Forget How You Feel

There is an excellent post today by Adrian Savage on lifehack.org entitled “To be motivated and successful, first forget how you feel.”

You can’t make yourself feel happy or sad, nor can you send away whatever feelings do have, however hard you try. So waiting to do something until you feel “in the mood,” or basing your choice of actions on how you feel at the time, is to hand over control of your life to the varying state of your stomach, the effect of the weather, or the dizzying gyrations of your love life. Forget about your emotions. They’re no sensible basis for living well or pursuing a successful career.

Read the rest of the article.

Comments

[Charles]

I think care needs to be taken with the idea of not letting emotions rule your life. Of course to keep postponing your tax return until you are in the mood or feel better won't help get it filed. However if one keeps going despite feeling repeatedly negative this is corrosive. Rather than going on stoically I think one has to ask some questions:

- am I unwell? - do I need to go to the Doctor's?

- do I need to make a major shift in my life with my work or where I live?

Finally and perhaps most difficultly we must not ignor repeating negative patterns. I don't where I read it but I am reminded of the story: if you find you've built your house on a volcano, more. If you find that you've done it again you better take notice and then work out why you keep building your house on a volcano before you move again.

[Sathya]

Ended up to this article, when I was searching 'How do you I feel now' experiment.

Mark:
I assume what this post says is against your current way of looking at things.
Am I right?

[Mark Forster]

Sathya:

<< I assume what this post says is against your current way of looking at things. Am I right? >>

Adrian Savage is making the point that your emotions shouldn't rule your life, with which I entirely agree. However I also agree with the comment by Charles that one shouldn't ignore emotions because to do so is inviting disaster.

What one needs to do is to manage one's feelings and emotions so that they are a positive influence on one's life. Most of my work is about how to do just this. Properly handled, feelings are *the* major motivator.

So, take the example of the tax return. No one likes doing their tax return. But also no one likes the dreadful feeling of having left it to the very last minute before the deadline. Both of these are strong feelings. But the secret is to manage the feelings so that they motivate you to get it done in order to avoid the even worse feelings later on.

I had my last tax return submitted and paid for at the earliest possible moment - and guess what, I haven't had to think about my tax return at all for the last nine months!

[Sathya]

Well said Mark.
Thank you 🙏