addition to “sadness,” you can also have “sour and sorrow”, “sorrowfulness” and “sorrow”…
It’s like you’ve seen different reds and know their names, you can better distinguish them.
This method I tried for a while, I feel very effective…not obvious!
Why? Because if you just learn words and know the definition of the word, you only know the abstract concept. These concepts are like a bottle. If there is no real experience, this bottle has no connotation.
For example, if you learn the word “smooth”, it is hard to really understand if you have not experienced the feeling of running after running, or the feeling of sleeping naturally.
How do you increase the experience? The best way is to try new things, create new feelings and emotions, and then consciously perceive them.
But we are so busy with work and life every day, how can we have so much time and energy, is there any simpler and more convenient way? ReallyThat is – watching the drama.
Since direct experience is difficult to create, we use the experience of others to increase our indirect experience.
You must know that the scriptwriter wants to make the plot look good, and it is necessary to express the emotion in detail and resonate as much as possible to attract us to continue watching. This just gives us a great experience.
How do you do it? It’s also very simple. When you are watching a movie, pay attention to how the character expresses complex emotions, and then imagine what kind of emotions you will have if you are in that scene.
For example, when I was watching “Our Day”, there was a scene in the family. The family waited at 4 o’clock in the middle of the night to wait for the pregnant women in the family to have children, but after waiting for a long time, there was no news. Later, the pregnant woman’s brother also violently unplugged the TV’s power supply, saying it was too noisy.
At the time I entered this scene, I felt a feeling of tension, anxiety, irritability, and helplessness. I feel that there is any sound next to it, it will be a torment. If it is me, I will turn off the TV.
When we carefully experience these emotionally complex scenes, we combine them with the learned emotional concepts. Later, when we encounter similar scenes, we can be more acutely aware of the emotions.
Of course, the quality of the play will have a certain impact. The more elaborate the play, the better the performance of the actor, and the more granular the expression of emotion.
And you can change the dramas of different countries. Because of the emotional expression of different language cultures, we can better refine our “emotional granularity”.
But some domestic dramas are carefully selected, which may make your “emotional granularity” thicker. For example, some actors, whether they are surprised, angry, or confused, are expressed in the blink of an eye. Whoever does not say it, you know.
This method sounds a bit simple and feels a bit troublesome, right? After all, we watched drama for most of the time to relax, and now it has become an exercise, how tired it is!
But once you start watching the show with this new perspective, you will find that the fun is much bigger than in the past. You are not just watching the story, you can also look at the doorway like an insider.
When others can only say that “the protagonist of this drama is really a burst of acting”, you can say “He performed 7 subtle expressions in 3 seconds in the first act. Different emotions.”
Conclusion
Let’s finally sort out.
The key first step in managing emotions is to identify emotions. To accurately identify emotions, you need to refine your “emotional granularity.”
The method of refining “emotional granularity” is to learn more about emotional concepts, and by watching drama can increase our experience and let us have a more profound and accurate understanding of the concept of emotions.
The specific operation is: When you are watching the drama, pay attention to how the character expresses complex emotions, and then imagine what kind of emotions you will have if you are in that scene.
When you look at the world with a rough graininess, it’s like watching a VCD with a very low resolution, and when you have a fine graininess, like watching a 4K movie, this The clarity between the two worlds is a difference of 104 times.
When the “emotional granularity” is sufficiently detailed, the same behavior, an expression, and a sentence, you may only need a moment to gain insight into the emotions behind you and become a high “emotional intelligence” person.
It’s like the classic lines in the godfather: “Those who see the essence of things in a second, and those who spend the rest of their lives without seeing the essence of things are destined to be completely different fates.”