“Do what feels right!” Yes, but…

Doing what feels right can be good, when you are properly calibrated.

But are you?

Probably not, at least in some areas. Because over the years, we’ve been calibrated poorly by our parents, by our friends, by people we work with and total strangers.

We might do something that is beautiful and amazing and loving, and still get shit on.

And so doing it again can feel, well, less than right.

D. Vassilia, @JunoCounseling, says:

“When you’re not used to being confident, confidence feels like arrogance.
When you’re used to being passive, assertiveness feels like aggression.
When you’re not used to getting your needs met, prioritizing yourself feels selfish.
Your comfort zone is not a good benchmark.”

I wrote not long ago about how you can do all the right things and fail, and how you can do the wrong things and win sometimes.

It’s true.

And it calibrates us even further out of whack when it happens.

Last week, I wrote about how we yell because we have trained others to listen only when we yell.

Yup. Calibration.

This is why just doing what feels right doesn’t work.

We need feedback.

And not just any feedback.

After all, with all the content I put out online, I get literally thousands of nasty, hateful messages a month. Should I listen to that feedback?

I do.

And I get fifty times the amount of positive feedback. Should I listen to that?

I do.

But not to exclusion.

Not in a vacuum.

And not weighted heavier than the feedback I get from people I respect, or in conversations where people are willing to dig deeper than “You’re wrong,” or “WOW! Thanks!”

And I also pay attention to my results.

One negative does not outweigh many positives, but it’s worth noting and watching for a pattern. Because sometimes the right thing is not embraced by the majority.

I also try (and I really do mean TRY) to put what I do over time into perspective by reading on various topics, and expanding my knowledge of stuff.

Like communication. I’ve read probably 120 books about communication, and I’ve learned something new from each one. And I tried those things out. And I test them, and I add what works over time to my communication tool kit.

But the first few times I did most of those things, they didn’t feel “right.” They felt weird. Awkward AF. I did them, though. And I learned. And I grew.

NOW, they feel right.

And they’ve been added to my calibration about what is right for me.

And I believe that I feel righter every day (without ever expecting to reach perfection, or 100% rightness). I feel, overall, 99.98% of my life is doing what feels right now. And I’m mostly rewarded for it.

And every day, I’ll do something that doesn’t quite feel right.

Because that’s how we grow.

What are your thoughts?

How often do you do what feels right? How often do you do something that doesn’t feel right in the hopes that it is right anyway?

Did any of D. Vassilia’s examples hit home for you?