Emotions, feelings and moods – They all matter but the difference lies in time and the power of choice

I have been doing a lot of work helping leaders develop their emotional intelligence recently and in a recent client conversation the concept of moods was brought up, which led me to want learn more. This was a part of my favorite kind of conversation, one that stretches my thinking and peaks my curiosity while in relationship with someone else trying to support their success.

What then is the difference between an emotion, feeling or a mood? It is a great question with all kinds of answers to it. After reading a bit about it, here is where I land on the subject.

As humans we are bombarded daily by endless amounts of stimulus from the world around us. Our body is trying to take it all in and simultaneously make meaning of it all so that we can respond accordingly and quickly. Stimulus and response all day long, it is what we do. Those stimuli elicit emotional responses from us, the primary ones being mad, sad, glad and afraid.

Emotions come on quickly physiologically and recent neuroscience says that they only fire for 90 seconds and then pass. Essentially the emotions are just physical signals of the body reacting to external stimuli. Becoming adept at recognizing the emotional responses in terms of both the experience that goes with them and what causes them is part of the emotional intelligence work I do with clients.

Feelings extend the experience by the brain trying to interpret the emotions. In other more specific words, the left hemisphere of the neo-cortex brain comes online to try and place meaning or recognize a pattern in relationship to the emotion. We want to be able to identify the emotion and connect it to experiences we have had that are similar or project it onto what might occur in the future. The need to attach the emotion to a mental model or a word that adequately describes it is powerful in us. All this work takes time and tends to extend the physical response to the primary emotion that has fired and passed. The choice to extend the emotion to a feeling by thinking about it is subtle and often unconscious.

Moods take this concept further and stretch the time continuum to hours and days. The other unique thing about moods is someone does not as easily express them as primary emotions and feelings. Being grumpy is different than being angry. Also, because of mood durations being extended a baseline mood can be in place while emotions and feelings pop to life based upon various stimuli as they occur. In other words, one does not cancel the other out or deny either from occurring simultaneously.

So we can think of these words along a time continuum, emotions short and immediate responses to stimuli, feelings extending the emotions by thinking about it and moods extending feelings farther over time. All three are possible simultaneously, the key is to be aware of what they are and how much time and attention we want to give to them, which is where our power of choice comes into play.

I believe the power of choice is actually two fold:

1) How much time and thought do I attach to my emotions, which leads them to become feelings and moods?
2) How much time and attention do We give to understanding, revealing and exploring our emotions together?

My belief is that all humans in stressful work situations are having the emotional responses but are choosing not to give enough attention to their own and the collective emotional experiences. The result is that emotions go unnoticed and unacknowledged and quickly become feelings and moods, like disengaged rather than frustrated, because no one is talking about them.

By not focusing on and acknowledging the emotions in real time and on the fly as they occur teams and leaders are not only missing out on valuable information that can increase team performance, drive re-engagement and improve decision-making; they are also simultaneously extending emotions across the time continuum because people will be thinking about them if they are not acknowledged as they occur.

The choice to ignore the emotions happens for all kinds of reasons, such as the following common ones I run into:

1) The company culture doesn’t value it or is uncomfortable with it.
2) There is not enough time and there is too much to get done.
3) People don’t know how to recognize or talk about them.
4) It is risky and makes you vulnerable.

If there are all kinds of benefits to this emotional intelligence work and we as humans are all experiencing, emotions, feelings and moods all the time, then why are so few companies and leaders within them choosing to still avoid the work to learn more about them?

Clearly the reasons listed above are obstacles to over come but I don’t think they are insurmountable. I do think the answer to the question is very personal. I am committed to explore the question further just like I was with the courageous leader that spawned this thought process while we were exploring his emotional intelligence and that of his team.

If you have, thoughts, reactions or dare I even say emotions in response to this then let me know. I sure would like to know and explore them with you if you are willing and able to identify them and then chose to communicate them, which is really what emotional intelligence is all about. So what’s your choice?