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I’ve probably tipped my hand already with the title, “Feelings Are Overrated.” That’s fine. I’ll stand by it.
I’m reminded of an old press conference with Bobby Knight, after a particularly ugly loss. A reporter—earnest, well-meaning, and completely predictable—asked him, “Coach, how do you feel?”
Even then, I remember thinking: That’s a dumb question.
Knight, to his eternal credit, agreed. He didn’t just answer it—he disassembled it, held it up for inspection, and showed us what a stupid question sounds like when exposed to daylight. And yet, decades later, reporters still ask it. Over and over. How do you feel?
Which tells you something important: the question isn’t about information. It’s a ritual. A cultural reflex. We’ve decided that feelings are the headline, the story, and the moral authority all rolled into one.
Today, I want to gently—but firmly—push back on that.
Not because feelings don’t exist. They do. Not because they don’t matter. They can. But because seventy-five years of obsessing over them hasn’t made us wiser, tougher, calmer, or happier. If anything, we’ve become more fragile, more reactive, and far more convinced of our own righteousness—often without any evidence to support it.
If you’re anything like me (and odds are you are), you see it every day.
You see people doing things that make no sense at all—behaving as if the universe is a customer service desk designed exclusively for them.
You see people brimming with self-esteem who haven’t done a single hard, admirable, or useful thing to earn it.
Somewhere along the way, we confused feeling good with being good.
A culture that constantly checks its emotional temperature starts avoiding anything difficult. Hard work feels uncomfortable. Discipline feels restrictive. Delayed gratification feels oppressive. And so we do what comes naturally: we listen to the feeling, crown it king, and act accordingly.
The tragedy is the belief that if we can just identify how we feel—really sit with it, journal about it, explore it, honor it—we’ll somehow be better off.
But all that usually happens is this: we get very good at naming emotions and very bad at changing outcomes.
If your life is a play—or better yet, a film—feelings are one of the actors. Sometimes they deliver a great line. Sometimes they improvise. Sometimes they absolutely overact. But they are not in charge.
Purpose is the Executive Producer.
Purpose decides why this project exists at all. It secures the funding. It determines what kind of story is being told and whether it’s even worth making.
Meaning is the Screenwriter.
Meaning gives the story coherence. It connects one scene to the next. Without it, you just have a collection of emotional moments that never add up to anything.
And purposeful action is the Director.
The director shows up every day and turns intention into reality. The director doesn’t ask how the actors feel about the scene—he asks what needs to be done to make the story work.
Feelings? Feelings are talent. Valuable, expressive, occasionally brilliant—but notoriously unreliable if left in charge.
We’ve spent two generations getting in touch with our feelings, and the data is in: we feel worse than ever.
What actually helps? Doing what needs to be done.
You don’t “feel” your way out of depression—you often move your way out of it. Physical exercise works not because it changes your feelings first, but because it changes your physiology and your momentum. Guess what comes before moving? Thinking. Thinking about moving.
The real order of operations looks something like this:
An event happens.
You feel something.
You think about it.
You decide.
You act.
The wheels come off when we skip the thinking step.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we’ve been training people to do for decades—feel, react, repeat. Thinking slows things down. Thinking introduces friction. Thinking asks uncomfortable questions like, “Is this true?” or “What’s the right thing to do even if I don’t feel like it?”
And here’s another uncomfortable truth: many people have never been taught how to think in the first place. Schools are very good at teaching what to memorize. They’re far less interested in teaching how to reason, how to weigh trade-offs, or how to tolerate discomfort long enough to arrive at a better answer.
So what should we do?
As a culture? We should take a breath. Acknowledge that feelings exist. Then—before acting—think.
As individuals? Same prescription. If enough individuals do that, the culture follows. Cultures don’t change because someone declares it so. They change because a critical mass of people start behaving differently.
Will that change the world?
Probably not.
And that’s okay.
As Dante warned us (and I’m paraphrasing generously), abandon the fantasy that you’re here to save humanity. It’s enough work to improve yourself—maybe become a little more disciplined, a little more thoughtful, a little more useful—and, if you’re lucky, help someone else do the same along the way.
Or, to borrow from Viktor Frankl: meaning doesn’t come from how you feel. It comes from what you take responsibility for.
Feelings aren’t evil. They’re just wildly overqualified for the role we’ve given them.
Let them speak.
Just don’t let them run the show.
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