As the central theme of this site is focused on knowledge, it’s imperative to understand what our emotions are and how they interact with our thinking and every day life. Emotions are our bodies way of getting us to do things. When we are angry we tend to do something with force. When we are in love we tend to protect those that we love. Emotions are chemicals that get released in our brains that can change our actions based on the situation. Emotions aren’t the only things that deal with chemicals and behavior. When we are hungry our stomachs send information to our brains and we decide to eat. When we hit our funny bone on the desk, done it hundreds of times, our elbow sends a signal to the brain that something happened.

These neural signals in the brain are a marvel of engineering. Regardless if they are evolved or created, they are fascinating. A superhighway of signals running through our brain to get us to do things. Think about that for a moment. Our bodies are sending signals to our brain so that our behavior changes. So that we stop doing whatever it was were doing before, in the case of pain.

Our behavior is, in the most simplest of terms, what we do every day. What our conscious mind decides to do with our body. Our emotions can influence that behavior. If we are angry we will act differently than if we were not. We will change how we interact with the world around us based on the emotion that we are currently feeling.

Fear makes us flight or fight, love makes us want to stay with loved ones, anger makes us want to defend what we have. All of them have a goal. All of them are there to get us to do something so that we survive. Why? Why don’t we know to do those things? Why aren’t we programmed at birth to do everything we need to do in life? Ants are. Antelope’s are. Lots of animals are. We seem to be this mess of emotions pushing and pulling us towards doing a certain actions.

I want to make it clear though, pain is not an emotion. Neither is the desire to eat or sleep. They are alarm clocks in the body. They are parts of our body sending chemical and electrical signals to our brains to get us to do something. The end result is very similar to emotions. They are the bodies way to control us.

Emotions are one of the bodies behavioral control mechanisms.  When our bodies recognize something as a danger, the fear mechanism fires off and the fight or flight syndrome takes over. Or when something challenges us, the anger emotion takes over and fills us with energy and the desire to attack. What’s really happening here behind the scenes? Our bodies are releasing chemicals based on observations. Those chemicals cause physical reactions that we call emotions. Those emotions interact with our conscious mind and influence, not control, our actions.

Our conscious mind is really only part of the equation when defining what it means to be human. Sigmund Freud called this the id. The sub-conscious mind. That part of our mind’s that we have no control over. If you think of a giant pyramid, only a small sliver at the top represents the conscious mind. The part of us that is awake and aware. In order to get that part that is awake and aware to do something that benefits the organism the body uses emotions.

OK, so, now what. We know that emotions and behavior are linked. That any one emotion can create a behavioral change in a person. That is a knowledge point. We now have identified a piece of information that we know to be true about ourselves. What can we do with it?  Well, if emotions can influence behavior, and with certain behavior we can achieve certain results, can we influence emotions to willfully to generate the behaviorwe want? Yes! As we continue to examine this fascinating topic, we’ll find that knowing how our bodies work gives us a very powerful tool. A tool that we can use to shape ourselves into whatever force we consciously choose to be.

Read about consciousness here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394-1,00.html
Read about the ID and Frued here: http://allpsych.com/psychology101/ego.html

We all have emotions. We all have all emotions in fact. Everyone gets happy, sad, angry and depressed. It’s part of being human. What is also true is that most people are generally happy, sad, angry or depressed. When approached with new situations, people will handle this situations generally with a similar mind set. If a person that is mostly happy most of the time, they will more times than not, be happy. It sounds simple doesn’t it? People that are angry most of the time are angry most of the time. The bigger questions is why? Because they, we, are wired, currently, to be so.

How we are built

What are emotions anyway? They are just chemicals. Complex combinations of chemicals flying around our brains. When we stub our toe an impulse is sent to our brains telling us that something has happened, something drastic. A sudden sharp pain has occurred somewhere. Our brains instantly activate the fight or flight paradigm. With our stubbed toe, we instantly get a feeling of anger and frustration. Sometimes we kick the chair over or throw the kid’s toys to the side of the room. Our brains have very quickly identified the situation as harmless and begin to shut things down. But, the release of chemicals has already occurred, and the anger we have may linger.

Now, imagine if our brains are wired in such a way to release that chemical more than the average person. What happens? We’re angry a lot. We approach most situations with that primary emotion of anger. We drive to work and yell at people. We get into fights with family and friends. When our team loses the game, we throw things.

Anger isn’t the only emotion at work either. This runs the whole gambit. Love, hate, sadness, happiness, and everything in between. I’m sure you have heard the expressing “they wear their heart’s on a sleeve”. But, as with all things dealing with people, no one answer is ever the only answer. We are just too complex for that.

Factors that play in

There are many factors that play into this. I am not saying that someone that is principally angry will never show some other emotion, it’s just not likely. Someone that is happy all the time does get angry. But, if you notice, they do so to a lesser degree. Someone that is angry all the time, does get sad. But it too is to a muted degree.

Life changes can influence our emotions as well. If you are a generally happy person, but you are placed in a high stress and highly confrontational job, you’re principal emotion may begin to change. We will modified ourselves to fit our surroundings. It’s a survival technique. Even though you were always happen at 20, you may be always angry at 40. The point here is what the principle emotion is at this given moment in your life. It won’t change day to day but may over a longer period.

Identifying your Primary Emotion

How can you tell what your emotion is? It’s very hard for people to see things about themselves. I’ve found that doing an objective exercise can help tremendously. Close your eyes and imagine you are some other person. Maybe someone you are a fan of, maybe a total stranger. Now, imagine this new person runs into you at the store, at work, on the street. Make it a real event, meaning a time that actually happened to you. Take a look at yourself, how are you acting? Do this many times for many past experiences you have. Are you generally behaving kindly, lovingly, angrily? If so, that’s it. You’ve just found your primary. This shouldn’t be very difficult to identity, the difficult part comes later.

And if you happen to see yourself acting in a combination of ways, that’s OK. There are no rules here. You may have one or two or three emotions that are at work. Each tugging a little to be the primary that you fall back to.

Identifying in others

What may help you identifying this in yourself is doing so in someone else. Take a look at your co-workers, friends, family. Are some generally happy, comical, sad, angry? Once you begin looking you begin seeing. Once you can see it in someone else, you can begin to see what yours is in you.

Changing the program

OK, so, you’ve figured out that you are generally behaving as if you were happy. Great! Happiness is the one of the better emotions to be your primary. What if you are generally angry? Sad? Are you locked into this forever? Not at all! The first step to any change in ourselves is identifying how we are now. You can’t very well change yourself if you dont’ know what you are changing yourself from. Most people focus on where they are going but don’t have a solid idea of where they are now. How can you know where to go if you don’t know where the starting line is?

Changing, though normally very hard, can be very easy if you do it in small manageable chunks. Don’t expect to wake up tomorrow and be happy all the time. Do try to wake up tomorrow and approach situations from the perspective of being happy. I don’t mean to fake happiness, I mean, imagine a time in your life when you were happy, and choose to feel that way now. Find something small in your day. Your kid’s smile, your dog’s wagging tail, your favorite TV show, a good meal, a pint at the pub, anything. If you want to strive to be more positive, make that your primary focus.

You know what all the emotions feel like, most people have experienced all of them. Pick one you like, and say to yourself, today I will be happy. Smile all day long, do the things that you did when you were feeling that emotion last time. Reward your behavior with positivity. If you find yourself slipping back into some other mindset, wake yourself up and say NO. We discipline or pets, kids, admonish our friends and family, why not ourselves?

Bottom line, we all have one way we generally behave. But it is not set in stone. Find your mindset, choose if you like it and if not, find a new one. It can be very easy simply because whatever you choose, happy, glad or even aggressive, you’ve probably already felt it at one point in your life and know how to feel it again. Now you just have to make a conscious effort to do so. Good Luck!

Group Psychology – acting like everyone else does

Have you ever been in a group of people and found yourself acting like an idiot? No, not an idiot, but acting like everyone else did? Maybe you were not acting like yourself. Whatever the circumstances, we tend to behave like those around us. The more people that are acting in a certain way the more likely we are to act in that way. Are you normally a passive person? Ever been to a football game? While there did you stand up and cheer when something happened? Maybe sports isn’t your thing, how about politics. I recently saw a large crowds of people dancing at both the Democrat and Republican convention’s. It was quite horrible. There wasn’t one coordinated movement in the bunch of them. Do you think they dance like this at home? Doubtful. Do you think they were dancing because others were dancing? Absolutely.

They call this getting caught up in the moment. Finding yourself in a cheering crowd and you may cheer along with them. Some call this the mob mentality. An angry mob may do things that on their own, the members of the mob, would not.

As an example of this, Napoleon, when he invaded Egypt converted to Islam. Why? He knew how groups thought. He knew that if he aligned himself with their group, they would be more accepting of him. We gravitate towards those that are most like us. This is an example of someone understanding the meanings of group psychology and using it to their benefit.

Why does this happen? Why are we like that? I think the answers is in our genes. There are some things I believe are true regardless if you believe in God or Evolution. We eat, sleep, dream, and die. Some things are universally true regardless of how we got to be here. This I feel is one of them. We are social creatures. We are built to be social. We are built in such a way that once put into a group we tend to behave like that group so that we fit with them. Regardless if this was born out of need from evolution or divine doctrine, it is true. Once we begin to relate to a group we begin to defend that group. Which leads me to the second part of this post. How we defend a group.

Group Psychology – defending the groups we relate with

Once we are aligned with a certain group, we tend to defend that group even if we feel that group is wrong. Think about this for a moment. I myself am a Washington Redskins fan. If someone that is a fan of say the Dallas Cowboys were to attack the redskins record, I would defend them even if they were right. Lets say you happen to love to go to Renaissance festivals and someone says all those festivals are silly, would you defend them? Lets say you are a Cuban American, would you defend all issues relating to Cubans coming to this country seeking sanctuary? How about you are Latino and are asked about immigration from to the United States? You’ll defend the groups you are aligned with, as would anyone. If you are a scientist, you’ll defend and support the views of the scientific community. If your country is attacked, you’ll defend it.

I think we can all agree that we will support those groups we are aligned with. Here’s the twist. You, like me and everyone else, are aligned with more than one group. Lets during the argument between me and the cowboys fan, someone else walks up and says football is too violent of a sport. Guess what happens, I and the cowboys fan will forget our differences and defend the larger group of football fans. Democrats and Republicans are attacking each other every day leading up to the historic 2008 election, but if these United States were attacked, they would band together and defend her and support each other in her defense.

Think of this like intersecting circles. There is one giant circle to which we all belong. The circle of humanity. If ever there was something that challenged all of humanity, we would quickly forget our infighting and attack this common threat. Next is the circle of ethnicities. Irish, English, Jewish, African, American, we all cling to our ethnicity. We sometimes cling to this before country. If someone attacks our ethnicity, regardless if they are a citizen of the same country as we are, we’ll defend our heritage. Next, is country. Each circle now gets smaller and smaller and are within the larger circles above like concentric circles. Next, the levels of circles begins to overlap with others. There may be people that are of the same ethnicity that live in the same country but hold to different political groups. Or hold to different social groups. Here we begin to see smaller and smaller circles of groups of people. This can go down to the smallest group, perhaps a group of moms in a neighborhood or the local PTA group. Regardless what it is, the smallest level is always what we relate to the most.

What’s this all mean?

I believe that this theory of circles can be used to better understand each other. Some people may be defending a topic and you’re not quite sure why. A quick glance may lead you to the conclusion that the person you’re arguing with is not defending his position but his groups position. Once you can determine this, you can change how you are approaching this. Get yourself into one of the person’s groups. Meaning, let this person know that you and this person are in a circle together. Once you both can relate to each other that you are aligned in thinking in one circle, you can have a softer tone and easier discussion about the circle that you are not aligned in. Once we are able to stop defending our point as if we are being attacked we can hold a more constructive discussion, one in which we would all benefit.