How do I want to feel?

When I do gymnastics, I feel inspired, I feel determined to persevere, I feel peace and happiness at heart. In other situations, I feel weak, defeated, blocked. Other times, I just don’t feel like doing gymnastics, I am tired, bored. However, most of the times it is those feelings that make me feel empowered, that make me keep wanting to do gymnastics. So looking at how I have felt in the past, I find out how I wish to feel in the future, how I want to feel.

In the blog How Do You Want To Feel? By Laura Jane Williams, she says: “If we chase the intangible feeling, rather than the concrete thing we might get a whole lot closer to that sigh of satisfaction as we close our eyes at night.” (Williams, 2015, p. 2). I can completely agree and understand where she is coming from. Williams is saying that if we chase or look for the feeling something provokes in us instead of the thing itself, we are sure to find something we love. We should find the emotions, not the material. How something makes us feel, that is what truly defines anything we do.

In the novel Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt, we can observe how the main character deals with mixed feelings when facing hardships. However, she makes a decision within herself of how she wants to feel. The author makes it clear to us how she felt by saying: “They made her feel old, and the way they spoke to her, the way they looked at her, it made her feel special. Important. It was a warm, spreading feeling, entirely new. She liked it…” (Babbitt, 2007, p. 44). We can see that once Winnie found out how she could feel, she knew that was the way she wanted to feel.

All in all, being aware and in contact with our feelings, knowing how we want to feel, can certainly impact our lives on a day to day basis.