How do you really feel?

I was reading about personal values yesterday. I did the exercise in the book and I was surprised by a couple of the values that came at the top of the list for me.

At first I thought they just didn’t fit and I was about to throw them aside but then as I paused for a few minutes I began to realise how absolutely true they were. And it got me to thinking – how honest am I about how I really feel?

I’m not talking about the knee-jerk reactions of day-to-day life here – I’m talking about that feeling in your gut – the one which says ‘yes this fills me with joy, yes I want more of this, yes this is so much fun’ or ‘no this doesn’t feel right, no don’t do it, no this is not for me’.

Back in the corporate world – some years ago now – I went on a training course on writing and delivering appraisals.

The one thing which I still remember clearly from that course happened during a feedback session after an exercise – I had been playing the role of appraiser and at some point I had asked the question “How do you feel about that?”.

The person I had been paired with, my appraisee, said that he had been taken aback when I had asked him “How do you feel about that?” as it wouldn’t have occurred to him to ask that question – he might have said “What do you think ….?” but not “How do you feel …?”.

We live in a society where it can seem like we are meant to ‘think things through’, make the sensible decision, override our own instinctual knowing. But how happy are we doing that, how fulfilled are we?

There is so much power in being really honest with ourselves.

How honest are you about how you really feel?

(Image courtesy of Dave Francis on Pixabay)