Use Emotions (Using Emotions to Facilitate Thought)
How we feel influences how we think. Using or generating emotions refers to knowing which moods are best for different situations, and “getting in the right mood.” More specifically, this skill allows you to employ your feelings to enhance the cognitive system (thinking) and, as such, can be harnessed for more effective problem-solving, reasoning, decision-making, and creative endeavors. Of course, cognition can be disrupted by extreme negative emotions such as anxiety and fear, but emotions also can prioritize the cognitive system to attend to what is important and even focus on what does best in a given mood. By way of example, if you are feeling sad, you may view the world one way, while if you feel happy, you will interpret the same events differently. Indeed research shows that people in a sad or negative mood tend to focus on details and search for errors, whereas those in a more positive mood are better at generating new ideas and novel solutions to problems.