2/5 2008
This week’s issue of Newsweek has an article about some fall-out from the ‘happiness movement’. Basically, the argument is that sadness can be a natural response to life events and that negative emotions can be adaptive. Accessing and leveraging the ‘full range of emotions’ should be part of any approach to EI.
Remember that emotions arise from events in our lives, as opposed to moods which are more diffuse and do not always have an external cause. Being down in the dumps, being moody, may not be all that adaptive, but sadness arising from a loss can be. Same with anger and fear.
February 8th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Hi again David
Snap, I blogged on that article too yesterday
And agree with you completely - of course!
http://thrivingtoo.typepad.com/thriving_too/
February 9th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Intriguing that we call feelings like sadness and fear “negative” or even “bad feelings” - makes it pretty hard to value them.
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I totally agree!!
March 7th, 2008 at 8:44 am
I agree that we are too quick to cover up those “bad” emotions like fear, sadness or anger. They may not be the most comfortable of emotions, but they all tell us something important about our current state. One of the best gifts I learned to give myself was to allow my self to feel sad when someone or something caused me pain. I don’t try to make the feeling go away or hide it. I find that it goes away when it’s ready to go away (which is usually quicker when I don’t deny and fight it). Resisting the existence of the emotion seems to simply prolong it!
I was once talking with a doctor who said that we never get to escape mourning or grieving, we just put it off until it catches up to us.
March 7th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Bobbi, that’s a powerful notion: “fighting against” an emotion actually prolongs it.
April 27th, 2008 at 11:15 am
David -
you wrote “Accessing and leveraging the ‘full range of emotions’ should be part of any approach to EI.”
I agree, and I am curious: Why?
-J
April 27th, 2008 at 11:33 am
“Accessing and leveraging the ‘full range of emotions’ should be part of any approach to EI.”
- Because emotions are adaptive. Becasue emotions contain data or information (see the ‘affect as information theory’ by Forgas). Because emotions give us meaning. Because being happy all the time, or sad, or angry, would be boring!