Resilience: a Boot Camp for your kids

Module 8: Emotional Precision

great to
see you again

We have a quick question for you to start with.

next steps...

Click here once you have written down your answer above...

today you are
going to learn

  • check
    How being precise about the emotion you feel helps you to be more RESILIENT.
  • check
    How you create your feelings and how to use this information to your advantage.
  • check
    A technique so you can choose precise emotions to help feel better when faced with tricky situations.

why being precise about what you feel
is important

  • 1
    A rich and full emotional vocabulary gives your brain more precise tools for dealing with the challenges you face in your life- especially for RESILIENCE.
  • 2
    Research shows that being PRECISE about how you feel has many benefits from better academic perfomance to a longer, healthier life.
  • 3
    Being PRECISE with your emotional states means that you experience the world around you more accurately, it also helps you to have better relationships (with yourself and with others).

how your brain works

Your brain's main job is to look after and manage your body.

It does this by constantly trying to predict what your body will need to best cope with the situation it finds itself in.

It anticipates what is coming based on what has happened before.

How does this knowledge help us?

developing a rich emotional vocabulary

As your brain searches for past experiences to help it to make sense of what is coming, by developing a rich emotional vocabulary, you are literally giving your brain more choices in the future.

It's the same as speaking a language, the more words you know, the better able you are to express yourself and communicate.

If you start to learn new emotional words today, your brain will be better at finding the right emotions tomorrow.

This is important because how you feel effects how you behave and how you behave effects the results that you get.

an example

Think about the following emotions:

Anger.

Humiliated.

Disrespected.

They are all part of the same emotional family: anger, but they each have different meanings and most importantly, each one feels different.

why this is important

How you feel determines your behaviour and how you behave determines your result.

If you are feeling anger, how are you likely to behave?

And if you are humiliated?

What about disrespected?

Can you see the difference? By being precise with how you feel, you get an accurate emotion which means you can behave accurately, which means you are much more likely to get a positive result.

over to you...

So the idea for this module is to help you to develop and use a much richer emotional vocabulary.

We have a number of activities that will help you to do just that.

And of course, your 7 DAY CHALLENGE will help you to practice this througout the week ahead.

activity:
how do you feel (precisely)?

Time to have a play with your emotions.

We have 2 activities for you this week:

  • 1
    How do you feel when: a list of different situations for you to get PRECISE with.
  • 2
    An exercise to help you choose a useful emotion to feel when you are in a tricky situation.
activity sheet- print version
activity sheet- online version

precise emotion selector

To help you be PRECISE with your emotions we have created the table below.

You will find 7 MAIN EMOTIONS.

Click on the emotion that sounds the closest to how you are feeling and then explore.

There are 3 levels of emotion in total.

If your emotion isn't described, we have also included a link to a dictionary, thesaurus and a words visualiser to help you.

Happy

Fearful

Surprised

Angry

Sad

Bad

Disgusted

Visualise any emotion

Look up an emotion- dictionary

Look up an emotion- thesaurus

summary

You have learned that having a rich, varied and precise emotional vocabulary is extremely important. It helps you to have a more accurate understanding of your life and your relationships as well as helping you to be more RESILIENT.

Give your brain more emotional precision and you equip it with the tools it needs to deal with ANYTHING life throws your way.

great work
well done!

Excellent work, that is module 8 safely home in the sheep pen :)

Baaa now, you are undoubtedly noticing your sense of RESILIENCE growing stronger...

See you in in the next module- only 2 more to go!

Click to check out your progress...

collect your award

Enter your name & print off your award.

the
7 day challenge
zone

Your 7 DAY CHALLENGE this week is to train yourself to become more PRECISE with your emotions.

Every morning, evening and night for the next 7 days, your parent/ caregiver will ask you:

How are you feeling right now?

Then either think of a precise feeling, or use our PRECISE EMOTION SELECTOR (above) to find one. 

You can't say GOOD, BAD, OK, HAPPY, SAD- these emotions aren't PRECISE enough.

See how many different emotions you NOTICE yourself feeling in the next 7 days.