What You Feel Is Not What You Want
A few years ago, the founders of the Conscious Leadership Group sat me down for an honest conversation.
I'd been a team member there for years. I loved the humans, loved the work, loved being part of something that genuinely mattered to me.
The message in that conversation was clear: go all in as a partner, or move on.
Every time I let myself imagine leaving, sadness rose up so strongly I could barely sit with it.
So I did what most founders do with an uncomfortable feeling: I turned it into evidence. If it hurts this much to think about leaving, I must really want to stay.
I started building a case for staying. I could stop the other work I was doing. I could make this my whole focus. Everything seemed to point toward staying.
The feeling was completely real. But it was pointing me away from what I truly wanted.
Feelings and Wants Are Not the Same Thing
Most of our decisions are made in order to feel a certain feeling, or to avoid one. Where it becomes a trap is when we start treating feelings as a signal of what we want, when the intensity of an emotion feels like a direct guide to what you should do.
Feelings are weather (immediate, real, and not permanent). Wants are more like a compass bearing. They don't always announce themselves loudly, and you can only hear them clearly when you're not using a decision to manage what you feel.
Here's the distinction that eventually clarified everything for me: sadness is the energy of letting go. Grieving is the most pure way to honor something that you loved. It doesn't mean you should keep doing it.
The grief I felt thinking about leaving the Conscious Leadership Group was real and enormous. It told me I loved what I was part of. It said nothing about whether I should stay.
A founder who avoids firing someone because imagining that conversation brings up dread is doing the same thing. So is the one who keeps a dying product alive because shutting it down feels like loss, or who stays in a company long past the honest point of exit because the thought of leaving devastates them. The feeling is real in every case. It isn't pointing at what they actually want.
How to Hear What's Underneath
There's a question I got from Joe Hudson that I love using in my coaching work:
"If you knew you'd be happy either way, what would you do?"
What that question does is remove the belief that your choice determines how you'll feel, which is usually what's generating the most noise in the first place. When happiness is no longer riding on the outcome, the emotional noise quiets. And you can often hear something clearer underneath.
When you're facing a hard decision, try this:
- Name the feeling that's loudest: fear, sadness, guilt, dread. Be specific about what it actually is.
- Ask: if I knew I'd be happy either way, what would I choose?
- Then ask: am I willing to feel what this choice actually requires me to feel? That willingness is where the real decision usually lives.
When I left the Conscious Leadership Group, I cried my eyes out. It felt like a funeral, I was so sad and grieving.
And it was one of the clearest decisions I've ever made.
The grief told me I loved something. That was true and it deserved to be honored. But it wasn't a reason to stay.
Your feelings are real. They carry genuine intelligence. And learning to hear what they're actually saying, rather than letting them stand in for what you want, is one of the most important things you can develop as a founder.
With love,
Dave Kashen
