them or use them as signals to alert us to be attentive to our emotional states.

In chapters 5 through 9 I provide exercises to increase your consciousness of how these emotions feel, so that you can be more aware of these physiological changes and use them as deliberate cues that make us attentive, giving us the opportunity to consider, reevaluate, or control our emotions. We may also be able to become more attentive to our emotional feelings by becoming more observant of the emotional feelings of others with whom we are engaged. If we know how they are feeling, if that registers in our conscious mind, we can use that as a cue to better discern our own feelings, and to signal us to become attentive to our own emotional feelings. Unfortunately, my research has found that most of us are not very good at recognizing how other people are feeling unless the expressions are pretty strong. No one needs much help in how to interpret a facial expression when an emotion is at its peak. The expressions are usually uncontrolled by then, showing the appearances I found to be universal. But expressions can be very subtle, just a change in the eyelids or the upper lip. And often we are so focused on what the person is saying that we miss these subtle signs completely. This is a pity, since we are better off if we can detect how another person is feeling early in our interaction with them. The appendix provides a test that allows you to assess how well you recognize the subtle signs of when an emotion is beginning. Chapters 5 through 9 provide photographs to help you become more sensitive to subtle facial expressions, and ideas about how to use that information in family life, in friendships, and in the workplace. Learning to attentively consider our own emotional feelings is not easy, but it is possible, and, over time, with repeated efforts, I believe it becomes easier.* Even when attentiveness has become an established habit, it won't always operate. If the emotion is very intense, if we are importing a script that we have not identified, if we are in a mood relevant to the emotion we are feeling, if we have had little
*My very limited experience with meditation, and my personal knowledge of a number of friends and colleagues who have had a great deal of meditative practice, has convinced me that this is another means to achieving such attentiveness. In research I am just beginning, I will learn more about how this occurs and document the nature of the changes that result.