How to Use Your Feelings

In last week's post, I talked about how feelings can provide valuable information when you're trying to make decisions. They can also serve as feedback for you once a decision has been made and you're in the process of carrying it out. I promised to give you ideas this week about how to use your feelings, to make them work for you to create a happier life, even if the life you have is already pretty good.

Sometimes we do have feelings that are gut instinct. You don't know why you're suddenly tingling with anticipation or why the hair is standing up on the back of your neck. You just know those feelings are happening. I talked last week about how those feelings can be responses to environmental inputs, even if you are not consciously aware that something significant is happening.

Most of the time, though, I believe our feelings are created by our thoughts. And it's especially difficult to control emotions that are generated by automatic thoughts, thoughts that run in the background. That mental soundtrack is made up of your long-time attitudes, social conditioning, and personal opinions. If you want to use your feelings to your own benefit, it's important to take control of your thoughts and to deliberately create new ones that move you toward the future you want for yourself.

Examining Where My Thoughts Originated

When I was depressed, the first thing I had to do to recover was to identify the thoughts that ran through my mind and to consciously consider whether they were based in fact or not. I lived with a great deal of criticism during the first four decades of my life. There was so much criticism from people I loved that I thought I was truly a bad person, mostly undeserving of happiness.

This worked out very well for the critics because it meant that I spent a lot of time and effort trying to please them. But it did not work out so well for me. When I began identifying the thoughts that made me feel terrible, I realized that many of them were based in untruths about me.

I told myself I was lazy, ugly, and worthless in an effort to make myself work harder, to be productive, attractive, and worthy. Instead, I ended up feeling worse about myself because I was never able to please the critics. Up to and including the critic in my own head, whom you may know as Little Miss Goody Two Shoes.

When you try and try and try to please someone or several someones who refuse to be pleased, eventually you give up hope of ever winning their approval or praise. And that is what happened to me. I fell into depression that lasted for years.

My emotions were working against me, and they continued to do so, until I decided I didn't have to feel that way anymore. I started telling myself better, not to mention truer stories, and my depression lifted.

You can make your emotions work for you by beginning where I did, by seeing yourself as someone who is worthy of acceptance, approval, and praise, whether you have been getting these things from others or not.

You can also choose to focus on the good things others say about you, no matter how insignificant they may seem. There were always people in my life who appreciated the good things about me, but I frequently discounted their opinions because the people closest to me told me otherwise. I didn't see for a long time how that served their interests at the expense of mine.

Do you have someone in your life who needs to make you stupid so they can seem smart? Or someone who brings up all your mistakes and failings so they can say they told you so? Or someone who doesn't want to hear your opinion because they want to control everything?

When I stopped letting those people influence me, I felt so much better. It was almost unbelievable. I became happier and healthier by choosing to focus on my good characteristics and my good actions and celebrating them.

Whether I received outside validation for them or not, I developed my own positive opinion about myself, and I focused on the good feelings of pride, satisfaction, and hopefulness. You can do that too.

Focus on Future Feelings

Many, if not most of us, struggle with making choices in the present that will create a better future because of how we feel in the present moment. If we have to do things that make us feel sort of bad now in order to feel good sometime far in the future, we often choose to feel good now and pretend that we won't feel bad in the future.

This doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you a human being. But being a human means you can change, and putting your focus on future feelings is a great way to direct your actions in the present.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Let's say you want to change jobs because you think being in a better job would be both mentally stimulating and financially rewarding. A better job would give you more time to spend with family and friends. It would give you financial freedom. You dream about how nice it would be to have that better job, but you don't take action in the present to get the job because you're focusing on all the obstacles in your path.

You would have to identify where the job would be, update your resume, apply for the position, go through the interview process, and maybe be rejected during that process if you even get an interview in the first place. And what if you ended up not fitting in very well? Your thoughts about all the obstacles make you feel anxious and overwhelmed, and you let those emotions paralyze you.

You don't take action to get a new job, and you stay stuck where you are, dreaming of something better, but never letting yourself go for it. Substitute your dream of choice for the job in my example. Do you want or need to get a divorce, to create a new relationship, to find a better place to live, to be a better parent, to get in better shape, or to make a fresh start of any kind?

If you keep thinking about the obstacles, you can overwhelm yourself with fear and doubt in the present, which keeps you from moving forward toward the future you want. What if you decided, instead, to focus on how you will feel when you are in the new situation? Could focusing on those emotions create the energy and the will you need to take action to create that better future for yourself?

I don't just believe it can. I know it can. Concentrating on the emotions you will feel when you get to your goal is effective, because those positive feelings actually pull you toward that specific future.

Focusing on the eventual outcome and the feelings I would have when I got there has helped me through the most difficult changes of my life, including getting divorces I didn't want but knew I needed, standing strong as a parent when caving in would have been so much easier, and uprooting my life and planning myself in a new place I love.

If you focus on how great it will feel to be lean and strong and fit into your pants more comfortably, really focus on how proud and satisfied you will feel, it's much easier to go to the gym or out for a walk. If you focus instead on how tired you are right now, or how cold it is outside, or how you hate to sweat, it's easier to say to yourself, I'll go tomorrow.

As long as you focus on the short-term, unpleasant emotions, tomorrow will simply be a repeat of today. But if you focus on how amazing you will feel when you get to your goal, it becomes easier to put in the effort today.

You know this, of course, but I'm talking about really getting yourself fired up about feeling the superb emotions you will create for yourself when you get to your goal. I truly believe there is magic in doing this. I have seen that magic in my own life many times.

Feelings Drive Your Actions

As I said last week, it isn't a good idea to always go with your feelings and leave out all other factors. But feelings inform our actions, and our actions in turn create more feelings. When I focus on the good feelings I will have in the future, if I take certain steps now, those steps become much easier to take.

Picturing myself living happily in my new home helped me put one foot in front of the other and take it one day at a time, one action at a time. The process of closing the purchase and making repairs and packing up my belongings and moving yet again is not my idea of fun. But living in my new home was more than worth all that effort.

How would you feel a year from now if you were in that new job, or relationship, or home? How would you feel if you had learned that new skill or if you had gotten into great physical shape? Can you imagine those feelings strongly enough to ignore the minor unpleasantness you'll have to go through today and tomorrow, and one day at a time until you get there?

Do you think it would all be worth it? This is how you can use your emotions to create better outcomes for yourself, regardless of your current circumstances. Imagine the great feelings. Feel those feelings. Do what you can today. Do both of these things again tomorrow, and do them one day at a time until the day comes when you wake up and pinch yourself because your dream has become your reality.

You can do this. I know it, and you know it. In fact, we both feel it.

By the way, if you do take a step today, you're going to feel at least a little bit better today because you've accomplished something on the way to your ultimate goal. When I work out, I feel proud of myself that day, as well as months later when I'm noticeably stronger and more fit.

When you do arrive at your goal and you feel the positive emotions you expected to feel, please let yourself enjoy those feelings. Allow yourself to wallow, to wallow in the joy and the satisfaction because my friend, you will have earned it.