(Actually, judgment of just about anything will hurt your mental health, and spread to your money anxieties.)
You must learn to trust your feelings without judging them.
And the only way you tune in to your true feelings is by trusting them.
Sometimes this doesn’t work out smoothly when you first start doing it.
Because your guidance system is f*cked up.
It’s mis-calibrated.
It needs re-calibrated.
It got that way because your parents, teachers, and the media have screwed it up.
And the way to recalibrate it is counter-intuitive.
It’s by trusting your feelings, more and more, even if it results in some less-than-pleasant circumstances.
As a kid, you trusted your feeling that told you to touch the hot stove-burner.
So you did.
You got burned.
You cried.
It was a ‘negative experience.’
Except that it wasn’t.
Your feelings are wiser than your intellect.
Your intellect fears everything and tries to control everything.
Your feelings want you to do anti-intellectual things occasionally, because it’ll give you precious life-experience, build your character, and help you feel alive.
(That doesn’t mean never use your brain, obviously. I used mine a lot in order to write this.)
But your feelings know how to guide you, and you don’t listen to them enough.
Your feelings knew that you needed a healthy respect for heat, so they guided you to the experience of a slight burn.
Your parents said:
“don’t touch the stove,”
But you just had to do it, because you were guided by your feelings. It felt right to touch the burner.
Same for swimming.
Your feelings told you it’d be fun to get in the water and swim with the grown-ups, but your feelings also knew you needed a healthy respect for drowning.
So they spurred you to choke on a bit of water.
It was unpleasant, but you learned.
Your feelings were self-calibrating their guidance system.
But the only way for them to do that, is for you to follow their guidance and embrace experience, (even if it’s sometimes less than pleasant.)
If you avoid trying, avoid experimenting, avoid being open, and avoid… well, life… your feelings can never calibrate correctly for you.
“You have to die a few times before you can really live.“ – Charles Bukowski
Basically, if you judge your hobbies, interests, passions, and impulses… you’ll avoid experiencing them.
You’ll rob your emotional guidance system of precious data.
You can have a good relationship with your feelings, where you let them guide you towards new interests, passions, and hobbies…
…or…
…You can have a terrible relationship with your feelings where you doubt, blame, avoid, and repress them.
You can let your over-thinking mind stomp out every fun experiment you’re meant to be doing.
It’ll keep your life small, miserable, and poor.
The quality of your relationship with your feelings determines the quality of your life.
People who are in tune with their feelings tend to live quite well, people who don’t tend to live miserably.
People who pursue their hobbies, interests, and impulses quickly learn if they’re truly “for them” or just a passing fad.
This is how you find the ‘true you.’
By actually living.
Love your self.