How are you feeling?

Every day the Decida team and I meet for a virtual “stand up” meeting.  It’s a quick check in to talk about the priorities for the day and make sure we are doing okay. So when I’m asked, “how are you?” I would be quick to reply with, “good/fine/great”. When challenged to use a feeling word I sometimes struggle to find a word that accurately describes what I am feeling.  This is where the emotion wheel can help.

Developed by Robert Plutchik a professor from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and adjunct professor at the University of South Florida, in 1980 to illustrate the various relationships among emotions. Like colours, primary emotions can be expressed at different intensities and can mix with one another to form different emotions (combination emotions). The intensity of the emotion increases as you move towards the wheel’s centre and decreases as you move outward. Note that the two-dimensional ‘flower’ can fold into a three-dimensional, spinning top shape.

Many studies have demonstrated the benefit of labeling emotions to disrupt the intensity of that feeling. Once you engage your conscious brain you will be able to better regulate your emotions (taming your Ape as we call it). So it is not surprising that expanding your vocabulary in relation to feeling words will give you greater scope to be able to accurately identify and label what’s going on in your head and deal with it accordingly.

To learn more about your Ape you may like to register for one of our upcoming Going Ape S#!t webinars being offered later in the year. More details below.  Hope to see you there!

Our featured articles this month include:

1. Answers to frequently asked questions from the Going Ape S#it webinars and an invitation to register for an upcoming session focused on building emotional intelligence.
2. An early preview for the soon to be released Going Ape S#!t book.
3. Calling for more volunteers to test the newly developed Decida Switch app.
4. Thoughts on decision making from the awesomely talented human being, Tracey Kay.

As always, please reach out if you have questions, feedback, or would like to get involved and thank you for your ongoing support, we are eternally grateful.

Regards Roshelle and the Decida team

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