Interpreting Emotions Using the Chinese Language

This article is inspired by Brene Brown’s book “Atlas of the Heart”. I enjoyed learning about emotions from her new book and was inspired to contribute to this body of work. As an ontological coach, the area of emotions is a domain that I actively engage in during coaching. Many interventions are also co-designed by aligning client’s emotional habits and moods to their intended outcomes.

This article attempts to help readers understand how the Chinese language describes certain emotions and what we can learn from the Chinese language vocabulary. In this article, I will specifically touch on three emotions - anger, happiness and fear.

ANGER

Borrowing the definition from Atlas of the Heart, anger is an emotion that we feel when something gets in the way of a desired outcome or when we believe there’s a violation of the way things should be.

There are various ways to express anger in Chinese. Below are two examples.

生气 (Sheng Qi) - These two characters combined means “angry” in Chinese.

生 means birth or growth
气 means air or energy.

These two Chinese characters basically means “the birth or growth of energy within one’s body”. This is interesting because anger does produce lots of energy within one’s body. The energy produced can be channeled productively. It is not uncommon to see many productive workers at times manifesting anger in a way that create challenges and conflict in the workplace. The same energy that often create drive and productivity is also the same energy that fuels anger.

The way to manage anger is to practice being attuned to the growing energy within us. Somatically, when a person is standing especially in a posture ready to take action (a body ready to move forward), it is this body disposition that drives productivity as well as fuels anger. If we want to diffuse anger, a possible intervention includes bringing our body downwards / backwards by sitting down or leaning back, kneeling, squatting etc to counter the birth or growth of the energy. This intervention can be applied during a conflict to diffuse your own anger.

怒 (Nu) - This character means “anger or rage” in Chinese. If we break down the writing of this character into two parts, we can see that on the top is the character 奴, which means “slave”. The bottom is the character 心 which means “heart”. This character basically means “a heart’s response when justice is not served (like being enslaved)”.

This gives us the idea that one of the purpose for anger as an emotion, is to propel us towards fighting injustice. When anger is harnessed effectively, we are able to intervene when there is bullying, oppression etc. Rather than judge the anger as a negative emotion, I often find it more useful in my coaching practice to help a person explore how the energy could be channeled productively.
Questions I have used to help someone explore anger:

What do you feel within your body feel whenever you get angry?

Who usually bears the brunt when you channel your anger in a not so productive way? How can you channel your anger more productively?
What are some areas of injustice you observed happening (at work)? How do you use your anger to intervene and fight the injustice?

What are some actions, behaviors or words that usually trigger your anger? What do you notice about your anger patterns?

Happy

In Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown writes that there’s really no consensus in the research when it comes to defining happiness. When I looked into the different ways happiness is expressed, I found many different ideas as well. Here are three examples.

开心 (Kai Xin) - These two characters combined means “happy” in Chinese.

开 means open (seen from the picture of a door about to be opened).
心 means a human heart.

The description of these two combined characters basically means “the opening of a person’s heart”.

My own interpretation from this is that the capacity to experience happiness is strongly tied to the ability of a person to open up his or her heart to be vulnerable. When a person’s heart is opened (as opposed to closed), love and experiences of pleasure can be more easily received.

As an ontological coach, a possible design intervention for a person who wants to experience more happiness includes this somatic practice:
the opening up of the shoulders, or stretching of the arms wide to expand the chest area (and therefore the physical heart). The idea is that when the body becomes more open (especially at the chest area), the mind follows the body to expand the ability to be open towards others. Happiness is possibly a byproduct or a fruit from this somatic practice.

高兴 (Gao Xing) - These two characters also means “happy”.

高 means high/tall as seen from the picture of the tower.
兴 is a picture of many hands holding up a dish together as a celebratory act

From these two characters, the emotion of happiness can be interpreted as an emotion experienced from heightened state of togetherness, inclusion and unity. Happiness can thus be practiced when one is purposefully engaged in activities that bring togetherness and activities that foster inclusion and a sense of belonging.

快乐 (Kuai Le) - This is the third pair of Chinese characters combined to mean “happy”.

快 - This word has two meanings. It can mean fast or speedy. It can also mean the airflow towards the heart is smooth and unblocked.
乐 - This character means rhythm or music as shown by the picture of a Chinese musical instrument.

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When these two characters are combined, they basically described things are smooth sailing like a piece of music played in perfect rhythm. As an ontological coach, I personally experienced happiness whenever I helped someone get “unstuck”. The feeling is similar to the description of the airflow being unblocked and the heart comes alive again. I personally found this discovery to be very fascinating.

Another way to read these characters is that they combined to mean “rapid / fast-paced” AND “rhythm/music”. Interestingly, music does affect our moods and celebratory music are often filled with fast rhythms.
It is worthy to note that we can practice changing the mood and emotion (of an environment or of a person) to a more light hearted one by the intentional use of music.

Fear

Fear can be defined as an emotion experienced when one assessed that something valuable could be potentially lost.

怕 (Pa) - From the picture, this character describes the heart as empty and there is a loss of something of great value, something very precious to a person’s heart. Other than fear, this particular character also means “worry” in the Chinese language context. From this character alone, it is quite interesting to observe that fear and worry often come as a pair.

As a coach, applying this knowledge allows me to help a person explore fear by examining what is of great value and precious to the person’s heart. Simply by asking a question such as “what is of great value to you that you fear losing?”, the conversation becomes a very rich one. I also discovered through my coaching sessions, a conversation about fear and worry often leads to a deeper examining of relationships and items that are of great value to a person. And this further leads on to whether a person’s life is aligned to his / her value system.

In summary: Having struggled with naming and understanding emotions, I have a firm belief that helping others name and understand their emotional life can bring significant breakthroughs. I hoped you have benefitted just as I have after researching about the Chinese language and human emotions. I have certainly expanded my own knowledge and abilities as an ontological coach.

Article: Working with Emotions in Coaching

Written by Victor Seet
Activator • Communication • Strategic • Self-Assurance • Command

As a Gallup and Newfield Certified Leadership Coach in Singapore, Victor is passionate about helping people be better observer of themselves to achieve the results they want, especially in the area of well-being and performance. Victor intentionally integrates the strengths-based and ontological approach into his leadership coaching and workshops.

**sources:
Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown;
www.chaziwang.com.

Listening Through Our Five Senses

I want to boldly suggest that the digital world has created a shift in the kind of leaders and communicators we need. In this digital world, we are having information overload. There are no lack of great speakers presenting information to us. We have easy access to Ted and videos of great speakers through YouTube. We have easy access to insightful podcasts on Spotify and Podbean. We receive so much information each day from others and that potentially creates a big vacuum - where will we have our voices heard? It is my opinion that as a society, we now desire to have great listeners much more than great speakers because of the need for our voice to feel heard. I anticipate that society as a whole will value a new way of being - a Listener. I wrote about this briefly in an earlier article on dealing with mental health.

This article is written on the premise of growing as a listener. As an ontological coach, I am learning that “we hear with our ears and we listen with our body”. This concept has a profound impact in the way I understand listening. I realized how powerful our five senses (vision, smell, hearing, taste, touch) can help us engage in deeper listening.

Let me provide some examples and practical strategies.

Smell:

When we smell something, our emotional state shift. That impacts our listening. For example, when we smell something foul, we could experience the emotion of disgust or frustration or resentment. When we smell something nice, we could experience the emotion of calmness or curiosity or joy or even playfulness. Many people have turned to aromatherapy and used diffusers to enhance the environments they are in to brighten their emotions and moods. For someone like myself who often engage in conversations in the car, I make sure the interior of my car smells nice by using car scents. The nice smell impacts my emotional state and makes me a better listener.
Given that more and more people are working from home, setting up an environment that smells great can make us better listeners to our stakeholders as well while we are on virtual meetings. Such a strategy to improve effective communication, while seemingly intangible, is worth considering. We cannot control how others speak. We can however enhance our environment to be better listeners.

Vision (Sight)

Listening is powerfully affected by what we see. When we get distracted by what we see, we find it hard to listen. On the flip side, the ability to observe ourselves on virtual platforms like Zoom or MS Teams has provided us with an opportunity to improve our listening. With virtual platforms, we are now able to see ourselves in a mirror-like manner and notice exactly what the other person is seeing. And that is powerful for growing our self awareness. Observing how our expressions change during conversations, noticing our default sitting postures etc, can be very insightful if we want to grow as listeners. Have you notice how you are sitting and presenting yourself on Zoom? How do your audience perceive your attitude, your enthusiasm, your readiness to engage through your body language? The ability to observe ourselves during conversations can be a great game changer.

Hearing (Sound)

We hear what people speak and the tone of voice they use. My assessment is that while many of us might be aware of the language and words we are using in a conversation, the same cannot be said about our tonality. Listening to tonality is a much needed practice if we are to grow in our listening. Our tone of voice are usually invisible to us but visible to other parties. In the past, I received feedback based on my tone but brushed the feedback away by rationalizing “this is just how I am. This is just how I speak!” I have since pay more attention to my tone and volume when I’m speaking. I respectfully encourage us to practice noticing our own tone of voice and the impact our tone has on conversations.

For example, a flat tone could mean someone is disinterested or an emotion of boredom might have emerged. Some tones bring energy and could be closely connected to emotions of enthusiasm or resentment, just to name some examples. When we hear a change in tone of voice, that could also mean a shift in the person’s emotional state and that is an invitation to do a check in. With practice, we can skillfully capture the opportunity to do a check in and elevate our effectiveness as listeners. On another note, the absence of sound and complete silence can create a powerful space for thoughts and emotions to connect during a conversation. Being comfortable with silence is another skill that hones our senses and produce powerful listening.

Taste

Many conversations happen around eating and dining. Many negotiations and important conversations take place around food. The taste of the food has the potential to change our emotional state and change the direction of the conversation.

Consider this scenario:
A waiter showed up with a delicious looking steak. Putting that mouth watering steak into your mouth and tasting it will almost immediately shift your emotions positively. Now add the experience of having a great bottle of wine to go along with the steak, your mood will likely brighten up further. You immediately become a new kind of listener (though this shift might be totally invisible for you).

Now consider another scenario: you took a bite of the fish on your plate only to experience a particular fishy taste lingering in your mouth long after it was consumed. The listening during this particular meal now becomes affected by the emotional state created by the lingering fishy taste.

As a Singaporean who loves to eat, I’m now more aware of how food can change conversations and more intentional to leverage the use of taste when holding important conversations.

Touch

Stroking a pet can bring certain emotions to pet owners and can possibly be a calming influence in conversations. Receiving a tender touch from another human being can evoke lots of powerful emotions as well. Leveraging the power of touch can be very powerful especially for parents with young children. When we communicate that we are listening to our young kids through physical touch, we create a huge amount of psychological safety (this aspect is intangible). As a parent, I’ve lost count of the number of times I have demonstrated that I’m listening to my kids by simply holding their hands, touching their faces, massaging their arms and shoulders etc. I have also learnt to calm my kids down by stroking their arms, stroking their backs, brushing my hands on their hair. This way of communication has worked marvelously for me since I started practicing. Touch is a key listening tool in parenting.

In summary: Have we considered how the global shift to more virtual meetings has amplified the need to listen well? To increase in leadership effectiveness and personal performance, we can practice tuning into our five senses. By paying attention to our senses, we can be more aware of our emotional state and become more effective as listeners.

Written by Victor Seet
Activator • Communication • Strategic • Self-Assurance • Command

As a Gallup and Newfield Certified Leadership Coach in Singapore, Victor is passionate about helping people be better observer of themselves to achieve the results they want, especially in the area of well-being and performance. Victor intentionally integrates the strengths-based and ontological approach into his leadership coaching and workshops.

Listening Through Our Mood

Have you considered how the global shift to more virtual meetings has amplified the need to listen well? In an earlier article, I wrote about practicing a new way of being in this digital world - being a Listener. There is a growing need to be more self-aware. That is my assessment as an ontological coach.

Being more aware gives us a greater insight into the choices that we have. The awareness impacts the relational and leadership results we want in this digital world. This article is written based on this premise.

As human beings, we are always listening to emotions. Traditionally, listening is a lot about what others say or do not say and being attentive to how others might feel. To grow our listening, we focus on improving our listening skills to be more effective. These skills include summarizing what was said, maintaining eye contact, asking good questions, etc.

listening through our emotions

Are we aware that we are not only listening to emotions but also THROUGH your emotions? This is the distinction that I hope to offer. We are always listening THROUGH our emotions and mood. We are always in a mood. This mood is, however, invisible to many.

Think of a mood as an emotional habit you have picked up. Let me share an example. Every weekday morning, I wake up at 6 am. I get myself washed up, change and get ready for the day. At 630 am, I wake my three young kids up. I get them to wash up, change into their school uniforms and finish breakfast by 715am. By 715am, the school bus fetches my two younger kids while I walk my eldest to school. What is invisible to me is that each morning I practiced an emotional habit - a mood of resentment. I resent that I used a lot of energy to drag my kids out of bed. I resent that I have to nag at them to wash up and get changed. I resent that I have to rush them to finish breakfast so they will not be late for school. Once in a while, I snapped at them. While I usually feel bad, I often deal with my guilt by rationalizing that my kids are great at triggering all my wrong buttons. In short, I blame my kids (a behaviour strongly connected to the mood of resentment)

The epiphany - swimming in a mood of resentment

I had an epiphany when I learned through my ontological coaching course that we are always in a mood that is usually invisible. From 6-715am, I am in the same mood every weekday. I swim in a pool of resentment during this period. That was the emotional habit I have practiced every day. In this pool of resentment, there are lots of stories and assessments. Each action by my wife or kids triggers a particular kind of assessment. For example, when I see my kid struggling to get out of bed, imagery of a lazy, ill-disciplined kid forms in my head. With my resentment mood, my assessments are pre-disposed to be negative. I am pre-disposed during 6-715am to be an angry, impatient, anxious, irritated father and husband. In my mood of resentment, all I can hear are noises. If I want to be a loving husband and father, I will need a new emotional habit.

our mood pre-disposed us to listen in a particular way

Are we aware we are in a particular mood (or practiced emotional habit) at work? Are we aware that our mood can change when our boss speaks? Are we aware that our ability to trust others is dependent on our mood? Different kinds of stories and assessments are generated in our heads when we are in different moods. These stories strongly affect the way we listen to others. That affects our relational and leadership results.

Here are some questions to develop our leadership and listening competency:

• Are we aware of our moods and emotions?

• Are we owning and engaging our emotions to be better listeners?

• Are we aware that we can shift our emotions to listen more effectively?

Pause for a moment:

What mood are you in as you are reading this article?

I propose that your mood and emotions affect what you are taking or not taking away from what you are reading.

As you are reading this article, you could be winding down from a long day and feeling relieved. You could be ready to start a brand new day and feel hopeful. You could be feeling curious and in a learning zone. You could be feeling bored. How you feel determines what you take away as you read this article.

Listening through our emotions starts with the practice of noticing how we are feeling. That involves checking in with ourselves using these simple questions:

• What emotion or emotions am I having right now?

• Why are these emotions there?

• What are the emotions telling me?

• If I am in a contrasting mood (name it), how will I be looking at things?

Ending note: When we practice noticing our emotions, we can learn to become better listeners. When we noticed that our mood does not align with the results we want to create, we can choose to change our mood. Learning to change our mood requires practice. It starts by noticing our mood when we are in different situations. For now, let us conclude that listening is an art.

Written by Victor Seet
Activator • Communication • Strategic • Self-Assurance • Command

As a Gallup and Newfield Certified Leadership Coach in Singapore, Victor is passionate about helping people be better observer of themselves to achieve the results they want, especially in the area of well-being and performance. Victor intentionally integrates the strengths-based and ontological approach into his leadership coaching and workshops.

Taking Ownership of Our Emotions

I was asked recently: “If there is one thing I will want to teach my 3 kids now, what will it be?”

The first thing that came to my mind was to take ownership of our emotions. In simple terms, that means to regulate our emotions. My instinctive response came out of two incidents that happened recently. On one occasion, my eldest son who is turning nine, went into a fit of anger and could not control himself. He was breathing very fast and heavily and gritting his teeth very tightly. His body was very tensed up and he was shaking On another occasion, my younger son who was six, had the same behaviour when he threw a fit.

Why Ownership?

As I reflected about what happened to my children, I became aware that for a large part of my life (till I was 40?), I had no idea that I could take ownership of my emotions. I see emotions as something that “happened” to me. I certainly did not see emotions as something I could learn to regulate or manage. I was one of those who have been guilty of blaming others or circumstances for how I felt. I was one of those who played the victim card as a convenient way to manage the discomfort I was experiencing. I was one of those who hate to admit that I struggled to cope with failures and rejections. The result was that negative emotions usually get the better of me in these circumstances. I go through life believing that emotions are happening because of what others or circumstances are doing to me. I do not have a sense that I could own my emotions. I am easily resentful, easily angered and easily frustrated. I could not deal with my outbursts. Others around me suffered as a result. In a nutshell, I am used to giving power away rather than taking ownership of how I am feeling.

The point I’m making is that things outside of us (circumstances or people) can make us feel anything until we take control of our own emotions. What I have learnt is that the sufferings caused by our negative emotions can be greatly reduced. We can take back control of our emotions rather than give away power. In fact, it is possible to be masterful of our own emotional state with continuous practice of good habits. And the result can be a very different life we can live. Unfortunately, until we accept this truth, we will be victims. Victims of circumstances. Victims of what others are doing to us or saying to us. Taking ownership of our emotions is the pathway to stop being victims.

READ ARTICLE: WORKING WITH EMOTIONS IN COACHING

Taking ownership is a developmental step.

The important thing is to realize that a step has to be taken. I have observed as a life coach that this awareness does not come easily to many people. Like what I have mentioned earlier, emotions are often perceived as “what happens to us”. We can be unconscious of the idea that we can take control of our emotions. Often it takes a lot of pain and suffering for one to eventually declare “I have had enough. I want to get hold of my emotions. I want to change.” The most transformative moment starts to happen - when one realized that there is a step to be taken and something can be done. In ontological coaching, we call this a “break in transparency or a breakdown”. This break in transparency causes people to wonder “why are all the sufferings happening? And can we do something about the sufferings?”

It is possible for people to go through their lives without declaring any breakdowns. Without declaring breakdowns, we will not ask ourselves those questions that can potentially transform us. For me, those questions started to surface during my mid life crisis. What's going on? Why am I increasingly dissatisfied with life? What's the point of pushing so hard? Why am I more resentful? Why do I react more in anger or impatience? Why am I languishing? Is this just who I am or is there something I can do to change? I thought I was doing all the things that I really ought to be doing, but I'm still suffering in some way. Why?

I invite you to reflect: “Could you identify with some of my thoughts? Were they familiar to you? In your pain and suffering, do you feel lost? Do you look for somebody to blame?”

It's my boss’ fault. It’s this particular colleague. It’s my spouse. It’s the pandemic. It’s the government.

The key question we need to be concerned about: “Are others doing this to us or do we have the power to change our emotional state?” There’s a real trap that exists. If we put the blame on somewhere else, we are victims and the power over our lives lie with someone else. We have no control when we give power away.

We do not have to deny how we feel.

If we interpret that others are behaving badly, our emotions will be affected by our thoughts. Our emotions are real. No one likes to be bullied, or retrenched or criticized etc. Yet, there is a truth that we can grasp. The truth is that we have control over our own body, emotions and thoughts. If we can simply accept this truth, our lives will change. We have the power to take ownership when we feel that the emotions are bringing us pain. We do not need to give the power away.

Taking back ownership is the point where our lives can be transformed. When we start to take back ownership, we move from ignorance into those periods of suffering or painful moments and we can start to learn about ourselves. We can learn how we respond. We can learn how to make meaning of the sufferings. We can learn what the emotions are doing to us and if those emotions are serving us. We can learn how we can overcome the effects of the negative emotions and how we can adapt. The essence is that we don't have to let emotions get the better of us. Misery is optional. We don't have to do resentment or anxiety or fear over and over again. We do not have to remain powerless.

It’s ownership that makes the difference.

We can all engage productively with our emotions. We can take responsibility and learn to control how we respond rather than react. We can step out of victimhood. We can step out of the space that says “I’m an impatient person, I’m an angry person, I’m resentful or I’m easily anxious”.

We can practice new habits of becoming. We can become kind. We can become patient. We can become compassionate. We can become stronger in our inner capacity. When we take ownership of our emotions, our lives will grow tremendously. The lives of others around us will be impacted tremendously.

Back to the story of my boys.

On each occasion, I brought my angry son into a room first. I assured him that being angry and upset is normal and taking responsibility of his emotions is very important as well. I demonstrated how he can calm down by breathing in and out very slowly and in a rhythm. I get him to practice and gave him space to do that by leaving the room. Now, both my sons understood how they can calm down. I have seen them doing that on other occasions and they are starting to practice emotional regulation. They might not understand the idea of taking ownership yet but I believe the regular practice will help them grow and develop.

Written by Victor Seet
Activator • Communication • Strategic • Self-Assurance • Command

As a Gallup and Newfield Certified Leadership Coach in Singapore, Victor is passionate about helping people be better observer of themselves to achieve the results they want, especially in the area of well-being and performance. Victor intentionally integrates the strengths-based and ontological approach into his leadership coaching and workshops.