Emotional Equations

Emotional Equations: Simple Truths for Creating Happiness + Success

By Chip Conley

Understanding Your Own Emotions

What are you feeling right now, as you start reading this book summary? Are you curious, skeptical, or have you already formed your opinion about the emotions, and you just want to see whether or not this book summary agrees with what you had in mind? There’s lots we could feel skeptical about in our lives because we have to be skeptical about where we’re getting our information from in order to qualify whether its fact or fake. In this way, being skeptical can be a good thing! It’s important to consider the source and always look for the truth, but here is where it gets interesting, can this practice spillover into our emotions? Can our skepticism impact our mental wellbeing in negative ways? Sadly, the answer is yes!

The book uses simple equations to represent complex emotional states. These equations highlight the factors that influence our emotions, allowing us to identify what we can control and what we can’t. By understanding these “Emotional Equations,” we can gain a new prospective to better weather everyday life interactions, especially with difficult people:

• Gaining Clarity: Break down overwhelming emotions into manageable parts.
• Focusing on Controllables: Identify aspects we can change (our perspective) and let go of things beyond our control (other people’s actions).
• Navigate Challenges: Develop strategies to manage difficult emotions and cultivate positive ones.
• Increase Self-Awareness: Recognize the thought patterns and situations that trigger specific emotions.

Overall, “Emotional Equations” offers us a practical framework to better understand people’s behaviors and why people do the things that they do in what we would consider a “weird” way:

• Understanding Your Emotions: Why do you feel the way that you do.
• Taking Charge of Your Emotional Well-Being: Developing healthier emotional responses.
• Living a More Fulfilling Life: By focusing on what truly matters and letting go of negativity.

“Emotional Equations” is not about eliminating emotions; it’s about managing them effectively.

Our emotions are calibrated at certain levels that we could tolerate, where we feel a certain degree of anxiety, fear, happiness, and depression at any given time. My hope is that you’ll learn something new about yourself by carefully examining your primal and layered emotions that we’ll delve into in this book summary. Perhaps you’ve been hindered by some form of distraction in your life that’s been hindering you from hitting your goals.

Emotions are part of human nature because they give us information about what we’re experiencing to help us know how to react. Emotional awareness helps us know what we need & want (or don’t want!). It helps us build better relationships & instinctively evaluate potential threats. That’s because being aware of our emotions can help us articulate our thoughts more clearly, resolve conflict more effectively, and move past difficult times more easily. What if a series of “Equations” could help us better visualize our thoughts and understand how to best overcome hardships that we experience in our daily lives?

Some emotions feel positive; like feeling happy, loving, confident, inspired, cheerful, interested, grateful, or included. Other emotions can seem more negative; like feeling angry, resentful, afraid, ashamed, envious, guilty, sad, or worried. Here is the good news: both positive and negative emotions are normal. Some people are naturally more in-touch with their emotions than others, and the good news is that everyone can be more aware of their emotions; it just needs practice! Emotional awareness is the first step toward building Emotional Intelligence, which is a crucial mastery of skills that can help you succeed in life!

Let me take a wild guess: You’re on the verge of making a major breakthrough in your life or career, but something is NOT working for you because of an invisible force that seems to be controlling your actions that makes you feel helpless! In this age of uncertainty, many people feel like they’re clinging to fantasy dreams & ambitions amidst a perfect storm that is quickly approaching.

Understanding how our own emotions have a strong hold on our behavior gives us a way to make sense of our lives by creating insight into the alchemy of emotions as we remove psychological blindfolds. That’s because more of our emotions are layered with other emotions that are NOT one-dimensional! Emotional Fluency is the ability to sense, translate, and effectively apply the power of emotions in a healthy & productive manner, where the equations that will be showcased in this book summary may help increase your fluency.

Most of us think of our own emotions in absolute form as either black-or-white and relatively straight-forward, but as we’ll come to learn that fact is stranger than fiction! Complex and layered emotions; like happiness, anxiety, faith, and many other emotions are a mix of other primal emotions, which makeups the resulting layered emotions that people around us experience! There are other layered emotional elements that come into play without us being aware of them because we’ve never attempted to articulate them or decipher them to better understand our odd behavior sometimes that we can’t seem to explain.

Regulating Your Emotions

Understanding and recognizing our emotions is vital for our wellbeing because emotions are our body’s way of communicating with us about what’s going on in the world around us. We can’t understand the outside world until we’ve learned how to listen to our inner one. If you want to have Emotional Intelligence, you need to first understand what comes before it that constitutes critical emotions. Believe it or not, emotions are in large part controlling our lives and shaping our perception about reality, which governs the outcomes in our lives. Emotional Intelligence is about our ability to understand and manage our own emotions while recognizing and influencing the emotions of those around us. So, what on earth is an “Emotional Equation”, and what’s the point?

Emotional Equations allows us to better understand what’s going on inside of us, so we know what we’re dealing with when it comes to layered emotions that are not straightforward or primal, such as fear, sadness, and joy.

Using simple logic that illuminates the universal truths in common Emotional Challenges, this book summary offers a way to identify the elements in our lives that we can change, those that we can’t, and how to better understand our Emotions so they can work for us instead of working against us! The Emotional Equations are mantras that we can turn to for stability in times of uncertainty, reminding us to focus on the things that we can change “the variables” and leave the others “the constants” alone.

Given the complex times that we live in post Covid, people are looking for ways to distill some basic truth in their life, and what better way to understand ourselves analytically than to structure the elemental emotions in the form of equations! Trust me, it’s not as boring as it sounds! At its core, this is what Emotional Equations is all about; a new way of thinking about emotions, breaking them down into their core components, and being consciously aware of when they work against you.

When we begin to understand where emotions come from, we can start to control the way we respond to them, where we might typically have felt helpless against. experience has taught me, the hard way, that those who are more in tune with their emotions are proven to be more successful in life and in business.

Emotions = Life

For some odd reason, it seems that most of the greatest work of art, literature, and inventions have come-out of suffering. Our lives will always be filled with various emotions that can go either way: positive or negative. All emotions tell us something about ourselves and our situation, but sometimes we find it hard to accept what we feel. Avoid negative Emotions or pretending that you don’t feel the way you do can backfire! It’s harder to move past difficult feelings and allow them to fade if we don’t face them head-on and try to understand why we feel that way. You don’t have to dwell on your emotions or constantly talk about how you feel. Instead, Emotional awareness simply means recognizing, respecting, and accepting your feelings as they happen, so that you become consciously aware of your Emotional responses.

The point about Emotional awareness is developing the skills to stop for a microsecond and see the space between our Emotions that we’re experiencing due to some external stimuli and our cognitive processing of these Emotions. This reflective standing would help us react in ways that would allow us to evolve and avoid crashing & burning. The choice is yours!

We have only eight primal emotions that are universal:

1. Joy
2. Trust/Anticipation
3. Anger
4. Disgust
5. Sadness
6. Surprise
7. Fear
8. Acceptance

As touchy-feely as it may sound, primal emotions are very relevant to our reality that we need to take notice of before we embark on the more layered Emotional Equations. The way we feel and interpret our emotions affects the way we think, our decision-making skills, and how we generally communicate in our day-to-day lives. A well-regulated individual is likely to have better balance, judgement, and control over their emotions and consequently, their actions!

Event + Reaction = Outcome

This means that events are things that you may not be able to control, but your reaction to events is something that you should be able to control, because the outcome is dependent on it!

Emotional Equations

Let us now explore the 18 Emotional Equations that are grouped under four primary categories that are as follows:

1. Dealing with Difficult Times (Despair, Disappointment, Regret, Jealousy, Anxiety)

2. Getting the Most out of Your Work life (Calling, Workaholism, Flow, Curiosity)

3. Defining Who You Are (Authenticity, Narcissism, Integrity)

4. Finding Contentment (Happiness, Joy, Thriving, Faith, Wisdom)

Understanding and recognizing your Emotions during Crucial Moments is vital for your well-being because they are your body’s way of communicating with you about what is going on in the world around you. How you respond to your Emotions will directly impact the outcomes you're experiencing in your life and career.

Dealing with Difficult Times

1.Despair = Suffering - Meaning

We all go through life, and experience suffering in almost every other aspect of our lives! This is a fact of life, and we cannot avoid it; no matter how hard we try. So, instead of focusing on the suffering that we experience in our lives, we can focus on transforming our suffering and pain into something worthwhile and meaningful, so that our suffering wouldn’t be in vain! We’ll never fall into despair if we understand how to learn from suffering, where we need to find the meaning behind the suffering. It isn’t until we feel that there is no meaning in suffering that we experience despair.

2. Disappointment = Expectations - Reality

If we expect a lot of things and then those things don’t happen as we expect, we get Disappointed! This does not mean that you shouldn’t have high ambitions and expectations. You can have them, but you need to realize that you are not entitled to those things to happen & no one in life owes you anything! You need to stop focusing on some delusional idea of the way “life should be” & start accepting how life is & make the best out of what you have while aspiring for greatness. The best way is to adopt a Defensive Pessimism approach to life: Expect the Worst & Hope for the Best!

3. Regret = Disappointment + Responsibility

Regret happens when we are dissatisfied with our results & disappointed about the outcome and feel responsible for making the choices that led to the disappointing results. We need to make sure that we do not make choices that will cause long-term pain by visiting our Default Future selves & evaluate if we’re satisfied with what we see in our imagination. The other thing is to be Content & Satisfied with what you have and not try to maximize everything in life at the same time! The things that you work hard on in life will happen inevitably; they just don’t have to happen all at once.

4. Jealousy = Mistrust / Self-esteem

When you are Jealous, you’re probably experiencing low self-esteem (sense of worthiness) in the situation; independent of the situation itself. In general, you find yourself having a high sense of mistrust about the situation or person you’re dealing with, so the feeling of Jealousy might be more about you than the person that you’re Jealous about.

5. Envy = (Pride + Vanity)/Kindness

When somebody succeeds at something that you’re working really hard for, but for some unbeknown reason to you, they made it, and you didn’t; you tend to feel Envy. The more self-pride & vain you are about yourself and what you’ve accomplished in life, the more Envious you are going to feel. The less kind you are to others when they achieve something, the more Envious you feel. The quickest way to remedy Envy is to STOP comparing yourself to others because whatever they have is NOT your story!

6. Anxiety = Uncertainty x Powerlessness

Uncertainty means you’re experiencing something with outcomes that are unclear to you. Powerlessness means that you feel that you don’t have control over the outcomes. If you want to be certain about something that you’re in doubt about and cannot control it, then you’ll feel anxious. On the other hand, if you just let go of the things that you cannot control for just a second and focus on what you can control, or at the very least influence, then anxiety slowly fades away…

Getting the Most Out of Your Work Life

7. Calling = Pleasure / Pain

When you follow your Calling (your Purpose), it means two things to your deepest inner being: tremendous amount of pleasure with minimal pain. Even if you experience pain, it doesn’t matter because the pleasure trumps the pain and you’re enduring because the endgame is what you aspire to achieve. When your Calling is clear to you; it makes the pain worth the gain!

8. Workaholism = What are you running from? / What are you living for?

This Emotional Equation resonates with me the most because I’m a Serial Workaholic. I become turbo anxious when I’m forced to relax and not work; like when I’m trying to relax on vacation. The question that we Workaholics need to ask ourselves periodically is: are we running away from a feeling of unworthiness, unloved, ashamed, and a host of crippling fears? Fear can range anywhere from fear of intimacy to fear of failing, ridiculed, or maybe even fear of succeeding! Ask yourself: what are you living for (your Calling) and whether the work that you’re doing is really what you want to do? Is what you’re doing something that you feel truly joyful about when you’re doing it or is it something that you think makes you happy, but is secretly making you feel miserable?

9. Flow = Skill / Challenge

If you have more challenges than you have skills, you start feeling anxious! Interestingly, if you have less challenges and more skills, you feel bored very quickly. Flow happens when your challenges are around 5–10% above your skills, and you gradually develop your skills through training and deliberate practice to meet the challenge that will gradually allow you to achieve a state of flow as if the task turns into a well-choreographed dance!

10. Curiosity = Wonder + Awe

Wonder is the sense of joyful, innocent, and surprise that you feel with a desire to know more. We feel awe and wonder when we’re humbled by admiring something that’s bigger than we are that it compels us to learn more about ourselves. Combine both emotions and you get curiosity, which is life-affirming, and it’s what drives us to do the things that we do. Curiosity is the window into finding your Purpose in life (your Calling).

Defining Who You Are

11. Authenticity = (Self-Awareness) x Courage

Self-Awareness means that you are an expert at Emotional hide-and-seek. It means that you’re consciously aware of your thought pattern and your behavior each day, where see yourself in an unvarnished way. You feel comfortable in your own skin without caring about being judged by most people. Courage means that you are brave enough that you’re able to stand for what is right, persevere through adversity, honest when it counts the most, and positive about life even when you run out of luck. When you have courage and you’re self-aware about your thoughts and actions, you can project authenticity to the people around you.

12. Narcissism = [2x(Self-Esteem)]x Entitlement

If you have too much Self-Esteem (think you are very worthy) and feel that you are Entitled to everything that you want, you are Narcissistic. To get rid of it, be Humble and Compassionate towards others, look at the world around you in an attempt to understand the grand scheme of things and that there are things that are bigger than you! Retire from your position as CEO of the Universe because frankly speaking; nobody cares about you except your parents (and maybe your spouse if you’re lucky!) Most people who matter care about your contributions that would lead to measurable and meaningful impact!

13. Integrity = Authenticity x Invisibility x Reliability

Authenticity means Self-Awareness and Courage, and Invisibility means that you do the things that you do even when nobody is watching! You do them because they’re the right thing to do regardless of the recognition or the accolades! Reliability means consistency, faithfulness, and living-up to your words and deeds. Having all three means that you have Integrity, and that’s what people see.

Finding Contentment

14. Happiness = (Wanting what you have)/ (Having what you want)

Being Content with what you have, and not wanting a lot at the same time. Be grateful & deliberately practice Happiness every day and know wholeheartedly that things need time to happen. Most people search for Happiness somewhere out there not knowing that true happiness lies deep within themselves. You don’t need anything outside of yourself to be Happy because Happiness is buried deep within you; all you have to do is have a candid dialogue with yourself between what you Have & what you Want. Once you’ve realized where to look for Happiness, only then will you be really happy.

15. Joy = Love - Fear

Do something that you love without fear of being fudged and you will be joyful. Joy is an emotion that’s experienced by many but understood by very few. It’s usually mistaken for happiness yet it’s unique in its impact on both our mind and body. Joy is not just a mere fleeting emotion; it actually triggers conflicting emotions (love and fear), which results in experiencing feelings of significant physiological and psychological changes that can improve our physical and mental wellbeing. As the great Dr. Seuss once said: “Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind!”

16. Thriving = Frequency of Positive / Frequency of Negative

You thrive when you focus more on the positive than the negative, but you’re not blinded by it that you feel entitled. It’s about striking a harmonious balance between the positive and negative emotions that you experience, and interestingly enough; not all negatives' feelings are negative all the time! The trick is knowing how to turn negative experiences into lessons learned to enable turning them into positive ones!

17. Faith = Belief / Intellect

Faith happens when you have Belief in something that runs deep within your Soul. The Intellect has little role to play with Faith on face value, because just like our physical eyes cannot see atoms, yet we have Faith that atoms exist! Belief’s foundation is not Intellect, but something beyond the realm of what our eyes are limited on seeing.

18. Wisdom= Square Root of (Experience)

Wisdom is the deeply rooted knowledge that comes from experience (Making Mistakes). It’s not based on just the accumulation of factual knowledge; in fact, it’s something more holistic that a person with years of experience can just see and make a split-second decision; almost subconsciously and without giving it a second thought!

Creating Your Own Emotional Equations

Using your imagination, you can create your own equations for anything that you’d like to better understand about yourself, like suffering, remorse, or growth. Keep in mind that the most effective Emotional Equations will be less about “What you’re Getting” and more about “What you’re Becoming!” If you’re going to go through the trouble of developing your own equations, you might as well create some that can serve you for decades to come, and not just in short-term.

19. Suffering = Pain x Resistance

Events may create physical pain or even Emotional pain, but they do not cause Suffering! Resistance creates Suffering, and that’s because stress happens when your mind Resists what’s happening, so accept the world as it is & not as you’d like it to be while working around the things that you can’t change, so you could focus on what you can change.

20. Remorse = Regret + Guilt

You regret the actions that you’ve made when you feel that you’ve made the wrong choices. Then, you start feeling guilty about the actions that you’ve taken as a result of that wrong choice that you’ve made, and that is remorse. Tap into your collective experience to make sure that you don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Read books to avoid making all the possible mistakes by learning from the greats before you because life is too short for you to make all the mistakes in the world.

21. Growth = Change - Resistance

All growth involves making mistakes and having a positive attitude about change! If you resist change because of your stringent beliefs or worldview, you’ll never grow and end-up staying where you’re at indefinably, and you have nobody to blame but yourself!

22. Humiliation = (Shame x Anger) - Power

When you are ashamed about something that you can or can’t control and you are angry about it but feel powerless about it; you are experiencing humiliation. The easiest way to avoid feeling humiliated is to be open for considering new worldview or changing your prospective, so you don’t have to feel ashamed about what previously brought you humiliation.

23. Empathy = Compassion (for self) + Presence (for others)

Empathy happens when you are there for others and can appreciate their struggles and imagine what it would be like to walk in their shoes. Interestingly enough, Empathy is at the heart of Innovation!

24. Self-Esteem = Success / Pretension

Self-Esteem is how we value and perceive ourselves. It’s based on our opinions and beliefs about ourselves, which can feel difficult to change at times. We might also think of Self-Esteem as self-confidence, where your self-esteem can affect whether you like and value yourself as a person. If you have a lot of true success and less pretension about your successes; you’ll have more self-esteem and will go far in life.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Now that we’ve increased our level of awareness about our own Emotions in a wholistic fashion, how do we enhance our level of awareness regarding our level of competence? Here are two simple steps:

1. Make a habit of tuning-into how you feel in different situations throughout the day, and ask why?
2. Share your feelings with those closest to you!

Managing your emotional reactions means that you’re consciously choosing how and when to express the emotions that you feel. People who manage their emotions know that it’s healthy to express their feelings, but that it also matters how and when they express them.

The Stages of learning & levels of Competence

In the realm of Competence Awareness, there are four distinct levels that come into play:

1. Unconscious Incompetence
2. Conscious Incompetence
3. Conscious Competence
4. Unconscious Competence

These are the stages of learning model, which is a psychological framework that explains how people become more competent when learning a skill; especially when it’s about themselves. According to this model, as people learn a skill, they move-up the hierarchy of competence & enhance their level of awareness about what they’ve learned.

Each of these stages of learning involves a different set of behaviors and abilities. Now, let’s delve into each of the four stages of Competence Awareness to better understand how to make it work for our advantage:

1. Unconscious Incompetence: is the beginning stage of learning when practicing a new skill that you want to learn. This stage is characterized by not knowing what you don’t know! Therefore, you’re not entirely aware of what the new skill entail, and not exactly sure what the goal should be. Think back to your earlier days as a freshman in collage.
2. Conscious Incompetence: is the intermediate stage of learning that you reach after developing some familiarity with a new skill. At this stage, there’s still a lot that you don’t know, but you can now recognize the newly acquired knowledge and what needs to be learned in order for you to improve.
3. Conscious Competence: is the proficiency stage of learning that you reach after developing a strong sense of proficiency at the skills that you’re trying to improve. At this stage, you would have a good grasp of the skills that you’ve developed and what they entail, which reduces your number of mistakes while practicing. However, performing at a high-level still requires a significant and conscious effort on the part of you as a performer, where you haven’t yet reached a state of flow!
4. Unconscious Competence: is the mastery stage of learning that you reach once you develop a very high-level of proficiency in the skills you’ve been working on developing. At this stage, you make very little mistakes if any, where you have an in-depth understanding about the skills and what they entail. Noteworthy, the biggest difference between this stage and the previous one is that in this stage you’re performing at an elevated level of flow, which is an intuitive level of performance that no longer requires as much conscious effort on your part as a performer.

Emotional baggage that we acquire more of as we get older weighs-us down unless we intervene somehow and do something about it. The more Emotional pull we’re fighting, the more force we’re require to overcome in order for us to move forward. Forces that are moving against our career path create a lot of friction and consequently, less progress!

So, what are your Emotional Equations saying about you & in what ways would you be able to turn your Weaknesses into Strengths? If there is one thing that I’ve learned from math while growing-up is that there is more than one way to solve an equation!

The Emotional Equation chart is just another way of looking at our layered emotions and some of the primal emotions that contribute to them, which raises our level of understanding about why things the way they are around us. This cheat-sheet chart seems to give us a good overview about some of the more complex emotions and encourages us to look closer at what triggers them in ways that enhances our Emotional Intelligence.

The Emotional Equation chart is intended to help us be more curious about complex emotions and try and understand our inner landscape a little more. It can really help us tune-in with our own emotions and understand what happens to us underneath the surface.

Takeaways

1. You have more control over your emotions than you might think.
2. Know yourself; behave yourself; know others; build long-lasting bonds.
3. Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, and the emotions of others.
4. Recognizing the emotions of others strengthens relationships.
5. Practice empathy to build stronger connections.
6. Emotions are complex but can be understood through a breakdown of influencing factors.
7. We can identify patterns and triggers for our emotional responses by better understanding what they’re consisting of.
8. Emotions are neither good nor bad; it’s how we manage them that matters.
9. Improve your self-awareness by getting to know yourself (the good, the bad, and the ugly).
10. By reframing situations and lowering expectations, you can significantly impact your emotional experience.
11. Shifting your perspective can significantly impact your emotional state.
12. Lowering your expectations can lead you to greater happiness.
13. Focusing on the present moment reduces your anxiety about the future.
14. To practice better self-management, you need to balance your emotional and logical sides.
15. Don’t send mixed signals, so make sure your body language is in line with your words.
16. Identify the areas of your emotions you can control (e.g., your perspective).
17. Let go of trying to control things outside your influence (e.g., other people’s actions).
18. Develop healthy coping mechanisms for managing difficult emotions.
19. Learn how to learn by developing an understanding about the balance between your emotional and rational brain.
20. Recognize Emotions in yourself and in others by breaking-down layered Emotions into their primal elements.
21. Understand the cause and effect of Emotions; both positive and negative to grow your level of self-awareness.
22. Make sure to label Emotions correctly and be honest with yourself first and foremost.
23. Express Emotions appropriately by being clear about how you actually feel and what is causing you to feel that way.
24. Regulate your emotions effectively by imagining the best version of yourself and how your best-self would respond to a particular emotion (especially negative emotions) and the tools that can help you regulate your emotions.
25. Focus on building positive emotions through gratitude, appreciation, and acts of kindness.
26. Emotional well-being is essential for a happy and fulfilling life, so practice forgiveness to release negativity and move forward.

The Maverick

www.dartec.com.sa

Hashim@dartec.com.sa