It's what you do that makes you brave

"What you feel doesn't matter in the end, it’s what you do that makes you brave." Andre Agassi


On a random Facebook post, I came across this quote from Andre Agassi. "It's what you do that makes you brave." I can't say I was "enlightened," but reminded that, it's about what we do with the feelings, and not just the feelings themselves.


I spend a fair amount of time, constantly, dissecting feelings: fear, annoyance, irritations, anger, unexpected happiness...By knowing the cause of a feeling, I will be able to isolate out factors that triggered the feeling, and make a decision or judge a situation. I'm hopefully, that by doing so, the decision is made with reason and logic, not instinct and intuition.


By doing so, I'm more likely to not take things personally. And by not taking things personally, I feel (again) more controlled of my environment. I wouldn't be hurt as easily because I know it wasn't personal.


Over the years, I've became extremely sensitive to subtle facial expression and body language change. I often get nervous when the reaction was not anticipated. I cannot always interpret them correctly, and likely to ponder on reactions for a prolong period of time. There was an article that showed pictures of people's eyes and asked readers to interpret their emotions. I came to the conclusion that the exercise is "culturally specific." The eyes reflect cultures and backgrounds of people (duh). The bottom line is this reading skills need learning and practice.


Back to feelings and feeling feelings: it what you do that makes you brave. This is all that matters. At the end of the day, it is about moving forward in life, despite the twists and turns.