Intuition, emotion, stress and habit

So if your body reports on everything, how do you know what it's actually reporting on?

You get to know the regulars.

Your body has habits. It has patterns. It has learned responses to certain situations, people and environments. Once you know those, you can start to spot when something different is happening.

The things that live in your body

Let's separate them out.

• Intuition: often a clear, specific response to a particular thing, which may not have an obvious explanation.
• Emotion: a response to something happening now, often with a feeling you can name: sad, angry, excited, scared.
• Stress: a general background tension that colours everything, regardless of what you're thinking about.
• Fatigue: heaviness, flatness, low motivation, that makes most things feel like too much.
• Physical discomfort: actual physical stuff: hunger, pain, illness, needing the loo. (Yes, really.)
• Habit: the same response you always have in that situation, whether or not it fits this time.
• Conditioned responses: reactions your body learned from past experiences, especially difficult ones.

The background question

One of the most useful questions you can ask is: is this feeling specific, or is it everywhere?

If you feel tense about one particular thing but fine about everything else, that's worth paying attention to.

If you feel tense about absolutely everything today, you're probably stressed or tired, and it's not a great day to read your body's signals about big decisions.

Habits aren't wrong: they're just old

Conditioned responses usually developed for a reason. Maybe that family member often did bring stressful news. Your body learned to prepare. That's sensible.

But it means your body's response is about the past pattern, not necessarily about right now. And knowing that gives you a choice.