Our Feelings Are Lying to Us: Why Discipline Is a Better Compass

It was August of 2022, and I was in my living room watching a Semi-Finals event from the CrossFit Games season. While CrossFit is a workout style practiced by everyday people in gyms around the world, it also has a professional sport side to it—much like how someone can join a boxing gym for fitness, but there are also professional boxers.

At each Semi-Final, the top three finishers earn a coveted spot at the CrossFit Games—essentially the Olympics of CrossFit.

This particular event was the final heat of the elite women’s division (ages 18–34), and the field was stacked with absolute monsters. The favorite to win was Mal O’Brien, an 18-year-old phenom and the youngest competitor on the floor. She had recently hired five-time Games champion Mat Fraser as her coach and had already won two events that weekend. She wasn’t there to mess around.

The workout included a brutal mix of burpees, sled pushes, and running, but the centerpiece was a grueling 70-calorie sprint on the Echo Bike.

If you’ve never ridden an Echo Bike, it’s essentially a stationary torture device disguised as fitness equipment. The bigger and stronger you are, the easier it is to rack up calories—but it torches your legs and lungs like nothing else. For me (a grown man weighing nearly 200 pounds), biking 70 calories fresh would take almost six minutes. And that’s if it were the only thing I had to do that day.

But this was the final day of a three-day competition. After running 1,000 meters, pushing a heavy sled for 100 meters, and knocking out 30 burpees, Mal—who weighed in at just 140 pounds and stood 5’3”—completed the 70-calorie bike in 4 minutes and 32 seconds.

I was dumbstruck. How could someone so much smaller than me endure that much pain and produce that much power?

Turns out, I wasn’t the only one wondering. In her post-event interview, Mal was asked directly: “How did you finish the bike so much faster than the rest of the field?”

She laughed, looked down, and said flatly, “Well, my coach Mat told me that if my legs started hurting, to tell them to shut up. So I did.”

It sounds ridiculous—telling a feeling to “shut up.” But there’s credible neuroscience behind what Mal was getting at.

Our feelings aren’t always facts. More often than not, they’re just suggestions from the brain. We get to decide whether we believe them.

Mal’s legs hurt. But they were still capable of generating power. Her mind registered the pain, offered a suggestion—“Maybe stop?”—and she chose to ignore it.

She thanked her brain for the input and kept going.

It’s not easy. But it’s a skill—one we can practice. Just like consistent running, swimming, or biking increases our lung capacity, regularly choosing discomfort over ease builds mental strength.

Willpower tends to wane in the face of anxiety, stress, and discomfort. When something makes you feel one of those things, don’t blindly obey the feeling. See it as one suggestion among many. Ask yourself:“What else could I do right now?”

Our emotions are often the loudest voices in the room—but not always the wisest.Strong feelings pull our focus into the now. Discipline pushes us toward the later.

So next time you face a wave of emotion, don’t just react. Thank it for the suggestion—and tell it (politely)... “Shut up.”

Fact

Studies show that the average emotion lasts 90 seconds—unless we choose to dwell on it. Most feelings are temporary; it’s our reaction that gives them staying power.

Action

Practice catching one strong emotion this week—frustration, anxiety, laziness—and instead of reacting, pause, label it, and make a conscious choice.

“I’m feeling ___, but I’m choosing to do ___ anyway.”

Question

What would change in your life if you stopped treating every feeling like a command?

Quote

"He who sweats more in training bleeds less in war." - Spartan Warrior Creed