How Positive am I, and How Positive are Other People?

This blog post deals with how to locate our emotional state of affairs: where, approximately, am I (or other people) on the positivity spectrum?

Previously we have talked about how to subdivide the negativity-positivity spectrum into “levels”, in order to arrive at a personality “type indicator” corresponding to the Core Emotional Energy (CEE).

And we have so far concluded that the  “right” amount of levels are six: three levels for describing the negative side (N3, N2, N1) and three levels for describing the positive side (P1, P2, P3).

How to Locate?

One more or less obvious question now is: How do we determine where a person is at, whether that person is me, or someone else?

Well, this is, of course, not entirely easy. And because it is not very easy, I already decided to make the levels rather few. This way we are taking into account that there is a certain margin of error, so to speak.

My idea behind the “positioning” of a person into a particular group is that we need different types of assessments. So not only do we need something similar to the regular questionnaire method, where we are interpreting written or spoken statements and expressions. We also need other ways of identifying what the state of the matter is.

Words, Phrases, and Sentences

In this particular blog post I will start with words, phrases, and sentences, because they are, perhaps, the quickest and easiest to measure. And in later blog posts I will talk about other “methods” that can add value to our assessment.

There is positivity and negativity in everything we think, believe, and say. So the words, especially the groups of words such as phrases and sentences, we think, believe and say reflect, to a certain extent, our “attitude” to the world and our position in it.

It is important to point out that we speak out of habit much of the time: many phrases and expressions are previously “programmed” into us, by ourselves, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

This means that our speech many times is somewhat of a “reflex”. So without really thinking, we just say something out of habit which we already have said many times before, in situations similar to the one we are currently in.

Emotionally Charged States

And this “reflex” speech (or “utterance”) often happens in emotionally charged states, where we, for instance, are angry or irritated to some degree. In such a situation, all the normal “polite filters” are off, and we get an insight into an individual’s “core” emotions; i.e. what he or she really thinks about this or that.

This connects with the old saying that goes something like this: “the true character of a person is not seen when everything goes smoothly for him or her; the true character of a person is seen when he gets in trouble.”

In other words, it’s how people think when everything is not going according to plan that is important to observe. And of course it is here that also their speech, and actions, can be observed, which will more accurately “reveal” their true inner, core emotional state of affairs.

This is, however, not to say that we are going to discard what that person thinks otherwise, when he is in a more calm state. But the idea is that we might combine these two to get a better sense of the person’s true core emotional energy (CEE) status.

For now, however, we will not distinguish between these two, but instead just use “words” as they are spoken in any conversation, in any situation.

The Different Levels: A First Take

Here is a small table of values that can serve as an initial attempt to construct a positivity scale or spectrum where we measure the emotional whereabouts with the help of words, phrases, and sentences.

NOTE: The table above should be read from the bottom (“N3” is the most negative on the scale) and up (“P3” is the most positive on the scale.) The idea is that “up” is the positive direction that we want to proceed in (i.e. we want to “upgrade” ourselves into becoming more positive).

Discussion

So one thing that we can see is that we have two extremes, N3 and P3. N3 is where there is no hope, no possibilities, and no future; P3 is where possibilities and opportunities are everywhere, and “problems” are more or less (perceived as) non-existing.

In between these two extremes we have a gradual scale from N2 and N1 to P1 and P2, where things get gradually more and more positive.

In my next post on this topic, I’ll continue talking about ways to measure one’s emotional status.

Chris Bocay

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