The words we use to describe our experience become our experience. If you are cut off in traffic are you 'peeved' or 'enraged'? If someone says something you don't like are you 'cut to the core' or just 'miffed'? Our children only seem to learn just a few emotional words such as stress, anxiety, anger, depression, happy, hate. This does not give them the ability to differentiate the severity of their experience. Broaden their (and your) emotional vocabulary to enjoy a much richer life.

So how do you expand your emotional vocabulary? A friend of mine brainstormed emotional words and came up with this list.

You could take a couple of words from this list everyday and 'try it on'. Does the word help you to feel more or less of the emotion you want to feel? If your unsure of what emotion the word describes then look it up in a good dictionary or discuss it with a friend.

If you find an emotion that is not quite right and want to know some related ones try using this free thesaurus tool which visually connects concepts and allows you to explore a web of emotions.

Remember the words we use to describe an experience become our reality of that experience. Expand your emotional vocabulary for a richer life.