JOY Intelligence™ is the ability to move through emotions with precision and purpose. The JQ Emotions Map™ is designed for real understanding, built to help people apply emotional data in real time.
Over 3,000 emotions identified, scaled, and refined through years of research. We narrowed the focus to 160 core emotions, data-backed, relatable, and easy to understand.
The JQ Emotions Map™ makes this even more accessible with 80 clearly defined emotions, designed so everyone can speak the same language.
The JOY Intelligence Emotions Map™ helps you understand what you're feeling, why it matters, and where you might go next, not to fix yourself, but to know yourself and what your options are.
This tool was created to bring structure and simplicity to emotional processing, using joy as a core life skill. Grouped into 4 progressive stages, the system helps individuals, teams, and leaders move from awareness to action.
Emotions rooted in stress or trauma responses, fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or feign. Presence and safety are often low, making joy difficult to access.
Emotions that help us interpret or investigate the situation more deeply. Discerning meaning and determining willingness to accept current reality.
Emotions that invite introspection and support shifts in perspective. With increased presence, we become more open to change and able to analyze behavior objectively.
Where emotional energy flows freely. Emotions are energizing, connecting, and inspiring. Neurotransmitters function optimally and joy is more readily accessible.
Four steps to move from awareness to action in any moment.
Identify where you are on the map.
Understand the nature of your emotion.
Aim for higher safety, presence, and/or joy.
Align mind, body, and emotions for lasting impact.
Happiness depends on life going well. It's tied to circumstances, achievements, and external conditions. When things are good, we feel happy. When they're not, happiness fades, which is why “happily ever after” is a beautiful fiction but an unrealistic standard.
Joy is fundamentally different. From Ehsan Gharadjedaghi's clinical perspective, joy isn't about what's happening around you. It's about what's happening within your nervous system. Joy emerges when your brain feels safe, when your body is regulated, and when you're present enough to receive what's good.
Using Ehsan Gharadjedaghi's neuroscience-based approach, we teach joy as a skill, not a feeling you wait for. Through tools like the JQ Emotions Map™ and Chair of JOY®, you learn to read your body's signals, regulate your nervous system, and create the internal safety that allows joy to emerge.
Think of it this way: eating ice cream makes you happy while you're eating it, then it's gone. Joy is what allows you to savor the ice cream, feel gratitude for the moment, and remain steady long after the bowl is empty.
Emotions aren't linear. They're dimensional.
Most emotional check-ins use a 1–10 scale or ask if you feel “positive” or “negative.” But this creates a false sense of simplicity. It treats emotions like a straight line and ignores the complexity of how we actually feel.
The JOYELY Approach: Instead of rating our own emotional state as good or bad, unnecessarily causing shame or guilt, we look at them through three separate lenses:
What is your level of joy? Does it feel easy to access right now?
Do I feel physically and emotionally secure in this moment?
Am I engaged with myself and this moment, or scattered?
This gives you a more accurate emotional snapshot, one that reveals what's really going on beneath the surface and helps you identify next steps, not just label what you feel.
The purple “Criticized” JQ Card helps you reframe criticism as a growth opportunity. It offers reflection questions and a challenge designed to strengthen trust, build resilience, and shift your focus from judgment to impact.
The JOYELY® JQ Cards offer a simple, science-based tool to navigate emotions with clarity and intention, Professional Deck Available Now!
Its structure can support and enhance existing communities and research across many fields. We imagine you'll have ideas of your own, and we'd love to hear them.
To explore how this framework might support your work, reach out directly:
Bailey Romatoski
Browse our JOYELY Shop for map-related tools, JQ Cards, and print versions of the Emotions Map.
Learn more about the free and simple to use Chair of JOY® Experience, Sit. Breathe. Think. Feel.™
Discover how this model is being used in schools, workplaces, and coaching environments worldwide.
A blueprint for joy-driven success. Programs can be customized based on the size of your organization and are available in hybrid formats for flexibility.
Achieve clear results through the Core Change Model, shifting work environments to cultivate joy and enhance employee satisfaction and long-term productivity.
Includes Interactive Kick-off Day, quarterly experiences, monthly meetings, and assessments. Features the Joy-Powered 12-Module Blueprint.
Develop strong change leadership skills to inspire and unify teams, fostering authentic leadership that drives sustainable organizational success.
Interactive kick-off, leadership foundation, action modules, mindset strategies, and empathy enhancement through emotional intelligence.
Implement foundational strategies to initiate core organizational shifts, creating lasting patterns that enhance workplace culture and performance.
Interactive kick-off, foundational leadership modules, and practical workshops to transform organizational culture quickly.
Inspire and equip participants with cutting-edge strategies for innovation and motivation, ensuring measurable outcomes that drive long-term excellence.
Focuses on the Joy Advantage, actionable strategies, expert guidance, networking, and takeaway resources for sustained impact.
Embrace a humanistic approach to change leadership, cultivating joy and resilience within teams for enduring organizational growth.
Expert-led training, interactive sessions, and practical techniques to enhance team cohesion and positivity.
Bring a dynamic voice for change to your events, elevating organizational culture and engagement through the transformative power of joy.
Engaging keynote presentations, interactive Q&A, and practical insights for incorporating joy as a core life skill to drive business success.
JOYELY®