The importance of emodiversity

Emodiversity is the word for the range of emotions you can notice and name. It turns out that the wider your emodiversity, the less likely it is that any single emotion can overwhelm you. And it’s pretty easy for all of us to develop our emodiversity. 

Firstly, it’s helpful to be aware that all emotions can be plotted onto a circumplex with two dimensions: high to low energy, and pleasure to displeasure. So, for example, fury would be high enery, high displeasure, whereas serene would be low energy high pleasure. 

Secondly, simply being more open about our own emotions, focusing on the emotions of characters in books and movies, and using music, can all help to develop our emodiversity.

There’s more about the emotion circumplex in this SWAP video: