The School of Life - Emotional Barometer

The School of Life

It can be remarkably hard to tell other people how we really feel; it may even be tricky for us to get clear about our own moods. Mostly, if people ask how we are, we'll just say, "Fine" - knowing that we've provided only a sharp abbreviation of what is actually going on in our minds.

This is a tool to help us overcome our vagueness: cards that offer definitions of twenty moods that we can all recognize but that can be hard to pin down and explain. Here are descriptions of – among many other things – the sense of feeling weepy, nostalgic, anxious, and dreamy.

These cards help us reach a clearer understanding of our inner emotional climate. They can also be passed on to friends and colleagues (or simply displayed on our desk) so that the world can better know what's going on inside us, without our needing to explain too much.