One powerful skill you need when you’re feeling ALL the feels

How are you feeling? 

No really, I mean it.

How are you feeling? What emotion are you experiencing right now? 

I don’t know if this is true for you, but the last year+ has been an intense rollercoaster of emotions and I’ve been leaning into what Susan David calls “emotional agility” skills to help me make it through. 

When it comes to working with our emotions, one of the more helpful emotional agility skills we can learn is how to increase our “emotional granularity.” 

Emotional granularity is the ability to distinguish and put our feelings into words, with a high degree of specificity and precision.

But most of us are anything but precise when it comes to labeling our emotions!

We typically describe how we feel in broad, non-specific words, like “stressed” or “blah.”

So, what’s wrong with that? 

Emotions are information. They help us to figure out what we need.

Get the label wrong and we might miss out on an important message or the best next steps to take for ourselves.

But when we accurately and specifically identify our emotions, then we can more accurately determine what we truly need.

So, as Susan says, go beyond the obvious and identify exactly what you’re feeling.

Not to mention, the very act of labeling your emotions can help you self-regulate. You know: name it, to tame it. 

Have you been feeling a whole lot of blah lately? This article about “languishing” is worth reading. 

And if you’re interested here’s a short article with solid tips on how to build the important (and rarely taught!) skill of emotional granularity.

Want to learn more? Join us in The Compassionate Badassery Lab for our webinar next week on emotions!

Born out of the early days of COVID, The Lab is a place where we experiment with new ideas, practices, and self-care to help us navigate the ongoing challenges of our work with animals and life in general.

If you’d like to join us in The Lab, we have an amazing library of webinars and workbooks on topics like boundaries, self-care, holding space, conflict, and so much more.

You can join The Lab anytime as a monthly member or annual member. On Thursday 5/20 you can join us for a live webinar called Compassionate Badassery Skills: Courage in the Heart.

We’ll be learning how to work with our emotions, because let’s face it: the work we do is all the feels, all the time!