From Logic to Feeling: Getting Real

Elliot had a tumour the size of a small orange growing just behind his forehead. The surgery was a success. But Elliot was not the same person afterward.

Before the surgery Elliot was a successful corporate lawyer. Afterward, he could not hold down a job. While there was nothing wrong with his logic, memory, attention or any cognitive ability, he was unable to access his feelings. He was unable to make the simplest of decisions, ruminating over the tiniest pro and con details with no resolution. He had no idea how he felt about anything.

His wife left him. He made investments that lost him all his savings, and he ended up living in a spare bedroom in his brother's home.

If you think you can navigate your life well enough with just intellect and reason, think again.

But this is not what we are taught. The accepted wisdom is "Watch out for your feelings - they will lead you astray." "Intuition is for the weak-minded." We are told that relying on your gut feeling is the surest way to go astray. We need to rein in our gut instinct with reason, logic and clear thinking. Critical thinking is the path to success in corporate and personal life. Where I live, Singapore, critical thinking is at the top of the list of essential skills for high school and university students.

Nobody, but nobody pays any attention to how we feel about anything.

And being aware of, and using, how we feel is actually life's secret sauce.

Tuning into how you feel is the key to having agency in your life

When did you stop hanging on every word your parents and teachers said and start 'thinking' for yourself? Was it around 18? Or 28? or are you still in thrall to society's rules and pressures?

Gabor Mate wrote a book called The Myth of Normal, about how our compulsion to be the same as everyone else and follow the norms of society has created chronic and critical illnesses in us that we do not understand. He tells us that following our gut feeling helps us to connect with our authentic selves and acts as a bulwark against the pull of society's norms. If we don't allow our gut to guide us, we will put our health in jeopardy by forcing ourselves to go against our natural way of being in an effort to fit in. He warns us that “lack of authenticity makes itself known through tension or anxiety, irritability or regret, depression or fatigue" which tells us we've abandoned our own needs and values. He asks us to ask ourselves “What fears or narratives kept me from being myself?”

Having agency means acknowledging how we are feeling, and through this, starting to be true to ourselves. It's our feelings that give us the sense of who we are deep down. When we acknowledge these, we 'know' what we should do next. And what we should do next is what our authentic self would do, not what others require of us.

Awareness of our feelings is the secret to making the right life choices

"Emotions evolved for one specific purpose: to help us live and reproduce a little bit better. That's it. They're feedback mechanisms telling us that something is either likely right or likely wrong for us - nothing more, nothing less." So says Mark Manson in his bestselling book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

Our feelings are there to help us steer ourselves through life. If you feel bad, it's a signal that something needs to be sorted out, that you've got some unfinished business.

I've been a people-pleaser all my life, which leaves a lot of stuff unsaid and undone. No wonder I have a deep reservoir of anger buried in me, screaming to escape. I have had to learn to let my anger out gradually, in small, limited bursts in order to prevent a sudden rush of rage turning my life into crisis. This anger tells me about all that I have left unsaid over the years: all the confrontations I should have had as I stood up for myself. Today it guides me as I try to express my true self.

On the other hand, when you feel good your emotions are telling you that you have done something positive. They reinforce effective action and similarly guide you through the day.

Yes, feelings need to be tempered with rational thought - with our ability to think through our actions. But relying too much on thought takes away the indefinable power of our emotions to tell us how we are really doing. They go deeper than thought, reaching to the heart of who we are in body and soul. Thought is more superficial, residing somewhere above our head, easily blown away by the gentle wind of an alternative viewpoint.

It's feelings that make us get up and make a difference in the world

How many times have we decided on our purpose, set a goal, or just thought about what we want to do?

And done nothing?

We all know about the failure of good intentions. But according to Daniel Goleman in Emotional Intelligence, a "gut feeling" lets us "drop or pursue that avenue of consideration with greater confidence."

When we allow ourselves to become aware of our gut feeling or our intuition, we are able to inject the motivation into our mental aspirations that kick us into action. While thinking can help us feel good, it's feelings that drive our behaviour. If we are numb to our feelings, we will go through the day in neutral - lifeless and slow to act.

It doesn't matter how many goal-planning and productivity systems you download from your authors. These mental exercises will have no effect on moving the needle of your business or your personal life until you connect with the driving force behind all accomplishment - your feelings.

Using our gut feeling is the only way to survive in an uncertain world

We all want control. We want to control how our future turns out. We want to control how long it takes us to finish a project. We want to control how successful we will be.

And so we set goals, write detailed processes and plans telling us what must happen at each part of the future, and soak up advice from other people telling us how they succeeded. We all desperately want to be able to control how our life turns out.

But life is uncertain. No plan is going to prevent things turning out some other way. The outcome of this need to control is anxiety and obsession. And the antidote is to let go and trust our gut feeling - our intuition - to gently guide us forward. As we listen to that still, small voice inside, we move forward in the present, moment by moment, and watch our life unfold naturally, as it needs to do. And by working with our intuition instead of our linear logic, we work with the forces of nature and time in a partnership, instead of trying to force an unnatural plan onto it.

In Writing on the Intuitive Side of the Brain, Lauren Sapala tells us to let go of trying to please the reader, and instead to focus on ourselves: "Does this idea excite me? Am I curious about this topic/character? Does this feel meaningful to me?"

As we tune into our feelings, we move forward with greater self-assurance than if we try to predict what others want. Our attempt to control the outcome goes against the natural way of the world, which is unpredictable. But giving our intuition centre stage brings us down from that platform of hoping things will turn out as planned, and gives us a solid base from which to work with uncertainty.

Good reasoning is an essential part of decision-making, but today too many gurus emphasise using this in productivity planning and even in relationship management to the exclusion of what our emotions and intuition are also telling us.

Nobody in the success advice world is talking about being guided by our feelings. This gurus continue to inspire hopeful readers and seminar attendees with mental pictures that lead to millions of disheartened aspirants who get nowhere.

It's time we had a conversation about the power of feelings and intuition in helping us guide and spur us toward a life of promise.

Best wishes,

James