A Basic Skill We Should Have Learned as Kids

Even a child could be taught this concept: that when we’re sad, for example, it’s hard to remember that the world itself hasn’t become a sad place, even though that’s exactly what it feels like. We’re just being visited by some feelings that make it seem that way.

Strong feelings pass, but while they’re here, they color and warp our vision, sometimes severely. So much hinges on this simple fact, and its implications, that it should be as fundamental a part of our education as learning language.

We’re living through emotional reactions all day long, even to events as tiny as hearing a text message arrive, or noticing a fly in the room. Our emotions aren’t always overwhelming us, but they are always affecting us, coloring our perceptions and opinions about ourselves and our world.

All of our values and morals, all of the meaning we perceive in life, stem from our knowledge that there are some very different ways a person can feel.we don’t make much of a point of understanding and adjusting for our emotional states. We even overlook the simple fact that we’re always in the middle of one, however subtle.

we are always somewhere in the realm of well-known human emotions, and that it can be extremely helpful to know where. Which general region, at least. Each region is hospitable to certain qualities, and hostile to others. In the region of anger, for example, compassion might have a hard time being present at all, but alertness is given a boost.

For example, if you’re aware that fear is prominent in you right now, you can remind yourself that the future is likely going to be easier than it currently seems, regardless of how strongly you might feel your impending doom. If you’re aware that anger is prominent, you can remind yourself that when you feel this way you tend to be highly critical... See more

This is the “fish in water” effect at work — because we are immersed in our emotions’ effects every moment of our lives, we tend to talk about them only when they’re exceptionally strong.

Essentially, we spend our whole lives navigating a limited patch of emotional terrain, which contains magnificent peaks and well-known pitfalls, yet we don’t bother making use of a map. We have a sense of whether or not we want to be where we are, but we don’t think much about the name of the region, how we got to it, and what we know about it.

Think of what a help it would be for any kid to understand — not just to be told, but to really understand — that the reason they want to say mean things to another student is because they’re feeling temporarily angry towards them, and not because the other student necessarily deserves to have mean things said to them.

Emotions really do work like sets of spectacles. Your “fear goggles” might sharpen and magnify images of future trouble and pain, while images of future joy and relief become faint, or don’t appear at all. Your “admiration goggles” might give a particular person and their ideas a blinding glow, and obscure the appearance of their faults.