You've Been Confusing Yourself With Your Feelings Your Entire Life
The Identity Mistake That's Ruining Your Mental Health
There's a voice in your head that's been lying to you since childhood.
And you keep falling for it.
We often walk around saying "I'm stressed" like we're announcing our name tags at a horrible networking event.
But here's the twist that changes everything: You're not stressed. Stress is just something happening in and around your house.
"When your kitchen sink clogs, you don't become a clogged sink. When your neighbor plays terrible music, you don't become the terrible music. So why in heaven's name do we think we ARE our feelings?"
Plot twist: You're the house. Your emotions are just really dramatic houseguests.
Here's what nobody tells us about feelings: they're basically emotional toddlers throwing tantrums in your living room.
Fight with a tantrum-throwing toddler? They scream louder and throw more stuff.
Ignore a tantrum-throwing toddler? They eventually get bored, eat some potato crackers, and wander off to destroy someone else's day.
Your anxiety is that toddler. Stop wrestling with it.
The secret therapists charge money to tell you: Stop trying to fix your feelings and start treating them like a nature documentary.
Next time panic shows up, calmly channel your inner David Attenborough:
"And here we observe the wild anxiety in its natural habitat, catastrophizing about Tuesday's meeting and creating elaborate disaster scenarios involving PowerPoint..."
You know what happens when you watch panic like it's happening to someone else's brain?
It gets awkward. And leaves.
Because here's the truth that will make you feel like you've been living in a computer simulation:
You were never your thoughts. You were never your feelings. You were never your problems.
You're the awareness that experiences all of it. And awareness? Awareness is like the sky: it doesn't give a damn what weather passes through.
Hurricanes, sunshine, tornadoes, rainbows… the sky just watches it all like, "Cool story, bro."
That's you. You're the sky.
And the sky has never, not once, been damaged by a storm.
Neither have you.
P.S. I stumbled across this idea from one of my favorite books I keep coming back to, and it shifted how I see my own emotions. If it shifted something for you too, hit reply and tell me about one moment this week or anytime when you caught yourself being the sky instead of the storm. No deep insights required... we're all just figuring this out as we go.
Want more insights on emotional resilience and living an aware life? You've found your tribe.
Each Thursday-Friday, I share one micro wake-up call for those of us refusing to sleepwalk through life (our emotions, relationships, days) and more!
Y'know, I often see a lot of "Dad joke" moments in TV shows, films, etc. where a child complains, "I'm hungry," and the Dad replies, "Hi Hungry, I'm Dad."
It's cheesy and stereotypical, and we are meant to laugh, or roll our eyes, and move on. But perhaps we should instead see that mistaking temporal states (e.g. hunger, anger, etc.) as a permanent fixture is a characteristic of children, not mature adults.
Likewise, in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, the fairy Tinker Bell is described as being so small that she can't hold more than one feeling at a time.
The implication is that the bigger humans are supposed to be able hold more than one emotions, rather than being entirely consumed by it. That even while we are feeling angry, we still have room to show compassion.