Feelings are not good or bad; actions are
What comes first, thoughts or emotions? This feels like the chicken and egg conundrum. It is a psychological, philosophical, and practical inquiry. We can explore one of the possible answers to such questions through cognitive behavioral therapy, Stoicism, Buddhism, and Zen practice. All of these disciplines appear to have a common conceptual framework around thoughts and emotions.
Stoicism—a school of thought begun in 304 BC—posits that it is not what happens to us that determines our feelings, but our thoughts about what happens to us. It is not events that upset us; it is our reaction to those events. This seems to have something to do with thinking. As biased animals, human beings have distorted thought patterns. The way we perceive something and process it determines the way we feel. Thoughts seem to come first. The same argument is made by cognitive behavioral therapy: in order to feel better, you need to intervene in your half-broken thought patterns; integrate them into your personality and belief system, and reconceive them from the first principle.
Buddhism and Zen posit that you are consciousness: all you want is already within you, buried underneath years of societal conformity, limiting beliefs, competing commitments. The way to unleash your potential is by doing less, stripping down all the self-constructed veils of thought, and letting go of them through meditation and awareness practice. As psychologist Lisa Feldman Barret puts it, “emotions are not built in, they are just built.” You make your emotions. Emotions do not happen to you, and because of this, you have responsibility for your emotions and state of being. This is an empowering and ground-shaking concept.
Your feelings often precede your actions. I do y because I feel x. And you may find yourself labeling your emotions as good or bad. In fact, as Alan Watts explains in one of his talks available on the Waking Up app, emotions are not good or bad; actions are. You have responsibility for your thoughts and emotions, and, as a consequence, you can shape your actions by committing to understanding yourself and your feelings a bit more in-depth, like you would with a group of people you find yourself in class with in high school.
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You aren’t at the mercy of your emotions — your brain creates them