Emotions are coordinated responses your brain launches when something matters to you. They bundle together bodily changes, shifts in what you focus on, a felt experience, and facial expressions, all working like a program designed to help you manage the situation.
What are emotions and why are they often difficult to manage?
So emotions, you could think of them as these responses that are triggered when we encounter events in the world or when we imagine events in our minds that are meaningful to us. It's almost like when we encounter such events, it's like a software program gets loaded up in our brains to help us ideally manage that circumstance. And so when we use the term emotion, we're actually talking about a coordinated set of responses, a loosely coordinated set of responses. Things are happening in your body, your thoughts may be tuned to certain kinds of information, and you actually feel a particular way and maybe have an expression on your face. All of those different parts of this emotional response are designed to help us navigate the situations we find ourselves in optimally.
The Library of Minds: Brain Coach: How to Stay Sharp When AI Does the Thinking | Jim Kwik
