Why I don’t follow my feelings..

Summary

• When trying to influence outcomes, focus on consistent actions that lead to observable results rather than trying to guess people's thoughts.
• Feelings exist but aren't useful in editing our activities; instead, focus on actions and feedback loops that drive results.
• It's empowering to create your own meaning in life; capital "M" Meaning suggests a universal purpose, while little "m" meaning is subjective and adaptable.
• Without a fixed meaning in life (capital "M" Meaning), it's harder but more rewarding to live by your self-derived values and principles.
• Beliefs should be treated as assumptions which can change with new evidence, reducing ego attachment and making them more flexible.
• Accept that there is no ultimate "should" or "must," which liberates you from societal expectations and allows you to act freely based on your values.
• Understanding that all emotions are part of the human experience and not inherently good or bad can alleviate unnecessary suffering caused by labeling them.
• Accept your emotions as natural, like weather patterns, without judging or trying to change them; their importance is situational and often overemphasized.
• Redefine personal terms and reframes situations in ways that align with your chosen values, leading to acceptance and resilience in the face of challenges.
• Personal growth and the ability to navigate life's difficulties often come from a willingness to redefine and accept rather than resist reality.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest focusing on actions instead of getting stuck in thoughts. If you see something that works, do more of that. Create a system where you do things, see results, and adjust. Don't worry too much about feelings, they're like the weather and don't always help in making good choices.

It's also empowering to make your own rules about what's important to you. This means deciding what you care about and using your choices to support those things. If things change, that's okay. You can always find new things that are important to you.

Instead of holding on to beliefs too tight, treat them like assumptions. This way, you can change them if you learn something new. It's like trying on clothes; if something doesn't fit, find something that does.

Remember, there's no universal "should" or "must." You are free to choose your path without worrying about what others expect. This lets you be brave and make choices based on what you believe, not what others say.

Accept all your feelings as normal parts of being human. Don't label them as good or bad. This can help you feel less pressure and be okay with who you are.

When things get tough, it helps to look at situations in new ways that fit with your values. This can give you strength and help you keep going. Accepting reality, instead of fighting it, helps a lot with personal growth.

So, decide what's meaningful for you, treat beliefs as flexible assumptions, and accept emotions without judgment. By doing these things, you can live freely and grow as a person.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"We can just create whatever meaning we choose to"

– Alex Hormozi

"I believe that there is no meaning"

– Alex Hormozi

"We get to create and destroy meaning as we see fit"

– Alex Hormozi

"Assumptions are based on things that we've observed and then we assume something as a result"

– Alex Hormozi

"The labels create more suffering than anything that we ever actually experience"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

if you can expose someone to a stimuli and get a consistent outcome a lot of marketers and sales people like to talk about the internal thoughts that someone's had like first they need awareness and then they need blah blah and then so they're basically just make up they reverse engineer fictitious steps of someone's mental thought process when they have no evidence to support what someone's thinking at all and so i don't find it useful because it's not useful like what are the things that are useful these are the things that are observable that we can drive action towards that that we create an outcome and then we have a feedback loop and so if we have those things then we can move the variables and get closer to where we're trying to go and the feelings although i recognize that they exist they're not helpful in trying to edit what our activities are i would say there are days that i feel like less energized or things like that for sure not about like the big picture of like i don't believe that this cause is not worthy but i do think a lot of people have that too where they're like what i'm doing is meaningless right and then i get into i think everything's meaningless and then we can just create whatever meaning you know we choose to because if we don't believe in a capital m meaning which a lot of people disagree with that's fine but if you don't believe in a capital end meaning i think that's very freeing because then you can create little meaning for whatever you want and so if you believe you can then choose to architect your own life in whatever ways that you deem meaningful and make the activities you do aligned with that meaning the difference between capital m meaning and little meaning and this is kind of like the basis of nihilism which people have like a very negative viewpoint around which i'm not entirely sure about why but like capitalism meaning means that like this is the meaning of life period like for everyone this is the meaning of life whereas if we say that there is no single agreed upon meaning of life and then people say well then that is your big meaning of life and i'm like yes you're right i believe that there is no meaning that is the thing that i that i believe and they're like well then that is the capital then sure that's my capital meaning is that there is no meaning what's the implication of that it means now that we have meaning making machines in our brain and so we get to create and destroy meaning as we see fit and so if we choose an activity and we deem that goal meaningful because we think it's more interesting or it energizes us then we can ascribe meaning to that and do more of it and what's nice about not having capital m meaning is that that can shift right that might be good for a season and then it can shift i will say that the downside of not having capital meaning which i consider to be religion off the shelf is that it's more difficult because you have no one who's saying here's the big box of rules you can read it and then that way you don't have to make the decisions about it but i think it's more difficult but ultimately more rewarding if you have reasoning behind why you believe what you believe because then you have to independently come up with your own conclusions about those things it also makes it malleable so that if you get new data or new evidence then you can change your mind which a lot of people again have difficulty with but like if you change the information then it would make sense that if it materially changes the outcome that you the way that you believe about something should change and i think a lot of people identify with their beliefs as a part of themselves rather than as what i prefer to call them which is assumptions because they work the same way what's the difference in belief and assumption not a lot right the only difference is just what we call the word and so assumptions are based on things that we've observed and then we assume something as a result and so i would say that beliefs are just assumptions and but when you call them that they become less tied to your identity if you have an assumption you don't say you challenged my assumption it's like well hey challenge my assumption oh that's great i i was assuming this it must be this and then they become much more flexible and then we don't tie our egos into them and i think ultimately it serves more people better in the long run i feel passionately about my viewpoint of the world mostly because i struggled and i was in so much pain for such a long period of time i'm only sharing this despite the fact that i get attacked for sharing this because there are people who this does resonate with but when there is no required meaning then a lot of language changes which is should must need have to like all of these things no longer exist because there is no capital m meaning so i don't should have to must need to anything and so a lot of the expectations that we bury ourselves into that weigh us down are just implied shoulds have to's musts and so if all of those disappeared then in a lot of ways it's very liberating and so for me in business it allows me to take actions even though i know that i shouldn't or must not or other people would judge me for not doing it the way that they thought i should do it because there are no rules which is why that was the preference to the book it's like there are no rules we can live our life whatever way we want to live it and that's okay i read a youtube comment the other day it's like hey you know you talk a lot about being sad and like how have you been able to x y and z and i don't identify with being a sad person i think i i have been sad in the past but i also don't think that there's a problem with being sad and so i think that there's just so much power in acceptance it's like so many people make themselves miserable because they think that they shouldn't be who they are and they shouldn't feel how they feel and so much of the medication that gets prescribed right now is because someone's like oh i'm anxious and why do we feel like someone shouldn't be anxious they are human why do we feel like we shouldn't feel sad we are human why do we feel like we shouldn't feel frustrated or angry we are human and so i think it's one of the most like interesting things or phenomena where if you have a line which is the normal human existence and you have points above the line and points below the line you have the median right or the the middle point and people want to not feel the things below the line and then we ascribe or label the things below the line as bad and things above the line is good when all of it is and so i think that if we just accept that and accept ourselves and accept the feelings that we experience as things that we experience like rain and weather and sunshine it's not like rain is bad not like sunshine's good it just is not like happiness is good or happiness is bad or sadness is bad or sadness is good we just label it that way and i think the labels create more suffering than anything that we ever actually experience so when you're sad do you try to not be sad no i actually don't think about it much i think a lot of people spend a lot of time and effort trying to figure out how they feel because they want to then judge or label themselves as i'm doing well or not well like a lot of effort goes into showing like how do i feel about this i mean my follow-up question be like why do you care why does it matter and that's why when you asked way long ago about like how much do you think feelings matter i don't think they matter at all like what would the case for feelings mattering be then why do you believe they exist it's a good question and it gets really interesting because it's like how i experience a feeling that i label in my head is sadness is it the same way you experience the thing that you like it's like seeing green and i see green and you see green what if all of our greens are different right i mean it's it gets very interesting like that but i think that i experienced something and if we were to just measure it based on like brain activity and like heart rate i would say that i become aroused in the literal sense uh from experiencing what i would deem as emotions and so if we were to describe it or define the term in that way i think i experience emotions and so i mean i'm fairly confident i experience emotions if we were to try and measure it that way then that's how i would say yes i do experience them but the question is just like how important are they and then it would be like for what if it's for accomplishment not very important for fitness not very important you know if if we're saying how important is emotion for love which is another emotion right it becomes like amorphous trying to go to amorphous but then you say okay well for defining love by what i'm willing to endure to continue to keep something then how important is it well it depends on how much i've conditioned myself to accept this thing so like if i want to stay married it's probably far more effective to condition someone to stay married because that is the external consequence of a good marriage as you stay together right i'm just saying like we're just purely measuring from out from external circumstances and so i think trying to measure and define things is what i actually geek out on and i really enjoy i think most people get bored of tears when i talk about this stuff so i don't talk about it much but that's the stuff that like um when when we keep peeling back layers of like why do you think you're able to get out of you know a difficult place in your life or why do you think you're able to go through these things a lot of it is because i believe that i will redefine terms and so we'll have some instance or something that i should do and i will redefine it or i'll say i i don't should i can just accept it and that's why the biggest refrain that i have in my head for like my own mental illness is just like and that's okay period like i don't wanna go to that thing that's okay