“What’s happening, Josh?” asks Bob.

“Well, I decided to ask Julie out on a date. Oh, how I’m hoping she’ll say yes! My mind keeps going over and over what I should say when I ask her.”

Two hours later.

“Hi Bob. I just got off the phone with Julie. She said yes! We’re going out on Saturday. I’m so happy!”

“Nice!” Bob replies. “You must feel relieved to get that over with.”

“Well, now my mind is racing on how to plan the night so we have a wonderful time together!”

As in the above, the emotions of “hope” and “happiness” often come up in conversations. If you can learn to speak artfully about them, there is an excellent chance that you may increase the amount of respect people have for your intelligence. Here is one way to think about these emotions that has worked for me over the past several decades.

The DIG Conflict Model’s View of Emotions

In the DIG Conflict Model, there are four basic emotions. The first two, threat and grief, are said to be negative emotions.

The second two basic emotions, hope and happiness, are said to be positive emotions.

Emotions turn our attention from some less important situations to some specific situation that we have appraised at the moment as the highest priority. At the same time, they provide an extra boost of energy so we can deal with the highest priority situation in a manner that may require more than the usual level of effort. The negative emotions help us to deal with situations that people typically view, at least at first appearance, as negative, while positive emotions can help us to deal with situations that people typically view, at least at first appearance, as positive.

In a previous post, I focused in on the negative emotions. Today, our focus is on the positive emotions. Let’s look at a parable to help us better understand the nature of hope and happiness.

The Parable of Santo

Santo is a waiter in Saint Paul and the father of two teenagers. He works the midnight to 10 a.m. shift at Mickey’s all night diner. He has been struggling to support his family with this low paying job.

This morning, after finishing his shift at work, an exhausted Santo drags himself into his car. Hector, one of the diner’s dish washers, slides into the passenger seat. Santo plans to take Hector home first before going on to his own home.

At this moment, Santo’s immediate desires are expressed to Hector as he starts up the car. “All I want right now is to get home and go to sleep.” To achieve these desires, Santo understands that he will have to drive through some modest traffic and make several different turns. There have been some serious accidents along his route, but Santo is not thinking about this danger. He has a set of well practiced skills that have become so automatic that he is fully confident that he can get Hector home, and from there, he can go on and get himself home without much further thought about this.

As soon as Santo pulls his car into traffic, Hector begins to check his cell phone messages. “Wow!” Hector suddenly exclaims, “I got a text message from Rudy Anderson, the owner of Rudy’s Restaurant. Rudy says his day waiter has just quit and he wants to know if you’d be interested in applying for the job!”

“You’re kidding!” yells Santo. “Rudy’s waiters get paid three times what I’m getting at the diner and it’d mean no more midnight shifts or moving my family into my beat-up van—that’d be great!!!”

“I’m not kidding,” says Hector. “Rudy wants you to stop by his restaurant as quick as you can.”

“YES!” screams Santo, now full of the emotion of hope. He had been expecting to drive home and go to sleep. Wow, now what a change this unexpected news has created for him! His heart is beating rapidly and he no longer feels tired at all. After dropping Hector off, Santo rushes home and takes a quick shower, puts on some clean clothes, carefully combs his hair, and hustles over to Rudy’s Restaurant. There, Rudy greets Santo warmly, and after a discussion, Santo is hired.

When he leaves the restaurant having signed a contract, Santo now realizes his life has just changed from having hoped to land this job to knowing he now has the job. He experiences this change as the emotion of happiness.

At home, Santo gets into bed to get some sleep, but finds that he can’t conk out even though he hasn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. With his mind racing, he thinks, “I have to buy some new clothes tomorrow. Man, what did I do to land this job at Rudy’s? Well, the big thing I did was to stop by there during an off-hour and introduce myself to Rudy even when he wasn’t looking for help. I told him that he had a great restaurant. I think it really helped when I told him that if he needed a sub for a day at any time I’d work for half the normal salary just to show him what I could do. Rudy liked that and tried me out, and I bet that’s what really sold him on me. I’ll remember to do that some more if I end up out of work again.”

Parable Interpretation

Let’s see if there is anything useful about hope and happiness that we can discover from this story. Notice that Santo, as he was heading home, had a plan to deal with his feelings of tiredness. Santo has confidence that he has a set of well practiced skills that are very likely to achieve this as he heads home in his van, and he begins to carry them out by guiding his car into traffic. As he does so, he is unaware of any emotion. He does feel tired, and this type of feeling is less intense than a full blown emotion

As soon as Santo hears about the new job opportunity, he immediately recalls his desire to get a better job. Santo quickly appraises this new information. Clearly he notices that this is a change from what he was expecting. This change leads to the emotion of hope. The function of this positive emotion is for him to shift his attention from all that he was thinking about before the emotion began and to instead focus on getting the job at Rudy’s. The emotion also functions to give Santo a boost of energy so that he can increase his chances to get this job. Even though he had felt sleepy and exhausted before having the emotion of hope, he uses the boost of energy to think about what the best things to do right now, and he changes his plan to go to sleep as soon as he got home. Instead, he decides to wash up, get to Rudy’s Restaurant and apply for the job.

Upon landing the job, Santo has achieved his desire, and with that, he realizes this means that there will be some good changes in his life, and he experiences the emotion of happiness. This happiness serves the function to give him a new burst of energy. We oftentimes need this extra burst of energy when we achieve a desire for two reasons.

First, we have to spend some extra time making arrangements for the new set of circumstances that led to the happiness. In the example involving Santo, he realizes that his new job will require some new clothes. He will have to carve out time during this transition period to pull together money so he can purchase the clothes.

Second, not only do we need the burst of energy to make preparations for our new circumstances that led to happiness, we also can benefit by taking some extra time to think about what led up to our success. By doing this, we can usually find something important to remember that we can reuse in the future. In our Santo example, he recalls how he had offered to work for Rudy at half the usual salary for a day or two so he could show him what a fine waiter he is. Santo will use part of the extra energy from his happiness to do the work necessary to place this very strategy in his memory bank in a form that will be more likely to be recalled if he ever loses his job again.

We see from this story that the positive emotions of hope and happiness function to shift our attention for a period of time to something appraised as particularly important and to provide us extra energy. We use this extra energy to carry out some important skills that can help us better achieve our desires.

Now, sometimes we use the terms “hope” and “happiness” in a broader sense than when we are referring to the emotions of hope and happiness. For example, some people, if asked if they hope to retire in a few years, may reply, “Yes.” At the moment that they say this, they are not in any real emotional state about this issue. Perhaps some pleasant, gentle feeling sweeps through some for a few seconds as they think of a time when they can do more of what they would prefer to be doing as time drifts by. In a few seconds they are thinking of something else.

Sometimes I am asked if I am happy. I might quickly think to myself that nothing is currently bothering me, and so I might reply, “Yes, I guess so.” Here again, there is no emotional state actually occurring as I say this, and the word “happiness” is being used to mean a relatively calm, non-distressed, pleasant experience.

Emotions are feelings, but more intense than most. Although there is no clear dividing line between relatively pleasant feelings and a full blown positive emotional experience, most people can sense when their heart has distinctly quickened, their attention has fastened firmly on a particular desire, changing the subject is hard even if they try, and they find themselves vigorously planning and carrying ideas into actions for a period of time that extends far beyond some fleeting few seconds. Emotions are of this nature.

Okay, there you have it. Here’s hoping the Santo parable and this little discussion gives you a better sense of what positive emotions are all about.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Recently I provided a post titled, ANGER: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE. There we chiefly focused on the variety of anger expressions.

Anger, in addition to being viewed as something that we express, is also viewed as an emotion. To deeply understand the nature of anger we must understand what emotions are.

The Four Basic Emotions

There are four basic emotions. Two of them, hope and happiness, are positive emotions.

emotions1 — Illustration by Deanna Martinez

The other two, threat and grieving, are negative emotions.

emotions2 — Illustration by Deanna Martinez

Although threat and grieving are referred to as negative emotions, they are not necessarily bad emotions. They actually can be very helpful in some situations. And although hope and happiness are referred to as positive emotions, they are not necessarily good emotions. Although they can be very helpful in some situations, they can make a mess of things as well.

Each of the emotions gives us a shot of energy to deal with some important moments in our lives. The positive emotions can help us to deal with positive moments and negative emotions can help us to deal with negative moments. To understand this a little better, let’s take a look at a quick story.

The Story of Alexandra

Alexandra is seventeen and an excellent swimmer.

emotions 5 — Illustration by Eric Sailer

She is fully confident that she has the skills necessary to use her legs and arms in a coordinated way that will enable her to reach the surface of the water in time to avoid drowning.

Because of her confidence about her swimming skills, Alexandra doesn’t experience any emotion about her swimming. There is a mild, pleasant feeling that she has when she swims, but this is different than what I will mean when I refer to an emotional experience. For sure, there are some feelings that we have during an emotional experience, but they are stronger than other feelings.

Because Alexandra is so confident that her swimming skills can deal with anything she will have to deal with while swimming, Alexandra can carry out her skills without much thought. This permits Alexandra to free her attention from staying completely focused on her swimming. Her thoughts begin to drift away from her swimming to events that happened in her past.

“That boy I met yesterday at the ice cream store was real cute!” she recalls. She then begins to think about what she has in store for her when she returns to school after the weekend.

Some of these thoughts that are drifting around in her head do lead to some emotional reactions. “Mrs. Smothers might yell at me in front of the whole class because I didn’t do well on my science test!” her thoughts cry out. This threatens her desire to be treated with respect. Her heart begins to pound as she begins to focus more intensely on this, and she is now experiencing the emotion of threat.

Suddenly Alexandra finds her foot has become entangled in sea plants.

This is a dramatic change in what she had expected to occur while she went about her swim. Recognizing a threat, Alexandra’s attention shifts rapidly away from the images of what might happen at school to what is going on in her present physical world where she is swimming. At the same time, she begins to experience an emotion about what is currently happening to her.

Alexandra’s emotion is serving the function of giving her an extra burst of energy, and she uses it to begin to carry out the fight-or-flight response. This is serving the function of trying to keep her alive. First, she says to herself, “If I don’t get free, this could turn out bad!” While saying this she tries to take flight from the grip of the plants and experiences the emotion of fear. Her effort fails. She then turns angry as her thoughts cry out, “Let go of me you stupid plants!” And with that, her legs fight against the grip of the plants by giving a violent yank, thus tearing her free.

She now feels hopeful that she can reach the surface and breathe safely, but her hopeful emotion keeps her extra focused on what is happening in case there are any more problems that may spring up.

When Alexandra reaches the surface, happiness wells up in her as she takes her first breath in beautiful safety.

Story Interpretation

In this story we get an introduction to what people do when they are NOT experiencing an emotion about something that is currently happening to them. Here’s the idea in a nutshell: Oftentimes we go on automatic pilot. That is, when we develop enough confidence that the desires we hope to achieve in the near future can be achieved by a set of skills that are already well practiced, we may set them in motion, freeing our attention for other matters.

Alexandra, at the beginning of our story, has a desire to safely get some exercise and to achieve this she goes for a swim. She has done this often enough in this area that she is confident enough that nothing will go wrong. Thus, early on during her swim, she does not experience any emotion regarding her swim.

The story makes a distinction between emotion and feeling. The touch of the water can be pleasant to some, and to others, unpleasant. Emotions, as I define them, do have feelings that accompany them. Emotions involve a distinctly stronger charge of energy than feelings in general. This stronger charge of energy is most easily observed by the quickened pace of our heartbeat. The extra energy permits us to stay focused on the situation that triggers the emotion and to carry out far more work than the more gentle states that tend to produce a rather quick smile or frown.

With the energy that is freed up when Alexandra utilizes her automatized swimming skills, she begins to think of other desires besides getting her exercise in for the day. What she thinks about while exploring her memories and anticipations of future events in her imagination may lead to an emotion just as much as what she meets in the present physical world.

Another aspect of automatized skills that this story introduces is the idea that as we use them, we are still appraising the environment in case we notice an important change in what we are expecting. Appraising means evaluating or assessing. We are not always aware that this appraisal is going on, but we realize its existence each time we suddenly notice something unexpected and find our attention drawn to it.

In the story, Alexandra suddenly notices her foot is caught in the plants and she is not expecting this to happen. This is a change in what she is expecting to happen as she goes about her swim. She evaluates this change as threatening her desire for safety. Alexandra uses her burst of energy to carry out some skills that set her free.

One set of skills that she uses is to cry out in her mind, “Let go of me you stupid plants!” At this point, Alexandra is experiencing anger. Because Alexandra is under water, she cannot scream these words out loud, but under normal conditions, she probably would.

If it was an animal or a person who had hold of her leg, Alexandra’s screams might have scared away the attacker. Or her screams might have been heard by friends who could have come to her rescue. And so, under some sets of circumstances, the angry screams could have helped to save her life, but not under water. Instead, Alexandra’s skill to violently yank her foot away from the grip of the plant saves her.

In this blog, whenever people are experiencing the basic emotion of threat and then they either give off a signal that a fight might occur at any second, or they actually begin to fight, they experience anger. In last week’s blog post when we saw our comic strip friends displaying such actions as glaring, waving their fingers, shouting, insulting, or baring their teeth, they were giving off signals that a fight might soon occur.

A threat to any desire can lead to the basic emotion of threat. Examples are a desire to be liked, to be treated with respect and to be free to make our own choices.

In the story of Alexandra, when she becomes angry her actions end up saving her life. As helpful as anger can be in certain types of situations, it can often make a situation worse. Moreover, even when helpful, anger still may not be the best response choice. To become wise, you must learn to recognize when to use anger, when to replace it with something better, and how to prepare yourself so that you can skillfully carry out more optimal plans even under highly threatening conditions. By following this blog, you will learn these very skills.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.