Palette of emotions (exercise)

When people talk about a person: "A bright personality!", in particular, his rich palette of emotions is also implied here. A person with a rich palette of emotions has an unusually rich world of emotions and feelings - there is sincere joy, fleeting sadness, leaden fatigue and idle laziness ... It is clear that the quality of the emotional palette determines not only the number of emotions mastered and used, but also their composition. There are three well-worn emotions in a person - gray boredom, fear and anger, it's sad, and if your three main emotions are joy, interest and gratitude, then such a set is much more interesting.

Here lives a married couple. The relationship is smooth, normal, calm... Ok? Not very. If people do not express anything to each other, no emotions, their relationships most often begin to be experienced by them as poor. The result? From time to time, such emotional evenness bursts into an emotional explosion. One of the ways to solve this problem is to expand the palette of emotions, learn to express a wide range of mostly positive emotions to each other, in principle, teach them to be more attentive to each other, better understand the partner's condition. It is important to understand that our moods, experiences and various emotional states do not so much reflect the richness of the world as the peculiarities of our socialization, our habits of interaction and reaction skills. If we want to have a rich emotional world and use it skillfully, it is worth expanding our palette of emotions and training the skills to summon the right emotions.​

How? I have developed and have been conducting a special exercise for this purpose, the "Palette of Emotions", in Sinton for many years. The exercise includes a list of emotions (emotional states) recommended for psychohymnastics and testing mutual understanding between partners, and a procedure for training these emotions. List of emotions to work out:

1. self-confidence,
2. mockery,
3. angry indignation,
4. inspired reverie, light
5. sadness,
6. melancholy sadness,
7. childish resentment,
8. stupid submission,
9. evil persistence,
10. cautious alertness,
11. contempt,
12. fatigue,
13. calm superiority,
14. royalty,
15. relaxed contentment,
16. joy,
17. sad tearfulness,
18. surprise,
19. admiration,

Stage 1: One of the partners does (expresses) some emotional state from the list, the other one guesses this emotional state by his expressive movements. The condition is that emotions are expressed without words and by means of only natural, everyday expressiveness, without bright theatrical gestures and exaggerated poses.

Stage 2: One of the partners does (expresses) some emotional state from the list, and his partner "edits" the expressive means, makes the image of the emotion more understandable, accurate and vivid.

Stage 3: One of the partners names some emotional state from the list, the other makes this state at speed and with an emphasis on external expressiveness.The power and truth of inner experience is not needed in this case.

Stage 4: One of the partners names some emotional state from the list, the other makes this state with a speed task and with an emphasis on inner experience. In this case, external expressiveness is naturally present, but it rather serves as a means of awakening an inner feeling.

The mode of the master of emotions: one calls and the second, covering half of the face with a sheet of paper, makes an experience with his eyes or mouth. A super masterful option is to make one emotion with the upper part of the face (eyes and eyebrows), and another emotion with the lower part of the face at the same time.

If you want to continue developing in this direction, I recommend starting every morning with special facial gymnastics and emotional gymnastics. In terms of time, it all together takes from 5 to 15 minutes, and gives a lot. Almost everyone who practices these exercises notes an increase in energy and an improvement in their mood, it becomes easier to understand the people around them and even easier to formulate their own thoughts.