Feelings Decide The Quality Of Life

Despite coming from different cultures and geographies, we all have learned to underplay and suppress our feelings. We overemphasize logic and rationality instead.

We are feeling creatures: the quality and texture of our lives are dictated by how we feel. The rational and logical approach only takes us so far: if we feel a sense of lack, we feel incomplete despite having everything that anyone could dream of.

This contemplation is taking us back to our primal way of feeling our lives!

Transcript

All of us come from a very different upbringing.

Some of us come from very different parts of the world.

Yet all of us have learned to underplay,

To downgrade,

To bury and suppress our feelings.

The more sophisticated our jobs get,

The more rational we tend to think ourselves to be.

We ignore the place of feelings in a world of rational thinking.

What we forget,

However,

Is that we are feeling creatures.

The quality and texture of our life is dictated by how we feel.

No matter how much we have in our life,

If we feel a sense of lack,

Then the quality of our life is not good enough.

Some traditions talk about counting your blessings.

It's a rational approach.

We look back in our life or look into our possessions,

Into what we have been given and trigger a feeling which says,

Yes,

I am blessed.

And that's what we feel.

That gratitude that we feel is triggered by rational thinking sometimes.

But what matters to us at the end of the day is how we feel.

Our metric of a thing,

Of an experience,

Of life in general is how we feel.

So we cannot isolate feelings from our work.

Somehow the culture has taught us to underplay feelings,

To move on,

To not sit with our feelings and not to even acknowledge them.

Under the garb of professionalism,

Feelings are undervalued.

I would argue that instead of isolating our work from feelings,

We should infuse our work with feelings.

This might be a little radical for some of us.

To be honest,

We are actually infusing our feelings into our work unknowingly anyways.

Fear,

Lack of courage,

Frustration,

Monotony,

Whatever has happened at home,

Whatever is happening in the economy,

We bring all those feelings into our work,

Albeit in an unconscious way.

When I talk about infusing our work with feelings,

I'm talking about consciously infusing our work with feelings.

And the tricky thing about consciously doing something is that it is quite difficult to consciously infuse our work with fear,

With doubt,

With mediocrity,

With lack of clarity.

None of us ever choose,

Consciously choose to make a mistake because it's just not in our nature to choose something unwholesome,

Unharmonious.

Most of these things happen because the choices are made unconsciously.

I remember first coming to the US almost 15 years ago and going out for a meal in a restaurant.

And what I noticed was something extraordinary that I'd not experienced before was that every person at the table got a menu to choose.

I looked around,

Even kids were getting menus that they could choose from.

Back home,

Back in India,

Although I was almost 25 years old,

I never got a menu just for myself.

Every table gets one or two menus and more often than not,

Elders of the family decide what to order for the entire table.

So I was quite amazed that from an early age here,

The freedom to choose is inculcated in kids.

All of us have a menu card,

Even now,

To consciously choose what we bring to our work or to unconsciously bring.

That's freedom.

The freedom is not something that is given,

Recognizing that we already are free and have been free is freedom.

It's like an analogy that my teacher likes to give sometimes,

Like a prisoner who has been sentenced to a life imprisonment and is sitting in a prison cell,

Only to be told that the prison and the prison cell does not have a lock.

There are no locks.

The prison is a choice.

To be in the prison is a choice.

To come out of the prison is a choice.

To recognize that there are no locks,

To recognize that the freedom to choose is always there,

Is by itself freedom.

And when it comes to bringing feelings to work,

We can only bring what we have.

So we need to be very conscious about what we are bringing to work.

And as a matter of fact,

We need to be conscious of what we are taking from work.

Unconsciously,

We might be taking stress,

Fear,

Insecurity,

Frustration back to our life.

This sentence assumes that there is a separation between our work and our life,

But that's a point for some other time.

The fact that we can only bring what we have implies we need to inculcate courage,

Clarity,

Joy,

Humor,

Confidence,

And infuse it in our work.

Innovation,

Impact doesn't happen in a mechanical,

Robotic way.

Empathy,

Intuition,

Innovation requires us to be sensitive,

Available,

Open,

And aware.

This recognition of freedom,

Freedom to choose,

At every moment becomes like a foundation,

Foundation of sensitivity,

Foundation of feelings that our work can catapult from.

Unfortunately,

The more sophisticated our jobs get,

The more we lack sensitivity to our feelings.

This is not true about all jobs,

Definitely.

And in order to bring courage,

Empathy,

Intuition,

Clarity,

Confidence to work,

We might have to clean house,

Rid ourselves of the doubt,

Lack of clarity,

Confusion,

Denseness,

Aimlessness,

By doing some soul searching.

And there are umpteen ways of removing the garbage.

The weeds that are growing can be removed.

Only then,

Plants can grow.

What I say is true about work,

And what I say is true about life as well.

It's not that we want to infuse just our work with courage,

Clarity,

Empathy.

We want to infuse our life with the exact same qualities.

The metric of how we feel is not just restricted to our work.

Everything is gauged by how we feel about it,

Or just about how we feel.

If I asked you,

Would you consciously choose to be sad?

Of course you wouldn't.

But do you have the freedom to choose to be sad?

Yes,

You do.

So,

As not to be sad is also freedom that you can choose.

Sad,

Angry,

Doubtful.

Past is not a predictor of future.

Past is only a predictor of future if we don't recognize and subsequently exercise our freedom.

That's why the recognition of freedom is a precursor,

Because then we can choose.

And once we understand the mechanism that the intelligence in us will not allow us to choose unwholesome,

Unharmonious feelings,

We begin to realize the impact this freedom and the exercising of this freedom can have on us.

So experiment.

Either peek into your life,

Scan it,

And see if you can actively choose to make a mistake,

Choose to be unloving,

Or experiment.

Focus hard.

Try hard to do a mediocre job consciously.

Unfortunately,

We are exercising freedom only to choose things that are making us suffer.

And we seem to be quite helpless in front of them,

As if this choice is inevitable,

Or for that matter,

It's not even a choice.

It just feels an ultimatum,

Destiny.

But if we truly ask ourselves in this moment,

Do I feel free?

Or do I feel like I'm in a prison?

The feeling will tell you clearly,

No matter what is happening,

That deep down voice that is available for us to tap into,

We'll always choose freedom.

And once we see it clearly that there is freedom in every moment,

We'll realize that unwholesome feelings or unwholesome triggers are a choice.

What happens outside is not in our control.

Definitely not.

I'm not saying that.

Neither am I talking about things that happen,

Drastic things that happen.

I'm talking about the mundane everyday choices,

Or lack thereof.

The mundane work that we either bring frustration,

Apathy,

Anger,

Lack of interest,

Lack of focus,

And the choice to bring in joy,

Empathy,

Creativity,

Clarity to it.

And the only way this transition can happen is when we realize,

When we accept,

And when we see it,

That I can choose to either do this or that.

And see how life rewards you if you choose to exercise this freedom in a conscious way.

I mean,

Even overeating cannot be done in a conscious way,

Unless we choose momentary happiness,

Which is again another choice.

That's why I said it's a moment to moment choice.

Because we feel free throughout our life.

It's not that we feel free in the morning and we feel imprisoned for the rest of the day.

If at any point in our day,

In our life,

If anyone asks us,

Do you feel free?

Our instinct is to say yes.

That freedom entails us to make choices,

Despite everything that has happened with us,

And despite everything that is happening with us.

The first point is to recognize that we have the freedom,

All of us,

All the time.

If necessary,

Clean house by removing feelings that are getting triggered out of unconscious habits,

Unconscious triggers.

And then exercise this freedom by infusing our work or life with whatever we want.

Thank you.