It’s important to remember that your feelings flow from your beliefs, your actions, and many other things outside of your control. As such, they ought to be subordinated to the rational process, rather than promoted to something above it. Your feelings are a source of information, but they aren’t facts. If you don’t have facts to support your feelings, honesty requires you to soften or abandon your position.
While the feelings of a person whose beliefs and actions are aligned will be optimal over time, there are many times when doing what is best requires you to feel bad in the present. Life will provide a stream of situations where you have a choice: feel better now and worse later, or feel worse now and better later. These decision points will consist of opportunities to say, feel, or act in a way that is out of alignment with your sincere understanding of reality. Don’t succumb to the temptation. Although deviating from alignment will make you feel better in the moment, the consequences will be worse than remaining aligned. Embrace opportunities to feel better later, even if they require you to feel worse now.
Generation Z provides an example of those who choose to prefer the present over the future. Generation Z survey respondents overwhelmingly defined “wealthy” as the ability to live comfortably without financial concerns, and yet they notoriously overspend beyond prior generations, debt-financing luxury lifestyles typical of affluent empty-nesters. These kinds of people will never reach the point where they can afford not to be concerned about finances later because they aren’t worried about their finances now.
It is through your willingness to face short-term discomfort that you will minimize long-term discomfort. As you consistently opt to remain in alignment, you will find that you face fewer moments where remaining in alignment causes you any mental anguish.