If you were raised by a woman, had mostly women teachers, and find yourself often in your feelings with not much real life progress, chances are, you’re a “feeler.”
I was a “feeler” for a long time.
“Feelers” are people who lean more into their feelings than their logical side.
Feeling too much for us men seems to lead to living quiet lives of desperation.
It leads to procrastination and analysis paralysis.
It gets in the way of being fearless in life.
It gets in the way of having any kind of resolve.
If I let my male coaching clients go on and on about their feelings on our weekly calls, our 50 minutes quickly turn into two hours. And the kicker? Zero progress. Oh, hell no!
Another way of looking at this is like energy.
There’s female energy which is all about feeling. Then there is male energy which is all about confidently moving forward despite our fearful feelings.
To say we have to stop feeling is ridiculous.
For us men, It’s ok to love, feel the pain that comes from failing, feel anger, etc.
What’s not ok is letting our feelings dictate our destiny.
What’s important is to have the awareness needed to know if feeling too much is the reason we’re stuck, unfulfilled and just miserable with our lot in life.
Once we wake up to what we’ve been doing, we need to lead best we can.
Example:
We’re going to do 30 minutes on the bike this morning.
The feeler comes to the table and says, “I don’t feel like it. We should watch some Youtube videos instead.”
The leader responds with, “Youtube is a great idea. That’s going to be the reward,” as he gets on the bike and starts to peddle.
Now the leader will need to deal with push back from the feeler. This usually comes in the form of messages like, we should clean this bike, this is hard, I feel hot, this is dumb, it’s not going to work, etc., etc., etc.
The feeler is 5 years old emotionally and desperately needs us to create space to express itself but under no circumstances is it ever allowed to drive. Why? 5 year olds are not old enough to drive and when they do, crashes follow.
I’ve learned and teach others, never fight with your feeler or pretend it’s not there. In doing so, they will always win which leads to us all losing. If you’re a parent, you’ve learned this lesson already.
After a few days of riding your bike, your feeler’s protests will be at a minimum, and in a few weeks, there will be an integration. Integration meaning, the two parts that were in opposition are now moving as one towards a goal that serves them, and the greater good. Now you’re one more step towards becoming a fully integrated, actualized man.
