6 books that will help you better understand your emotions

People are overwhelmed with feelings. We are ashamed of envy, make poor choices out of fear, and miss opportunities out of sadness and anger. In the end we decide that from now on our best friend is cold reason. This is how a person turns into something like a neural network: he knows everything in the world, except what he himself wants and how he feels.

The selection will allow you to study emotions 360 degrees. From scientific data to personal experience, from basic theory to practical tools: questionnaires, diaries, psychological exercises.

1. "The Emotions That Rule Us" by Lawrence Howells

We are accustomed to thinking that the meaning of life lies in specific, measurable and tangible achievements. The picture of well-being that a person paints in his head is tangible: here is a house, here is a garden, here are three dogs, here is a trip to Mallorca. However, scientists prove that there is no single aspect more important to the quality and meaning of our existence than emotions.

The book by clinical psychologist Lawrence Howells is a kind of guide to the world of emotions. It clearly explains how and why feelings arise, what components they consist of, why they appeared during evolution and what is their connection with the human body. Howells focuses on seven basic emotions: fear, sadness, anger, disgust, guilt, shame and happiness. A separate chapter is devoted to each feeling.

Another important point that the author reminds us: bright emotions can both give incredible happiness and drive you into a trap - that is, to force the psyche to go in circles, and us to act destructively in response to this or that experience. The book describes the mechanism by which such traps arise and provides exercises from cognitive behavioral psychology that will help break the vicious circle.

Buy

2. "Compass of Emotions" by Ilse Sand

Ilse Sand is an author loved around the world for her thoughtful presentation of material and attention to the problems of highly sensitive people. However, feeling very vivid emotions is not the same as being able to understand them and distinguish one experience from another. This small book provides navigation: where the boundaries of different emotions lie, what we most often suppress, and how to use even the darkest feelings constructively instead, e.g. envy.

It is important to learn to track the degree of intensity of experiences - for this, the book contains visual infographics and exercises. Ilse admits that it is almost impossible to influence feelings directly, but we still have one lever, and these are our thoughts. The same event can evoke different emotions depending on how we perceive it.

The author also calls not to get carried away and not to distort the concept of positive thinking - that is, not to build a wall around yourself of “I like everything, I always need to experience only emotions with a plus sign,” and allow myself to feel the full range of available sensations and focus on genuine self-understanding.

Buy

3. “Are you being honest?”, Jenna Kutcher

How often do you turn on autopilot mode? This is a state when, in the flow of everyday affairs, a person mechanically moves from one task to another. If you live on autopilot for too long, you can completely lose touch with the “driver” - that is, your consciousness, feelings and aspirations, and then even simple questions can lead to a dead end. What inspires you? What makes you laugh? What makes you dance with happiness?

Jenna Kutcher's book is suitable for taking the first step, stopping and looking deep into yourself. Once upon a time Jenna achieved career heights thanks to the regime of endless affairs and tasks - that is, in such a corral that was more reminiscent of moving through a tunnel. Somewhere out of sight remained friends, hobbies, recreation, and even relationships with her future husband - the focus was aimed only at the light at the end of the tunnel, that is, at the next promotion and your office with a beautiful sign. However, having received the position, Jenna suddenly realized that the reward was not her own happiness, but someone else’s approval.

The book consists of three parts: in the first, the author proposes to cleanse yourself of other people's husks and determine your true aspirations - and asks strong, although sometimes uncomfortable, questions to do this. In the second part, Jenna examines the external factors that define us: relationships with a partner, family, hobbies. The third part is specific steps that will help you rebuild your life and become its full-fledged owner, that is, stop allowing others to make choices for you.

4. “Emotional Intelligence of a Leader”, Leonid Krol

To understand yourself, you need to “switch off” from the outside world in time. To lead a healthy and fulfilling life, full of colors and emotions, you need to “turn on” back and interact with others. Finding balance can be difficult—even more difficult is making your feelings didn't interfere, but helped to achieve what I wanted.

Leonid Krol is a candidate of medical sciences and a business coach with 25 years of experience. In “The Emotional Intelligence of a Leader,” he shares case studies—and it’s hard not to recognize yourself in his clients’ problems. For example, here is the attentive, ironic and charming Nadya, who can make a brilliant career in sales. But it doesn’t: emotions and traumatic experiences, suppressed anger, resentment and even moral masochism interfere, that is, the habit of tolerating painful situations.

Like Jenna Kutcher, Krol advises starting the journey by developing awareness and understanding the factors that hiddenly influence behavior. From this point you can begin the path to a happy life: learn to regulate feelings, take care of and motivate yourself with the help of positive reinforcement. To remain alive and feeling, but not to give yourself offense, the author proposes to build a system barriers - it has support points that help to endure difficult moments, cognitive tools success (emotional intellect, attention, flexibility) and boundaries of trust.

Buy

5. "Self-Care Diary"

From theory to practice. Sometimes it's not enough to just equip yourself with the tools to recognize emotions. To truly know yourself, you need to collect some kind of statistics and understand what feelings prevail in you most of the time.

This kind of “flight log” of well-being is designed for three months. It doesn’t look like a personal diary, a gratitude diary, or even an emotion tracker—it’s suggested that you write in it completely specific things: how you slept, what you ate, how much water you drank, what you did during the day and, of course, what resulted felt.

A diary is especially useful if your condition is unstable - for example, when living with mental disorder. Simple, but at the same time surprising things can become clear: say, on days when you sleep 8 hours, your mood is almost always calm, after a certain meal - irritable, and on days of meeting with friend N you almost always feel anxiety.

In addition to daily spreads, the diary contains pages of retrospective questions: you are asked to remember the moments in which you felt a certain emotion especially vividly, or make a list of activities that restore you during difficult times moment.

6. "HBR. Emotional intelligence", team of authors

Emotions are not only about our relationship with ourselves. If you dig deeper, the concept of soft skills also concerns feelings, your own and others, and the ability to understand them. Remember why you left your last job? Very rarely the reason is due to rational factors such as low salary - often it is due to a toxic boss, tense atmosphere, inability to talk about your problems openly. Even by “lack of prospects,” we sometimes just mean a gloomy atmosphere created by a leader.

Harvard Business Review (HBR) is the world's leading business magazine. This collection of articles from it was written by analysts, trainers, and entrepreneurs who studied the cases of large companies and their managers. The authors come to the same conclusion: an excellent manager is not always the most competent, but always an employee with strong emotional intelligence.

Fortunately, EQ is made up of many components that can be improved: developing empathy, working on your own motivation, or learning more about social skills. The authors consider the concept of emotional leadership - in the most general sense, this is the kind of atmosphere you charge your colleagues and subordinates with. Another component of a healthy team is fair processes, that is, a culture in which every employee has the right to speak out with a guarantee of being heard. In such companies, people work more efficiently despite salaries and bonuses - so the saying “Nothing personal, just business” seems a little outdated.

Buy