5 Reasons to Be in Touch With Your Emotions

By Paisley Hansen

June 1 2021 - Emotions can have a big impact on how you think and act. The emotions you experience on a daily basis can motivate you to act and influence the huge and minor decisions you make in your life. It is vital to understand the three fundamental components of emotion in order to properly comprehend it.

An emotion is made up of three parts:

• A subjective factor (how you experience the emotion)
• A physiological factor (how your body reacts to the emotion)
• An expressive factor (how you behave in response to the emotion)

Emotions can be fleeting, such as rage at a coworker, or they can be long-lasting, such as sadness over the loss of a relationship. But why do you feel emotions in the first place? What function do they have? Here are some ways emotion helps us.

1. Helps Us Make Decisions

From what you eat for breakfast to who you vote for in political elections, your emotions play a big role in your decisions. People with specific types of brain damage that affect their ability to experience emotions also have a lower ability to make appropriate decisions, according to research.

Even when you feel your decisions are guided only by logic and reason, emotions play a significant impact. Your ability to comprehend and manage emotions, or emotional intelligence, has been proven to have an essential role in decision-making. This mental toughness results in greater decision-making abilities.

2. Helps People Understand You

When you engage with others, it is critical to leave signals that will help them understand how you feel. These indicators could include emotional expression in the form of body language, such as distinct facial expressions related to the emotions you're experiencing.

In other circumstances, it may entail expressing your feelings explicitly. When you tell your friends or family members that you are pleased, sad, delighted, or afraid, you are providing them with crucial information that they can utilize to take action.

3. Helps You Understand People

The emotional displays of individuals around you supply you with a lot of social knowledge, just as your own emotions supply significant information to others. Social communication is a key element of your daily lives and relationships, and the ability to interpret and respond to others' emotions is crucial.

It enables you to react appropriately and form deeper, more meaningful bonds with your friends, family, and loved ones. It also enables you to communicate effectively in a range of social circumstances, such as dealing with a grumpy client or managing a rogue employee.

Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to investigate emotions scientifically. He speculated that emotional displays might be crucial in terms of safety and survival. If you come across an animal that is hissing or spitting, it is evident that the creature is furious and defensive, prompting you to back away and avoid potential danger.

4. Helps You Take Action

When faced with a stressful exam, you may be concerned about how well you will perform and how the examination will affect your final score. You may be more likely to study as a result of these emotional responses. You were motivated to take action and do something constructive to increase your chances of receiving a good grade because you had experienced a specific emotion.

You also have a tendency to do particular behaviors in order to increase the likelihood of experiencing pleasant emotions and decrease the likelihood of experiencing unpleasant emotions. You might, for example, seek out social events or pastimes that bring you joy, pleasure, and excitement. You would, on the other hand, generally avoid circumstances that could lead to boredom, grief, or anxiety.

Your emotions, as you've discovered, serve a variety of functions. Emotions can be brief, long-lasting, intense, complex, and even life-altering. They can inspire you to act in certain ways and provide you with the tools and resources you need to engage meaningfully in your social lives.

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