Choosing Emotions
Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart
Book • 2025
Doug Earl Johnston's 'Choosing Emotions' is an emotionary that catalogs hundreds of distinct emotions illustrated by thousands of quotes from people who experienced them.
The book emphasizes emotional granularity, arguing that precise vocabulary helps individuals name and manage feelings, improving decision-making and relationships.
Johnston frames emotions as choices that can be shaped through awareness, belief, and repetition, offering practical metaphors and strategies for parents and adults.
It blends quotations, definitions, and reflections to create a usable handbook for identifying and discussing emotions.
The work positions itself as the most comprehensive English-language reference on human emotions, aimed at helping readers model and teach emotional literacy.
The book emphasizes emotional granularity, arguing that precise vocabulary helps individuals name and manage feelings, improving decision-making and relationships.
Johnston frames emotions as choices that can be shaped through awareness, belief, and repetition, offering practical metaphors and strategies for parents and adults.
It blends quotations, definitions, and reflections to create a usable handbook for identifying and discussing emotions.
The work positions itself as the most comprehensive English-language reference on human emotions, aimed at helping readers model and teach emotional literacy.
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Patrick Cummings
Raise | Of the 272 Emotions, Most Parents Only Know 12 (w/ D. Earl Johnston)
