3 Things I've Understood About Myself from Using the "How We Feel" App

Mar 11, 2024

“How We Feel” is an excellent app to help us check in with our emotions.
It provides ways to analyze the different things that affect our feelings, such as the weather, how many minutes we meditate, or how much we sleep at night.
It’s easy to use and offers video training for those who want to learn to better manage their emotions.

Here are 3 things I’ve learned about myself from using the app for two months now:

I Don’t Pay Attention to My Feelings Enough

I’ve set up multiple reminders to log my feelings into the app.

I thought it would be easy. It’s just a feeling, and I always know how I feel.

But labeling my thoughts was harder than I expected.

Am I tense? Confused? or Anxious? There is a fine line between these.

Thinking more deeply about what I’m feeling leads to deeper self-reflection and insights about my current feelings.

This is something we don’t get to do. Certainly not on a daily basis.

The app made it easier to check in on myself multiple times a day with minimal effort.

After I log in my emotions, I write down what I’m doing right now, but I also log in:

This was a fantastic way to understand how my daily habits affect my emotions.

Does taking more steps lead to more positive emotions? How many hours of sleep are enough to have a good day?

How We Feel does a great job of analyzing the results and gives you a weekly breakdown based on your input.

But it was annoying entering these things manually every time I logged in.

If I had a smartwatch, this information would enter the app automatically.

The next item on my wishlist is now an Apple Watch.

The last thing I’ve noticed is that there are many feelings on the app that I never choose.

I’m talking about these awesome positive feelings like “Thrilled” or “Amazed.”

It made me reflect and think about how I can get to experience these emotions.

I don’t have an answer yet, but it feels like a good thought experiment to struggle with.