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The 'untranslatable' emotions you never knew you had
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The Positive Lexicography Project
It aims to offer a more nuanced understanding of ourselves, by capturing many ways of expressing good feelings from across the world.
It is directed by Tim Lomas at the University of East London, who is working towards getting many "untranslatable" experiences get in our daily vocabulary.
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Highly specific positive feelings
... that depend on particular circumstances:
- Desbundar (Portuguese): to shed one’s inhibitions in having fun
- Tarab (Arabic): a musically induced state of ecstasy or enchantment
- Shinrin-yoku (Japanese): the relaxation gained from bathing in the forest, figuratively or literally
- Gigil (Tagalog): the irresistible urge to pinch or squeeze someone because they are loved or cherished
- Yuan bei (Chinese): a sense of complete and perfect accomplishment
- Iktsuarpok (Inuit): the anticipation one feels when waiting for someone, whereby one keeps going outside to check if they have arrived.
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Complex and bittersweet experiences
- Natsukashii (Japanese): a nostalgic longing for the past, with happiness for the fond memory, yet sadness that it is no longer
- Wabi-sabi (Japanese): a “dark, desolate sublimity” centered on transience and imperfection in beauty
- Saudade (Portuguese): a melancholic longing or nostalgia for a person, place or thing that is far away either spatially or in time – a vague, dreaming wistfulness for phenomena that may not even exist
- Sehnsucht (German): “life-longings”, an intense desire for alternative states and realisations of life, even if they are unattainable.
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Behaviors for well-being
- Dadirri (Australian aboriginal): a deep, spiritual act of reflective and respectful listening
- Pihentagyú (Hungarian): literally meaning “with a relaxed brain”, it describes quick-witted people who can come up with sophisticated jokes or solutions
- Desenrascanço (Portuguese): to artfully disentangle oneself from a troublesome situation
- Sukha (Sanskrit): genuine lasting happiness independent of circumstances
- Orenda (Huron): the power of the human will to change the world in the face of powerful forces such as fate.
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Emotional granularity
It's our capacity to distinguish between the particularities of our emotions. This then determines how well we cope with life.
Some of us use different emotion words interchangeably, while others are highly precise in their descriptions.
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Nostalgia
It is the sentimentality of our past, usually for a particular time and place associated with positive emotions, etched in our memories. Historical texts state it was termed as homesickness ...
A Time Machine
The feeling of nostalgia is like traveling in a time machine. The activities that were once cherished are no longer done, and the world that is remembered no longer exists.
Nostalgia can be a form of self-deception, giving a rosy tint to the past, creating a paradise out of the moments of our lived lives.
Deep nostalgia fosters a sense of serene melancholy and spiritual longing.
Suffering
The deepest form of suffering is a feeling of extreme dissatisfaction about the impermanence and the insubstantiality of everything around us.
Buddhism mentions suffering as inevitable as long as there is desire, lust and a sense of coveting/craving in our lives. Once we grasp this fully, we stop craving and struggling in hope and fear.
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Human Emotions
An emotion is an objective state that exhibits itself in many ways like behavior, facial expression, heart rate, blood pressure, and stress-hormone levels. Broadly speaking, we kn...
New Kinds of Emotions
- Mix N match Emotions: FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a newly coined mix of envy, fear, and sadness.
- Social Emotions: Feelings like guilt, shame and embarrassment are social emotions, and can even be found in dogs.
- Fear: Emotions like fear and anxiety are hard to pinpoint in the brain's geographical area, due to the presence of multiple fear circuits.
If our emotions are constructed by our minds, it means they can also be de-constructed or even reconstructed.
Labelling Emotions
The brain loves to identify, tag, or label all the feelings and emotions that are being experienced.
New studies show that changing the name of the emotion can change the feeling that is produced by hearing that emotion, and the brain may be able to create or make up emotions that don't have a label yet.
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Simulation: The Way The Brain Really Works
Every moment that we are alive, our brain utilizes concepts to simulate the surrounding environment, practically creating ‘our’ world.
At any given moment, our brain tries ...
Simulation: A New Era Of Psychology And Neuroscience
- Simulation is the standard, default mode for all brain activity.
- Discovered in the 1990s, simulation is what psychologists and neuroscientists mistook as ‘reactions’ to what we see, hear, touch, smell or taste.
- We automatically use simulation for thinking, understanding language, feeling empathy, remembrance, imagination, dreams and the ability to perceive.
The Signal Computing Process
Using the ability to simulate the brain gathers outside information and integrates it with what it already knows and what is associated with it.
Then it combines these signals and computes in various ways to perceive and guide the corresponding action.