Sharing Resources to Help You Grow Personally, Professionally & Financially

Sometimes it helps to get a little dose of encouragement—along with a good cup of coffee!—to start the day. Today we discuss feelings.

Hopefully the message below will help you get off to a good start for the week. Please feel free to forward the newsletter on to others that you think would benefit from the content.

Feelings

Feelings Are Real, Even When They Don't Reflect Reality

One of the most important things to understand about human connection is this:

Feelings are real, even when they don't reflect reality.

When someone shares how they feel, that experience is real to them. Whether their feelings align with your perception of the situation is often beside the point. In that moment, what matters most is recognizing and understanding what they are experiencing.

Imagine a child who says they are afraid of the dark. Their fear is genuine. Explaining why the dark is harmless or insisting they shouldn't be afraid doesn't immediately change their emotional experience. In fact, dismissing or challenging the feeling can sometimes make the fear feel even more isolating.

This is why validation matters.

Validating someone's feelings does not mean agreeing with every conclusion they have reached. It simply means acknowledging their emotional experience and letting them know they have been heard. A response as simple as, "That sounds really difficult" or "I can understand why you feel that way" can create a sense of safety and connection.

Sharing feelings often requires vulnerability. Whether someone is expressing joy, sadness, frustration, fear, or disappointment, they are trusting another person with something deeply personal. When those feelings are dismissed, minimized, or explained away, the message received is often: "Your experience doesn't matter."

Validation, on the other hand, communicates something powerful:

"I see you. I hear you. What you're feeling matters."

Interestingly, genuine validation often creates the conditions for growth and change. When people feel understood, they are more likely to explore the reasons behind their emotions, reflect on their experiences, and engage in meaningful conversations about what comes next.

Not every feeling needs to be fixed. Not every emotion needs an immediate solution.

Sometimes the most valuable thing we can offer is our presence, our attention, and our willingness to acknowledge what someone is going through.

Because before people can move forward, they often need to feel seen.

That brings us to this week’s question:

Do you recognize feelings of others as their reality?

Thanks for sharing a bit of your time with me this Monday morning.

Have a great week!

Curt

About MMM: Each week I publish “Monday Morning Motivation” in the hopes that at least one person will find a bit of inspiration and that this inspiration will have a positive impact on their life. My motivation comes from experiences, reading, sermons, and discussions.

Photo credit: rawpixel.com

Blog post from this past week:

Monday Morning Motivation - Failure

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Monday Morning Motivation – Feelings