Hello Reader,
I've said things in meetings I immediately wished I could take back. By the time I registered the signal, the words were already out. My body was trying to tell me to slow down. I just didn't hear it in time.
Most of us who came up in technical environments were trained to treat physical discomfort as noise — something to push through on the way to actually thinking. That reflex is useful when the system's down and someone needs you to stay calm and work the problem. It's a liability in a hard conversation, where what you actually need is to catch the signal, not override it.
You've been practicing the override for years, so you're fast at it — faster than the signal. You're already responding before it has a chance to register.
The practice I walk through in this week's video is almost embarrassingly simple: when you feel something strong, stop for a few seconds and scan your body. Where are you carrying it — chest, jaw, gut, behind the eyes? What does it actually feel like — tight, heavy, hot, electric, hollow? Don't name the emotion yet. Just describe the physical texture, like you're reporting on it.
I've been doing this for a couple of years now, and I've built up a personal library of the patterns that show up most for me. One of them: energy that starts in my chest and moves up into my head usually means I've started running with an idea before I've stopped to ask whether it's actually a good one. The video covers the second pattern, and why this practice ends up being upstream of nearly every other regulation tool — box breathing only works if you catch the signal first.