Emotional Intelligence · Part Two • 1

Naming What's There

How are you feeling right now? And not just "fine" or "good" or "stressed" — those are shortcuts, not feelings. Try to get more specific. Are you restless? Tender? Quietly satisfied? Apprehensive? Numb? Wistful? Somewhere between irritated and sad that doesn't have an obvious name? Many of us grew up with a limited emotional vocabulary — happy, sad, angry, scared, and not much in between. But emotions are more like a color spectrum than a box of four crayons. The more precisely you can name what you feel, the more clearly you can understand what you need. What are you feeling right now, as specifically as you can describe it?