By Brene Brown
Who would have thought that you could describe 87 emotions and experiences so clearly? Not only does she describe them, she differentiates them and lets us know which ones are closely related and why.
Brene’s ability to help us understand the “near enemies” and “far enemies” to certain emotions is fascinating. A ‘near enemy’ emotion is sometimes more dangerous than that ‘far enemy’ because you know the ‘far enemy’ is coming but often don’t see or understand the ‘near enemy’ is there.
A ‘near enemy’ to compassion is pity. Compassion is about understanding and accepting and pity really looks at the other person as different than ourselves. It separates people rather than brings them together. Hmmmmm….good stuff.
All too often people describe emotions in very simplistic terms like happy, sad, and angry. But what is the difference between happy and joy? Well, she describes that there is a difference. Joy tends to be shorter lived. Hmmmm…didn’t really think about that too much before.
Anger. This is an interesting one because anger is often happening because of another emotion behind it. You could be angry because you are jealous, or have been wronged in some way, you are scared, frustrated, confused, overwhelmed, or many other emotions. Hmmmmm….
As a career coach or career service provider, we want to remember we can not know what a person is feeling unless we ask. They way people show emotions can be quite different and we can’t assume we know what they feel because of how we might feel in the same situation.
But you don’t have to be a career coach to benefit from reading this book. All human beings should read this book and pay attention to their own emotions better. Thank you Brene.
