by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Your Feelings and Emotions are Important but They’re Usually Not a Source of Wisdom
If you spend five minutes in the self-help section of a bookshop or scrolling through ‘therapy’ content online then you’ll probably come away with the overwhelming need to “Just get in touch with your feelings“.
Apparently, getting in touch with your feelings and using them as the compass to guide you in all areas of life is the magical ingredient that will finally set you free of yourself so you can feel more, express more, honour your truth, trust your feelings, and follow whatever feels ‘right’.
All you have to do is just feel and then everything else will somehow fall into place.
Now, before anybody starts sharpening their pitchforks, let me say something from the outset which is that I actually agree with this in part – in fact, one of the central ideas behind the work I do is that many of our deepest problems come from refusing to feel what is already inside us.
This avoidance of feelings is why:
- We distract ourselves.
- We numb ourselves.
- We intellectualise.
- We stay busy.
- We blame other people.
- We chase ‘success‘.
- We hide behind identities.
- Etc. etc. etc.
In other words, we’ll do pretty much anything to avoid sitting quietly with whatever uncomfortable truth is trying to make itself known to us.
This is why I’m a huge believer in the phrase:
“You have to feel it to heal it”.
Tbh, my clients are probably sick of hearing it but I’ve seen it transform my own life and I’ve watched it happen over and over again with the people that I’ve worked with over the years because when people finally stop resisting grief, shame, fear, anger. sadness, or any other ‘difficult’ feeling then the emotional knot inside them starts to loosen, life starts flowing again, and the inner pressure finally eases.
So yes, feeling matters pretty deeply but here’s where the modern conversation often goes badly wrong and messes up peoples’ lives:
Many people don’t stop at feeling their emotions – they start believing them and putting their feelings on a pedestal as a substitute for actual wisdom.
In the worst cases, they actually identify with their feelings and start thinking that they ARE their feelings instead of seeing that feelings are just something that they HAVE.
This is where life can start coming off the rails if we’re not careful.
This article is about staying or getting back on track.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Feelings vs. Wisdom: What We Cover in This Article
- Your Feelings and Emotions are Important but They're Usually Not a Source of Wisdom
- Emotion is E-motion, Energy in Motion
- Realness in Two Steps
- The Truth: You Are NOT Your Feelings
- Why Following Your Feelings Is Usually Bad Advice
- Wisdom Works With Reality
- Principles Beat Feelings
- Growing REAL With Awareness, Acceptance, and Action
- The Final Word: Feelings vs. Wisdom
Emotion is E-motion, Energy in Motion
The word emotion gives us a clue as to how we need to treat our feeling in general because you can think of it as e-motion, “energy in motion”:
The most important part here is the word “Motion” because it reminds us that feelings are supposed to move through our system – just like a sort of internal weather passing through the ‘sky’ of consciousness.
Now, this doesn’t mean that whoever first conjured of the word “emotion” had this in mind but it’s a useful way of saying it because all emotions have a natural cycle that they want to go through the body:
They rise. They peak. They fall. They change.
Many of the troubles in our lives start when we try to freeze them in place – because we fear completing the natural cycle of rise, peak, and fall – by deciding they define who we are or by treating them as Gospel truth.
- “I’m anxious“.
- “I’m broken”.
- “I’m not good enough as I am”.
- “I feel like a failure“.
- “I don’t feel loved”.
- Etc. etc. etc.
None of these statements necessarily describe reality itself but they all describe an experience that’s happening inside the person uttering it.
There’s a world of difference in the sense that your feelings are a real experience that you’re having but this doesn’t mean that they’re automatically true.
This is actually one of the most important distinctions you’ll ever learn if you want to step up and start living in alignment with your REALNESS.
(Which is what we all want, really – even if we don’t realise it).
Realness in Two Steps
If I had to reduce the whole philosophy of Realness down to two simple principles, it’d be this:
1. Uncover the truth.
2. Live the truth.
That’s it.
If you make it your mission to do these two things consistently for the rest of your life then you’ll keep moving deeper into wholeness, become a more authentic expression of yourself, and generally feel more peaceful, effective, and connected to yourself and life…in other words you’ll be more REAL.
Notice something important, though:
Those two steps don’t say “Feel whatever you’re feeling and assume it’s true” – instead, they invite you to move through your emotional experience until reality reveals itself.
The key point here is that your feelings are not the destination or end of the line – they’re most often just part of the journey of returning back to yourself and life (away from ego and into realness)@
Sometimes they’re pointing towards something important; sometimes they’re leftovers from yesterday.
Sometimes they’re echoes from childhood; sometimes they’re reactions created by your ego trying to protect itself.
Sometimes they’re completely misleading and cause you to waste years of your life if you don’t get out of your own way, remember that “emotions are e-motion, energy in motion”, and let the cycle complete itself.
In short:
Wisdom comes from uncovering reality – not from blindly obeying whatever emotional weather happens to be passing overhead.
The Truth: You Are NOT Your Feelings
One of the biggest mistakes people make in life is confusing what they have with what they are:
- You have thoughts.
- You have beliefs.
- You have sensations.
- You have memories.
- You have emotions.
- Etc. etc. etc.
But none of those things are actually ‘YOU’!
What you really are is the awareness in which all of those experiences appear to be experienced…
A good way to visualise this ‘awareness’ is to imagine that you’ve got a huge sheet of brilliant white paper stretched out in front of you with a tiny black dot somewhere on that page:
The paper itself is your awareness and the dot is whatever you happen to feeling in a given moment – if all you ever look at is the dot then you’ll forget all of the space surrounding it and will start to believe that the dot is everything and therefore the most important thing of all.
That’s exactly what identification with your feelings/emotions does – you stop seeing awareness itself and become hypnotised by whatever emotional experience happens to be present.
This is why you start associating your emotions with “I am”:
“I am anxious”.
“I am depressed“.
“I am angry”.
“I am [whatever]”.
None of these emotions (or any other) are what you ARE – they’re just experiences (e-motion) unfolding within awareness.
They’re not your identity – they’re just visitors that come and go but the moment you identify with them, you interrupt the natural flow of emotion and end up getting stuck and eventually stagnating.
Like we’ve said a few thousand times in this article now, “emotion is e-motion, energy in motion” and so if you cling to it, suppress it, dramatise it or build an identity around it, then you eventually stop it from moving and take yourself out of the natural flow of life.
This just causes tension to build which leads to friction, frustration, and then misery and so life starts feeling unncessarily heavy:
The ego loves this because its entire job is to keep reinforcing separation and defending the identity it’s constructed so you can keep the shadow self at bay.
The only way out is to start being REAL again which means to:
Feel everything but identify with nothing.
Why Following Your Feelings Is Usually Bad Advice
One of the most common pieces of advice you’ll hear when it comes to all this ‘stuff’ and how to live a ‘good’ life is to:
“Just follow your feelings“.
Or maybe”
“Just do whatever feels right for you”.
Both of these sound lovely but, unfortunately, reality isn’t quite so simple.
Here’s why:
1. Feelings Change Constantly
If you followed every feeling you had, your life would look like somebody trying to drive a car by randomly yanking the steering wheel every few seconds in whatever random direction ‘felt’ right rather than according to any actual plan or vision for where they’re trying to take themselves.
It would be a literal rollercoaster of emotion:
- One minute you feel inspired.
- Next minute you’re terrified.
- Then excited.
- Then exhausted.
- Then confident.
- Then doubtful.
- Then [whatever arises next].
When your strategy for dealing with life and moving forward is to “follow your feelings” then you just end up driving all over the place without really getting anywhere (or, at least, nowhere REAL).
Feelings change for all kinds of arbitrary reasons:
- Circumstances change.
- Hormones change.
- Blood sugar changes.
- Sleep changes.
- Weather changes.
- Stress changes.
- Etc. etc. etc.
If your decisions rise and fall with every passing emotion, then basically your life becomes unstable – on the other hand, if you choose to 1) uncover the truth and 2) live the truth then you’re putting yourself in alignment with reality which provides a sense of continuity because WHAT’S REAL IS ALWAYS REAL.
2. Feelings Contradict Each Other
Human beings are wonderfully contradictory – for example, you can love someone deeply whilst simultaneously feeling furious with them or even ‘hating’ them.
Some other examples of these kinds of contradiction are that you you can desperately want to start a business whilst also wanting the safety of staying employed or you can crave intimacy whilst fearing vulnerability.
Which feeling should you follow, then? Aren’t we just supposed to “follow our feelings”?
Exactly.
They’re pointing in different directions which shows us that feelings can’t be the ultimate guide because they often reveal internal conflict rather than objective truth.
3. Feelings React to Reality – They Don’t Define It
This might be the biggest point of all which is that:
Feelings are not reality – they’re usually just your REACTION to reality.
For example, imagine that somebody doesn’t reply to your text message and that you immediately feel rejected.
This feeling is a ‘real’ experience that you’re having but is rejection actually what’s happening in reality?
Maybe they’re asleep.
- Maybe they’re driving.
- Maybe they forgot.
- Maybe they’re overwhelmed.
- Maybe they simply haven’t seen it.
- Etc. etc. etc.
The point is that your feeling arose before the truth became available because that’s just how emotions work (they’re fast, protective, and evolutionary shortcuts to surviving life).
Your wisdom slows things down so you can actually get in touch with truth and live from a real place by asking a simple question:
“What’s actually true here?”
Wisdom Works With Reality
If feelings aren’t wisdom, then what exactly is this “wisdom” that we keep talking about?
A very simple and working definition of wisdom is as follows:
Wisdom is learning how reality actually works and then choosing to work with it instead of fighting against it.
That’s exactly what Realness is about:
- Uncover the truth.
- Live the truth.
Reality doesn’t bend because we have strong feelings or because we ‘dislike’ or ‘like’ something about it – just like gravity doesn’t stop working because we’re upset.
Reality just keeps doing what reality does but this is fine and even a ‘good’ thing just as long as we remember that REAL ALWAYS WORKS because whenever we align ourselves with reality, life starts flowing but whenever we resist reality, suffering increases.
It’s really that simple (not easy – simple).
Principles Beat Feelings
If you want a peaceful and real life, then, don’t build whatever you’re building on a foundation of temporary or conflicting emotional states but choose to build it on principles and a REAL vision.
For example:
Your feelings might tell you “I don’t feel like going” whereas your principles remind you “I keep my promises”.
Feelings might say I’m scared” but your principles remind you “I value courage”.
Feelings tell you “I don’t think I can” but your vision reminds you why you started.
Feelings tell you to quit but your commitment tells you to continue.
This doesn’t mean ignoring emotions – far from it, in fact:
It just means letting them be experienced without handing them the steering wheel.
Feel them, listen to them, and learn from them but then let your wisdom (alignment with reality) make the decision about moving forward.
If you want to go deeper into your realness then check out my book Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness.
Growing REAL With Awareness, Acceptance, and Action
Whenever you’re caught in emotional turbulence, I recommend returning to the three pillars of Realness:
Awareness, Acceptance and Action.
(It works every time):
1. Awareness (Deconstruct the Ego)
Pause and observe what’s happening by asking yourself:
“What exactly am I feeling?”
Or:
“What’s the story my ego is telling?”
Separate the raw emotion from the narrative built around it and try to shift into presence first and foremost.
2. Acceptance (Integrate the Shadow)
Instead of resisting the emotion, allow it to be whatever it is by feeling it fully and letting it move.
Remember:
You have to feel it to heal it and emotions are e-motion, energy in motion.
Acceptance doesn’t mean agreeing with your feelings – it just means making space for them without trying to become them.
This is where the shadow starts integrating instead of controlling your life from behind the scenes.
3. Action (Trust Yourself and Life)
Once you’ve uncovered what’s actually true, act from your principles and vision rather than your emotional impulses.
You can start by asking yourself:
“What’s the most real action available to me right now?”
Not:
“What do I feel like doing?”
But:
“What aligns with reality?”
That’s where trust begins – trust in yourself, trust in life, and trust in reality itself.
The Final Word: Feelings vs. Wisdom
Your feelings deserve your attention, compassion, and willingness to experience them fully but they don’t deserve your unquestioning obedience.
Feelings are merely signals about what’s going on inside you based on where you’ve been – they’re NOT commandments, messengers, or masters that need to drive you to places you don’t even wanna go.
The beautiful paradox is that the more willing you become to feel everything, the less controlled you’ll be by your feelings because you stop identifying with them and remember that awareness is infinitely larger than whatever emotion happens to be passing through it.
You can stop clinging and resisting and instead choose to let energy remain in motion so that something far wiser than emotion begins to emerge:
Realness.
In the end, the goal was never to feel better but to become more real and – perhaps ironically – that’s exactly what allows you to feel better in a way that actually lasts.
P.S. If you’re ready to do the hard work of feeling what you need to feel and returning to REALNESS then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you uncover a foundation of truth in yourself and life.
Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.
It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.
This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).
Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.
It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.
Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.
The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.
The Flow Builder Journal has everything you need to make the next 21-weeks of your life a turning point.
It has monthly, weekly, and daily (morning and evening) check-ins, tools and reflections to keep you in the zone and keep you flowing with zest and momentum.
If you want to get unstuck and grow REAL then check it out.
Download EGO/SHADOW/TRUST - a free guide to transformation that will walk you through the vital stages of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action with practical strategies to implement right away.
