Understanding Emotions for Success

Session resources based on the book How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett.

Key Takeaways

• Our brains construct emotions in the moment based on sensory input and past experiences.

• There are no universal facial expressions of emotion.

• Our brain’s primary job is to keep us alive by predicting our energy needs and allocating resources.

• When the predictions do not match the sensory input, our brains make corrections (prediction loop: predict, simulate, compare, resolve errors)

• Our brain uses past experiences to give sensations meaning. Low resources such as lack of sleep may be interpreted as negative emotions

Tips

• Pause to observe and be curious about others’ behaviors, and our own. Catching prediction errors (assumptions) helps us learn.

• Eat well, sleep, exercise, relax, and take care of your body budget (resources)

• Try on new perspectives

• Pinpoint how you feel throughout the day. Try to be specific.  

• Learn or make up words to describe feelings.

• In the moment: Label, reframe, or recategorize what you are feeling; think about whether the issue is a physical threat or about your social identity.

To Reflect On and To Do

• If these are new concepts, start by reflecting on how your brain predicting and correcting might be faster than constantly taking in all stimuli and reacting. Does it change how you see yourself and others? Does it change how you think about how you approach stakeholders?

• Have you ever noticed people interpreting something based on what they believe? Can you think of a time when you made interpretations of situations or behaviors based on your past experiences or beliefs?

• What would need to happen for your body budget to be balanced more often?

• Can you increase your emotional granularity by check in throughout the day or expanding your vocabulary? Spend two minutes trying to list as many words as possible for an emotion, like happiness or confidence. Create and document your own emotion words.

Resources Books, websites, and apps

• Session content based on the book How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, by Lisa Feldman Barrett

• Lisa’s website and her acclaimed TED Talk from 2018

• Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive by Marc Brackett

• Marc Brackett’s website and his How We Feel app (recording emotions throughout the day)

• Six Seconds website; their interactive scale to support shifting emotions and their  interactive Plutchik wheel of emotions

Articles

• Facial Expressions Do Not Reveal Emotions - Scientific American

• Applying the Theory of Constructed Emotion to Police Decision Making

• Are You Budgeting for Emotional Intelligence? - International Coaching Federation

• Interoception: How We Understand Our Body’s Inner Sensations – Association for Psychological Science

• To Be Energy-Efficient, Brains Predict Their Perceptions | Quanta Magazine

• Why It's Imperative We All Learn To Be 'Emotion Scientists' | KQED

• 9 Ways Your Emotions Influence Your Judgments

• The insidious sexism of 'resting bitch face' | The Week

Resources: Basic Background

• Feeling Faces: Cards (English-Blank) - National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations

• What is Interoception and Why is it Important?

Marc Brackett’s Emotion Scientist RULER skills 

• Recognize our own emotions and those of others, not just in the things we think, feel, and say but in facial expressions, body language, vocal tones, and other nonverbal signals.

• Understand those feelings and determine their source— what experiences actually caused them— and then see how they’ve influenced our behaviors.

• Label emotions with a nuanced vocabulary.

• Express our feelings in accordance with cultural norms and social contexts in a way that tries to inform and invites empathy from the listener.

• Regulate emotions, rather than letting them regulate us, by finding practical strategies for dealing with what we and others feel.