Yes, I am also more conceptually and experimentally inclined towards this option… (quite literally in fact, since in my worst time of depression, unemployment, lack of money, etc., I excelled as a videogamer -in the arcades of the 80’s, before the term existed and could be monetized, haha-, being very good in many games, among the best in several, and the best in the country in one -later globaly, by breaking the official world record during the 2020 quarantine when family problems overwhelmed me and I could not focus on writing…-).
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In light of the discussion about the actualism flow diagram, I’ve been looking at my own process in a lot more detail and thought I might share how I typically go about getting back to feeling good before investigating.
While I’m in the moment of feeling bad (or loving emotions), my ‘feeling bad’ feels very justified, and any trying to ‘talk myself out of it’ will only be insincere or lead in circles. It is much more productive to get back to feeling good first, by any means possible.
It more or less looks like this:
“Parents Stopping Babies From Crying Follow These Tips”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OWkFa87b6c
It’s basically just distraction.
That can be a big or small distraction, so just try different things and then check in with your emotion again to see where you are. If I’m still in feeling bad (or loving, which is layered over bad anyway), then the distraction didn’t work. No problem, I just try another distraction, then another distraction, until something does work.
For something major, that might require a more significant intervention, such as taking the rest of the day off work, changing your environment / going for a walk someplace, separating yourself physically from the trigger for some period.
And sometimes - frequently, actually - it happens very immediately, like within 3 seconds.
Earlier this morning I was feeling unhappy because a friend of mine is flying to Morocco to surf for some amount of time, he has recently finished commercial fishing and got a big check and has no commitments. And I don’t have extra money to go do that, so I was feeling bad about it.
After a little while of going in circles feeling bad, I remembered about the method and set about getting back to feeling good.
Basically I just started looking for something that I felt good about. I looked around my room at the view, looked at the trees outside in the stormy weather. Nope, still felt bad.
I focused on my body and the comfortable position that I was in lying in bed. That often works for me. Sometimes I’ll notice I’m not comfortable, and moving to a more comfortable position works to get back to feeling good. But, not this time.
I looked around for another distraction. As I was looking around, I noticed that my continued activity of just looking for something, worked! I was definitely feeling good now. I guess because I was sensuously using my attention on what was around me. Either way, I’ve succeeded at getting back to feeling good!
And then, when I looked at my ‘issue’ again, it didn’t seem like such a big deal at all. After all, I’m happy here and now. One day I’ll be able to travel again, just not this month. That’s ok.
Now, when I next start to feel bad about not being able to travel, I’ll already have ‘gone there’ and can nip it in the bud - thanks to getting back to feeling good!
That was pretty easy!
Note: One of the the nice things about this type of ‘quick intervention’ is, it’s very easy to remember to go back to the trigger & investigate it, because it’s only been about 1 minute since I was completely caught in the emotion. I’m still in a good position to dedicate attention to figuring it out.
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Although of course I also value the more general descriptions, I am much more adept at detailed ones like yours. It seems to me that they bring to the new (and not so new) practitioner precisely practical ideas that for too long (years, for many) are not considered important/useful or part of the “actualist package” on how to feel better.
In these cases I am particularly happy/glad (with felocitous feelings) that this kind of explanations/descriptions get captured in the forum.
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Since I’ve also been focusing on getting back to feeling good pre-investigation lately I have some similar thoughts.
I was feeling bad the other day and thinking “how can I get back to feeling good without investigating these apparent reasons to feel bad?” It seemed that I needed to find the right combination of thoughts that would make feeling good seem sensible and that would require investigation. However I knew this would lead to philosophizing in circles due to trying to ‘figure it out’ while feeling bad.
It occurred to me though that if I simply stopped ruminating on the “reasons” to feel bad, maybe the simple fact that feeling good is pleasant would draw me in so that I could investigate from the position of feeling good. So that has been my go-to for getting back to feeling good pre-investigation. Essentially stopping the rumination and focusing on the simplest most obvious reasons to feel good imaginable.
love the video by the way, I am just a big complicated baby lol. It reminds me of this Vineeto quote:
“Have you ever watched a child getting upset when their favourite toy is taken away by another child for instance and then the mother or teacher steps in and diverts their attention by pointing to a bird flying by or a showing them a fragrant colourful flower or inviting them to join a different game that’s going on. Young children are usually able to very quickly forget their previous upset and accept the nudge to being happy again whereas adults often insist on the seriousness/ importance of their own particular problem and/or feeling and choose to continue to feel bad.”
http://actualfreedom.com.au/actualism/vineeto/selected-correspondence/corr-feelings4.htm
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Yes! We adults just usually think our ‘issues’ are too big & important to allow getting back to feeling good, but all that does is extend the human condition indefinitely.
A major thing that has spurred me to focus on feeling good first has been that my investigations while feeling bad were never very fruitful. The clarity of mind was never there. And I could see the failure of those investigations in how I was continuing to create a ruckus in my relationship, I was obviously not genuinely changing.
Even if ‘I’ think that ‘my’ issue is so big & important, ‘I’ can concede that I come to better/more accurate conclusions when I’m feeling good. That’s what allows me to set whatever issue aside for a minute - with the promise to myself that I will get back to it.
Another thing that has helped is, I’m never actually giving anything up. To ‘me’ it feels like I’m having to lose something, but all I’m losing is a belief which never existed anyway.
In the case of this desire to travel, I’m not ‘losing’ travel. I can’t afford it anyway. The belief was just desiring an impossible thing.
Sometimes the release of a belief actually allows for me to have more, as when an investigation uncovers a part of life which I had closed myself off from.
@Miguel I’m very glad it’s useful for you! Any and all forms of communicating have something to add, all the hyper-technical stuff has been very useful but I agree that supplementing that with flow charts, poetry, photographs etc etc etc all have the potential to communicate something about the actual world
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This is really helpful because often when I feel bad investigating is really difficult. I used to try investigating when I was feeling bad which led me to feel worse cause I was getting frustrated at myself for feeling bad and not being able to find the trigger. And I noticed that only once I started feeling good I was able to think clearer and be able to actually figure out what was going on in my head!
@Kub933 i think throwing a piece of cheese on my head when im crying would be very helpful actually 
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Can someone email Vineeto to update the AFT to include the cheese technique?
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In addition to the above ‘distraction’ method, this post by @Kub933 describes another effective way to get back to neutral or feeling good:
Where the distraction method may work better in situations where one is overwhelmed, or for a beginner, Kuba’s ‘freezing’ method is an effective & straightforward way & has the benefit of keeping the issue directly in view so it’s clearer to investigate. In my experience both options are good depending on the situation.
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Amen Miguel, that is exactly what we need, Detailed Discription of Applying the Method
And then, when I feel good, "I see no reason to give up that feeling good by investigating" 
@FrankN INVESTIGATE!!!
It can be very fun actually!
“What are the workings of the universe? What are the workings of @henryyyyyyyyyy ???”
It’s a great adventure 
If you are able to fully acknowledge everything that is happening in the affective faculty (which is what the answer to HAIETMOBA is), then you are already in a successful position to (effortlessly) get back to feeling good. Richard explains it thusly,
Once the specific moment of ceasing to feel good is pin-pointed, and the silliness of having such an incident as that (no matter what it is) take away one’s enjoyment and appreciation of this only moment of being alive is seen for what it is – usually some habitual reactive response – one is once more feeling good … but with a pin-pointed cue to watch out for next time so as to not have that trigger off yet another bout of the same-old same-old. This is called nipping it in the bud before it gets out of hand … with application and diligence and patience and perseverance one soon gets the knack of this and more and more time is spent enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive. And, of course, once one does get the knack of this, one up-levels ‘feeling good’, as a bottom line each moment again, to ‘feeling happy and harmless’ … and after that to ‘feeling excellent’. This Moment Of Being Alive
The verb “seen” (along with ‘silliness’) here refers to a combination of ‘affective awareness’ (or ‘affective monitoring’) and ‘cognitive attentiveness’ (or ‘cognitive rectification’) … or, in other words, ‘awareness-cum-attentiveness’:
This hyphenated neologism – a term which includes being affectively aware in combination with, and as felt necessary thereby, being cognitively attentive (the Latin cum=with, together with, or along with, as in ‘a garage-cum-workshop’, for instance) – was coined in order to more readily reference an adroit technique which involves a keenly discriminative affective monitoring of the quality of mood plus the cognitive rectification of same, and as instigated responsively therefrom, so as to effect beneficial modification of one’s day-by-day temperament which, in the longer-term, brings about a benefactive transformation of disposition and/or character as well. Any necessity to be (cognitively) attentive only takes place on those occasions when/ where an otherwise ongoing (affective) enjoyment and appreciation diminishes – which attentiveness is initiated by that diminution in the quality of (affectively) enjoying and appreciating being alive/ being here, each moment again, come-what-may – and occurs less and less once one gets the knack of thus (affectively) monitoring one’s moment-to-moment mood and temperament via the increasingly subtle variations in that quality Apperception; Awareness-Cum-Attentiveness
What you call ‘investigation’ (in the context of getting back to feeling good) essentially refers to being aware-cum-attentive, nothing more. And the phrase “instigated responsively therefrom” refers to an on-the-job real-time experiencing:
The most effective way to investigate all the beliefs, ideas, theories, concepts, maxims, dictums, truths, factoids, philosophies, values, principles, ideals, standards, credos, doctrines, tenets, canons, morals, ethics, customs, traditions, psittacisms, superstitions, myths, legends, folklores, imaginations, divinations, visions, fantasies, chimeras, illusions, delusions, hallucinations, phantasmagoria and any other of the schemes and dreams and mores which constitute social conditioning is the hands-on moment-to-moment approach – the on-the-job real-time experiencing where all the real-life people, things and events are currently occurring in a real-world context – rather than armchair philosophising.
If one asks oneself, each moment again, how one is experiencing this moment of being alive (which is the only moment one is ever alive) all will be revealed in due course, in the bright light of awareness, as one goes about one’s normal life. Moreover, all the instinctive drives, urges, impulses, compulsions, demands, pressures, cravings, yearnings, longings – all the instinctual passions which necessitate social conditioning in the first place – will be laid bare with the perspicacity born of pure intent and thus open for examination. Selected Correspondence: Beliefs and Psittacisms
But of course, given how cunning the identity is, more often than not you are not fully acknowledging how you feel when feeling bad … thus leaving an undercurrent of unacknowledged feeling-activity to persist just beneath the level of conscious awareness. So whatever ‘investigation’ is done cannot be called awareness-cum-attentiveness, as there is not that sufficient affective awareness in the first place (much less the sincere cognitive attentiveness to rectify it).
Pure intent is not strictly necessary to see the silliness and get back to feeling good; sincerity is. Specifically, as Richard calls it, “sincere/ naïve intent”:
• [quote]: ‘(…) An actualist’s intent is a [sincere/ naïve] intent and discovering how to blend this [sincere/ naïve] intent via attentiveness – into one’s conscious life is the process that places one on the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom … this path is a virtual freedom’. [end quote] […]
[quote] ‘Nevertheless, one is still ‘human’ and to be ‘human’ is to err … and most people are very ‘human’ and err repeatedly.
Despite [sincere/ naïve] intent, the actualist lets their attentiveness slip now and then and one finds oneself stuck in some unfortunate – but normal – ‘human’ failure. It is attentiveness that notices that change … and it is attentiveness that reminds one to apply the [sincere/ naïve] intent required to pull oneself out.’ [endquote] […][quote] ‘Slipping into ‘normal’ happens over and over, but the frequency decreases with the assimilation of the fact that the absence of anguish and animosity in one’s moment-to-moment experience allows one’s daily life to be peaceful and harmonious way beyond normal ‘human’ expectations. Once attentiveness has exposed those affective set-backs, sensuousness provides a more considerate and carefree condition … one is happy and harmless for ninety-nine percent of the time.’ [endquote]
[quote] ‘It is attentiveness which notices the change from ‘normal’ into happiness and harmlessness, and which reminds the actualist to maintain the [sincere/naïve] intent needed to keep one blithe and benign … and which allows apperception to freely happen. Apperceptiveness makes possible salubrity and sagacity (…). Pure Intent
Which in turns requires making actualism the no. 1 priority in one’s life.
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Hmm I don’t think so. Richard is talking about ‘seeing the silliness’ here. This comes after one has already recognized one isn’t feeling good (i.e. the affective part), and after one has already engaged cognition to pin-point the specific moment of ceasing to feel good. Having used both the awareness and the attentiveness parts of it, now one is at the last (perhaps also cognitive?) step to “see the silliness”.
I find that when this works, it is an instant all-at-once insight that “oh yea that is silly”. If this doesn’t work, it means I don’t see that it is silly… and then it usually makes more sense to get back to feeling good via some other means (like do something fun; just go about my day and wait; etc…) and investigate it later, rather than try and investigate it then. And by investigate I mean a thorough going-through and deconstructing an issue, etc. While ‘seeing the silliness’ is much different, it’s more of an instant insight kind of thing.
In this context we’re talking about the role of investigation, and that investigation is to be done only once one is feeling good, as opposed to one when is not yet back to feeling good. The investigation in this context is in seeing how ‘I’ tick so as to prevent future diminutions of feeling good.
While ‘awareness-cum-attentiveness’ refers to a) affectively monitoring how you feel to catch when you aren’t feeling good, and b) pinpointing the specific moment, and seeing the silliness of that so that you are already back to feeling good.
So we’re talking about two different things here.
How would you know this about me? 
It sounds like what you are really saying is this:
That may be so – indeed as you say, sincerity is the key.
Indeed, I think this is a conflation of terms.
That may be so. I find generally that advising someone that they are not succeeding because they aren’t sincere enough, has limited practical/beneficial effect. I find that something a bit more hands-on or specific-to-the-circumstance is what helps someone get past a particular issue.
I agree - pure intent certainly helps though!
Indeed, that is why Vineeto advised me to add this note at the top of the actualism flow chart:
Cheers,
Claudiu
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@Srid: apart from the point/request that @srinath made to you and that includes the will of many of us (Zulip - #13 by Srinath), I wanted to remind you that AF is an eminently practical discipline. Of course, you can engage with @claudiu in any theoretical discussion you both want, but for my part I have had enough in Zulip from your part with respect to similar approaches to this one you have made here.
I think, instead, that this topic is an excellent opportunity for you to explain PRACTICALLY what happened to you as a feeling being that you obviously “forgot to feel good” (the title of this topic) when you had the tremendous emotional outburst of closing Zulip, harming so many.
That someone who practiced actualism for so long has suffered an emotional incontinence of that magnitude when there were alternative paths, merits an honest analysis that could benefit those of us who have been practicing AF for a long time, and also the newer and future members of the community.
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Richard is talking about ‘seeing the silliness’ here.
Well, now, isn’t that a bit of a truism? Of course, he is; but what does ‘seeing the silliness’ actually mean, in phenomenological terms?
[Seeing the silliness] comes after one has already recognized one isn’t feeling good (i.e. the affective part), and after one has already engaged cognition to pin-point the specific moment of ceasing to feel good. Having used both the awareness and the attentiveness parts of it, now one is at the last (perhaps also cognitive?) step to “see the silliness”.
Having used both the affective awareness of the diminishment and the cognitive tracing back to the trigger event, what exactly is it that you do to ‘see the silliness’ (such as to lead to ‘an instant all-at-once insight’)?
While ‘awareness-cum-attentiveness’ refers to a) affectively monitoring how you feel to catch when you aren’t feeling good, and b) pinpointing the specific moment, and seeing the silliness of that so that you are already back to feeling good.
After affectively monitoring how you feel to catch when you aren’t feeling good, and (cognitively) pinpointing the specific moment of trigger, what exactly is it that you do to effectuate ‘seeing the silliness’ (such as to lead to ‘an instant all-at-once insight’)?
The answer, to anyone that reads the Actual Freedom Trust website with both eyes, is that it is awareness-cum-attentiveness that continues to be engaged (ie, beyond just noticing the diminishment). That is what does the trick; brings about ‘an instant all-at-once insight’ as you call it. Once fully seen, the feeling vanishes; and one is once more back to feeling good. At this point, I’d advise the reader to re-read the quotes I posted above, especially the ‘on-the-job real-time experiencing’ and ‘keenly discriminative’ parts, as they seemed to have eluded your attention when writing this response.
(Note: Affective awareness is constant; cognitive attentiveness is engaged only whenever one is no longer feeling good).
Richard explains it prosaically here,
Attentiveness is the observance of the basic nature of each arising feeling; it is observing all the inner world – emotional, passionate and calentural – which is whatever is presently taking place in the affective faculty. Attentiveness is seeing how any feeling makes ‘me’ tick – and how ‘I’ react to it – with the perspicacity of seeing how it affects others as well. In attentiveness, there is an unbiased observing of the constant showing-up of the ‘reality’ within and is examining the feelings arising one after the other … and such attentiveness is the ending of its grip. Please note that last point: in attentiveness, there is an observance of the ‘reality’ within, and such attention is the end of its embrace … finish. Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness
(The word ‘observing’ refers to awareness-cum-attentiveness; not an intellectual awareness)
In regards to the distinction between investigating before or after getting back to feeling good, nowhere on the Actual Freedom Trust website, do I see a unilateral prescription. I do see Richard saying something to that effect of ‘it depends on the person’:
RESPONDENT: (…) How is the method best done – should I examine the feeling and find its trigger while experiencing it, in order to get back to feeling good?
RICHARD: If you have a tendency towards being an intellectual/ abstractional-type person then … yes.
RESPONDENT: Or should I get back to feeling good and then figure out why I last felt less-than-good?
RICHARD: If you have a tendency towards being an emotional/ passional-type person then … yes. Selected Correspondence: How to Become Free
(I consider myself to be an ‘intellectual/ abstractional-type person’ – and going by your report of going around in circles, and being a computer programmer, you are probably too)
Here’s the case for investigating prior to getting back to feeling good:
• [Respondent]: ‘There is also confusion as to what should be done as soon as I find myself feeling less than good. Sometimes I read that I should get back to feeling good quickly before investigating the feeling, other times I read that I should track back and investigate first in order to feel good.
• [Richard]: ‘The latter advice relates to consciously experiencing whatever it is which is preventing happiness and harmlessness (less it all be but a detached/ disassociated intellectual exercise) … for example: [Richard]: ‘It is impossible for one to intelligently observe what is going on within if one does not at the same time acknowledge the occurrence of one’s various feeling-tones with attentiveness. This is especially true with the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful). In order to observe one’s own fear, for instance, one must admit to the fact that one is afraid. Nor can one examine one’s own depression, for another example, without acknowledging it fully. The same is true for irritation and agitation and frustration and all those other uncomfortable emotional and passionate moods. One cannot examine something fully if one is busy denying its existence’ Selected Correspondence: How to Become Free
(The phrase ‘consciously experiencing whatever’ – I’d emphasize the ‘whatever’ (with naive curiosity) for you want to leave no stone unturned (imagine a bucket load of fascinated curiosity here to find out how ‘you’ tick with the explicit goal of getting back to feeling good; ie. ‘done out of necessity’ and not as ‘an end in-and-of-itself’) – refers to awareness-cum-attentiveness; and the phrase ‘detached/ dissociated intellectual exercise’ probably describes what underlies any going around in circles.)
And here’s the case for getting back to feeling good first (what you seem to be advocating as the only approach, which it is not), regardless of the specific issue in question:
RESPONDENT No 23: What about when I find out what happened to end feeling good and I see that it is silly to keep worrying about it yet that doesn’t stop the worrying and I am not back to feeling good?
RICHARD: Two things immediately leap to mind … (1) you value feeling worry (a feeling of anxious concern) over feeling good (a general sense of well-being) … and (2) you have not really seen it is silly to feel bad (a general sense of ill-being). What I would suggest, at this point, is to feel the silliness of feeling bad (in this case feeling anxiety) … then the seeing (as in a realisation) might very well have the desired effect (as in an actualisation) of once more feeling good.
PS: In addition to making actualism no. 1 priority (come what way, you want to be feeling good), I’d also emphasize the role of sincerity/naïveté (and having a sense of humour) as opposed to being serious which feeling bad often tends be.
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I think a lot of this “get back to feeling good first” comes back to this sentence, from the ‘This Moment of Being Alive’ article:
“…any analysing and/or psychologising and/or philosophising whilst one is in the grip of debilitating feelings usually does not achieve much (other than spiralling around and around in varying degrees of despair and despondency or whatever) anyway”
With this footnote attached:
"[Richard]: What the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago would do is first get back to feeling good and then, and only then, suss out where, when, how, why – and what for – feeling bad happened as experience had shown ‘him’ that it was counter-productive to do otherwise.
What ‘he’ always did however, as it was often tempting to just get on with life then, was to examine what it was all about within half-an-hour of getting back to feeling good (while the memory was still fresh) even if it meant sometimes falling back into feeling bad by doing so … else it would crop up again sooner or later.
Nothing, but nothing, can be swept under the carpet."
In addition, while I was in Ballina Richard corrected me by, to my memory, emphasizing getting back to feeling good before doing any investigation. Since that time I’ve been repeating that advice many times on this forum. I will acknowledge that my memory is flawed and that some of the nuance of his advice may have been lost with time, unfortunately there is no written record of that conversation to go back to.
What it seems to me is, there are two forms of investigation.
One of them is direct observation of the emotion/self, itself, happening, firsthand. Which is what you refer to by
(emphases mine)
Which attentive observation can only happen in real-time, and thus, by definition, while the emotion is happening - not while feeling good.
And the other form is analysis, which is best done while feeling good, per:
“any analysing and/or psychologising and/or philosophising whilst one is in the grip of debilitating feelings usually does not achieve much”
and “RESPONDENT: …should I get back to feeling good and then figure out why I last felt less-than-good? RICHARD: If you have a tendency towards being an emotional/ passional-type person then … yes.”)
I’d argue that both are useful and at some stage necessary to become free, though one or the other would be useful as a starting point, depending on one’s predilection (as Richard advises)
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Wonerful henryyyyyyyy
Could you give an example of a situation where you investigated for reasons other than when it’s necessary? It looks paradoxical to me to do for any other reason.