Feelings Wheel
How to use a feelings wheel to understand your emotions
A feelings wheel is an emotional framework to communicate your feelings. When I feel bad, feel like something is off, I feel much bettter by looking at the wheel and identifying what I’m feeling.
How To Use It
I like to use it when I’m journaling. Most of the work that I do on myself happens within the pages of 5–6 journals that I have lying around. I journal to problem-solve feelings that I have, both good and bad.
Example
Say that I had a rough day at work. Maybe I had a conflict with my co-worker and I sensed that there was some animosity between us. Say I didn’t finish my tasks because I was feeling bad and he told my manager.
Root Cause Your Feelings
I’ll go to my feelings wheel and start from the outside. I’ll look at each of the outside layer and just keep reading them until I find one that’s resonant. Resonant means that reading or hearing something made you feel something powerful. So powerful that you should feel compelled to talk about it. Usually for particularly complex feelings, I find that sometimes I can resonate with 5–8 feelings in the outer layers. Write them all down. Then I go into the secondary layer and then the core emotion and write those down.
This is what I would write:
- “I felt overwhelmed, anxious, and fearful/scared that I’m going to lose my job.”
- “I felt betrayed, resentful, and angry that he went behind my back.”
Look At Reality
What do you know as a fact and what do you not know?
What you know is what they did. What you don’t know is why.
From the above example, I know that my coworker had a conversation with my manager. I don’t know what was said. I just heard from my manager that I needed to complete my tasks. Look how far my feelings spiraled.
“I’m scared to lose my job”. A conversation and my manager giving me feedback doesn’t mean that I’m going to lose my job, it just means that I need to make changes to how I approach work, like always.
“I felt angry he went behind my back”. Did he betray me? Does he hate me? What does this mean for our relationship in the future.
People Principle 1: The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.That’s one possibility. Another is simply, I look at the tasks, realize that I’m blocking him from doing his work and he needs it done to do good work on his end.
People Principle 2: Most action people take are about them, not you.People aren’t ever thinking about you, even when you think they are. People project everything that they see and do, it’s the curse of having an ego. By taking this step to look at reality and how we feel in 2 seperate stages and letting reality win, we lower our ego.
People Principle 1 Corollary: If they were about you, it would be exceedingly obvious.Unless someone tells you to your face “I’m hurting you now because I hate you and you suck”, it’s not about you.
People Principle 3: When in doubt, just ask.We want to get as close to reality as possible. Thus, we need data, we need facts. After all, feelings, especially the most extreme ones can often be wrong. Test assumptions, use tact and ask.
“Hey Barry, I was wondering if I was blocking your task?”
Don’t bring up anyone else if there is no need for it. More people = complexity in a conversation. A socially stupid question would be “Hey I heard you said something to my manager, is this what you meant?”.
And then, almost always.
“Yeah I can’t do my work without yours”.
We have achieved empathy and are again interfacing with reality.
You’ll find that once you achieve empathy, you’ll no longer feel negative feelings. This is because it’s impossible to achieve empathy while still staying angry at someone.
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