Understanding Your Emotions

• Are you an emotional person?
• Do you take this question to mean: Do you get upset easily?
• Why do you assume that emotions are negative?
• What positive emotions do you express? Excitement? Or enthusiasm?
• What's the difference between a mood and an emotion?
• Emotions are outbursts. Moods are longer lasting - like feeling up or down.
• It's not healthy to suppress negative emotions.
• Better to avoid them, such as angry outbursts by reducing stress levels, taking yourself less seriously or changing your attitude towards upsetting things.
• How aware are you of how your moods affect your decisions?
• We like to think we are so rational, but we can make quite different decisions if we are in a good mood than if in a bad mood.
• What rash decisions have you made lately, either when you were feeling particularly bad or especially good?
• How often do you take steps to counter the effect of your moods on your actions?
• When angry, do you postpone acting until you cool down, for instance?
• How aware are you of the impact of your moods and emotions on others?
• Are they strongly affected but successful in hiding it from you?
• How do your moods and emotions boost or undermine the morale of those around you?
• If you don't know the answers to these questions, then, like most of us, your emotional intelligence might benefit from a little developmental fine-tuning.