The Balance of FEELINGS

Make room for a full emotional life without turning every difficult feeling into a problem.

When you stop feeling bad about feeling bad, you feel better.

That sounds simple, but it changes so much. You have a negative feeling, and then you decide you should not be having it. You know how to manage your mind, so you tell yourself you ought to feel better.

Now you have doubled down on feeling bad.

I spent so much of my life thinking I should feel better more of the time. Understanding that being human includes a contrast in emotion helped me be at peace with my experience instead of constantly arguing with it.

The goal is not to make every thought positive. It is to become more deliberate about the balance of feelings you experience.

Imagine a silver platter of feelings

I use this image with my students: I am walking around a dinner party carrying a beautiful platter. Instead of offering appetizers, I am offering feelings.

Which ones would you choose?

You might immediately reach for happiness, excitement, and love. But imagine becoming human and choosing the emotional repertoire for your life. Would you really want to leave sadness behind?

You would be happy during moments you consider sad. You would feel excited about experiences you consider painful. That is not the human life most of us want.

When we understand that thoughts create feelings, we have the power to choose what we think. That does not mean we want to use that power to feel wonderful all the time.

There is a huge difference between choosing sadness because it is what you want to feel and believing the world has forced sadness on you with no choice available.

Why this matters for buffering

If you think the outside world creates your feelings, and you cannot control the outside world, escaping those feelings can seem like your only option.

That is why so many people buffer. They seek a false pleasure because they do not know how else to feel better.

But your thoughts create your feelings. When you understand what you are thinking, you can decide whether you want to keep that thought or change it.

There is an important order to this work: First, become aware. Then be willing to feel the emotion all the way through, for as long as it takes. Only then work on changing the thought.

If your reason for trying to feel better is that you do not believe you can manage the emotion, you need to learn how to feel it. Rushing to positive thinking is not the same thing as allowing a feeling.

Wanted feelings: choose a full human experience

The first group is wanted feelings. These are the emotions you would choose from the platter because you want a balanced human experience.

Happiness might be one. Sadness might be another. I want to feel heartbroken sometimes, including when something does not work out for my child or when I go after a huge dream and do not achieve it.

I do not think being willing to feel heartbreak is detrimental to me. But you get to decide what belongs in your own emotional repertoire.

When you choose a feeling, identify the thought creating it. If you think your puppy makes you happy, ask what you think when your puppy comes into the room. That thought is what creates the happiness.

The same is true for the feelings you consider negative. You can want sadness without wanting self-pity. You can choose to experience anger and process it instead of reacting from it.

Unwanted feelings: allow them instead of resisting

The second group contains feelings you would not pick from the platter but that are part of your current experience.

These are feelings to allow. Resisting, denying, or avoiding them does not help you understand them.

If you are anxious about being anxious, you compound the experience. If you worry about your worry, you add another layer.

Try being willing to include that feeling on the negative side of your human experience. You can acknowledge it, find the thought creating it, and feel it without immediately trying to push it away.

That willingness gives you authority in a way rejection does not. Once you understand what you are thinking and feeling, you can decide whether you want to change the thought.

Do not skip that understanding in a rush to make yourself feel positive.

Indulgent feelings: stop using them to avoid action

The third group is indulgent feelings. These are emotions we use to protect ourselves from showing up in our lives. I teach that we need to stop indulging in them.

Confusion is an example. We think it happens to us, but we create it with thoughts like not knowing what to do or not understanding the next step.

Confusion does not lead to clarity. It keeps us stuck.

You can practice thinking that you are figuring it out, learning, or understanding instead. Those thoughts create a different experience and let you move forward.

Self-pity, hopelessness, and feeling left out can also become indulgent. So can worry, doubt, or anger when we use them to avoid taking action rather than processing them.

My friend Merrick laughs that I am the person who feels wonderful about not being invited to a party. I am an introvert. I get energy from being alone, and big parties are not my favorite thing.

The invitation is not what determines whether I feel left out. How I think about it does.

Choose your balance on purpose

Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. Put positive on one side and negative on the other.

List the feelings you want to include. Happy and sad might both belong. Delighted and disgusted might both belong. They do not have to be exact opposites.

Then compare that list with the emotions you actually experience. Which have you been choosing deliberately? Which are part of your experience that you have been resisting? Which are you indulging in to keep yourself from acting?

Be willing to add new emotions and practice them. Rehearse the positive feelings that help you create your dreams. Allow the negative ones you have been afraid to feel. Stop indulging in the ones that keep you from showing up.

Your feelings drive your actions and results. Creating a deliberate balance of feelings is part of creating the life you want.

You do not need to feel great all the time. You need to understand your experience, be willing to feel it, and decide on purpose what you want to practice.