In this episode of The Spirit of EQ, Jeff East and Eric Pennington explain emotional literacy.

Our emotions are chemical. When you are confronted, your body dumps chemicals into your brain. These chemicals get you ready for fight, flight, freeze or flock. The job of the emotion is to give you information.

But our emotions are neutral – it's what you do with those emotions that causes a reaction.

There are 8 basic emotions:

1) anger

2) anticipation

3) disgust

4) fear

5) joy

6) sadness

7) surprise

8) trust

How can we approach and control these emotions? We can use the Plutchick Model of Emotions.

This model puts emotions into categories and ranks emotions.

Jeff's homework assignment for you – write down what emotions you went through today. Why did that emotion happen?

In each episode, Jeff and Eric will talk about what emotional intelligence, or understanding your emotions, can do for you in your daily and work life.For more information, contact Jeff at [email protected], or go to their website, Spirit of EQ.

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