Chicken or egg: Feelings and actions

Have you ever thought a version of the following?

When I’m secure, I’ll leave my job / relationship.

When I’m confident, I’ll try surfing / asking that person out.

When I’m prepared, I’ll start a business / go back to school.

Or what about these?

Once I leave my job, I’ll feel free.

Once I get in the water, I’ll feel brave.

Once I launch my website, I’ll feel legitimate.

Which comes first? Do your feelings determine your actions, or do your actions determine how you feel?

This chicken-or-egg question comes up a lot in coaching conversations. I don’t have definitive answers but I have some observations.

What I see in my clients and in my own life is an interdependence between feelings and actions. Meaning, how you feel informs how (and whether) you act. And whether (and how) you act informs how you feel.

There’s an ongoing, mutually reinforcing relationship between feelings and actions.

Okaaaaay.

So given that, how do you take action even when you don’t feel like it? And how do you cultivate the feelings you desire without attaching them to certain outcomes?

As far as I can tell, both of these questions have the same answer:

Make new meaning.

The meaning you assign to an action—including its potential outcome—determines how likely it is you’ll take it. And the meaning you assign to a feeling—including where it comes from—determines how likely it is you’ll seek or avoid it.

If you’re struggling to take an action, or you’re convinced something external needs to occur for you to feel how you want to feel, try naming the thoughts you’re having about these desired actions and feelings.

Once you’ve named your thoughts, try questioning their veracity.

Is this belief absolutely true? Could you prove it in a court of law?

If you thought about it differently—assigned a new meaning, dropped an association, or considered it from another person’s perspective—what could emerge?

For example, if you stopped equating freedom with leaving your full-time job, what other actions could you take to experience freedom in your life?

If you imagined how someone you admire would approach a difficult conversation with their partner, how would you proceed in your own relationship?

If, instead of expertise or perfection, you redefined confidence as a willingness to run experiments, what new activities / relationships / interests would you pursue?

This thought exercise is powerful—and there’s a point of diminishing returns.

There’s actually research showing that the longer you think through certain things, the less likely you are to arrive at a resonant answer.

This happens when the insights you’re seeking require input from the intuitive, imaginative part of your brain, which gets activated when your mind is free from the figure-it-out energy of your analytical mind.

If you’ve ever wondered why you get sudden ideas or clarity in the shower or on a nature walk, this is why. Your sensory experience is heightened, quieting your intellectual mind.

And so, I have another observation on this chicken-or-egg question around feelings and actions:

Action is almost always the best choice.

It doesn’t have to be massive action (although it can be). Anything that pulls you out of your thought loops is a win.

Action is the antidote to stuckness.

You may not get exactly where you want to be immediately, but you won’t be where you were. That, by definition, is progress.

When in doubt, act. Chicken or egg be damned.