List of feeling words

Some people have told me it’s hard to find the word that expresses how they feel. That’s understandable, so I created a list. It’s just a starting place; how you feel may be a word that’s not on this list. That’s OK. Use what works for you!

I feel surprised when I see how many feeling words I found, because on my first pass I only came up with 18.

Abandoned Absorbed Accepting Admiring
Adoring Affectionate Affirmative Affronted
Afraid Aggravated Agitated Alarmed
Amazed Ambitious Amorous Angry
Annoyed Anxious Apathetic Apprehensive
Ashamed Attracted Awed Besmirched
Bewildered Bitter Bleak Blissful
Bored Bothered Brave Bright
Broken Buoyant Calm Capricious
Captivated Carefree Caring Cautious
Certain Changeable Cheerful Cheerless
Close Comfortable Compassionate Complacent
Concerned Confident Confused Considerate
Contemptuous Contented Converted Convinced
Corrupted Courageous Cross Cruel
Crushed Curious Cynical Damaged
Defeated Defensive Defiant Defiled
Definite Degraded Delicate Delighted
Depressed Desecrated Despairing Desperate
Despoiled Determined Devoted Dirtied
Disappointed Disbelieving Discouraged Disgraced
Disheartened Dishonoured Disillusioned Dismal
Disobedient Displeased Disregarded Distant
Distraught Distressed Distrustful Disturbed
Doubtful Dreary Dubious Dull
Eager Earnest Ecstatic Edgy
Elated Embarrassed Empowered Enchanted
Encouraged Engaged Engrossed Enraged
Enraptured Enthralled Enthusiastic Erratic
Evasive Exalted Exasperated Excited
Exhilarated Exultant Fantastic Fascinated
Fearful Festive Fouled Friendly
Frightened Frustrated Furious Glad
Gloomy Goaded Grateful Grieving
Grim Gripped Grumpy Harmed
Hateful Heartbroken Heated Held
Helpful Helpless Hesitant Hopeful
Hopeless Horrified Hostile Humble
Humiliated Hurt Hysterical Ignored
Immersed Impaired Impatient Impulsive
Incensed Inconsistent Indecisive Independent
Indifferent Indignant Infuriated Injured
Inquisitive Insecure Inspired Intent
Interested Intrigued Involved Irate
Irresolute Irritated Jealous Joyful
Joyous Jubilant Jumpy Kind
Light-hearted Livid Lonely Loving
Low Loyal Mad Marred
Mean Melancholy Mesmerized Messed up
Miserable Misunderstood Moody Mortified
Murky Nervous Obsessed Offended
Ominous Open Optimistic Outraged
Overwrought Panicked Passionate Patient
Peaceful Peeved Persuaded Perturbed
Pessimistic Petrified Pitying Playful
Pleasant Pleased Poignant Positive
Powerless Preoccupied Proud Provoked
Puzzled Raging Rancorous Rapt
Raving Regretful Rejected Relaxed
Relieved Remorseful Resentful Respectful
Ruined Sad Sanguine Satisfied
Scared Sceptical Secure Seething
Serene Shaky Shamed Shocked
Shy Soiled Sombre Sorrowful
Spellbound Spiteful Spoiled Strained
Strong Stubborn Stupid Sulky
Sullied Sure Suspicious Sympathetic
Tainted Tarnished Tender Tense
Terrified Threatened Thrilled Timid
Torn Tranquil Triumphant Troubled
Trusting Ugly Uncertain Uncomfortable
Unconvinced Understanding Undetermined Uneasy
Unforgiving Uninformed Uninviting Unnerved
Unnoticed Unpredictable Unreliable Unsure
Unwanted Upbeat Upset Vacillating
Variable Vengeful Vexed Violated
Volatile Warm Wavering Weak
Worried Wounded

How to do first person Action Inquiry

Previously, I wrote about what Action Inquiry is, and some of its aims.

I’ve also written about some of the practices that help you notice how you feel and the main check-in (naming how you feel).

Action Inquiry (AI) can work in 3 different arenas:

  • First person: where you increase your personal integrity by inquiring into your own actions and results.
  • Second person: where you increase mutuality in relationships with another person.
  • Third person: where you increase sustainability by inquiring into organizational strategies and actions. (This is a larger We, not to be confused with third person in grammatical rules, where it refers to They.)

Each of these has its own approach, and although each approach is related to the other approaches, they look and feel essentially different.

Today I’m going to share how you can do the First Person AI. Remember, the aim of First Person AI is to increase your personal integrity. Integrity grows by means of regular dynamic evaluations into the gaps between what you plan and what you do, or between how you feel and what you say that you feel, or between what you value and what your actions create. All those sorts of things.

We begin by stretching the limits of our attention into all of the Four Territories of experience. (Inspired by Bill Torbert’s 2004 book, Action Inquiry.)

  1. First territory – the results, outcomes or consequences you observe. This might be your own feelings about what’s happened. We’re quite accustomed to being aware of this, but it still can be challenging when the results are so different from what we wanted.
  2. Second territory – the actions you take, deeds you perform, behaviors, skills, patterns. Essentially, what you DO that leads to your result. Some of this are aware of ourselves in this way. But many of us don’t habitually inquire into what we did to get the outcome we didn’t want.
  3. Third territory – the strategy you’re employing, the overall approach you’re using. Game plans, ploys, your plan about how you’re going to achieve your aims. I think too few of us give any thought to this at all. How many times do you actually sit down and figure out a plan for getting the result you want? (This may be why life coaching is a booming profession!)
  4. Fourth territory – your intention, or vision. Where you place your attention. Your aims. Sadly, we seldom focus our attention here. But doing so is probably the single most powerful things we can do to begin to live a more fulfilled life. How can you get what you want if you spend zero time envisioning your future?

It sort of works in reverse within us. First you have an intention or a vision or a goal (the fourth territory), even if it’s below the level of awareness. Then you decide your strategy for achieving it (the third territory), even if you aren’t aware that you’re doing this. Too often these two territories are below the level of conscious awareness; we give little or no thought at all to what we really really want, or the best way to make it happen. But we act as if we DO know what we’re doing. No wonder then that we end up with what we don’t what and didn’t intend!

From your strategy (the third territory), you determine the action or actions you’re going to take (the second territory), and you have an expectation that this will bring about a certain result or outcome (the first territory).

Overall, the plot unfolds something like this (in a personal example):

  1. My intention was to learn to do Action Inquiry myself, and to become skillful and competent enough that I could teach others how to do it. (That was my fourth territory – my intention or vision or goal.)
  2. I decided that the best way for me to approach this was to form and participate in a regular Action Inquiry group, where members would work together to understand the technique and make the practices habitual. (This was my third territory – my strategy.) My strategy was, more specifically, to find a few like-minded people, people interested in personal development (integral style) and who would be open to learning this new way of being in the world, this new way of deliberately expanding their awareness in their lives with a mind to personal development.
  3. The first action I decided to take was to approach some other coach-consultant colleagues I’d met at a Bill Torbert event, who lived sort of near me, and see if they were interested in setting up such a group. (This was my second territory – the actions I took).
  4. And they WERE interested! Yay! A result! (My fourth territory – the outcome.)

The saga continued from there, and some of the outcomes were NOT what I wanted, so it was an opportunity to inquire into my actions to see what I needed to change. This is where the single-, double- and triple-loop learning comes into play, which I wrote about previously.

We’ll have more about my learning experience later.

So here’s one possible beginning script that you can try right now. Maybe think of a recent situation that didn’t turn out as you wanted it to.

When I first encountered <the situation>, the intention  I formed was <what was your main aim?>. In order to realize this intention, I decided the best approach to take would be <what strategy did you decide on?>. From that strategy, I decided the  best action for me to take was <what did you DO?>. The result I got was <what was your outcome?>.

If you got what you intended, Well Done!!! If you didn’t, well, a learning opportunity had presented itself to you. Please read about that in Learning Loops.

Related reading: please check out all my articles about Action Inquiry.

Name how you feel – the main check-in

I’ve written previously about some Action Inquiry practices for noticing how you feel:

Once you’re in the habit of noticing how you feel, it’s time to take the next step: naming how you feel in a situation and how it affects you.

We have a simple check-in we use at the beginning of our Action Inquiry meetings (this is from Bill Torbert’s 2004 book, Action Inquiry):

I felt/feel<blank-1> when <blank-2> because <blank-3>.

  • blank-1: what word best describes the feeling? Try to use just one word. Maybe 2, but usually 1 word.
  • blank-2: what action, incident or experience evoked the feeling? Briefly describe the situation.
  • blank-3: what is it that’s important to you that the event affects? Share what it is that this affects in you. A value you hold? a belief in how things ought to be?

Example: I felt discouraged when the conversation once again drifted over to welfare reform, because I have so many other topics to discuss with my Integral Circle friends and we only have so much time together.

Another example: I feel angry when my neighbor’s visitors block my drive, because I believe that it’s considerate (and therefore a good thing) to stay out of other people’s way.

In the first example, I notice in retrospect how I felt when the topic of conversation once again headed toward a topic I was tired of discussing.

In the second example, I notice a general pattern in my reaction to being parked in (or out of!) my own driveway.

This naming exercise helps improve my capability to notice, in a timely fashion, how I feel and why I feel that way. And that helps me more effectively decide what action to take (or if I should take any action at all.)

Try it out for yourself. Think of some time recently when you had a strong feeling. Come on — think of something that always pushes your buttons, or something that touched your heart.

Say it like this: I felt/feel<blank-1> when <blank-2> because <blank-3>.

  • blank-1: what word best describes the feeling?
  • blank-2: what action, incident or experience evoked the feeling?
  • blank-3: what is it that’s important to you that the event affects?

Why not share your results with me? Please leave a comment.

Related reading:

What is Action Inquiry?

Action Inquiry is a systematic, life-long practice to help you learn from your experience. By practicing Action Inquiry, you can increase your personal integrity, your capability to achieve what you want, your capability to work with others more collaboratively toward shared visions, and your use of transformational learning to create a more just and sustainable world.

Definitions of terms

Systematic: Consisting of planned, orderly, repeatable, defined steps

Practice (n): when you perform a technique repeatedly, in an effort to get better at it

Integrity: behaving in a way consistent with your values; lack of a gap between what you intend and what you do, or what you say and what you do, or what you feel and what you say that you feel

Effective: your strategy or actions are effective when the efforts you put in create the results you want

Transformational: it changes the way you see things, not simply the way you DO things

Bill Torbert, in his 2004 book, Action Inquiry, says that practicing Action Inquiry is a way to become:

  • increasingly capable of making future visions come true
  • Increasingly alert to the dangers and opportunities of the present moment
  • Increasingly capable of performing in effective and transformational ways

Action Inquiry has 3 aims

  1. Within the individual, the aim is integrity. Integrity grows by means of regular dynamic evaluations into the gaps between what I plan and what I do, or between how I feel and what I say that I feel, or between what I value and what my actions create. All those sorts of things.
  2. In relationships, the aim is mutuality. When we recognize power differences between 2 people and keep in mind that the use of power can reduce trust and impede honest communication, we’re more able to take creative action toward shared visions and goals, increase collaborative conversations and jointly determined ways of working together to co-create our outcome.
  3. In wider organizations, the aim is sustainability. In order to be sustainable, organizations must create effectiveness, integrity and mutuality to continue growing toward social justice and harmony with the natural environment.

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Related reading:

Notice how you feel – satisfying moments

The main idea behind these Noticing exercises is that it’s a good thing to know how you feel about things. But so many of us are seriously out of practice in noticing how we feel. One of the basic intentions of Action Inquiry is for us to become better at noticing how we feel, naming how we feel, and then doing something to change how we feel (when we don’t like it).

Noticing and naming how we feel leads to more clarity about what’s really happening in our life, in the moment that it’s happening. It’s a skill anyone can acquire — it just takes practice.

This exercise is from Bill Torbert’s 2004 book, Action Inquiry.

Check in with yourself daily at each mealtime and bed time to identify the moment that was the most satisfying to you since the last check-in, and pause to articulate to yourself what made it the most satisfying. In the same way, identify the moment that was the least satisfying to you since the last check-in, and what made it so. Recall if you were aware of these reactions as the moments actually occurred.

All of these exercises point to the same thing: being more aware of how we feel. This awareness is the first step toward personal development.

Why don’t you try one of these exercises for a few days, and post a comment here about how you feel about it? 🙂

Related Reading:

Notice how you feel – transitions

One of the hardest things we try to do is to describe to someone else exactly how we are feeling. Skillful actions require a clear understanding of how you feel about what’s happening.

In Action Inquiry, one of our goals is to be able to quickly and accurately assess how we are feeling, so that we can more skilfully decide what’s the best action to take. It’s part of the Inquiry before the Action in Action Inquiry.

Bill Torbert, in his 2004 book, Action Inquiry, gives us a few exercises intended to improve our ability to notice how we feel. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But once you try these exercises, you’ll probably find that it takes practice to notice how you feel.

So, here is another practice made to help us learn to notice how we feel.

As you transition from one activity to another, bring the transition into your awareness by noticing how you feel about ending the previous activity and beginning the next one.

The intention here is for you to develop triggers to help you notice how you feel. “I ran out of time. I have to put that task down before I finished it, and I feel frustrated.” Just like that.

Try it for a week. You might want to let me know how you get on with it. Why not leave a comment?

Related reading:

Notice how you feel – periodic check-ins

One of the hardest things we try to do is to describe to someone else exactly how we are feeling. One of the aims of practicing Action Inquiry is to become more aware of how we feel, in the moment, so that we can gauge whether we need to change something, do something different to get a different outcome. Skillful actions require a clear understanding of how you feel about what’s happening.

But before we can describe how we feel, we need to notice how we feel. It’s surprising how many people hurry through their busy days and never really notice how they feel. Until there’s something drastic, that is. When something drastic happens, we do notice how we feel, and it can be overwhelming. I think that overwhelm comes partly from not being very experienced in noticing how we feel, so when we notice it, it’s kind of surprising to us.

So, here is a practice designed to help us notice how we feel.

This exercise is from Bill Torbert’s 2004 book, Action Inquiry.

At home and at work (to the extent possible), set your watch alarm or cell phone to go off every 60 minutes. When it does this, take 30 seconds to notice how you felt mentally, emotionally, and physically at the moment the alarm went off (including any irritation that the alarm went off!).

The intention is for you to more quickly be able to identify how you feel in any given moment, to be able to describe to yourself how you felt. “I’m mentally stimulated, emotionally calm, but my left leg hurts behind the knee.” Just like that.

Try it for a week. You might want to let me know how you get on with it. Why not leave a comment.

Related reading:

Learning Loops

When we experience something in life, we can look at it as an outcome. If the outcome isn’t what we expected, we can tell this by our reaction, even if we aren’t aware of exactly what we were expecting. It can be enough to notice that you are surprised. Or disappointed. Or some other feeling that helps you become aware that you have a result you didn’t want.

Capable learners learn from their experience. By this, I mean that when you recognize that you haven’t got the result you expected, and inquire into that result, you can change one of three things to get a better result.

  1. You can change your action, or behaviour. This is single loop learning. Don’t like what you got? Change what you do, and you’ll have a different result. If you are skillful in selecting what to try next, you may get a better result. If your husband always forgets to take out the recycling, you can try sending him a reminder email. If he still forgets, you can try having him set a reminder in Outlook.
  2. You can change your approach to the situation. This is double loop learning. Don’t like your result, even after trying several different actions? Maybe you want to change your approach. When you change your approach, or your strategy, then new actions arise as ideas to implement the strategy. If you’ve tried sending your husband an email to remind him to take out the recycling, and tried task reminders, and he is still forgetting, you might change your approach to the problem. You could decide to do it yourself. You could have a meeting to find out what he thinks might work to help him remember. Your actions would certainly change, but the key here is that you changed your strategy, or approach to the situation
  3. You can change you entire vision, or purpose. If your vision of what you are trying to do changes, then your approach will be different and your actions will be different as well. This is triple loop learning, where you can see a broad landscape and quite a distance into the future. Your partership with your husband is based on spiritual and personal development. It might not matter who actually does what task, but you might feel that re-negotiating the division of household chores so that each person has a good mix of the easy, the delightful, the mundane and the abhorrent. (For example.) Then a whole new approach or strategy is in order, to manifest this whole new purpose. And the actions you take will of course be different.

Most of us are very familiar with the single loop learning approach. We know the old adage that “insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Think of the sentence that begins “When I don’t get what I want . . .“. Most of us can see how that might well be completed with:  “I try again“, or “I try harder“. Insanity? (hmmm.) A more adaptable, more learning-based approach, would be to ” I try something different“.

Some of us would look at an unwanted result, and think “I’ll try another approach to the same goal, because the goal I’ve set is the right one!” This is double loop learning in action.

To use triple loop learning in your life is pretty sophisticated. Only the most capable and skillful learners take such a broad or long view.

How many times have you questioned your life’s purpose? Or your vision for your life (and your future)? Probably, if you’re like most people, not often, if ever.  When you do, it can be confusing, upsetting and scary. But when you examine your life and apply solid principles of inquiring into your own actions, you have the means to create the rich, exciting and fulfilling life you want.

This is Action Inquiry, at its very best.