Live Beyond Feelings

Have you ever woken up one morning and felt like staying back in bed and doing nothing? I know I have, a few times. In fact, I'm sure that is some of us, every single day.

There are so many of us that would say in bed, all day everyday if we had no responsibilities gnawing at us, and if all our needs were taken care of. I mean, who doesn't want to keep warm in the embrace of their bed and pillow? Who doesn't want to pander to however they feel at any given time?
It is like a temptation, and everyone feel it every given time, some more than others though.

What sets people apart though, why some people become wonders and other people live mundanely are the choices they make in spite of how they feel everyday. Chances are, the more you give in to how you feel and ignore the actions you are supposed to be taking to achieve growth and progress in your life, the more your chances of living a mundane life.

We all feel the need to sleep. To stay back in our beds and bingewatch movies To take the junk, morning, day and night. To have drinks and party all night, and something even all day, for the chronic party-lifers. We all feel the need to simply do everything we feel because it is easier, but I promise, the easier your life is now, the harder it would be in the future.

If you have listened to, read or watched the more successful people in this world, they'd tell you that every day, they feel exactly how you feel. They feel like staying in bed, not going to the gym, not practicing, not reading, they feel like simply doing the things that are easy. And that is all of us. But they take action in spite of their feelings. They practice in spite of their sore limbs. They work out in spite of their sore bones. They read even when the book is so boring and makes them sleepy. And that is only a tiny fraction of us.

Many of us wait to feel like doing something before we do it. We have a growing list of to-dos, but we don't feel like doing anyone of them yet, so we simply don't. We need to write, we need to design, we need to record and edit videos, we need to read, we need to sew, we need to prepare a report, we need to do push ups, we need to create a client document, we need to find leads, we need to take the course for an hour, we need to do whatever is on our to do list, but right now, we don't feel like doing any of that. We simply want to lay in our beds and surf for the hottest gist on twitter, so we do that, and remain where we are in that moment, and in life.

Then there's someone else somewhere, who has all of these things to do, who has a long list of to dos, doesn't feel like doing them, but instead, feels like seeing a movie or chatting with the love of his life, and still goes ahead to do the things he doesn't feel like doing. He makes that appointment even though he doesn't feel like doing it. He gets on his seat and prepares that document, he read that book, does the edits, and all those things he didn't feel like doing in the first place, then records progress and sees his to-do list get shorter, or get filled with more challenges that expands the scope of his mind, builds up his portfolio and makes him a more valuable person.

Guess who will become successful and become all they see in their vision? Yes. You guessed right. The one who often does what they need to do, not the one who only does what they feel like doing.

You know the irony of this? You will almost always not feel like doing something productive until you start doing it. If you are waiting for when you feel like doing the work you need to do, you will wait for a long time until there are no more productive hours left, but if you go ahead to do it even when you don't feel like it, momentum builds that help you start to feel like it right in the middle, and this momentum will spur you to do more challenging and productive work.

Rob Dial in his podcast, The Mindset Mentor, often says that "Inaction begets more inaction and action begets more action." It means if you're doing nothing and waiting to feel like doing something before you do that something, you will continue to do nothing, as doing nothing births more nothing. However if you go ahead to do what you need to regardless of how you feel, your action will birth more action which will birth more productivity.

Start living beyond your feelings. That's how you build the kind of life that inspires other people. This is why that old saying asserts that you don't need to conquer lands and territories to be considered great. You only need to conquer yourself.
Conquer your feelings. Maintain the discipline to do the things you need to do regardless of how you feel. That is how you create things and become a valuable individual.

This morning, I woke up not feeling like writing anything at all. I woke up feeling like I didn't even have anything to write, but regardless of how I felt, I sat down and made this newsletter come to life. I reminded myself that I am not my feelings. I am not ruled by my feelings. I want to become a blessing and impact my world positively, and I can't do that being ruled by my feelings.

Try this this. Do what you need to do per time even when you don't feel like it. Thank me later.

To your growth,
Abiola Okunsanya,
Handzinspired. ✨