I was visiting an english classroom at the high school and in between the shelves of books and motivational sayings, I found this painted on the wall:
I walked across the classroom to get a better look and I immediately found my current emotion among the brightly colored squares. I’m not sure the teacher’s intent on painting this on the wall besides the interest it adds to a windowless room. Perhaps it serves as a quick mental health report card – I know I scanned the chart and checked myself. Maybe it’s serving an english purpose and providing better descriptive words for emotions in students’ writing.
Either way – I liked it and I appreciated it’s place in the high school classroom. I snapped a picture on my phone and have found myself periodically going back to it and referencing it.
I think I’ve become lazy when describing how I feel. I’m well. I’m tired. I’m excited. I’m frustrated. That pretty much sums up all the emotions, right?! 🙂 Really, there’s a whole slew of emotions I don’t regularly recognize for what they are. Am I well or am I satisfied? Am I tired or drained? Am I excited or optimistic?
We use so many of those interchangeably but as I look at the chart, I see just how different some of those are. I like the idea of narrowing it down a little more to truly recognize what emotion I’m sitting with.
And looking at this chart it’s clear we’re all a little emotional – both good and bad.
