Are You Your Thoughts, Feelings, or Actions?

One of the most important questions of our lives that perhaps we do not give enough thought to is:

“Who are you?”

I think so much about everything that, at many points in my life, I would have assumed that I was my thoughts.

For many people, they may feel so much that they may conclude that they are their feelings.

For others, they may feel so compelled to act that they may come to conclude that they are their actions.

For others still, perhaps some quality has become so central to their lives, whether it be their work, their beauty, or their intellect, and they identify with such qualities so much that the quality becomes them. When they think of themselves, they see a particular quality or set of qualities they embody as part of their human spirit.

Growing up, if someone told us over and over how hardworking, or smart, or beautiful we were, perhaps we ended up learning to identify as what we were told we were.

Unfortunately, if we were repeatedly reminded of our faults and how we were not good enough, perhaps this is how we came to identify ourselves. Rather than being something, we came to see ourselves as lacking something we were supposed to be.

The interesting part of being human is that we get to define what or who we are. Whether we relate more to our thoughts, feelings, actions, or some other quality of ourselves, we get to choose to live our lives based on what we find to be important.

Often, we like to simplify things to make sense of them. It’s easier to see myself as my thoughts. But the reality is that my feelings and actions help me to arrive at my thoughts. Most people tend to know what they feel or believe, and then they use thoughts to rationalize or explain this. If I feel angry and I don’t know why, I will find a way to explain it, probably based on whatever actions just took place.

Feelings flow into thoughts. Of course, thoughts can flow into feelings too. If I am obsessively thinking about something, I may have a strong feeling about whatever I was thinking. And it seems that if we feel strongly enough, we will be compelled to take action. And again, our thoughts or our reasoning will help convince us further whether we should take action or whether it is unsafe to do so.

Often, our feelings compel us to action, and our thoughts reason us out of having to take any action. If you feel more, you may take more action. If you think more, you may take less action.

Feeling too much with not enough thinking can lead you to take actions you regret or to take actions in ways that were not properly thought out and perhaps would lead to undesired consequences. Thinking too much with not enough feeling can result in not taking enough action. You may miss many opportunities, having thought them through too deeply and focused on all the things that could go wrong, thinking yourself away from taking action. The other danger with thinking too much with not enough feeling is that we can find it difficult to relate to other people. Usually, people find it more interesting to surround themselves with impassioned people, as they tend to be more relatable and entertaining to be around. Thought or reasoning without any feeling can feel dry, empty, and purposeless.

If your feelings and thoughts are in balance, then you may find the way to take the proper actions when needed and to avoid taking unnecessary actions or actions that will lead to undesirable consequences. Reaching this point can take self-reflection, practice, and of course seeking balance in one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions.

A key issue to keep in mind is that it is quite easy to get stuck. Thoughts can get to a point where they loop around. I suffered depression in the past (e.g., many, many years ago), and at some point, there were just negative thoughts looping in my mind repeatedly. After sinking deep into these thought loops and having hundreds of negative thoughts in a row, it isn't easy to form a positive thought or positive action in your life. And so thoughts can build a sort of momentum, and when they get going in a certain direction with enough power, going against them can be like trying to stop a speeding train.

A path to get out of these loops is to realize that our thoughts have gone out of control and force ourselves to take positive actions (e.g., exercise or socializing with friends and family) even if we don’t feel like it. If you feel stuck in your life and unable to make progress, I recommend seeking professional help.

We can also get stuck in our feelings. Have you ever felt bad for someone? Perhaps a friend just lost his job. Then you spend your time worrying, thinking about his family and how they may struggle to pay the bills. You may worry about how they will pay for that new car they just got. You don’t want to call your friend and bother him, as you know he is probably worried and busy. And also, a part of you doesn’t want to call because if he asks for help, you fear that you are not in the position to offer any. You would be happy to listen to his problems, but ultimately you cannot do much of anything to fix it. When we find ourselves in these situations, it’s quite easy to get stuck in our feelings. It can drag down our whole day if we get stuck there.

A path to get unstuck from our negative feelings is finding a small positive thought or action we can do to help and then actually do it. For example, this could be notifying our friend of any job openings you know about, or offering to listen if he wants to talk, or meditation or prayer. Such actions can help us relieve the negative energy inside us and transform it into positive action.

We can even get stuck in our actions. Imagine two men who struggle to move a heavy sofa from one room to another. So they ask a couple of friends to help them. The sofa is currently positioned in the hallway between two rooms. The men get to their positions, two on one side of the sofa and two on the other side, and they proceed to push the sofa. They struggle and struggle, but the sofa doesn’t move. They check to see if something is blocking the sofa from moving, and there is nothing there. It should be able to move freely. The furniture is heavy, but not so heavy to where four men would not be able to move it.

What is the problem here? The men were not clear on their direction. They were all pushing the sofa forward, meaning they were canceling out their forces and working against each other. If two men are on each side of the sofa, one side should be pushing and the other side pulling. If everyone is pushing, as is what happened here, then we have a problem.

When we get stuck in our actions, we can stubbornly push forward, even when we shouldn’t be pushing at all. Sometimes, we should think more deeply before we act, or we should consider how we feel. Our feelings or intuitions may reveal that this is not the proper course of action, but our desire for progress may keep us moving forward nonetheless. Sometimes, the best course of action is to do nothing – to wait and see what happens. Not every situation demands action, and most situations will not benefit if we push forward without thinking through the implications of our actions.

Everyone gets stuck in action occasionally. But if we often push forward and cause undesirable problems in our lives, we should think more deeply about our true goals. We should come to understand that action without any reflection can cause catastrophic problems and waste time, meaning we will have to perform more and more actions in a loop that becomes frustratingly difficult to dig our way out of. This can result in burnout, as we do more and more but accomplish less and less. To perform meaningful or useful actions, we will need to engage in thought.

This can take practice, but see if you can learn to use your thoughts, feelings, and actions to help you move forward in life, rather than getting stuck in them. Try to balance these different parts of yourself and see what happens.