 As we get ready to take on the topic of emotional intelligence, I think it is first important that we get a handle on what is emotion and understand emotion a little better so that we can understand emotional intelligence. So with that in mind, let's take a look at emotion, starting with what is an emotion? An emotion is the body's multi-dimensional response to any event that either enhances or inhibits your goals. So there's a lot to that. We're going to get to a lot of this as we break down this definition, but your body's multi-dimensional response, meaning we react in a variety of different ways to any event, meaning that there is a triggering event involved in emotion that either enhances or inhibits your goals. So it either helps you achieve something that you're trying to achieve or it keeps you from doing so. That's what we mean when we say emotion. So let's start off with breaking down this definition a little bit by talking about the dimensions of emotion. The first couple are pretty self-evident, the ones most people would think about when we talk about emotion. First of all, physiological changes. When we experience a strong emotion, our body reacts. Our body reacts. We get a rise in our body temperature, our core temperature goes up, our heart rate may increase. We may start sweating a little bit or sweating a lot. Our palms may get clammy, our stomach may tighten up and so forth. We experience these physiological changes as the result of experiencing a strong emotion and the stronger the emotion, the more physiological change we're going to experience as a result of that. Not too surprising there. Most people would say, yeah, I've had that when I've experienced a strong emotion. Nonverbal reactions. We'll also have nonverbal reactions. We may act surprised. Our face will respond nonverbally or we may put our hands up and say, no, no. Things like that when we experience a strong emotion. We'll have these nonverbal reactions as well. Again, not too surprised. Most of us would say, yeah, when I'm experiencing a strong emotion, I get a certain look on my face or I have a habit where I rub my hands together or have some sort of nonverbal reaction to a strong emotion. So far, nothing too shocking on here. One area you may not think of is your cognitive interpretations. Your cognitive interpretations of that emotion. When you experience a strong emotion, let's say you're experiencing a strong emotion, your heart rate is increased, you're getting warm, you're starting to notice some sweat on your arms and maybe in your face or whatever, your palms are clammy or whatever, your stomach is tightening up. We have all these physiological changes. So I say, what emotion are you feeling? If you're experiencing those types of changes, what's the emotion that accompanies that? Or what emotion are those accompanying, I should say? And the answer is, gosh, that could be a lot of things, right? It could be a lot of things. It could be anger, it could be fear, it could be love, it could be excitement, could be any of these things. So we need our cognitive interpretations to tell us, what emotion am I experiencing? I'm experiencing these physiological changes, my body's responding, I have these nonverbal reactions or whatever. So what does that mean? What label do I put on those emotions? And that carries a lot of weight for us. Our self-talk, as we call it, self-talk really determines how we respond to these emotions and how we react to them, how we feel about those emotions. So our cognitive interpretations are very important in understanding emotion and experiencing these emotions. Finally, we have verbal expression. We express ourselves verbally when we experience an emotion, right? What do we say when we experience these emotions? Whether it's intentional or unintentional and just blurts out of us or whatever. What language do we use to describe these emotions and to respond to these emotions and to articulate these emotions? The verbal expression is a very important component of emotion, just like all these others. So our emotions are not any one thing. It's not just our stomach tightening up and we get a little sweaty. It's more than that. There's different dimensions to emotions that we experience as a result. A couple of things we also need to understand about the nature of emotions. One question that comes up is, how is emotion different than mood? And is emotion different than mood? We use those words interchangeably a lot of times, but the truth is they mean two different things. First of all, emotions, as we talked about, are triggered by a specific event, right? They're caused by something specific. There's a specific triggering event there, whereas mood is not. It does not have that triggering event. It does just kind of happen upon us. It could be as simple as waking up on the wrong side of the bed, right? There's no real rhyme or reason behind why we experience a mood that we're in, but an emotion has a specific triggering event. The other thing we know about the difference between emotion and mood is that emotion tends not to last as long as a mood does. A mood will linger longer than an emotion will. So it comes on to us just kind of inexplicably. We don't really know where moods come from, and they tend to linger a little longer, and so they are different than emotions. So mood is something different that we're talking about. Emotions also vary in valence, and this is really how we measure an emotion and the effect of an emotion. Remember, we measure emotions by whether they enhance or inhibit our ability to achieve our goals. Remember that from our definition. So valence is what tells us whether that emotion is helping to enhance or is inhibiting us in achieving those goals then. So sometimes I'll ask students to get out a piece of paper or come up on the board and we'll divide it in half and say, okay, list what you say are good emotions. What are good emotions? And you'll hear things, we'll list off things like love and joy and happiness and excitement and optimism and those types of things always end up on the good emotion side of things. And then I say, well, what about bad emotions? What are the bad emotions? And then we get into anger and fear and hatred and things like that. Right. But the truth is, there's no such thing as a good emotion or a bad emotion by definition. No emotion is inherently good or bad and every emotion has the opportunity to be either good or bad, either one. And the way we determine whether an emotion is quote unquote good or bad is again, whether it enhances or inhibits our ability to achieve a goal. And so we call that valence though. Emotions with positive valence are the ones that help us achieve our goal. Emotions with negative valence inhibit us from achieving our goal. Okay, all well and good. Right. So how do we measure valence? So how do we determine valence? Well, there are two factors in determining valence. The first is intensity. How intense is that emotion? Is it, you know, is it an appropriate line? And again, we're talking about appropriate levels here. And so every emotion, again, could be too intense or not intense enough or, or whatever. Right. So for example, you know, we're talking about good emotions. Love is a good emotion. Right. And then love is a good emotion. You know, 90% of the time love is a good emotion. But what about when somebody's love becomes infatuation and they're unable to let go of that love, even when the relationship ends and, or if it's inappropriate and so forth, then, then the intensity of that emotion can grow beyond what's appropriate. Right. So even love can be a, have a negative valence if the intensity gets out of check and gets out of whack there. So the, so intensity is how we, is one factor in measuring valence. The other is duration. How long does this emotion last? Does it, is it lasting an inappropriate amount of time? So again, if we think about, you know, anger, let's say you're playing a sport, you're participating in a sport, right? And sometimes anger can be good, right? Because sometimes anger can get you pumped up to, to, to do better against as you think about that other person as your enemy. And so far, and that helps you play harder and work harder and, and, you know, have energy for, for a longer period of time or whatever. But when that, when that energy lasts and when that anger lasts beyond that game and you know, the game is over and you're still just angry at this person and it's lingering or that's, that, that's out of whack for that duration. Right. It's, it's in an inappropriate level as for the duration of that, that anger. So, or, you know, you get into a situation at work and you have to get angry to defend yourself or whatever. And then you come home and you're still angry and you take it out on your family, take it out on your roommates, take it on or whoever you come across next. That's, that's anger out of proportion with the appropriate duration there. Yeah. So we can think of it as, as both of these things working together on this graph, so to speak, right? So we got this line, which, which represents the level of intensity and duration and those may rise as we go along, right? But there's an appropriate range for those things. And when we get outside of that appropriate range as it is in those upper levels there, then that's when an emotion takes on a negative valence. So every emotion has potentially this, this opportunity to be in that appropriate range and to be experienced and to be expressed appropriately, depending on the, the, the intensity and the duration, right? But when the intensity and duration creep up outside of that appropriate range, that's when you have a negative valence in emotion. Emotions come to us from a variety of different places. They're influenced by a variety of different things. Some of those things include our personality. Some of the surges more happy go lucky than others and some of some are pessimistic and so our personality plays a role in, in how we experience and how we express emotion. Our culture, some cultures like the United States encourage the expression of emotion and encourage it right away. Whereas other cultures deem it better to kind of tamp it down a little bit. So you don't upset the fruit basket. It doesn't need to become a collective issue just because you're experiencing an emotion doesn't mean it has to affect everybody else and doesn't mean it has to be expressed all the time. Those are, you know, some cultures adhere to those kind of guidelines. Then gender can be a factor, particularly the way that we've socialized the genders over the years that men are not to be as emotional in terms of caring and loving and compassionate and things like that. But it's more okay for men to express and experience anger and things like that than it is for women. So, so the way we've socialized the genders over the years will impact how we're, how we're expected to experience and express those emotions. Our social conventions and roles. You know, again, traditionally speaking, if we go back in time, the mom is the compassionate one, right? She's the nurturer, the caring one, the compassionate one. Dad is the disciplinarian and the one who teaches and the one who also gets probably angry more so, right, than mom does. So depending on our social conventions and roles and also occupationally, we can look at this. There are some roles that encourage more emotional expression and others that discourage emotional expression. So those kinds of things will influence our emotional expression as well. Social media certainly has a large impact, especially through what we call the disinhibition effect where we get braver on social media. When we're on the other side of a screen, then we get more brave than we would be otherwise and say things we wouldn't normally say. Otherwise. Emotional contagions are an issue and influence on emotional expression. You can catch emotions just like you can catch the cold or the virus, so to speak, right, or the flu bug. So what we mean by emotional contagion is that especially strong emotions will rub off on other people. If you come into an essentially neutral room emotionally, but you're especially negative in your behavior or you're especially positive in your behavior, then you will oftentimes drag some of the people with you and move them out of that emotionally neutral state and into whatever state you're in. And then finally, emotional intelligence, which is something we're going to get into in more detail in the next video here in this series. But the ability to recognize and monitor and manage your own emotions and use those for motivation, as well as understanding and recognizing and sort of controlling in a sense that the emotions of others are being able to interact with them in relation to their emotion. That's emotional intelligence. We'll get into deeper detail what that means in our video on emotional intelligence, but it is a major influence on emotional expression. So what can we do to improve our emotional expression? Just a few ideas for you here. First, we can improve our emotional vocabulary. We can learn that before experiencing more than one emotion, it's okay to express that. And if we're experiencing an emotion at a particular degree, it's okay to use terms that are appropriate for that level. In a lot of times in elementary school, you'll see posters up on the wall like this, right? And they'll say, tell me what emotion you're feeling. And that's a sort of way to expand their emotional vocabulary, but we need to do the same thing. We need to be active in expanding that vocabulary. So instead of just saying, well, I'm really mad. I'm mad. Well, how are you mad? What level of mad? Are you furious? Or are you just irritated or are you annoyed? Or what, you know, we have all these wonderful words in the English language, it's incredibly diverse. So certainly we can find a word or words that better express how we feel emotionally and what we're feeling emotionally. We can learn to recognize our feelings, which is not always easy, right? We can learn to realize when we're experiencing an emotion and what that means and what may have triggered it and so forth. We can share multiple feelings. I mentioned this kind of a second ago here. But if we're feeling two things, if, you know, if your friend says they're going to beat your house at nine o'clock to pick you up for something and they're not there at nine and they're not there at 10 and they're not there at midnight, they show up at two in the morning and say, Hey, I'm here. You're allowed to feel multiple things. You're allowed to feel relief that they're okay. You're allowed to feel happy that they're there. You're allowed to feel angry that they left you standing and they left hanging like that. You're allowed to feel parallel, you know, not parallel, but you're allowed to feel disappointed with the things you weren't able to accomplish. During that time because you were waiting on them, right? You're allowed to experience and share these multiple feelings, multiple expressions of emotion. We can also accept responsibility, which is not always easy, but it's important that we, when we make a mistake that we say that was me. So we can accept responsibility for our emotions and accept that nobody else can really tell us what emotion we should experience. They can kind of nudge us and give us, you know, something to bounce off of, but in the end, we need to accept responsibility that we are responsible for our own emotions. There's also a difference between feeling and acting. That's something we need to remember. Feeling and acting are different things. We can feel something without having to act upon it, at least not in that immediate sense usually, right? So we can feel without acting right away. We can choose the best time and place to choose the best time and place for this emotion to be experienced, right? And to express our emotions with others. Now may not be the best time to express our emotions to others. So we can make a concerted effort to choose the best time and the best place for each individual conversation. Finally, we need to recognize that the order of things does not go the event and then action. Just immediately react to the event and then have an emotional action. We need to remember that whatever that triggering event is, we'll trigger that feeling and that's fine. I'll trigger that feeling. But then we need to think about that. We need to process. What does this mean? What, you know, what's the best way for me to respond and then take action? We need to be more thoughtful in between there. So emotions are something we all experience. We all we all express. We all feel we all, you know, have these emotions. So what we need to do is have a better conversation about how do we experience those emotions appropriately and effectively, right? What's the appropriate valence for each of these emotions? And what can I do to manage, to recognize these emotions and then manage them? And that's a part of what we'll get into in our next video when we talk about emotional intelligence. If you have any questions about this or any other topic related to professional presence, communication, anything like that, feel free to email me. I'd be happy to hear from you an email. And in the meantime, happy communicating.