Don't Let Your Feelings Dictate Your Life

How are you feeling today?

Far too often we let our feelings drive our lives. We let how we feel dictate what we do and how we act. We feel good one day, and it becomes a good day. We feel bad the next, or not up to the task, and sure enough, it comes true.

Unfortunately, being beholden to your feelings, leaves you beholden to your past . . . and to your subconscious mind . . . not to your vision and your goals.

So instead of letting your feelings drive your actions, let your goals drive your actions. Rather than responding to how you feel, respond and drive yourself based on what you want.

What You Want Needs To Be The Driving Factor?

Ever start a diet because you "want" to loose weight, get trim, and feel better about yourself. - only to do good for three days, and quit, because you weren't feeling better about yourself.

Did you stop wanting to loose weight?

Did you stop wanting to get trim?

Did you stop wanting to feel better about yourself?

Usually not. Your goal didn't change. You just gave-in to the feelings of not wanting to do the work any more. Not wanting to work out. And certainly not wanting to feel hungry any more.

You Can't Count On Feelings

Feelings need to follow your actions, not lead them. But they take time - and are rarely predictable 100% of the time. Our feelings are rooted all too often in mixed messages and crossed wires in the memories of our past.

Our goals are rooted in the future.

Don't follow your feelings.
They will lead you in circles, often right back to where you started.

Feelings are confusing.

Often anger is confused with fear. Often hope and infatuation is confused with trust and love.

In the case of the diet above, you should not set a goal to feel better about yourself . . . because how you feel is often too easily impacted by many outside factors - things outside of our control.

And besides, feelings are not measurable and often very related more to how I felt 10 minutes or 10 hours ago, than any set standard. So it is often tough to tell how much better you feel from one week to the next - or from one year to the next.

Sure, you can set a goal of losing 10lbs or 2 inches from your waist, and you can say that you should feel better because of that, but there is no guarantee that you will.

In fact, you may feel that given all the work you did, you should feel better than you actually do, only to cause you to give up on any further efforts.

Let Your Goals Drive Your Actions

Bottom line, follow your vision and your goals . . . and they will lead you to where you want to be, even in the midst of tumultuous feelings.

And besides, and you've heard me say it 1000s of times - Let Your Goals Drive Your Actions.

Set your goals - make them what you want, not what you want to feel. The feelings will follow, if your goals are truly what you want.

Change Yourself And You Will Change The World Around You

We don't see the world as it is - we see it as we are and as we feel.

If you feel good about yourself, you see the world as a reflection of that. If you are insecure and lack confidence with your life, then you will find events and surround yourself with people that validate those feelings too.

So, if you want to change the world, you can try to change everyone and everything around you - or you can change yourself and see everyone and everything around you change too.

I don't care how objective you try to be - what you experience - happiness, sadness, anger, jealousy, wraith, joy, pride and even love, isn't just black and white truth - it's a reflection of who you are, how you think, how you live, what you do, and even where you live.

A Personal Reminder

Last month, I was reminded of this idea once again - in my own life. A couple events occurred in my life that shook my confidence and rocked the foundation of my life.

The funny thing is that the events were not that big of a deal. In fact, as I look back they were completely foreseeable and almost silly. So they shouldn't have impacted me at all. But at the time, I was doubting some things in my own heart. And when the events happened, it reflected back what I was already feeling - and they were nearly crippling.

Had these events occurred the month before or even this month, they would have hardly impacted me at all - had I even noticed them. But when I was feeling a little insecure about a couple things in my life, my subconscious was looking for validation of those insecurities. And of course, it found the validation - as it ALWAYS will.

You Can Choose The Feelings You Want Validated

Everyday, there are things that will happen around you that will validate nearly anything and everything you want to feel. If you feel pretty, you will find validation. If you don't, you will find that too. Smart, dumb, fun, angry - anything you feel, your subconscious will validate for you - it will find (or create) validation to perpetuate the feelings you are experiencing about yourself.

The funny thing is that validation doesn't always come from where we thought, or hoped, it would. That can cause anxiety. But it shouldn't, because it isn't about the others around us, it's about us. It's our subconscious looking to make you feel safe in how you are feeling by validating your thoughts. Accept it - it is what it is, a reflection of you, not the people around you.

So rather than looking for validation of what you want to believe about yourself - behave and feel what you want to feel about yourself first.

Be the person you want to be, and the feelings will follow. And where the feeling lie, so lies your filter - and inevitably, validation for your feelings.

Be confident, and you will feel confident - and find validation for your confidence.

Be happy and you will feel happy - and you will see happiness all around you - validating and expanding your own happiness.

Love and you will feel love - and without a doubt, you will see love all around you.

YOU have the ultimate power over YOUR LIFE, over the world within which YOU LIVE. You can choose how you feel and what you surround yourself with - happiness, sadness, love, or anger, simply by choosing to behave in a manner that reflects those feelings.

And most importantly, you will not only will you change yourself, but you will change the world around you.


**** But here is a quick warning . . . the feelings you want to validate must be real, not made up or faked, or the validation you find will feel just as insincere as the feelings you are trying to validate.

Self-Sabotage or Self-Preservation?

There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs with many people who decide to “change” their life for the better. They commit very deeply to the process of change – truly believing they will do what ever it takes to make the change become permanent. But just as they are about to “break through” to the next level, they disengage from the process and go back to their old self.

Why is this? Why do they pull-back from change just as things are getting good?

Is it because they changed their minds and don't really believe in their goals anymore? Or because they don't think the process is working for them?

I don't think so!

Even though they may say and "feel" both of these things, I don't believe it to be true. In fact, I think that just the opposite is true. And the longer I coach, the more I see it happen.

You see, up until the point of backing down, most people actively participate in the change process at a conscious level. They make real decisions to be who they want to be. And they are very motivated.

Unfortunately though, change in the early stages isn't permanent - it's just surface changes. Real change takes time and requires a deeper commitment. It requires changing habit patterns which are subconscious thoughts - and these are not as easily changed.

Sure, they get close to making a real difference long term, but they never carry through because of an incredible strong drive to quit and / or destroy everything they've worked for up to this point. And it feels the longer they fight it, the stronger the feeling grows.

It is precisely at this point that most people quit and go back to who they have always been – back to what feels comfortable every day. It is really a shame, because just as the pull becomes strongest is the precise time that you have to find a way to push through – at a conscious level – because your gut (your inner voice) is doing everything it can to hold you back – to keep you from taking that next step.

And it is doing so more out of self-preservation than anything else!

The very survival of everything you have counted on as “truth” depends on you not going any further. In the next couple steps you take, you will begin to see a new truth. Each step is a challenge to what you have always known and will redefine your world image. Your subconscious knows that you are on the verge of breaking free from your comfort zone as it is right now – and reaching a new plateau in your life. And this plateau in your life will leave the past as simply that – your past.

Up until this breakthrough, the tug of your old self grows with each passing day – until you feel like you can't go another step. Do not succumb to these tugs and go back to their comfortable life. If and when you have the strength to step through that invisible barrier, that is your comfort zone, you will no longer feel that ever-increasing tug. You will find a new freedom and drive to keep moving forward.

Don't get me wrong, you will still feel the tug of your old self. But after breakthrough, with each passing day, the tug will get weaker – and your new path will gain strength. The new you will begin to take shape.

It's not that you forget who you were, it's simply that you begin to see yourself as something new – as something re-defined.

So here, if anywhere, is where you need to find someone to support your journey – to encourage you to keep moving forward – to help you find what lies outside your comfort zone.

Sadly, too often, you can't count on your family or your friends of old on this journey. It's not because they don't love and support you or because they don't want what's best for you. Instead, the problem with those who love you so dearly is that from where they stand (usually inside your comfort zone), the pain you will endure is being caused by your efforts to change, not by the struggle to break from your old habits. They want to you be who they have always know you to be, more so than who you can be.

Many people call this process self-sabotage. Honestly, I think the name is wrong. It's not sabotage at all, it's actually self-preservation. To see it as “against” you is, in my opinion, looking at it from the wrong perspective. And this perspective actually makes it more difficult to overcome. Conversely, when you see it as an attempt of preservation of the old you, it is actually easier to step through and overcome.

It's not you trying to sabotage your dreams – it's you trying to save the only YOU that you ever known – the YOU that you've always been.

Here is the simple truth - "You will always be you." And instead of leaving the old you behind, you will add to it. You will learn new things, new tricks and gain new experiences.

As I said in one of my earliest blogs, Be Willing To Give Up Everything To Get What You Want, you have to willing to give up what you currently have in order to create or get what you want. And now you can see, more than anything else, what you have to be willing to give up is what previously defined YOU – and allow something new to grow and become who you are.

Make Yourself Happy Whenever You Want

All too often, people think that their feelings emanate from somewhere inside themselves that they can't control. They are happy, sad, fearful, angry or even jealous, because of something that is out of their control. Not true - nothing could be further from the truth.

Your feelings are yours and yours alone. You can choose any one of those feelings at anytime, regardless of your circumstances.

Think about it, could you make yourself depressed right now? How about angry? Or even sad?

I know I could. It's so easy to get yourself worked up over negative actions and thoughts which generate negative feelings. But believe it or not, it's just as easy to do the same thing with positive feelings - but most of us rarely choose to do it.

If you want to be happy - then choose it. Smile. Dance. Run. Skip. Eat Chocolate. Play Golf. Be Happy. Whatever it is that makes YOU happy.

Act happy, think happy thoughts, and you will feel it.

If you want to be proud of yourself - then choose it. Do the things that you know make you feel proud and stop focusing on the ones that strip you of that feeling.

Act proud, think prideful thoughts, and you will feel proud of yourself.

I know, this all sounds so simple. In truth, it is. What's difficult . . . is actually doing it, because we often forget that we have this power over our own lives.

So as you go about your day today, rather than letting your feelings just "happen" to you, choose to feel the way you want to feel - and make those feelings a reality.