Everything is a feelings problem.

This is a exaggeration of course, but I've been struck by just how many sticky problems have an emotional component.

I have a tendency to ignore emotions in favor of (what seems to me like) the main content, but I limit myself when I do this.

Enthusiasm, despair, excitement, fear - these are too powerful to ignore. But naming them and uncovering the deeper values they reveal helps me make better decisions.

For example, I value minimalism and getting rid of junk but routinely put off doing any decluttering.

I realized that what I call "decluttering" is really better termed "making difficult decisions about my identity."

To get rid of <hobby supplies> that I never use involves confronting the fact that I'm not a <hobby> person. It's painful to realize that I'm not who I wish I was.

Getting rid of something I spent a lot of money on reveals that I wasted the money. I'm not as wise and frugal as I wish I was.

I put off minimalism because I don't have to feel those bad feelings if I don't force myself to evaluate and make the decisions.

And this scenario plays out in a lot of different areas of my life.

I don't take action toward a goal because I don't want to get excited and then fail and have to face the disappointment. Easier to coast along content with the status quo.

> To get rid of <hobby supplies> that I never use involves confronting the fact that I'm not a <hobby> person. It's painful to realize that I'm not who I wish I was.

My solution to these feelings is to remind myself that my hobbies don't define me, whether I do them a little or a lot. And it's OK to save some unused stuff until a season when I can use them. (Assuming that's not too far off.,)

I recently dusted off an ambitious hobby project I shelved years ago and "finished" it. In the three years that the project sat, my relevant skill set and the available open source software improved to the point that the project took days rather than months, and ended up better than I originally expected. It was very satisfying to pick up again.

I have another technique for this. I like to paint, and I'm ok, generally what I paint now is recognizable. But I've given myself a really long time line on getting good. Like 25 more years of practice. If you have a desire for a hobby there's no reason you can't think of it like golfing in retirement, or something similar. I'm ramping up to doing it more over a really long time.

In my case I kept the core supplies but got rid of a big stash of stuff that I was keeping in order to be able to "go make something on a whim" after realizing that right now it's the lack of time more than the lack of supplies that has been keeping me from creating. If it's going to happen, it will have to be a deliberate effort for a particular project and in that case I can also make the effort to go out and buy what I need.

But coming to terms with the fact that I don't have that kind of time in my life right now is hard, even though it's my own choice to prioritize other stuff. We're putting extra time into work right now with the goal of early retirement within the decade. This fact combined with the number of small children in the house means time-consuming hobbies with lots of small pieces are off the table for the next few years. I'm definitely looking forward to coming back to it in the future though!

I think the sacrifice is worth it but it's still a sacrifice. Usually I'm caught up in the busyness of life and don't think about it, but spending time on big-picture stuff like minimalism really brings the feelings to the surface. So no wonder I keep putting it off!

Very true. And as I reflect on why I used the identity language, I'm realizing that expressing my irrational feelings in an exaggerated form also helps to reduce the impact they have. By announcing dramatically to my husband, "I'm not a sewing person anymore!" I'm able to see just how silly it is to have that thought as a subconscious burden holding me back.

I think there is also a difference between knowing and _knowing_ - as in internalizing the information and relieing on it. There are many things that have been taught in school, for example, but made little sense untill I got the tools to truely understand them and be able to play with them.

So rather than just facts, you have networks of facts and experiences that need to connect for things to make sense and you to truely know something.

You can consider emotions as a compass. I have found it useful to listen to them, to figure out their cause. We will carry emotions our whole lives, ‘changing’ them doesn’t bring about the insight to actually deal with them. I recommend looking to resources like ‘It’s Not Always Depression’ by Hilary Jacobs Hendel

I started paying more attention to emotions when I realized that they show me the truth about what I value.

Strong feelings are typically a sign of a strong desire or fear of something.

"Why does this bother me so much? It's not that big a deal. Oh, because I really want..."

Knowing what I really want makes it easier to take action to get it, especially when the feelings are getting in the way of the goal. (Bad feelings and the fear of bad feelings are often obstacles to making things better.)

We think we make our choices rationally but in fact we don’t - they’re based on emotion and are mostly unconscious.

See George Lakoff’s work on cognition and decision making.