A few years ago I learned that I could disconnect at will from physical feelings like tickling or cold showers. Initially I would flinch or laugh uncontrollably, but I found I could flip a mental switch and break the circuit, split the action from the reaction. (It turned out to be impossible to disconnect from pain, even though it can act as a focusing device, but that’s another story.)
I rely on feelings a lot when doing things, especially in situations with many factors where there is no certain path forward. I rely on intuition and let my brain do most of the work. This works well most of the time, and I can articulate why I feel what I feel.
This does not work so well when the general meets the particular — when I’m in the daily trenches, feeling the intense DO NOT WANT, trying to follow my own plans telling me to do things that are perfectly logical. This, for me, is a fundamental problem: how do I reach goals I want to achieve in general if I don’t want to do the relevant actions now? A question of motivation. (Yes, I know all about habits, planning and a million other things; I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.)
Now recently I thought: since it’s a known fact that action produces feeling and there are two ways to overcome the effect of a negative feeling (power through the action or remove the negative feeling), why don’t I use my skill with physical feelings and apply it to mental feelings instead? Suspending mental resistance is only necessary for a short period of time: when I start doing something, the action takes over and produces a feeling impulse that takes it into the positive. In short, it worked.
I genuinely envy people who are driven and can vigorously pursue their goals. My brain simply refuses to commit to anything long-term, even though the essential shape of my goals hasn’t changed in 15 years.