Rating things, anything, is a completely subjective test. Especially when we’re talking about feelings. Perhaps that’s the point.
I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve been working of late on several of my writers’ maladies. My shoulders and my back hurts. My physical therapists ask, “On a scale of one to ten, how’s your pain right now?” I struggle with answering that. I don’t want to “over sell” it, but I also don’t want to under report my pain level as well. But I’ve learned something: they don’t expect me to be perfectly accurate with each report. They’re interested in the subjective.
What they want to know is how I feel at that moment. They want to know how I feel about what I’m feeling. I’ve watched them record what I tell them and from that observation I see that they don’t really care about the pain level unless it’s truly, go-to-the-emergency-room high. I’ve had kidney stones, so I have a clear picture of a ten-level pain event. But what is a four? What’s six? How do I explain that to someone else? Is my four your four?
I don’t think it matters that much. What they want to know is how I perceive the pain at that moment. It’s not my pain, but the my perception and feelings that they’re interested in. It may seem frustrating to the patient to try and rate something like pain accurately, but it’s extremely helpful to the medical professional. Your three may be someone else’s six. It doesn’t matter. They’re treating you at the moment. When they ask me, the want to know how I feel.
And I think that they’re right. Some times my back can be really bad, very painful, but my mood may be great and I push on. I’d rate my pain lower at that moment than if I was tired and exhausted with the same relative pain level.
And this works with virtually anything. Compare these three coffees. Which of these is the softest toilet paper? How likely are you to return to this store? How happy are you with this purchase? How happy are you, period?
What are all these numbers for?
They’re for you to test your perceptions. If you don’t know how you feel about something, make your scale of one to ten and rate it. Then put it away and ask yourself again tomorrow. Become your own observer and accept what you tell yourself. Do your ratings change over time? Don’t judge yourself, just observe. Trust yourself. Let yourself feel and acknowledge these feelings.
You might find out some interesting things. I have. Top among these things is that I’m not as cool and emotionally controlled as my hero, Mr. Spock. My pain level and moods do affect how I behave and how I make decisions. How much I like a product, what a book or movie or piece of much or work of art made me feel and experience are all real and important pieces of information.
And perhaps most important, if I measure my feelings, I can affect them. I can do something about my pain levels and I’m doing exactly that. I can do something about anger and frustration. And I can better communicate with emotion and power when I understand what those emotions, those feelings are and how intensely I feel them.
I know that observing changes the thing observed, as Heisenberg tells us. But I’m also discovering the value of subjectively measuring myself. It’s a powerful tool that’s making me a better communicator.
The On A Scale Of One To Ten by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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