Something we don't always realize is that how we feel matters.
There's this great phrase,
Believe your pain from Joseph Sobroski.
How you feel matters.
We're in a very goal-oriented society.
We know where we want to go.
I think it's extremely important to know where you want to get,
But how you feel during and how you feel when you actually get there is really important.
So if you are torturing yourself every day,
Trying to get to a result,
That later will feel good.
I guarantee you it will not feel good.
You can't pave the way to happiness with feeling really,
Really awful.
While something can be challenging,
Something can be rigorous,
That's different.
But if you feel like you're going against your true nature,
Stop right now because you're not going in the right direction.
There's this great idea from Dostoevsky,
We're on a Russian literature theme today,
That if you were to build a building in which everyone were happy,
Like a perfect building,
It's paradise,
But to build it,
It would cost the tears of one child,
It would not be worth it.
That's maybe an extreme example,
Or it sounds extreme.
He actually wrote this before communism,
And communism was all about,
Let's all be unhappy now in Russia,
Like give up everything,
Be unhappy now so we can build this ideal utopia in the future where everyone is happy.
We've kind of adopted that mentality in certain ways,
Like it's okay if I'm miserable for the next 10 years,
At least I'll make a law firm partner.
I hear that attitude all the time.
Again,
Something can be challenging,
But if it feels like you just don't feel good in your own skin doing it,
Or it goes against your values,
Or you don't see any deeper point to what you're doing,
Then it isn't worth it.
You can't pave the way to joy with non-joy,
And what do we all want?
We want joy,
We want love,
We want real connection to ourselves,
We want to feel like we're living a life that feels good to us,
That is important,
That is using our natural talents.
So what you feel matters.
There's a lot of parts of the world,
A lot of mentalities in a lot of countries that are get from point A to point B.
How you feel along the way doesn't matter,
And I'm just here to tell you,
Self-compassion matters.
Self-compassion is staying connected to your emotions,
Being on your own side,
And not putting yourself into relationships,
Jobs,
Situations where you're either unsafe,
Or where you really just don't feel good in your own skin.
