Fine

Sometimes when I ask clients how they're feeling I'll get this answer: "Fine". I usually try to point out that this doesn't tell me much. Even a relatively short list of feeling words like this one includes over 400 choices, and "fine" isn't included.

Describing and evaluating are different tasks. If I tell you that I just painted my office a color that I really like, this doesn't give you enough information to match it at the paint store -- you only know my evaluation of it. But if I specifically tell you the color ( Benjamin Moore Historic Series Prescott Green, by the way ) this detailed description gives you a much clearer ability to know my preference.

So expand your emotional color palette to be as descriptive as you can about your inner emotional experience. Otherwise, if you say "fine" you may run into someone who will point out that this can stand for:

F - Fearful
I - Insecure
N - Neurotic
E - Emotional

And you can do better than that!

By the way, for a vivid example of the richness of emotional language, click to visit "We Feel Fine", a stunning website that catalogs every use of the phrase "I feel" appearing on the Internet at any point in time,