The Importance of Emotions in Our Happiness Journey
From the list of emotions below, which are good emotions and which are bad emotions?
love
fear
anxiety
joy
sadness
excitement
disgust
loneliness
anger
courage
guilt
awe
Did you hesitate at all to categorize them? Did you have difficulty categorizing any of them? Did your list look this?
Good emotions: love, joy, excitement, courage, awe
Bad emotions: fear, anxiety, sadness, disgust, loneliness, anger, guilt
I suspect that many of you had a list similar to mine (if not exactly like mine). Now, take a look at the list of emotions below. Which are good and which are bad?
surprise
sympathy
pride
hope
desire
Did you struggle more with this list? Did you realize that being surprised might be good or bad, depending on the circumstances?
You might be delighted by a surprise birthday party, but you would likely be quite upset if an intruder surprised you by breaking into your house. You could have a healthy pride in your accomplishments but taken to a higher level, that same pride could border on arrogance. Desire might be good if it leads you to work toward a college degree but it might be bad if you have a persistent, romantic desire for someone who doesn’t have the same feelings for you.
Isn’t it interesting that we find it easy to categorize some emotions but need qualifications in order to place similar judgements on other emotions? If we can agree that some emotions might be either good or bad, depending on the context, is it possible that all of our emotions might have some crossover from good to bad or vice versa?
Could you imagine, even for emotions easy to categorize, such as anger and excitement; two scenarios, one supporting the idea that the emotion is good and one showing that it is bad?1
There are many variables when deciding whether an emotion is “good” or “bad,” such differing circumstances, different personalities, or the same person’s differing feelings on different days. Even the way we interpret a situation will have an effect on whether we view our emotions as “good” or “bad.”
Why, then, do we spend so much time categorizing our emotions? Worse, once we’ve chosen a category to place this moment’s emotion into, we leave it there, unable to imagine the feeling in any other way. The more we do this, the more sure we are that some emotions are “good” and that some are “bad.”
My long-time readers might already have realized that my first question in this post (“Which are good and which are bad?”) was actually a trick question. Emotions aren’t “good” or “bad". They are simply information.
The statement “emotions are simply information” might sound a bit cut and dried, but there is a huge opportunity behind that statement. If emotions are telling us something about ourselves, about the way we interact with the world, and about how we react to difficult or desirable situations, we can quite literally change our experience of life by observing what our emotions are trying to tell us.
I’ll use a made-up example that I’ve drawn from listening to true stories from my friends, family, and readers: If a friend asks you to help him move but you really don’t want to help, what happens when you begin to say ‘no’ to him? In the ideal situation, you would simply say ‘no’ and both of you would be OK with that. But many people have difficulty saying ‘no’ and emotions take over, causing them to say ‘yes’ when they really want to say ‘no.’
What emotions might be a clue that you’re saying ‘yes’ not because you want to, but because you feel you “should”? There might be feelings of guilt: “He helped me move once, so I owe him.” There might be feelings of pity: “He doesn’t have anyone else to help so I should do it.” There might even be feelings of being pressured: “In the past when I didn’t help him, he yelled at me. I better help to avoid that this time.”
In my example, what information might these emotions be conveying? Realize that emotions are very personal and you’ll have to dig — and possibly deeply — to discover what your emotions are trying to tell you. That said, I’ll go ahead and offer some possible ideas.
Guilt: Perhaps your friendship has been one-sided and you are already feeling guilty about that. Perhaps you don’t want to be friends with this person anymore and that’s why you don’t actually want to help. Perhaps you simply hate moving stuff and would have said yes if he’d asked you to help with something else.
Pity: Perhaps you don’t want to help, but you feel that you must always help those who ask. Perhaps you feel that because you’ve been blessed with lots of friends, you have an obligation to help those who don’t have as many friends as you do.
Pressure: Perhaps you feel pressure to help because you don’t want to deal with the other person’s anger. Perhaps you feel pressured because this person is “supposed” to be your friend but you’re starting to feel tired of dealing with him. Perhaps you feel pressured because the person has a history of intentionally triggering strong emotions in you to get what he wants.
With all of these possibilities, did you notice that I didn’t place judgements on the underlying feelings? You may have felt judgements as you read the statements, but notice that I never implied that feelings guilt, pity, or pressure were wrong or justified. The feelings themselves are neutral.
In order to discover the information behind the emotions, we have to first learn how to detach our own judgements from the emotions. Can you be an unbiased observer of your own emotions? Hint: It’s really difficult to do! ;)
As we take on the challenge of simply observing our emotions without placing judgments on them, we open the door to being able to use that information to make decisions that are more aligned with our authentic selves.
If you’re just starting out with observing your own emotions, that’s all you need to do for now. Later, you can use that information, but the hard part is in observing and letting go of judgment. Try actively “listening” to your emotions for awhile and see what you discover.
If all else fails at the moment, simply remind yourself emotions are neutral. They are only “good” or “bad” because of the judgments you place on them. This simple-but-not-easy step will lay the groundwork for some truly amazing insights into yourself and the world.
As my higher math textbooks used to annoyingly say, I’ll leave this as an exercise for the reader. ;)