Emotions~What are they?

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What are emotions?



Let's take a deep breath and imagine yourself in these situations: like you get married, you won a ticket to London or you managed to enter MMU, how do you feel? Happy. Again let's say something bad happened to you: like someone closed to you, passed away, you failed your exams, how do you feel then? Sad.

This feelings are what we called emotions. In definition, emotion is a mental state that happens unconciously along with physicological changes. We can feel our emotions in our bodies, like when our heart beats faster than usual or our muscles tensed. Even though emotions are internal, it's our physical expressions that makes the difference


Based on some facts from the book entitled "Emotions" written by Robert C. Roberts, he stated that emotions are feelings that you are aware of. One can feel an emotion while being unaware of some.

IMPORTANCE OF EMOTIONS

Here are a few of the reasons why our emotions are important in our lives. By the way, the first few chapters of Goleman's 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence, have a good presentation on evolution and emotions.

Survival

Nature developed our emotions over millions of years of evolution. As a result, our emotions have the potential to serve us today as a delicate and sophisticated internal guidance system. Our emotions alert us when natural human need is not being met. For example, when we feel lonely, our need for connection with other people is unmet. When we feel afraid, our need for safety is unmet. When we feel rejected, it is our need for acceptance which is unmet.

Decision Making

Our emotions are a valuable source of information. Our emotions help us make decisions. Studies show that when a person's emotional connections are severed in the brain, he can not make even simple decisions. Why? Because he doesn't know how he will feel about his choices.

Predicting Behavior

Our feelings are also useful in helping us predict our own, and others' behavior. Here is an article on the idea that feelings predict behavior.

Boundary Setting

When we feel uncomfortable with a person's behavior, our emotions alert us. If we learn to trust our emotions and feel confident expressing ourselves we can let the person know we feel uncomfortable as soon as we are aware of our feeling. This will help us set our boundaries which are necessary to protect our physical and mental health.



Communication

Our emotions help us communicate with others. Our facial expressions, for example, can convey a wide range of emotions. If we look sad or hurt, we are signalling to others that we need their help. If we are verbally skilled we will be able to express more of our emotional needs and thereby have a better chance of filling them. If we are effective at listening to the emotional troubles of others, we are better able to help them feel understood, important and cared about.

Happiness

The only real way to know that we are happy is when we feel happy. When we feel happy, we feel contented and fulfilled. This feeling comes from having our needs met, particulary our emotional needs. We can be warm, dry, and full of food, but still unhappy. Our emotions and our feelings let us know when we are unhappy and when something is missing or needed. The better we can identify our emotions, the easier it will be to determine what is needed to be happy.


Unity

Our emotions are perhaps the greatest potential source of uniting all members of the human species. Clearly, our various religious, cultural and political beliefs have not united us. Far too often, in fact, they have tragically and even fatally divide us. Emotions, on the other hand, are universal. Charles Darwin wrote about this years ago in one of his lesser-known books called "The Expression of Emotion In Man and Animal". The emotions of empathy, compassion, cooperation, and forgiveness, for instance, all have the potential to unite us as a species. It seemed fair to say that, generally speaking: Beliefs divide us. Emotions unite us.

Source: http://eqi.org/emotions.htm

The number of emotions that we can experienced are huge, yet we only managed to experience a few of them. Metaphorically, emotions let us experienced the colour of life. Often, people will think or look at certain colours for certain emotions.









Example:









Happy ~ Pink









Sad ~ Blue









Accurately, it is not that we are only capable of experiencing a small number of emotions, rather people labeled these emotions into common group.







~ POSITIVE ~







Happy



Awed



Delighted



Excited







~ NEGATIVE ~







Sad



Annoyed



Anger



Depressed

Some emotion related artworks:

~Credits for this artwork goes to their respective artists~

Here are some of the emotion-related quotes I found in the Net:

"Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' garden."

"Sadness flies away on the wings of time."

"It is sad to grow old but nice to ripen."


Here are some of my own quotes:-





"We live to facilitate not to frustrate"

"Loneliness is the start of a companionship"