Aaron Taylor — College Football Hall of Famer and Super Bowl champion — distills his entire journey of self-development into one phrase: “Feel your way to freedom.” Looking back on his life, he sees that every obstacle, every inefficiency, every self-sabotaging pattern came from his desire to not feel. Whether through alcohol, money, power, control, or even the violence of football itself, he used everything available to avoid feeling.
“Everything that has gotten in the way that has been an inefficient way to create the outcomes that I want has been my desire to not feel.”
The phrase points to a paradox at the heart of transformation: the path to freedom runs directly through the feelings we most want to avoid. Not around them, not over them, but through them. Aaron describes arriving at this realization reluctantly — “it was basically the only thing left. I tried all the other stuff and it just didn’t work.” This echoes a common pattern where feeling becomes the last resort after every strategy of avoidance has been exhausted.
Related Concepts
- Emotional fluidity defined
- Avoidance is the stuckness not the feeling
- Being with emotions beats fixing them
- Fear is excitement without the breath
- The gold in life lies just beyond what you’re afraid to face
- Allowing replaces striving on the back nine of life
- Focus on how you want to feel not what you fear