Many (too many) of the shiny, market-approved approaches leave out the critical element of feeling. It’s as if we’ve collectively agreed that growth, progress, and ultimately evolution, are only possible through logic, strategy, and action plans—neatly packaged, measurable steps that lead from point A to point B. But feeling? That’s deemed too unruly, too personal, too slow for the relentless tempo of modern life. These frameworks are neat, measurable, and marketable. They appeal to our intellect, to our desire for clarity and control. But conspicuously absent from these algorithms for living, for leading, for change is the quiet, yet profound invitation to feel. Feeling—so human, so messy, so unpredictable—is left out, as though it were some inconvenient guest at the banquet of rationality.
Why?
Because feeling is not productive in the way we’ve been taught to value productivity. It doesn’t slot neatly into a PowerPoint slide. It can’t be graphed or charted. Feeling disrupts the linearity of decision-making. It asks us to pause, to sink into the body and the soul, rather than sprint toward the next actionable step. But this is precisely why it matters. Feeling is the pulse beneath the skin of our decisions, the beating heart of human experience that too many approaches pretend doesn’t exist.
There’s an arrogance in our systems, in our institutions, that dismisses emotion as a liability. We privilege logic and intellect as if they alone can carry the weight of our shared reality. In leaving “feel” out of the equation (check out my latest creative project #bringyourheartintotheequation), we hollow out the depth of what it means to truly listen and learn. We act on what we “know,” but what is knowledge without the wisdom? Without the gut sense that something—though it looks right on paper—is utterly wrong?
We sterilize our solutions in pursuit of efficiency, but at what cost? Without feeling, we are efficient machines, cold calculators, disconnected from the very thing we seek to improve: life.
The world (we) loves clean lines and easy answers, but feelings are tangled. They force us to reckon with uncertainty, to admit that sometimes the data doesn’t tell the whole story, that logic isn’t always the final answer. Feel introduces ambiguity, and ambiguity has become our collective enemy. We have been conditioned to fear its fertile chaos, the potential it holds to unravel our plans, to delay our progress.
Yet it is in the ambiguous, the felt, the uncertain that true insight resides. Feelings are the undercurrents that carry us into deeper understanding, into the unsaid, into the realm of human connection that no algorithm can touch. We know this intuitively, but we don’t let ourselves feel it because it threatens the tidy scaffolding we’ve built to prop up our decisions.
In leadership, in education, in policy-making—what happens when we prioritize feeling? When we let empathy, grief, joy, and confusion hold court with logic and action? The system might slow, yes. But maybe it should. Maybe slowing down to feel would open us to the relational complexities that are at the core of every challenge we face.
There is wisdom in feeling, but it is the kind of wisdom that resists commodification. And that’s why it’s left out.
To feel is to surrender control, to let the heart inform the mind. It is a subversive act in a world that asks us to compartmentalize our humanity.
But as we continue to bulldoze through life with our heads down, obsessed with metrics and goals, we leave behind the richness of the very things that make those goals matter in the first place.
So maybe the real reason we omit “feel” is because it refuses to play by the rules of efficiency, clarity, and progress. Feeling disrupts. Feeling demands presence. And feeling requires us to acknowledge that to be human is not only to know, but also to ache, to love, to mourn, and to wonder.
In leaving out feel, we are cutting out the very heart of change itself.
Why is it, in a world obsessed with self-optimization, that the one thing most intrinsic to our humanity—our emotional landscape—is often ignored?
Because feeling is not welcome in the crisp, clean world of methodologies that promise to transform us. To feel is to invite unpredictability, to embrace the messy, raw texture of being alive. And messiness doesn’t fit into a spreadsheet. Emotions can’t be neatly bullet-pointed on a list of deliverables or given a percentage in a progress report.
Feeling doesn’t offer the dopamine rush of checking off a task or completing a module. It doesn’t have a tidy output that can be sold or pitched. It’s vulnerable, ambiguous, and at odds with the hyper-rational systems we’ve constructed to make sense of ourselves and the world.
We’re encouraged to “think critically,” “analyze deeply,” and “take action.” But rarely are we told to “feel deeply.” And even when emotions are acknowledged, they are often framed as hurdles to overcome—impediments to progress rather than integral components of it. We talk about “managing” emotions as if they are rogue elements to be tamed, rather than sources of wisdom to be tapped.
But here’s the thing: evolution and transformation—true transformation—are not a clean, linear journey. It’s not about following a set of instructions until you achieve “success” or “growth” as if it were a destination you could map out. Evolution is organic. It’s messy. It’s full of wrong turns, setbacks, and periods of stillness. And feelings are the compass in this non-linear path. How can you genuinely evolve or grow if you do not feel the tension of uncertainty, the weight of failure, the joy of discovery? How do you connect with others—truly connect—if you’re not attuned to the emotional landscape that governs their lives, as well as your own?
Many approaches to development focus on what’s visible and quantifiable: skills, habits, outcomes. They cater to a world that values productivity over presence, speed over depth. In doing so, we are reduced to a sterile process, where the very essence of our humanity—our emotional complexity—is left behind.
Without feeling, development is hollow. It’s surface-level improvement, a change in appearance rather than substance. It becomes an exercise in performing growth rather than embodying it. And yet, we avoid feeling because it demands that we confront discomfort, that we sit in spaces of not-knowing, that we embrace vulnerability. These are not things that make for great TED talks or slick personal development workshops. But they are the things that make for genuine human evolution. It’s easier, of course, to build models that skip the inconvenient, unpredictable realm of emotions. But in doing so, we are denying the fullness of what it means to develop, to learn, and to be fully alive.
So here’s the provocation: the next time you’re handed a new tool or approach promising to “unlock your potential,” ask yourself—where is the space for feeling? Where is the room for the complexity of your emotions, the depth of your lived experience, the things that cannot be measured or managed? Because without that space, without feeling, what you’re left with is just another method for self-improvement—polished, efficient, and utterly disconnected from the truth of who you are.
Feeling is central to complexity. It’s not a wildcard or an inconvenience; it’s one of the ways we navigate the tangled relationships and unseen forces that shape both ourselves and the world around us. Feelings are how we tune into the hidden dynamics of a system. When we leave feeling out of our approaches to growth—whether personal or organizational—we’re leaving out a crucial layer of perception. We’re amputating a part of our ability to sense and respond to complexity.
The omission of feeling is not just a byproduct of those tools—it’s the consequence of a worldview that refuses to acknowledge that complexity requires us to be with the whole, not to cut it into digestible pieces.
The problem with too many models of development is that they are designed for a world of complications, not a world of complexity. In the world of complications, everything can be reduced to parts, to cause and effect. It’s a world of formulas, where we believe that if we just follow the steps, we’ll get to where we want to go. But complexity doesn’t follow that logic. Complex systems, whether they be ecosystems, organizations, or human beings, operate through interactions, relationships, and emergent properties. What happens in one part of the system reverberates through the whole, often in ways we can’t predict.
And feelings? They are the undercurrent, the pulse of those interactions. They provide critical feedback on what’s happening beneath the surface. They tell us when something is out of sync, when we are approaching danger, or when we are aligned in ways logic alone can’t grasp.
Feelings connect us to the subtle, relational dimensions of life —something data points and bullet lists cannot capture. They bring us into direct contact with the complexity of the world.
Ignoring feelings in the name of streamlined development approaches is akin to ignoring the winds in the middle of a storm. You might have a map, but without paying attention to the currents around you, the map is useless.
To fully engage with development, to truly evolve in complex systems, we must reintegrate feeling. Not as a secondary or optional step, but as a primary way of knowing. Feeling allows us to sense the edges of what can’t be measured, to understand the emotional landscapes of our connections, to tap into the collective intelligence of the systems we are part of.
In a complex world, growth isn’t about getting better at following steps or making faster decisions. It’s about deepening our capacity to be present with the full range of human experience—rational and emotional, intellectual and intuitive. And to do that, we must stop pretending that feelings are irrelevant or inconvenient. They are the very fabric of how we navigate complexity, the emotional intelligence that allows us to dance with the unpredictable, emergent patterns of life.
Without feeling, we are not simplifying complexity—we are amputating it. And in doing so, we lose the very insights that allow us to grow within it.
True development demands we honour not just what we think, but what we feel. All ArtfulMindset programs are designed with this in mind. I invite you to have a look at some of our programs here, or reach out for a consultation.
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