Comprehending our emotions and navigating through shifts in our feelings can often prove challenging. However, delving into our emotions is the initial stride toward effectively managing them. A constructive approach to enhancing our emotional awareness involves monitoring them closely. This blog aims to offer insights into establishing methods for tracking your moods and adopting best practices in emotion monitoring.

## Taking the initial steps!

The initial step involves introspection: determine why you wish to track your moods. Perhaps you aim to deepen your understanding of yourself and your emotions, or you seek to identify particular patterns and triggers influencing your mood. Moreover, mood tracking could serve as a valuable resource for your mental health provider, offering insights into your emotional well-being.


## Measuring your emotions

There are studies which have used various surveying techniques to measure participants moods and found that whatever was the mood of the participants during the morning was how they felt post-work hours - thus, if you kick off a day with a bad mood chances are you would end the day ill-tempered too!

So if you are wondering when is the best time to track? It is inconsequential whether you commence tracking early in the morning or later in the evening. The key is to choose a time that feels comfortable for you. To ensure accuracy, you may experiment with tracking your mood at different times throughout the day over a period of time


## Applying a framework - The Emotion Wheel

If you find it challenging to select emotions for your mood scale, consider exploring the Emotion Wheel devised by Robert Plutchik. In simple terms, the Emotion Wheel can act as a blueprint for developing your scale. It outlines eight fundamental emotions that aid in recognizing your feelings and fostering self-awareness and self-compassion.


![](/img/wheel.png)

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Starting to Track Your Moods