[Day 7] It's okay to choose based on 'how you feel' rather than the 'correct answer'—The final installment for those who have been worn down by being 'right'

In Day 6, I wrote about how names returned. Impatience, sadness, and joy are given names. Emotions take shape and transform into something that can be handled.

Once things are named, some things become visible. It is the standard itself—the criteria by which you have been making choices up until now.

When your senses return, you realize you have been choosing based on correctness.

Once you can name your emotions, one day, an unpleasant realization arrives. It is the realization that many of the things you have chosen in your life so far were not based on your own feelings.

The school you went to, your career, the people you dated, how you spent your weekends. The things you claimed to have decided yourself were, in fact, chosen based on correctness or the evaluations of others. Academic achievement, annual income, stability, social standing. Those criteria were always much louder than your own feelings.

The more you have been worn down by 'correct' arguments, the more your criteria for choosing have been placed outside of yourself. You haven't used the method of choosing based on your own senses for a long time. So, even when your senses finally return, the circuit for using them to make decisions is not yet working.

This is not a matter of ability. It is simply that during the time you were being worn down, you couldn't have survived without holding onto external criteria. Using correctness as a shield was a form of defense during that period.

However, those whose senses have returned no longer need to keep holding that shield. If you keep choosing while holding the shield, your own joy will not follow the results of your choices. Somewhere, the feeling of being unfulfilled for some reason will remain.

A life lived by correctness leaves your own warmth behind in proportion to that correctness.

From here on, this is a story about slowly changing how you make choices.

Mutta Nanba chose based on enjoyment rather than correctness.

In the work 'Space Brothers,' there is a protagonist named Mutta Nanba. His younger brother, Hibito Nanba, became an astronaut before his older brother. His older brother, Mutta, was working a grounded job as an engineer for an automobile manufacturer. It looks like a sensible and, by societal standards, correct life.

That older brother ends up leaving his company due to a certain incident. An unexpected void in his adult life visits him.

In that void, he remembers. The promise he made with his younger brother when they were children to go to space. In terms of correctness, given his age, background, and the gap in his career, not choosing that path is the more reasonable route. But his heart is moved.

He decided to aim for becoming an astronaut again not because he had a high chance of success. Nor was it because it was the 'correct' answer. It was because he could not ignore something that had stirred within him.

Here, one of the people who supports him is the astronomer Sharon Kaneko. She quietly tells the hesitant Mutta: the gist of her words is that he should decide not based on whether it is correct, but on how he feels and whether he finds it enjoyable. To rephrase, it means it is okay to move the axis of your choices from the outside to the inside.

Mutta chooses the scenery he wants to see, not the path that will be recognized by others. He wasn't able to choose it because he was a strong person. He is a negative thinker who keeps doubting himself. He just didn't discard the clumsiness of searching for his path based on his own senses.

He didn't choose the correct answer. He just chose the direction his heart was moved toward.

The act of starting over for someone who has been beaten down by 'correct' arguments is similar to that. Not whether it is correct, but how your heart was moved. You can make that your reason for choosing.

Things you choose for yourself are things you can continue.

In psychology, there is a concept called self-determination theory. People can sustain things longer when they choose based on a sense of 'wanting to do it' from within, rather than being driven by an external 'should'.

Things chosen based on correctness waver easily when external circumstances change. If your evaluation drops, how others see you changes, or the situation worsens, the reason to continue is chipped away little by little each time.

Things chosen based on your own feelings have a different structure. The reason lies within you. Even if external evaluations shift, as long as something within you continues, it will not waver.

Things chosen externally collapse externally, while things chosen internally continue internally.

This is not about strength of character. It is a difference in the structure of how you choose.

For those who have interacted with others based on external standards, the relationships themselves become heavy. Being with people turns into a reason for exhaustion. You find yourself feeling that things are a hassle more often. You might think you have become cold-hearted. That is not the case. You have simply spent too much time navigating human relationships based on correctness.

I delved into this kind of heaviness in another article, 'To those who are trying too hard to the point where human relationships feel like a hassle.' The weight I wrote about there is the weight carried by those whose criteria for choosing have remained placed on the outside.

Returning your way of choosing to the inside. That is the most modest, yet most effective way to keep going.

The final step for those who have been worn down by correctness

I write while working a regular job. My main job is a world that runs on correctness: procedures, safety standards, evaluation criteria, and reports. Everything is built on logical arguments. That is necessary. However, if you live only within logical arguments, your own sense of self quickly fades.

I didn't start writing because I wanted to grow. I wanted to reclaim the sense of self that was fading away in my main job by writing. There are days when things don't go well. There are probably more days when the notifications are quiet even after I write. Still, I continue. The reason is simple: the time I spend writing is something I chose based on my own feelings.

When you try too hard based on correctness, there comes a moment when you want to reset the relationship itself. It is an impulse to quit everything and go somewhere else. This is not laziness. As I wrote in another article, 'Wanting to reset human relationships is not running away, but a sign of reaching your limit,' it is a signal from your body that it is impossible to keep choosing based on the outside anymore.

The more you are in your 40s and have been ground down by workplaces and society that run on correctness, the more your criteria for choosing are placed outside. Changing jobs, side hustles, re-evaluating relationships. If you think about any of these with logical arguments, the answer is always that it is safer not to do them. But some of you have already noticed that you are fading away after stacking up safe choices.

Just as Mutta chose his dream again after becoming an adult, you can choose your next step based on your own feelings starting now. You don't have to make a big move. Just write down what you want to spend a little time on after work. Movements that turn into side hustles usually start there. You don't have to make the side hustle the main act. Just keep your own feelings gently by your side.

Correctness is not a reason to continue. Only what moves your heart will allow you to keep going.

It is never too late to choose again. All you need is the permission to choose based on your own feelings now. You don't need someone else to give it to you. You can give it to yourself.

You can decide based on how you feel, not on the right answer. Choosing what moves your heart is not selfishness; it is the foundation for continuing.

The time you have been worn down by correctness is not wasted. Because of that, you can now distinguish what your own feelings are.

For 7 days, we have traced the path together to slowly recover the sense of self that was worn down by the punch of logical arguments. The nights you couldn't argue back, the mornings you blamed yourself, the weekdays of being evaluated, the numbness, the evenings of taking too much in, the moment you reclaimed your name, and the step of choosing the next thing based on your own feelings. Those who have reached this point are no longer people who are just being worn down by external correctness.

I write about organizing emotions every day on note. Reading it might make you see your usual self a little differently. If you are interested, please take a look at my profile🦉