Stop Thinking, Start Feeling

I've been thinking, what advice do I wish someone gave me when I was 25 years old?

There's a difference between thinking and feeling.

Most of us live in a world that promotes thinking. You analyze things, you describe things in a logical way. When you go to work, your boss asks you, 'why did you make that decision?' You defend your decision with a logical framework and a PowerPoint, spreadsheet. You show them the data, you show them numbers.

Most of our day-to-day lives are spent thinking. And most of my life, I thought that was the only way to be. I went to school, I was decent at math. I would study, I would focus on logic and being logical.

But I've grown to realize over time, that's not the only way of being.

You can feel. You can make a decision based on feeling.

Most of my life I was trapped in my head. I would think about what I want to do next. There was always a monologue running up here. Do this, do that. What about this? What about that? And it was very rare that I listened to my gut.

If I want to make a big decision in life, I would think about it, pro con list, be very rational about it. But actually, your body has a pretty good sense of what you actually want.

You don't need to logically work your way through every single problem. Sometimes you can just feel it.

What do I feel like doing? What do I feel right now? How do I feel about this? What does my intuition say?

It wasn't until I turned 35 that I realized how often I was in my head. Thinking about things. Processing. Questioning. I wasn't feeling most of the time. And so I started to make a change.

I wanted to tap into my intuition. I wanted to feel more often. It was hard because at work, everything I did, I worked at Meta, and the question was always like, show me your rationale. Show me the reasoning, defend your decisions.

But I realized over time, I made better decisions just based on my intuition. I realized that I felt better when I tapped in how I felt about something, tapped in what my body felt.

Right now, I'm even noticing that I'm a little tense. My shoulders are hunching a little bit. I'm not breathing deeply, I'm a little nervous.

Those feelings weren't things that I really could access before. And it took time for me to build that awareness of my body. I did it through seeing a therapist and doing meditation and breathing exercises.

She would check in with me every once in a while when I would say something and my mind would race a mile a minute and I would start talking and talking and talking. She'd be like, yeah, how does that feel right now? And that wasn't a question I asked myself very often.

I've learned as I've begun to tap into this more. A lot of things in the world that is driven by feelings, not thinking. Music, art, video games, dancing, when I go surfing, I'm out there feeling the wave, I'm feeling the ocean.

Now that I've found more of a balance between thinking and feeling, I think I'm better at work. I definitely have better mental health. My brain is not constantly chugging on all these issues.

Sometimes I can just relax, sometimes I can just feel, sometimes I can just be.

I wish someone would have got a 25 year old Brad and said, 'dude, you don't have to think all the time. You don't have to overanalyze everything. What does your intuition tell you? What do you feel right now? What does your body say?'

That one simple question, 'what do you feel right now?' has unlocked a host of realizations: Wow, this situation makes me uncomfortable. I didn't even realize it. Wow, I'm performing right now. Wow, I'm not even, I'm so stressed. I'm so up here. I'm constantly thinking. And it made me better at my job. It may be better for a mental health standpoint.

I make better decisions now. I just feel better because I have more of a balance between mind and body, and I'm aware of what's going on around here. I'm not just a brain Sam walking around, like a computer, crunching numbers all the time. My advice to you is listen to your feelings, listen to your emotions, listen to your body.

Do not just rely on your brain, that will lead you to overthinking and overrationalizing everything. And if you can do this well. I firmly believe you will be happier in life. You will really understand what your body needs, what you as a person want to do, and it will really help you, especially in tough times, I think it's really stressful, really challenging, to have a 2nd set of inputs into your decision making that's not just, what do I think? What do I think? What do I think? What do my brain saying?