Posted on 2014-11-21 00:00:00 +0000

“Life consists in action.” – Aristotle, Poetics

“Nobody cares what you feel.” – David Mamet, Theatre

These are confessional times. Technology makes its possible for people to publicly share the details of their lives at almost any time. As yet, no one has figured out how to post to their Facebook page while they sleep. In the interim, much broadband is eaten up with people disclosing their moods, their current location, and the minutiae of their days. The news is disseminated to their virtual friends and followers, as support is sought, accepted either explicitly or tacitly. We are continually seeking validation for our feelings and see this exploitation of emotion everywhere. At sporting events, reporters corral the victors and breathlessly ask them, “How are you feeling right now?” Well, they’ve just one a major sporting championship, we can likely guess they’re feeling pretty good. But I’m always left dissatisfied with these pulpy questions and the boilerplate responses.

Because I don’t really care how they feel. Sure, the emotion exhibited in the heat of action is fun to watch, celebrations are, by nature, celebratory and it’s pleasurable to watch expressions of pure joy. But isn’t the more pressing question how they did it?

We are endlessly fascinated by our emotions and yet emotions are extremely transitory states. Over the course of a day, we feel an endless parade of emotions. Does each one merit attention and notice? The grumpiness that greets us after a bad night’s sleep might soon be ameliorated by some unexpected good news which might get edged out when some jerk cuts off in traffic which might turn into sheer anger when we spill some coffee on our shirt which might get interrupted by the joy we feel laughing at a great joke a coworker shared with us. And all that might take place by 9:30 AM on a Monday morning. Are any of these emotions more deserving of your attention than the other?

The perfunctory question gets asked all the time, “How are you?” We are socially primed for that easy exchange to take place whenever we talk to someone. But, realistically, do we REALLY want to know? ”Hey, Bill, I’m feeling terrible. I think I’m a terrible human being who deserves the worst life can dish out.” Try answering that way sometime and see the reaction that you get.

If we focused more on the actions we take, as opposed to how we’re feeling, we’d get a better understanding of who we are and our accomplishments. A friend recently decided to start running again, after a fourteen year hiatus. Six months ago, he could only run five minutes at a time. Often, he told me, he didn’t want to run but chose to take contrary action – he ran regardless of how we felt. This past weekend, he told me he ran over six miles, an hour’s worth of running, for the first time in his life. He said he felt an enormous sense of accomplishment but added it was less about how he felt and more about the consistent action taking.

It takes discipline to play past our fickle emotions, but great accomplishments can be realized by developing that muscle.