List of Resourceful States

Would you like to be able to gain more mastery over your emotions?  If yes, a primary step is that you’ll need to enrich your emotional vocabulary. 

Try this: in the next thirty seconds, list every word you can for difficult emotions.

Then do the same for positive ones.

Most people find the first list comes faster, and longer. We have a rich vocabulary for frustration, anxiety, overwhelm, sadness, anger, fear, stress, disappointment, boredom, guilt, embarrassment, confusion, but reach for the same two or three words (“good,” “happy,” “fine”) to describe the entire spectrum of states we actually want to live in.

This matters more than it sounds.

The words you have shape the states you can recognize, name, and intentionally return to. If “calm” and “peace” feel identical to you, you’ve collapsed two distinct experiences into one. If you can’t tell focus from flow, or appreciation from awe, you lose the ability to navigate toward the specific state you actually want because you can’t aim at what you can’t name.

Expanding your emotional vocabulary is one of the simplest, highest-leverage moves you can make for your inner life. It’s also the foundation for everything that comes next: 

• Practicing states deliberately
• Anchoring them so you can access them on command
• And eventually combining them into the higher-order “recipes” like resilience, flow, and deep presence with others.

But the vocabulary comes first. Here’s a starter menu of resourceful states to expand your range:

• Acceptance
• Appreciation
• Attunement
• Awe
• Belonging
• Calm
• Care
• Certainty
• Compassion
• Confidence
• Connection
• Curiosity
• Deliberateness
• Delight
• Desire
• Devotion
• Effortlessness
• Excitement
• Focus
• Forgiveness
• Freedom
• Generosity
• Gratitude
• Humor
• Importance
• Joy
• Letting go
• Lightness
• Love
• Meaning
• Mischievousness
• Non-judgmental observation
• Openness
• Optimism
• Ownership
• Patience
• Peace
• Permission
• Playfulness
• Pleasure
• Presence
• Pride
• Purpose
• Rapport
• Receptivity
• Respect
• Reverence
• Safety
• Significance
• Steadiness
• Strength
• Surrender
• Tenderness
• Trust
• Unimportance
• Validation
• Willingness
• Wonder

Try This Now

Read back through the list. Do two things:

One, notice which of these words name states you have easy access to, and which ones feel more distant. That gap is your most valuable training ground. Most people have at least one or two states on this list they rarely taste, and those are often the exact states that, if developed, would change everything.

Two, pick three words that you’d like to feel more often. The ones that, if they showed up more this week, would actually change your quality of life.

Write them down somewhere you’ll see them. That’s the beginning of a state practice.

Why Vocabulary Is Just the First Step

Naming a state is the doorway. Walking through it is the practice.

Once you can name a state precisely, you can begin to intentionally practice it.  Not wait for it to arrive, or chase it through external circumstances, but cultivate it directly, the way a musician practices scales. 

With practice, you can anchor these states so they become available on command. And once you have a library of states you can reliably access, something remarkable opens up: you can begin to combine them into higher-order recipes: resilience, flow, unconditional self-value, optimism, etc. and to use them to texture your experience of your memories and shape your future self.

But all of that starts here, with words. With recognizing the territory before you try to map it.

Do you have any others that aren’t listed here? Feel free to add a comment!

Your contributions are greatly appreciated 🙂