Are Your Feelings Coming from the World... or Your Mind? Let’s Test It.
Most of us go through life assuming our feelings come from our circumstances. Stress comes from work. Frustration comes from traffic. Happiness comes from a perfect cup of coffee. (Okay, that last one feels very true.)
But what if that’s not actually how it works? What if we’re never really feeling the world out there—we’re only ever feeling our thinking about the world?
I know, I know. That sounds philosophical and maybe even a little ridiculous. But instead of debating it, let’s test it right now.
Experiment #1: The Instant Mood Shift
Take a second and think about something stressful. Maybe a looming deadline, an argument you had, or a time you totally embarrassed yourself. (Don’t worry, I won’t make you stay here long.)
Notice what happens in your body. Maybe your shoulders tense up, your stomach tightens, or your heart beats a little faster.
Now, shift gears. Think about something peaceful or joyful. A vacation memory, a time you laughed so hard you cried, or the feeling of lying in bed with no alarm set for the next day.
Notice the shift? Did your body relax a little? Did your face soften?
Okay… but here’s the thing: nothing actually changed in your external world between those two moments. Your circumstances didn’t magically improve. Your boss didn’t email you saying, “Never mind, take the month off, we’ll still pay you.” And yet, your feelings changed—because your thoughts changed.
Experiment #2: The ‘Delayed Reaction’ Trick
Have you ever been in a situation where something should have made you mad or upset, but you didn’t realize it until later? Maybe someone said something rude, but you were distracted and didn’t register it until hours later. Or you got an email that sat unopened in your inbox all day, and you were totally fine—until you read it.
If circumstances directly caused our feelings, we would feel them instantly, the moment something happened. But we don’t. We only feel them once we think about what happened.
Why This Illusion Is So Convincing
If we’re always living in the feeling of our thinking, why does it seem like the outside world is responsible for our emotions? A few reasons:
Biology: Our brains evolved to scan for threats and react quickly. If a tiger jumps out, we don’t stop to analyze our thinking—we just feel fear and run. That’s useful for survival, but not so much when our boss sends a vague “Can we talk?” email.
Conditioning: From childhood, we hear phrases like “You hurt my feelings,” “That made me so mad,” and “This situation is stressing me out.” Nobody teaches us that our thoughts play a role—we’re trained to blame the outside world.
Messages from Society: Movies, books, and everyday conversations reinforce the idea that circumstances = emotions. We hear stories of people made happy by success, made sad by heartbreak, and made angry by injustice. We don’t question it because everyone around us believes it too.
All of this creates the illusion that our feelings come from the outside world. But when we look a little closer, we start to see that it’s not our circumstances—it’s our thoughts about our circumstances that create our experience.
So What Does This Mean (and What Can You Do with It)?
It means the world doesn’t have a direct line to your emotions. It means your well-being isn’t being held hostage by traffic, work, or other people’s moods. It means that peace, joy, and clarity are far more accessible than we think—because they don’t come from controlling the outside world, but from understanding how the inside world actually works.
Now, this doesn’t mean we should ignore problems or pretend life is always sunshine and rainbows. It just means that when we see that our feelings come from thought, not circumstances, we stop getting so yanked around by life. We don’t have to control the outside world to feel okay—we just have to notice what’s actually creating our experience in the first place.
So what can you do with this understanding?
Catch the illusion in action. The next time you feel stressed, overwhelmed, or irritated, take a moment to ask: What am I thinking right now? You might notice that it’s not the situation itself, but your thoughts about it, that are fueling your feelings.
Let feelings flow without overreacting to them. Once you see that thoughts create feelings, you don’t have to take every passing emotion so seriously. Feelings come and go—just like thoughts do. You don’t have to fix them, just let them pass.
Notice how this frees you. If the outside world isn’t in charge of your emotions, that means you don’t have to wait for circumstances to change before you feel okay. That peace, clarity, and well-being you’ve been chasing? It’s actually been inside you all along.
The more you see this in real life, the less life feels like a roller coaster you can’t control. And the best part? You don’t have to do anything special to make this work. Just seeing how it works is enough to start shifting everything.
And that changes everything.