One of the primary purposes of Lifecraft is to help you become more aware of your emotions. This is critical to living a happier, more balanced life.

The word emotion comes from the Latin term emovere which means moving. In other words, emotions are a combination of energy and motion and are an expression of how life is constantly flowing around you.

Emotions can come and go very quickly, which can make it difficult to understand the complex processes that produce these emotions. That’s why it’s so important to keep a record of your emotions, a practice that will yield valuable insights.

Emotion types

There are two main types of emotions: Primary and Secondary.

Primary emotions

Primary emotions are those that you feel first in response to an event. They can be very strong and are usually instinctual. They often bypass your higher thought processes: when something happens, you can feel an emotion before you fully understand why. Lifecraft includes 8 primary emotions:

• Happy
• Loving
• Optimistic
• Surprised
• Afraid
• Sad
• Bored
• Angry

Secondary emotions

Secondary emotions are more complex and often come after you've had time to process a primary emotion. For example, when you feel happy (a primary emotion), you might recognize that it’s because you’re amused or relieved (which are distinct secondary emotions). Secondary emotions are generally learned — we acquire them from our family, community, life experience, etc.

Lifecraft includes 8 secondary emotions for each primary emotion. For example, these are the secondary emotions for Happy:

• Cheerful
• Delighted
• Joyful
• Amused
• Proud
• Satisfied
• Grateful
• Relieved

Understanding your emotions

Examining your primary emotions will help you recognize events in your life that trigger these emotions. Examining your secondary emotions will reveal how you react to and process those events internally. In both cases, simply taking the time to reflect on your emotions will help you gain a greater understanding of yourself. This can be highly beneficial.

Emotion model

Lifecraft’s emotion model is based on decades of research into unique human emotions (see Robert Plutchik, W. Gerrod Parrott, Phillip R. Shaver, etc.) However, every person is unique so there’s no standard set of emotions. For that reason, you can edit the emotions in Lifecraft to make them your own:

Preferences/Settings > Emotions

Recording your emotions

There are two places in Lifecraft where you can record your emotions: the Emotions View and the Journal Entry View.

Emotion View

The Emotions View is where you record your emotions as they happen. You can include a short note explaining what prompted the emotion or how you feel at the time. Those short notes will prove invaluable when you later review your emotions.

Journal

When you create a journal entry, you can assign an emotion to that entry. This will typically come after you’ve had time to reflect on the events of the day. To help you with this, you can have Lifecraft copy the day's Emotion Log to your journal entry. At that point, you may still be feeling a range of emotions, but you should try to focus on just one: that's the emotion you should assign to your entry.

Learn more

Emotion View

Journal: Entry View