The intelligence you’ve been taught to override

You know what I’ve been thinking about lately?

Mindset ( and to be honest a bit about AI) . We talk about it all the time. I talk about it all the time. How do I think, how do you think, what belief is running underneath all of this. And that matters, no doubt about that. But there’s another intelligence at work and most of the time we’ve been taught to ignore it.

It doesn’t speak in sentences. It speaks in sensation.

If you don’t slow down enough to listen, you end up living inside your head while your body is trying to tell you the truth.

I was sitting with a client recently. She had just stepped into a very senior role. Only a few weeks in. And she said to me, «Rita, something feels off. I can’t tell you what it is. I just feel it. In my body. Something isn’t right.»

So we stayed with the feeling instead of focusing on the story.

What is under the feeling «off»? Where do you feel it? What happens when you say that out loud?

She kept coming back to the same words. It feels off. My gut. Something just doesn’t feel right.

I thought this isn’t about mindset, this is way  bigger. 

Because the body already knew.

I learned to respect that kind of knowing in a hospital room, when I made the decision to turn off my son Benjamin’s life support so that a different, unproven life saving option could have a chance. I had no clue that would be possible. 

That is not analysis. That is not artificial intelligence. That is something far deeper and almost impossible to explain.

Have you ever felt it?

Something felt off. Just a tightening in your chest. A heavy sensation, the undercurrent . A sense of misalignment, feeling off,  you couldn’t yet justify. And instead of staying with it, you moved into being competent. Sounds familiar?

You told yourself « it is just more complicated than I thought. I need more time. I’m still in the middle of it and it’s too soon to know».

You signed the agreement even though you felt the contraction when you read the final clause.

So,what actually happened?

You negotiated with yourself !

One reasonable decision at a time.

When you are negotiating with yourself, your energy drops even if your performance doesn’t.

And then we call it pressure. Or workload. Or leadership fatigue. And for me, that makes it even worse because by labelling it with all the popular definitions, we disconnect with ourselves. 

This is the time to stop….now, connect with it. Ask your emotion, sensation or that gut feeling, what is its message. What is it trying to get your attention to?

The question I personally ask when my emotions are rumbling is : What brilliant message do you have for me, and it is not what I think it is?

Are you willing to stay with what you feel long enough for it to become instruction?

Because the world we’re moving into rewards speed, not depth. 

I can’t talk about this without talking about AI.

We are moving into a world where knowledge is no longer the differentiator. Data, modelling, forecasting. Machines will do that faster than we ever could.

But AI cannot feel an undercurrent in a room, that something needs to be said but isn’t.It cannot sense that something is «off» before the numbers show it.It cannot carry the moral weight of a decision that will change lives.

It cannot sit in a hospital room and choose without certainty.

That is human.

That is you.

In my work, we don’t stop at I feel something.

We stay with it until it sharpens. Into clarity.

That is when you know what needs to change. Who you need to speak to. What you can no longer tolerate. Where you have been saying yes while something inside you said no.

So here is the question worth sitting with.

Where have you felt something was off, clearly, in your chest, in your lower back or somewhere else and talked yourself out of it?

And what would shift if you stopped negotiating with yourself and started trusting what you already know?

That is not a mindset skill.

That is a human one.

And it may be the rarest form of intelligence we have left.

Love,

Rita

PS. This is the kind of conversation I'm having evert week with my clients. If you're sitting with this, you dont have to do it alone. Book a private 1:1 conversation here.