---
title: 'The Surprising and Liberating Fact about Feelings'
url: 'https://tonypiper.coach/articles/the-surprising-and-liberating-fact-about-feelings'
date: '2023-01-12'
updated: '2024-12-04'
author: 'Tony Piper'
description: "Feelings don't come from external circumstances - they reflect your thinking in the moment. This liberating insight gives you more control over life."
tags:
  - 'Presence and Clarity'
  - 'Ship 30 for 30 2023'
  - Mindset
---



# The Surprising and Liberating Fact about Feelings

By Tony Piper,  January 12, 2023 •  [Presence and Clarity](https://tonypiper.coach/tags/presence-and-clarity) [Ship 30 for 30 2023](https://tonypiper.coach/tags/ship-30-for-30-2023) [Mindset](https://tonypiper.coach/tags/mindset) 

[Yesterday](https://tonypiper.coach/articles/the-rumble-strip) I shared the metaphor of Rumble Strips. Their job is to get our attention when we've drifted out of our traffic lane. Similarly, our feelings are designed to get our attention.

I hope that even being aware of when you're on the rumble strip will begin to bring you some peace.

But have you ever wondered where those feelings come from?

Are they from other people, environment, circumstances, the future or the past? Or somewhere else?

Have you ever felt really upset about something - a rude driver or a slow pedestrian - and later noticed that you feel differently about it (or not at all) the next morning?

Or perhaps you have a colleague who you always get along well with, but others find irritating?

What about a message notification from a particular person? How is it that we can get upset even if we've not seen the actual message?

The fact that two people can have a different experience of the same colleague, or that I can have two different experiences of the same situation suggests that the feelings don't come from out there. If they did, they wouldn't change. And Apple/Google/Microsoft don't have a technology that forces us to feel bad when we see a notification.

**Rather, feelings are only ever telling us about the kind of thinking we're doing in the moment.**

If we're doing angry thinking, we'll feel angry. If we're doing sad thinking, we'll feel sad. And so on.

They feel lousy so we will notice, and stop doing the thinking that created them. If they felt good, we'd have a good reason to stay in them. But they don't.

The bad news is that nobody taught us this. The good news is that feelings are nothing to be afraid of because they're just letting us know about our thinking. Nothing else.

When we can truly see that for ourselves, we begin to see we have a lot more control over our experience of life than we might have ever imagined.