Feelings Lie: How Not to Get Fooled

Haven’t we all blamed our circumstances or other people for our feelings?

It was time for the annual service on the System 2000 oil burner that heats our home. As usual, I engaged the technician doing the work. He and I always appreciate the human connection, and as a bonus, I always learn something.

Ed, who is in his 50s and still learning, said, “I enjoy working on the System 2000.”

Then Ed surprised me by adding, “Our younger staff are bewildered by all the electronics in System 2000.”

Ed observed, “They just aren't willing to learn. My manager has told me I must be very careful when I talk to them while training them. Their feelings get hurt when they're corrected.”

“I like the younger technicians,” he defensively explained, “but I must look out for the customer. I don't belittle them when they make an error, but I must ensure the work is done correctly. The customer can’t be without heat at 3:00 AM on a cold night.”

Ed is a thoughtful, soft-spoken guy. I don’t doubt he's sincerely trying to teach, not scold, young technicians.

“When were feelings raised to paramount importance?” Ed wondered.

Feelings are getting in the way of learning. At UCLA Medical School, a professor “was berated by a student for asking if the student could identify a major artery in the operating room, which she could not.”

Many take their feelings as a guide for action. They do not know the ego’s narrative playing in their mind is not a reliable guide for navigating life. Feelings lie.

At Mindset Shifts U, we are part of the solution as we learn why feelings lie.  We do the work so we don’t get tricked by feelings.

This week at Mindset Shifts U, a participant wrote  that through his study of Bonds That Make Us Free, he now understands the “trip-up of all shallow self-improvement programs.” Shallow self-improvement has a “focus on the external - if I can somehow manage my time better, or have more ‘work-life’ balance or create better habits or improve my colleagues or my managing style or whatever. Trying to force a change on the world or how you interface with the world, like pushing the buttons in a different sequence will do the magic.” “How exhausting.”

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I’ve been writing about the dangers of trusting feelings for many years. A version of a 2019 essay I wrote for the Foundation for Economic Education follows.

We have been taught to trust our feelings. Being authentic, we are told, is the key to success. On college campuses, feelings have been elevated to the sacred.

Gillian McCann, a professor of religion at Canada’s Nipissing University, relates the story of her graduate school supervisor advising her “to do whatever [she] felt.” A friend listening to her story quipped, “That kind of advice has ruined a generation.”

Writing with co-author Gitte Bechsgaard, McCann observes that problems with emotional self-regulation and addiction are rapidly growing. They add that “we are living in a culture with an expectation to be authentic and expressive in all life situations—quite independent of context or consequences.”

McCann and Bechsgaard pointedly write, “A mind that is left undeveloped (or not attended to) is… potentially our worst enemy.”

One morning, after setting up my breakfast in my Instant Pot, I sat down and prepared for my workday by watching my thoughts arise. I attended to my mind, especially noticing grievances, even mild annoyances, that could undermine my purpose for the day.

As I sunk into my meditation, I heard the steam hissing furiously from my Instant Pot. The pot had not sealed.

I could blame the Instant Pot for my rage or acknowledge my thoughts of frustration, irritation, and blame ready to erupt.

Mindless, I found myself back in the kitchen, screaming in frustration.

In seconds, I was shocked by the intense emotions seething beneath my placid surface. The hissing steam exposed what was lurking in my mind.

If I was ready to learn, the hissing steam was about to teach me a lesson. I could blame the Instant Pot for my rage or acknowledge my thoughts of frustration, irritation, and blame ready to erupt.

Haven’t we all blamed our circumstances or other people for our feelings? Feeling resentment, we blame our partner for not offering enough support. Feeling anxiety and stress, we blame a traffic delay. Feeling depressed, we are sure it is coming from the state of the world.

We have reversed cause and effect. As the late author Michael Crichton observed, Wet sidewalks don’t cause rain. Likewise, feelings don’t cause thoughts.

You can’t have a feeling without having a thought first. Take a moment now; try to feel anger. Can you feel anger without first conjuring up angry thoughts?

As our feelings become more intense, so do the physical sensations in our body. We seek relief from our swirling thoughts.

Splitting your thoughts from your feelings and pretending something outside yourself is causing them is the beginning of psychological enslavement. The Instant Pot didn’t cause my frustration; its hissing steam revealed my frustration. Traffic doesn’t cause anger; it reveals our anger. Relationships don’t cause resentment; they reveal resentment we are carrying within ourselves.

Yet, we stubbornly insist that our wet sidewalks cause our rain. The more intense our feelings, the more confident we are that other people and circumstances are to blame for the emotions we experience.

As our feelings become more intense, so do the physical sensations in our bodies. Our heart rate may rapidly rise. Our muscles may constrict. Our thinking swirls with rapid-fire thoughts; an external situation has hijacked our attention. We seek relief from our swirling thoughts. For many of us, reaching for our smartphone is an escape from the swirl. Addictions form to escape that swirl.

This past week, you may have experienced anxiety, fear, depression, worry, resentment, frustration, or another intense feeling. I have never met someone who claims to be immune to negative feelings. How we choose to process our feelings is crucial: outside-in or inside-out.

Typically, we process feelings in an outside-in manner. We believe our feelings give us feedback about other people, our circumstances, past events, or future possibilities.

Most of us pay special attention to some negative feelings while easily overlooking others. Judging by the growing number of prescriptions written for anxiety, many pay special attention to anxious thoughts. For some, when anxiety arises, their thinking speeds up. They are gripped by thoughts of Why am I feeling this way? How can I get rid of this feeling? The more their head is filled with thinking, the less present they are to the moment. Taking a prescription drug may seem like the only way to calm the mind.

Looking at feelings through an outside-in mindset, it seems we have a lot of external circumstances to process and manage. After all, if an endless supply of other people and circumstances are causing our feelings, it is natural to have a lot on our minds.

However, we misunderstand how the mind operates when we attempt to understand our feelings from an outside-in mindset.

No feelings can ever exist separate from our thoughts. We are always experiencing our thinking and our feelings from the inside out.

In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” From an inside-out mindset, our feelings are a barometer, giving us feedback on the quality of our current thinking.

Understanding that we can only experience life inside-out, not outside-in, is the beginning of taking responsibility and experiencing psychological freedom.

In 1895, the first silent movie was shown in Paris, France. The less-than-a-minute movie simply showed a train arriving in a station. There are perhaps apocryphal accounts of audience members rushing out of the theater in fear. The audience experienced the train bearing down on them; the experience of projection was new.

Apocryphal or not, the story provides a good metaphor. Gripped by an outside-in mindset, we try to flee our mind’s theater by resisting the thoughts and feelings we have created. The feelings we are having in any given moment are arising from our thoughts, not from our external circumstances.

We project our thinking onto the world. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey wrote, “We see the world, not as it is, but as we are.”

Each moment, we choose whether to take responsibility for our experience in life. When we look at our experience through an outside-in mindset, we believe our feelings give us honest feedback about our circumstances and other people. This outside-in mindset leads to blame.

The alternative is to experience life through an inside-out mindset. Moment by moment, we can interpret our feelings as signals, giving reliable feedback on the quality of our thinking.

Life requires action. When action is needed, an inside-out mindset allows us to act from our highest purpose and values. In contrast, using an outside-in mindset, we approach a problem with a built-in lack of clarity. This lack of clarity undermines our problem-solving ability. Indeed, the harder the problem is, the more the lack of clarity in the outside-in mindset works against us. As the popular saying goes, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”

We can go through life kicking and screaming, or we can be a happy learner. To stubbornly maintain that life is being lived outside-in is to be devoted to misery.

To be a happy learner, remember that your interpretation of an “external” situation is a big clue to your state of mind.

Observe when intense feelings arise. Observe any thoughts blaming other people or circumstances for your feelings.

For example, do bad drivers piss you off? If so, observe the accusations you are making. Perhaps you are a good driver but inconsiderate in other situations. If you are willing to learn, life gives you insight into the contents of your thinking.

Understanding that life is lived inside-out, practice the subtraction solution: have a little willingness to say, I must be mistaken because I’m blaming.

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus began his life as a slave. He overcame physical bondage and then attended to his mind to free himself of his own inner chains. In the collection of his writing The Enchiridion, he shared his timeless discovery: “People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them.” Epictetus continued:

When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others.

The good news is life’s situations—even hissing steam—will instruct us if we are willing to learn to attend to our mind from an inside-out mindset.

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