The Nature of Emotions and Personality

“I think,” and “I feel,” are different processes, right? There is a certain quality of what is referred to as emotions, feelings, or the heart, and what is referred to as thoughts, cognition, or the mind. This distinction is consistent through different cultures and across time, seen in everything such as philosophies like the yin and yang, to the masculine and feminine aspect of Latin-based languages.

“I think,” and “I feel,” are rarely in the same sentence together unless there is a “but” in between them. Why is that?

Can you recall or imagine an experience when you could say “I think and I feel that?”

If the heart is suggesting what is meaningful, and the heart is framing up what is logical, then the combination would be the best of both worlds. Why would getting the heart and mind both on the same page be so difficult though, if feeling the joy of doing what is meaningful and the peace of doing what is logical would be so appealing?

In soccer, the goal is to take the ball across a field and into the box and prevent anyone from doing the opposite thing…that is, until half time, when the sides are switched, and now your goal is to do what you were trying to prevent. Why do the teams have to switch sides? Because the slope of the field, the wind, or the sun can create an advantage to moving the ball in one direction compared to the other. I remember as a kid playing goalie and not wanting the sides to switch because I knew I would be staring into the sun, squinting and having a hard time doing my job. The reality of emotions is similar to soccer, but instead of two sides on the field there are seven.

Sticking with the soccer analogy, imagine there are seven different whistles, and each matches up with a certain side you are trying to protect and where the goal you should be aiming at are. When we are born, we are born to play, and this all happens naturally. We don’t even have to have names for each whistle or side of the field, we just instinctually play and play well. This is where personality comes in, because imagine you are playing, and in front of one of the goals someone spreads out a whole dump truck full of rocks, how would that affect the game? If you have ever played a sport you know that you don’t want to have to look at the ground, you want to look at the game. Every sports surface is meticulously leveled and maintained so that the game is about the players and the sport and not the terrain. So, returning to the soccer analogy with the rocks on one side of the field–when playing on the other six sides of the field your focus could be on the game, but one the side where the rocks are, you would be looking at your feet and the rocks so you don’t trip and fall. This is how personality forms, and in some cases it is worse than rocks that get poured on certain parts of the field, it is landmines or worse.

To keep the analogy, what the game looks like, is there are only two of the seven sides of the field we like playing on, and one we can play on if we have to, but don’t like it still. This actually wouldn’t be an impossible obstacle to overcome, because how the game actually is, you can take time to pick up rocks and diffuse landmines, and eventually clean up the field. One reason we don’t, is because people are watching, and they cheer when there are goals and boo when there are not. The audience doesn’t seem to know or care about what the whistles mean, and only care to see goals scored. Does the audience matter though? Is that why we are playing? Actually no, because everyone else should be playing their own game. But that doesn’t mean they are, and the reality is, what we stand to lose or gain from keeping the crowd happy is quite substantial, or at least it seems that way.

Would it be worth it to win the whole world but lose your soul? There are many examples of people who seemed to have it all but felt dead inside and we see which eventually mattered more. A good example for me was dirtbikes. I started riding because it was fun, and began going to the races, but found that the level of risk I had to subject myself to was not worth it, and there at the threshold of being professional, I gave up racing and went back to riding just for fun. I have friends who stuck with it because they said it was the only thing they were good at, and so they didn’t have a choice, they had to race. I understand that, there have been several times when I really needed money and thought about throwing on my helmet, and entering a local race and not holding back. The problem is, odds are I wouldn’t be the only one, and I might risk it all and not win anything. This is the trap we are in, and why the peace and joy of the actual game is gone.

As long as there is something we want from the crowd, then we will be enslaved to do what will make them cheer. Similarly, as long as there is something we don’t want from the crowd, then we will be fearful of whatever might make them boo.

The machinery of our heart and mind works automatically to do what is the most meaningful in the most logical way. What is meaningful in one moment might not be meaningful the next. For example, it might be meaningful in one situation to be patient, and meaningful in the next to courageously stand up. Patience and Courage are tools we can use when they are right for the job at hand, but they are also identities that look good on a tombstone. You get to choose, to have peace and joy in the present moment by using the right tool for the job, or try and prove they should be written on your tombstone when you are dead. The decision seems obvious right?

Here is an example of why our actions show most of the time we pick the tombstone. What do you remember about the story of Frankenstein’s Monster? Frankenstein created something that was a bad idea to begin with and of course, it got out of control…right? It would be worth reading it again. Frankenstein pieced together the best parts of the body he could, a bigger brain and a bigger heart. Specifically a heart that was four times the size of normal human. What did that lead the monster to do? Read philosophy in the forest and try to facilitate real friendships. That sounds evil right?

Sadly, we don’t have a perfect roadmap to follow or any perfect example of what an ideal life would look like. All we have are examples of people proving how well they can score goals on one or two of the seven possible goal boxes. The reality is, to have peace and joy, we must integrate the whole field in spite of how difficult other people and circumstances have made parts of the field.

What are the seven sides of the field? They are approaches to life, and they are steps in a process of living intentionally rather than reactively.

What are the seven different identities that steer us towards proving rather than doing?

Charisma or Confidence

Intelligence of Insight

Creativity or Perspective

Kindness or Connectivity

Reliability or Responsibility

Order or Preparedness

Wisdom or Beauty

These are all good qualities, but they are qualities of an action not permanent labels to wear. What makes the temptation to try and embody just one rather than use all seven when they are the right tool for the job, is that each action has an opposite consequence. For example doing what is creative is opposite of doing what is time-tested. To do something creative, you are giving up the stability of time-tested results. Similarly, when you do what reliably works, you are giving up on the opportunity to discover a better possibility. If your identity is wrapped around getting reliable results, you will end up passing up a lot of opportunities where creativity could have helped you find a better approach.

Pre-programmed choices between opposite ideals is what creates personality. But it doesn’t have to remain that way. You can start to listen to your emotions, which are suggesting which of the seven approaches is best in that moment. It is difficult to explain the seven emotions, because an emotions is just a message to the brain from the heart, which happens so fast, that if acted on, it might not even be perceptibly felt. This means that feeling an emotion means that the message was going ignored and the heart started getting louder so it would be heard. Culturally, emotions have be stigmatized so weirdly that even just the names of the emotions implies strongly positive or negative connotations. I used the names that were developed from research on facial expressions done by Ekman. Differing from him, I believe that each of the seven is not good or bad but just messages about what approach is most meaningful. It would be awesome if language around emotions reflected their true nature. One day I hope to hear that someone is feeling Initiative rather than contempt, or feeling Deconstructive rather than Sad.

The problem with personality, is that the bias we have developed as a response to external factors could have started while we were still in the womb or been given a name. I am not saying the children should not be given names or that the conditions of the womb will determine a child’s fate, but there is a lot of pressure pushing us towards parts of the field and away from other parts. Not to hound the idea of names, but it is a good example of how much pressure towards certain expectations is present even before a child is born. Each name is picked for a reason, it might be that as a doctor, lawyer, or professional athlete the name would fit, or it might be a part of the current cultural climate that is most popular. Does it matter if you were named after a religious, pop culture, or political person? Let’s say that none of that matters as far as how our personality is shaped, what about what happens when we start trying to fit in with our peers in our neighborhood or at school?

Personality is a limited set of approaches to life that seem to work. When nothing seems to work, our personality might seem to change substantially. Ideally, once we know the landscape of the whole field we can play on, that we will neither be enslaved by an identity nor scrambling to carve one out. Anatomy of Mind and Emotion is here to help you on that journey.