Ending Our Resistance to Life, Part 1

Why “I Don’t Feel Like It,” Is a Lousy Excuse

You have been taught you must adjust your feelings before you can do something. That order is backwards… Actions influence, even create, feelings… [For example] trying to encourage depressed people to feel like taking a walk may be at first difficult or impossible. So we start with changing behavior, not trying to work on feelings directly.

--David K. Reynolds, Constructive Living for Mental Health

On a walk, I encountered a neighbor who shared her concerns about her bright high school-aged son. “He wants to be an architect, but he won’t complete assignments or study,” the neighbor related. “When I encourage him to pursue his goals by studying more, he says, ‘I don’t feel like it.’”

“The next time you have this conversation,” I advised, “ask him if he thinks you like getting out of bed in the morning and going to work?” My neighbor laughed with recognition, so I continued.

I explained to my neighbor that her son was taking his I don’t feel like it feeling state as a guide to action. Feelings are a real-time signal of the quality of one’s thinking; thoughts lead to feelings. Her son was blind to the link between his thoughts and feelings. He was sure his feelings had more to do with his world, teachers, and textbooks rather than his internal beliefs and thinking.

You don't need to “work with” feelings. You don't need to express them or “get them out.” You just need to notice them and go on with your life.

--David K. Reynolds, Constructive Living for Mental Health

My neighbor’s son was sure “they” were keeping him from reaching his goal.

I wanted to convey the universality of feeling internal resistance to taking action, so I clumsily shared this joke by the late Jesuit priest and psychotherapist Anthony de Mello.

[A] gentleman knocks…on his son’s door.

“Jaime,” he says, “wake up!”

Jaime answers, “I don’t want to get up, Papa.”

The father shouts, “Get up, you have to go to school.”

Jaime says, “I don’t want to go to school.”

“Why not?” asks the father.

“Three reasons,” says Jaime. “First, because it’s so dull; second, the kids tease me; and third, I hate school.”

And the father says, “Well, I am going to give you three reasons why you must go to school. First, because it is your duty; second, because you are forty-five years old, and third, because you are the headmaster.”

De Mello adds an admonition for all of us: “Wake up, wake up! You’ve grown up. You’re too big to be asleep. Wake up! Stop playing with your toys.”

You don't need any mental preparations before changing what you do… When you discover this truth not by just reading about it, but by practicing it, and experiencing it then you discover there is great of freedom in your life.

--David K. Reynolds, Constructive Living for Mental Health

De Mello is right. Via our thinking, we all play the I don’t feel like it theme.

Today, notice that no matter what you are doing, even if you have a dream job, a part of your thinking is arguing that you should be doing something else.

Are you washing dishes? Maybe you think the dishes can wait until the morning, or someone else in the family should wash them.

Are you a salesman explaining something to a client? Part of your mind may distract you with resentful feelings over your client’s “stupid questions.” When you don’t make a sales bonus at the end of the year, you are sure the lousy economy and an unsupportive sales manager held you back—not your mindset.

The neighbor’s son may study halfheartedly. We wash the last pot and skip cleaning the counters. We may stall on going back to the client with essential details.

We say, I don’t feel like reading. I don’t feel like exercising. I don’t feel like cooking.

I don’t feel like eating real food. I don’t feel like being kind to my partner. The list is endless.

When entrepreneurs  gathered for a retreat at an exclusive resort in Utah, one participant expressed concern about what he observed as a lack of commitment to achievement: “Everyone wants to work at SpaceX; no one wants to go to engineering school.”

At times, each of us has been the actor who phones in a performance. When we do, we harm ourselves.

Take heed; there is wisdom in the adage: how you do anything is how you do everything. If we think we can save our best for when we decide it matters, we are telling ourselves a lie. Our mindset matters.

There was a time when my understanding of the role of mindset was primitive. When I was a rookie professor, some days I felt on, and some days I didn’t feel like teaching. I had not yet learned to discount those feelings. As a consequence, some classes would be a slog. I would acutely notice if the room was too hot or cold, if some students were not paying attention, if I felt inspired, etc. The more I noticed these external factors, the more I didn’t feel like it, and the more I falsely believed I had a good reason for not feeling like it.

Then I caught on. Still, there were days I didn’t feel like teaching. 

Yet, almost 100% of the time, five minutes into the class period, any not feeling like it noise in my head vanished.

The critical variable was my willingness to treat as irrelevant any thoughts or feelings that interfered with 100% presence for my students. Notice you can’t will presence, but you can choose to subtract what is not presence.

The time may come when we bound out of bed “feeling like it.” Until then, we can stop shadowboxing with the effects of our state of mind. We can stop blaming other people and our circumstances for our decision to not feel like it.

You know you must shoulder responsibility for your own actions despite the excuses provided by pseudo-experts in psychology, social work, and the legal systems. Society never makes us do what we do. Race never makes us do what we do. Our upbringing never makes us do what we do. We do what we do.

--David K. Reynolds, Constructive Living for Mental Health