The 7 Human emotions: The Secret to an extraordinary life.
"Nothing in life has any meaning except the meaning you give it.
If you don't like the way you're feeling, change the meaning." -
Anthony Robbins
What are emotions? Emotions are nothing but feelings or a state
of mind where your conscious focus generated a certain mental
and physical state. The way we feel is arguably the most
important aspect of life. No matter what we want whether it be
more money, better relationships, more time or a better body, it
all comes down to emotions. Huh? Yes! See it is not a better
body or more money you are really after but rather the feelings
you associate to having more money or a better body. Emotions
form the core of our lives and more specifically the 7 human
emotions that drive our behaviour.
All the emotions we experience are not only rooted in our own
minds, but they are even "created" by us. Some people think that
the emotions they experience are entirely out of their control
and that emotions are spontaneous reactions to the events of our
lives. If we are going to take control of our emotions,
especially the 7 human emotions, then we need to understand that
avoiding, denying or ignoring emotions will harm you more than
actually dealing with them.
There are those that believe that there are 7 human emotions
that drive all human behaviour. In reality there are only two
human emotions that drive us. These two emotions are Pain and
Pleasure. Everything we do in our lives we do either out of our
need to avoid pain or our need to gain pleasure. These two
categories of emotions contain all of either the positive or the
negative of the 7 human emotions. Jeremy Bentham said it best:
"Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign
masters, pain and pleasure...they govern us in all we do, in all
we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off
our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it"
The positive spectrum of the 7 human emotions will drive us to
pleasure and that is why we pursue them. The negative spectrum
of the 7 human emotions will drive us towards pain and that is
why we will do anything to avoid it. It is also important to
notice that we will do more to avoid painful emotions than we
will do to gain pleasurable emotions as this is instinctive to
our nature as human beings.
The 7 human emotions of Pain are: 1. Fear 2. Hatred 3. Anger 4.
Greed 5. Jealousy 6. Revenge 7. Superstition
These are the emotions we are all trying to avoid as the
experience of them will inevitable be a painful emotion.
The 7 human emotions of pleasure are: 1. Love 2. Sex 3. Hope 4.
Faith 5. Sympathy 6. Optimism 7. Loyalty
"The secret of success is learning to use pain and pleasure
instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that you
are in control of your life. If you don't life controls you" -
Anthony Robbins.
All emotions serve a purpose and a very important purpose as
such. We all want to experience the positive side of the 7 human
emotions and often we seek for it in the wrong places. Drugs,
alcohol, smoking ex. are all devises we use to get out of pain
and into pleasure. They are things we do to instantaneously
suppress the negative emotions we may experience. The truth is
that suppressing or ignoring an emotion will only amplify it
until you deal with it. If we heed and utilize the signals that
emotions give us we can change the quality of our lives and
experience of life immediately.