Your Feelings Are Not FACTS

Happy Thursday Friends!

We’ve all been told to trust our gut. Follow your heart. Honor your feelings.

And I believe in all of that — with one important caveat.

Your feelings are real. But they’re not always right.

More specifically: they’re not always current.

Think about the last time you felt a flash of anxiety before speaking up in a meeting. Or the hesitation you felt before raising your hand for something new. Or the fear that crept in when you considered making a bold move.

What if that feeling wasn’t about today at all?

Sometimes the anxiety you feel in the room is 22-year-old you who got shut down in front of a crowd. Sometimes the fear of launching the thing is a story someone else told you about yourself decades ago. Sometimes the self-doubt that shows up isn’t wisdom — it’s an old wound still making noise.

Emotional intelligence isn’t about honoring every feeling. It’s about knowing which ones are data — and which ones are old programming running quietly in the background.

The CLEAR framework starts with the Circumstance — the facts. Not the interpretation. Not the feeling. The actual, observable fact. When you can separate what happened from the story you attached to it, you start to see how much of your emotional response is rooted in the present — and how much is a response to something that happened a long time ago.

So before you let a feeling make a decision for you this week, pause and ask yourself:

How old is this story?

You might be surprised by the answer.