A short monologue by Dr. Arthur Brooks (SPEAKER A) explaining that emotions function as an alarm system signaling threats (negative emotions) or opportunities (positive emotions). The speaker argues negative emotions are essential for survival and that instead of seeking only good feelings, people need a system to understand, manage, and learn from emotions to become self-managing.
Emotions are not there to give you a nice day and they're not there to ruin your day. Your emotions are there to say something is going on that you're perceiving either as a threat or an opportunity that you should either decide to approach or decide to avoid. Negative emotions are an indication that there's a threat, that there's something you should avoid. Positive emotions, the ones that you really want a lot of, say that there's something awesome out there and that you should approach, that it's an opportunity, it's great. But here's the thing. People say all the time, I want more good feelings and fewer bad feelings. I say there's no such thing as bad feelings. Without negative emotions, you'd be dead in a week. They're an alarm system. They're an alert to you that something's going on. You should be very grateful for all your emotions. What you need is a system for understanding and managing your emotions and learning and growing as a result of all of your emotions. That's really what we're talking about here. That's what it means to be a self managing person.
