THRIVING IN TIMES OF STRUGGLE
What does it mean to flourish when the systems we depend on are under strain?
Flourish in Times of Struggle is a new podcast series for people who want to move beyond personal resilience and grapple with the deeper structures that shape our lives. In this opening episode, Michael C. Patterson introduces the series’ focus on systems, legitimacy, and collective action—and invites listeners to think together about how healthier, more democratic forms of governance might emerge.
Earlier Flourish As You Age podcasts focused more on personal change and development to promote brain health and mental management.
THRIVING IN TIMES OF STRUGGLE
MIND - Awe & Emotional Intelligence
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In this episode we examine the role EMOTIONS play in muddling our minds and how emotional regulation can help in the un-muddling process.
We introduce the important concept of EMOTIONAL GRANULARITY. Neuroscientist and emotions expert Lisa Feldman Barrett expounds this idea, which suggests that emotions are constructed and that we only feel those emotions that we can name. A such, we are emotional illiterates, making use of a limited range of basic emotions like Happy, Sad and Mad. Barrett suggests that we can expand our emotional range - our emotional literacy and regulation - by expanding our vocabulary of emotion words. By, in other words, being more "granular" in our choice of words to describe what we think we are feeling.
We also focus on the important and healing emotion of AWE. I introduce a new emotion word - a neologism - to describe the ecstatic feeling we get when exposed to something awesome. In such instances, we have AWEGASMS! And we explore the psychological evidence that awegasms are good for your health and your happiness.
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