Those two orange circles up there are the same size. I know it, you know it, and your eyes still don’t believe it. Surround something with bigger things and it shrinks. Surround it with smaller things and it grows. Your brain isn’t broken — it just refuses to measure anything except in relation to whatever’s standing next to it.
That we perceive things in relative rather than absolute terms is a fact worth taking seriously. Just because you see something a certain way doesn’t make it true.
Knowing the truth doesn’t change the experience.
Even when you know for a fact that what you’re seeing isn’t real, the illusion persists. You can’t think your way out of it.
Now. Do you think that effect is limited to your eyes?
Your feelings work the same way. That sense that emerges from body chemistry, arousal, and thought — the thing that shows up as a good or bad feeling about something — is a sensory output. Not a verdict. A reading. And like all sensory readings, it can be wrong.
The difference with the circles is that you can get a ruler. The misperception is objectively knowable, even if it remains subjectively experienced. You can hold the measurement next to the feeling and see the gap.
You can’t do that with how you feel about your life.
There’s no external instrument for “how’s it going.” No calibration point. No one hands you a print-out that says your current satisfaction level is running 15% below the actual objective conditions. How would you react if someone said – “cheer up, your experience of frustration is overstated. This universally accepted objective measure states your frustration ought to be 27.3% less.”
Many of my clients have a direct version of this. They look at their world and know that they have it pretty good. Successful, lucky – certainly compared with 90% of the world’s population. But they still feel off somehow. They can recognise that they “objectively ought to feel happier (or more confident) than they do”.
Like the circles – knowing what’s true and feeling/experiencing are not the same thing. You’re inside the experience, using the experience to evaluate the experience. It’s a bit like asking someone if they’re asleep.
The reverse is also true, we all know people who “feel more confident than they should, given the quality of their work.” 😊
This matters because most of us have been taught that feelings are the most trustworthy signal we have. “Use the force Luke, trust your feelings.” Authentic. Unfiltered. Yours. And in one sense that’s true — nobody else is having them. But trustworthy? That’s a different claim entirely. Your feelings are produced by a system that evolved to keep you alive, not to give you an accurate read on some objective and universal scale of success or happiness. On whether your career is going well or your life is as good as your neighbour’s appears to be.
It may be truly felt. That doesn’t make it true.
Which is worth remembering next time the voice in your head delivers its verdict on how things are going. The best available instrument for calibrating a feeling is usually another person — someone who knows you well enough to be honest and likes you enough to bother. Not to validate the feeling. To reality-check it. Find that person and use them.
Nigel