 In this post, I want to talk about something Mark Manson calls “the feedback loop from hell” . Basically, this loop is a cycle where we judge every feeling and thought we have. We end up feeling guilty about feeling guilty about feeling angry about feeling anxious and so on. So what is really happening, and what is the solution to bypassing all this?If you ask me, it’s very simple. Just accept whatever you’re feeling or thinking because there is no way to control our emotions and thoughts… We can accept them, feel them, understand them and then let them go. We can also use them to improve ourselves everyday – we may never be perfect, but we can thrive to do better. One example I always like to share about myself is me judging who I am as a coach. It starts like this: “I am not a good coach, I cannot empathize”. And it ends like this: I feel guilty for feeling guilty for feeling afraid of failing as a coach. And here I am in a limbo of emotions!So I stop myself and say: “hey, you can’t control that you’re afraid of being a bad coach; so accept it and let’s explore that fear”. Why do I feel that? What can I do the next time I am faced with this feeling? All that introspection made me understand that I have difficulty dealing with weakness, whether it’s in me or in others. The thing is, I can’t change that thought that comes to me whenever I feel weak or someone around me does. However,I can pause and remember that weakness is part of being human and we all need help on some days. I remind myself that I’ve had anxiety attacks and felt like a failure, I’ve made mistakes that anyone could make. I am human. So, in that moment, instead of focusing on being a failure or on how weak people around me are, I choose to relate and to be empathetic. That decision, right there, is one of the things that make me a better coach every day. I am not perfect, I am human and so are you. We all judge others and ourselves harshly sometimes and have moments where we doubt our abilities.But it is what we do next that will define us. We need to accept those emotions, let ourselves feel them and explore them and then just let these emotions go and move on.And each one of us can learn to live by this mantra.It’s okay to miss a loved one and want to cry, it’s okay to be angry towards an injustice. Let the feeling in, feel it and then let it go and keep living.We all experience the feedback loop and go on months judging ourselves or people around us. Instead of staying stuck in the loop, we can try to be better by letting go of control and accepting that it’s okay to feel emotions; pleasant or unpleasant. It’s also okay to have weird or ugly thoughts because in reality we can’t really control those either. The only thing we can do is learn how to feel them, understand them, and then simply let them go. And as I mentioned before, we may never be perfect but we can learn from every experience and become better. |