If you don’t learn how to untangle your feelings from your actions, you’ll never
unlock your true potential.
Here’s how feelings keep you from changing. When you stop to consider how you
feel, you stop moving toward your goal. Once you hesitate, you’ll start thinking
about what you need to do, you’ll weigh the pros and cons, you’ll consider how you
feel about what you need to do, and you’ll talk yourself out of doing it.
I have said it before, and I’ll say it again because it is so important. You aren’t
battling your ability to stick to a diet, execute a business plan, repair a broken
marriage and rebuild your life, hit your sales goals, or win over a bad manager—you
are battling your feelings about doing it. You are more than capable of doing the
work to change anything for the better, despite how you feel.
You can’t control how you feel. But you can always choose how you act.
Ever wonder how pro athletes achieve so much? Part of it is talent and practice,
but another key element is a skill that you and I need in our lives—the ability to
separate from our emotions and push our bodies and mouths to move. They may
feel tired as the football game drags into the fourth quarter, but they don’t act tired.
Feelings are merely suggestions, ones the greatest athletes and teams ignore. To
change, you must do the same. You must ignore how you feel, and as Nike would
tell you, Just Do It anyway.
Everyone struggles with their feelings of self-doubt. Just ask Lin-Manuel
Miranda, creator of the smash hit Hamilton that won 11 Tony Awards in 2016. It
took him six years to write Hamilton. You may dream of writing the next Hamilton,
and you very well might. Just don’t forget that it took Miranda six years to write that
show. And he had to battle his feelings of self-doubt every step of the way.
He recently put up this post on his Twitter page. It’s a post of a conversation
between Miranda and his wife, Vanessa. Three years before Hamilton debuted to