The modern assumption is that how you feel comes from the world around you or the physical processes in your body. Those searching for an answer to why people are significantly more depressed, anxious, and less happy today than at any other time need only recognize that never has a society more effectively convinced people that have so little control over who or how they are or what they do in life.
The truth is that how you feel comes from what you want, what you do, and what you think, relative to your experience in and with the world. The beliefs and actions you choose will strongly influence how you feel. Your desires come largely from what you believe, and your feelings largely come from how well your actions align with those desires.
To the extent that your actions or desires are out of alignment with your beliefs, or your beliefs are inaccurate or incomplete, you will experience more frequent and intense negative feelings such as pain, anger, guilt, and unhappiness. Your mental and emotional state is very much subject to the degree of alignment between your thoughts, feelings, actions and your perception of reality. The fact that dishonesty creates physiological stress is shown by the fact that lie detectors don’t measure lies—they measure impaired breathing, increased heart rate, and perspiration. Your body language and even your voice change when you lie!
While the presence of intense negative feelings is obvious, their root source is less so. Some clues can help you decipher whether your negative feelings might be from dishonesty rather than something else. Do you find yourself hesitating to do what you believe is best? Do you lack motivation in doing what you believe is most important? Do you struggle to start, focus, or finish what you choose to do? Do you apply anything but your best effort toward obtaining what you say you want?
Honesty is the key to accomplishing amazing things while being totally free from anxiety, depression, and guilt. You will always feel greatest possible peace, confidence, contentment, and joy when you are acting in full alignment with reality, as far as you know it. If your desires, beliefs, and actions do not align, you will experience frequent and possibly intense emotional distress. The only way to resolve this distress is to align these three classes of behavior. Maximizing your understanding of reality and aligning your actions and desires to it will maximize feelings of satisfaction, happiness, purpose, and peace.