Care How You Feel

When it comes to choosing into what you want, the core practice is “Care How You Feel”. This is a powerful practice that will change your life if you allow it.

Commitment

Let’s talk about commitment. If there is a cause that we care a little about, we may perhaps say something to someone about it, we complain or question or discuss it. Perhaps we click some likes on Facebook and share an article or two. If we care a little more, maybe we donate some money towards someone acting on that cause. Maybe we go to a protest. If we care more, perhaps we organize a protest ourselves. Now think of the level of commitment that had someone stand in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square as it rolled towards them.

How Much do you Care How You Feel?

So, and this is a real question to ask yourself: along this scale of commitment, what is your own level of commitment to yourself, to how you feel? How much do the things you want really matter to you? How much does feeling happy and fulfilled really matter to you?

Is it at the level of sharing a Facebook article about how you feel – a funny or sad meme, and then we’re done for today? Maybe we donate some money occasionally, we splurge on a massage for self-care. Perhaps we spend a few hours discussing with our friends at the dinner table or the bar about not feeling good about our job? Is that where our commitment to ourselves ends?

For a very long time this was my level of commitment. I remember literally spending years and years standing in my local bar at the end of the street, talking to my same friends about the same topics – my job not being fulfilling any more, wanting to work on something with purpose, wanting to leave the city, wanting to spend more time outdoors.

Choice and Commitment

We must come to the understanding that a choice is not a choice until it is accompanied by action. If you decide to jump off the high diving board into the pool far below, when is it that you truly make the choice to jump? Is it when you are contemplating it and mulling over the options and then say “Yes I think I will jump”? No, since nothing has changed. We could say it is when you start climbing the ladder up to the high diving platform. But the real decision actually happens when you step off the platform. That is when you are committed, and have made a true choice. Choices are only real choices when accompanied by committed actions.

For the spiritual path practitioner - we could say that enlightenment occurs when the gap between choice and wise action is eliminated, hesitation is dissolved. So, that is what to practice to evolve along the path.

If we care enough about how we feel, if we are to truly make choices based on how we feel, the level of committed action will be commensurate. What level of action are you willing to ascribe to caring how you feel? What is your commitment, and what is your commitment to – is it to you, and what you want? Or is it to something else like someone else’s company, money, a partner’s perceived needs, practicing staying stuck or so many other things that we put up as barriers to avoid looking closely at our level of commitment to ourselves.

Care About Choosing Into Your Happiness

Returning to the question then of What Do You Want - you now have the immediate practices you want to create in your life. Now it’s time to Choose. You need to intensely, massively, powerfully Care How You Feel. We could also say this as: CHOOSE how you feel.

What do you want? You have discovered that. Now you need to Choose to feel that. Over and over and over. With commitment, passion, discipline, patience and loving-kindness. Care how you feel enough to choose into it no matter what.

EXERCISE

Here is a sequence of exercises related to Caring How You Feel. You can do them one at a time taking a break in between and coming back later to the next one, or do them one after the other. You can journal after each one any insights you might have, I find this helpful.

Step 1. Look at the impact of not having these in your life.

Really feel into the impact of whatever it is - the loneliness of being alone, or the heaviness of the extra weight you’re carrying, or the screaming panic and stuckness you feel in the job you hate, or whatever it is for you. Really allow yourself to open up to the real impact of this in your life, on you, and on your loved ones, your community, your family, and back again most importantly on you. Don’t allow yourself to get into total panic with this, and don’t go down the rabbit hole of attacking yourself for this, but try and really feel into the impact to your heart. Allow the sadness of that to be present.

Step 2. Visualize having these in your life.

Now, open up to a deep visualization of having what you want. Bring yourself into the feelings of having mobility in your life, being lighter, being in intimate relationship, feeling joyful, or whatever it is that you want. Really see if you can create the feelings of what this feels like. BE what you want. Just imagine it, visualize it, feel it.

Step 3. Contemplate and Meditate on Caring How You Feel.

Now feel into the core of your being. Can you connect with the lifeforce that is flowing through you. The impetus that causes you to take a breath every single time. That is the energy that cares, really cares. Connect to it. See that each breath is a choice, a new choice each time to live. To want to explore, to dream, to experience. Really see if you can connect to this caring. And that now you need to take responsibility for this, commit to caring enough about yourself to honor this life experience by committing to what you want. It is deeply important that you choose into what is in your heart. The greatest gift you can give the world is the gift of your own well-being.

4. Step into Being.

Now practice BEING what you want. The next couple of emails will explain how to do this in more detail. But for now just step into it. And if you start to feel down or overwhelmed about this, come back to the feeling of Caring How You Feel, this commitment to yourself and what you want. Practice it until it is unshakeable.

What’s Next

We’re going to talk in the next chapter about how to put this into practice, how to work with the mind to make these things show up in your life.