Why Our Emotions Are Bad Consultants (Most Times)

I am one of those people who experience their emotions intensely.

Most times, I don’t like that. It overwhelms me. That’s why one of the first things my therapist told me is:

Emotions are our most valuable compass. They are meant to guide and protect us.

That protection worked extremely well — a long time ago.

Our Emotions Are Still From the Stone Age

In the Stone Age, when we saw a dangerous animal, we got shit scared. So ran away. When we saw an attractive mate, we wanted to make love. When we relied on social integration, we felt an urge to socially adapt to a tribe.

Times are way different from the Stone Age now.

However, we still have our Stone Age primal urges. In today’s world, these emotions don’t serve us as they did back then.

If we translated them 1:1 into action, life would be quite hard.

How Survival Mode Kills Long-Term Happiness

We cannot run for our lives because we are afraid of delivering that 10-minute presentation to our boss. We cannot just jump on the person we want to make love to. And over-adaptation to others makes us feel bad on the long run. It makes us feel disconnected from ourselves.

As we’re not in survival-only mode anymore, we have the privilege to consider our long-term happiness much more.

But we need to be aware of our emotions — we need to use them wisely and properly use them as a compass. Not as an immediate call for action.

I Am A Slave To My Primal Urges, Too.

For example, I run a small Instagram account about running.

I know the whole theory on how to become successful on that platform. Yet, I get shit scared when it comes to speaking into a camera — which is currently one of the best ways to accumulate an audience there.

But if knowledge was enough, no doctor would smoke.

So most times, I immediately react to my anxiety. I post a video of me speaking — and delete it straight away. I’m concerned about being perceived as awkward or incompetent.

At the same time, I know this is exactly what blocks my success.

Act Your Way Out Of Emotional Hurdles

In that case, my emotions are a very bad consultant to my actions. And I am sure you can identify cases like this in your life, too.

If yes, good. The first step is awareness, always. You cannot change a program that you don’t know.

But changing requires more than thinking. No one can think their way out of what blocks them. And now comes the hard part: Action. You have to use your awareness and take the opposite action.

It’s easier to act yourself into who you want to be than to think yourself into who you want to be

This will rewire your emotions and make the scary thing less scary. Or it will make any emotion that guides us in the wrong direction less intense — step by step.

Rewiring My Emotional System

For me, that means I have to post one damn Instagram video of me speaking. The first time will be the hardest. I have to prove myself by action that being seen is by no way a threat to my life.

Also, I try to detach myself from my emotions. To perceive them, look at them from above and ask: Oh, what does this want to tell me? And should I act based on it — or let the emotion exist and just wait a bit?

We’re not in the Stone Age anymore.

And yet, it takes shitloads of work to make our emotions see that, too.

What are the intense emotions that sometimes block you or guide you in the wrong direction?

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