Stop Cutting Yourself Off from This Superpower: How Honoring The Way You Feel Can Fuel Your Success

In the high performance and achievement space we’re taught (surprisingly often🤨) to ignore how we feel, and focus only on what we do.

👉 Discipline, they say, is doing the thing regardless of how you feel.
👉 Hustle, they say, is required, and that means working long and hard, regardless of how you feel.
👉 Achieving, we’ve been taught, is about showing up even when you don’t feel like it.

Anyone? Anyone else heard all this stuff?!

Ok, but here's the thing...YES, I honor the value of showing up on days when you’d really rather not, because there are an infinite number of possible reasons you may not want to on any particular day...AND...I believe the message we repeatedly get has an undertone that we’re unintentionally making more powerful than the original message, and that is this:

There’s no space for how you feel at the table, so stop paying attention to that. It’s useless information that’s only going to derail or delay you. Stay busy doing, and don’t stop to feel. Feeling is for the lazy and the weak.

Of course, not in so many words, but honestly, that’s the popular, hustle harder message, no? The only talk about noticing what you feel is a discussion on how to run those feelings over. But that path has consequences.

• We’re dehumanizing the experience of achieving. Experiencing emotions is like a faucet without a hot and cold knob. If you try to turn down (or off) feeling the lows, you’ll unintentionally turn down (or off) feeling the highs, too.
• The way you feel is a message, and to be completely detached from that information is a fast track to building a life that is wildly out of alignment and/or balance (exhaustion and burnout ring any bells?).
• Turning off your connection to how you feel – which, in its most elevated form, is your intuition, inner guidance, gut knowing – is turning off your connection to one of your superpowers!

One of the core reasons we’re told (so repeatedly) to ignore how we feel is because creating big goals and dreams often (always?) calls us to step outside our comfort zone. And stepping outside your comfort zone is, well, uncomfortable. Instead of teaching you how to honor your full human experience, and how to harness the wisdom that lies within, it’s a whole lot faster and easier to just teach, “Forget about how you feel!” Simply said, it’s a lot easier to teach people to just blindly push toward their goals, regardless of how they feel, and in the short term, it usually creates quicker results.

You 10xed, you got the results you wanted, so what are you whining about with all this feeling nonsense? 

Riddle me this - What do all of these things (list below) have in common?

• Burnout.
• Exhaustion.
• Chronic anxiousness.
• Chronic stress.
• A career you hate.
• A partner you don’t know.
• A family that doesn’t know you.
• A life full of achievement and a soul full of emptiness.

Answer: None of them just pop up one day. All of them give you sign, after sign, after sign, in the form of feelings, and too often we choose to ignore those signs (feelings) because we’re taught that what we feel doesn’t have a place at the table. We’re not taught what to do with the information – How do I feel? Why do I feel that way? – so we keep running it over, until the effects of those choices are so fully suffocating, we must take some action to rectify the now urgent situation. Then, and only then, will we consider giving feelings the microphone.

That path is not the only option. It doesn’t have to play out like that. Reaching for big goals doesn’t mean a life of shutting down how you feel in the name of achievement. There is a path that includes honoring and utilizing both doing and feeling. That path is the path of discernment.

Discernment - perception in the absence of judgment

Following the path of discernment means allowing yourself to notice, and then act, without judgement. It looks like this:

Step 1: Without any judgement, how do I feel?

Step 2: Without any judgement, why might I be feeling this way?

Step 3: Without any judgement, decide what to do with that information.  

EXAMPLE 1

(Step 1: How do I feel?) I feel scared and anxious.

(Step 2: Why do I feel that way?) I’ve never given a talk in front of people before and I’m worried I won’t do well. I’m stepping outside my comfort zone, which is uncomfortable.

(Step 3: What do I choose to do with this info?) I’m choose to show up anyway, because giving this talk is really important to me.

(Notice no judgement is required to effectively gather and use the info.) You don’t need to belittle yourself for feeling scared and anxious, or beat yourself up for not having taken more speaking lessons before today.

EXAMPLE 2

(Step 1: How do I feel?) I feel exhausted and unmotivated.

(Step 2: Why do I feel that way?) I’ve been lighting the candle at both ends for weeks trying to reach my current goal.

(Step 3: What do I choose to do with this info?) My morning routine is really important to me, and a big part of me reaching my goals, but right now I need to honor my health and get back to fully charged, because I’m far more effective from that place. I’m going to take this week off to get some additional rest. I’m also going to cancel that party I was going to attend this weekend.  

Notice: no judgement is required to effectively gather and use this info. You don’t have to tell yourself that you’re weak and pathetic for being tired, beat yourself up for choosing to slow down, or tell yourself stories about how slowing down for a week is going to ruin everything you’ve been working so hard for.

These are two very simple examples, but hopefully they make the process very clear.

👉 How do I feel?
👉 Why do I feel this way?
👉 What do I choose to do with this info?

How you feel isn’t a weakness. At the most basic level, it’s just information. Give yourself permission to use discernment to collect and use that information to help you move toward your goals in a way that feels aligned and balanced. Yes, reaching big goals WITH alignment and balance is an option. But to do that, you’ve got to be connected to how you feel along the way (not just when you feel the heat of the flames from the dumpster fire you created by ignoring your feelings for so long).

Don’t turn off your superpowers because its faster and easier to sprint blindly forward with your hair on fire, trying to avoid feeling the flames. That’s just a silly strategy…no?

If this all really landed for you and you want to explore this topic further, this one is for you: Why am I so scared to do the damn thing? (A tool for you!)

What landed here for you? What insights did it create? Follow and drop me a DM on IG @alirspicer - I'd love to hear from you!