Two weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of being equipped with the mental models and psychological vernacular that help you to more objectively discern what you are experiencing and why. Remember, “if you can name it, you can tame it”. Specifically, in my last post, I wrote about distinguishing the difference between stress and pressure, so you are more capable of accurately labeling what is occurring to then more effectively deal with it.
This week will follow suit but instead of stress and pressure, I’ll provide you with working definitions (these come from Dr. Marc Brackett and the people behind Mood Meter ) to distinguish between emotions, feelings, moods, and dispositions.
- EMOTIONS are short-lived responses to stimuli (either real or imagine) and cause shifts in cognition, physiology, expression, and behavior
- FEELINGS are the short-term, private experience of emotions. They are often more complex and can represent a mixture of several emotions at once. Love and shame are examples of feelings
- MOODS are emotional states that may not have an identifiable cause, last longer in duration, and are less intense than the experience of a singular emotion.
- DISPOSITION is a characteristic long-term pattern of emotion that becomes a baseline of where an individual “lives” emotionally. With planning and practice, it’s possible to change disposition by recognizing long-held tendencies and regulating towards more supportive emotional states.
