Your nervous system is, among other things, a pattern-matching machine. It takes incoming information and runs it against everything it has previously learned about what that information means and what response it requires.

This happens fast, faster than conscious thought. By the time you're aware of reacting, the reaction is already underway.

In self-improvement circles, there's a strong emphasis on feeling your feelings, and this is generally excellent advice.

The problem is how it tends to get interpreted.

Many people hear "feel your feelings" and translate it into: sit with this, stay with this, honor this, process this. Which turns into: hold this, carry this, make sure you've fully experienced every dimension of this before you move on.

But emotions aren't meant to be permanent. They're meant to be information.

Most of us live in the larger expanse of what we don’t even know we don’t know, which is the uncharted territory of possibility and growth. Feeling lost or insufficient isn’t failure; it’s a sign that you’re ready to move into that new unknown.