If under your goals living in California is optimal, then it is rational to live in California.
The point of, for instance, EA is not that giving to homeless people in New York when there's starving children in Africa is a bad goal- it's that it's an inconsistent goal when one also professes that human lives have equal value. And when one wants to live by that tenet, then EA offers better routes to optimizing lives saved.
What you described is exactly how rationalists think emotions are best wielded: you look at your/a situation and look at how you feel about it. They're your barometers for whether that which you believe to be your goal is actually your goal.
Emotions are misused when you treat factual beliefs as goals: then your emotions get attached to them, in unhealthy and cult-like ways.
Rationality is one approach to trying to believe fewer misguided things.
That doesn't make it easy and it doesn't mean that success rates at doing so aren't still wildly variable.
It doesn’t decide your goals, it just helps you reach them. The number of strawmen in this thread is far too high.
Ok, I'll bite. If it's the wrong emotions controlling you, what do you do then?
Please don't suggest any course of action that requires you to be in control.
I'm happy to continue living in California because emotionally: * I like the weather * I like living close to mountains and beaches and deserts * I like my house and I'm too lazy to move
Rationally I should take the 10% pay cut to go full remote and move to a suburb of Indianapolis.