10 Keys to Happier Living - Emotions

"Emotions, positive and negative, are part of what makes us human and have helped us survive as a race. They are signals that something's right or wrong  -  they help us communicate this. But there's more to them than meets the eye  ...  Emotions are evoked by events happening in real time or they can be triggered by our memories or thoughts of past and future situations. And they are usually about something which. at some level, matters to us."


"It's believed that whether they feel good or bad, emotions evolved to help our ancestors survive. Feelings described as good, pleasant or 'positive' evolved to motivate us to approach and take advantage of potentially safe opportunities and to signal that things are going well. In contrast, feelings we'd call 'bad' or 'negative' motivated us to avoid potentially harmful situations. So even though unpleasant emotions don't feel great, they can still be helpful."

We owe it to ourselves and our own well-being to learn to understand and manage our emotions.

"Our awareness, understanding of, and ability to, communicate and manage our emotions and the needs they represent is important for our psychological well-being."

Emotional intelligence is the ability to accurately identify and express our own emotions, to identify emotions in others, to re-direct and use emotions wisely, to understand the transitions between conflicting emotions and to manage emotions in a positive motivational sense.

Rather than simply emphasise positive emotions it's important to state that we should never feel bad about feeling bad.  It is simply not realistic to think that we can come to a place where all we feel is positive and wonderful. Life is full of stresses and challenges. It would greatly assist our long-term well-being if we sort to improve our own emotional intelligence.

"Gratitude, being thankful and appreciative, is a simple but powerful force for happiness and well-being. It helps to train our brain to notice and appreciate what's good, so balances out our natural focus on what's wrong. It's an emotions that connects us to other people and the world around us."

Gratitude is a positive emotion that we can practice daily until, like riding a bicycle, it becomes second nature. Gratitude is "not about inventing or making up good things in our lives, it's about noticing what's already there."

Quotes taken from '10 Keys to Happier Living' by Vanessa King