Check the body first
Before you believe the story a bad feeling tells, check whether your body is behind it: sleep, food, caffeine, illness.
Key takeaways
- When a strong feeling arrives with a story attached, check your body before believing the story.
- Ask: when did I last eat, how did I sleep, how much caffeine, am I coming down with something?
- If something's off, fix the cheap thing first, then look again. Whatever is still there is worth taking seriously.
Body first
In the hunger experiments, the hungry people who first paid attention to their own state didn't take it out on the researcher. Noticing gave their brains a better explanation for how they felt. "I'm hungry and tired" competes with "Everyone is against me", and often wins.
That's the whole practice: when a feeling is strong and comes with a story, check the body before you believe the story.
Before you believe the story
- Notice
A strong feeling with a story attached: "This is hopeless." "They're all fed up with me." "I need to quit."
- Check the body
Hungry? Short on sleep? Too much caffeine, or alcohol last night? Ill, in pain, or at a point in your cycle when this tends to happen? Been indoors and still all day?
- Fix the cheap thing
Eat, drink some water, step outside, go to bed. Big decisions and difficult messages can usually wait a few hours.
- Look again
Afterwards, see what's left. What's still there is worth taking seriously.
Don't turn this into a way of dismissing yourself. "You're just tired" can be its own way of not listening. The point is to sort out what comes from your body and what comes from your life, without assuming it's all one or the other.
Tom's Sunday night
It's 11pm on Sunday. After a friend's birthday weekend, Tom has slept about five hours a night since Friday. Today he's had three coffees and not much food since a late breakfast, and he hasn't left the apartment. He's now sure his job is wrong for him and his friends find him boring, and he's drafting his resignation email to send first thing tomorrow.
Sources and further reading
- MacCormack, J. K., & Lindquist, K. A. (2019). Feeling hangry? When hunger is conceptualized as emotion. Emotion, 19(2), 301-319.
- Craig, A. D. (2002). How do you feel? Interoception: The sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3(8), 655-666.
Finish the lesson
Answer the question above to complete the lesson.