Mixed Feelings
IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME
So, we have established the fundamental principle, distinguished insight from information, and brought the responsibility for all squarely back into our wheelhouse. I accept that, relative to the energy and urgency of January, this might easily be read as overly and unnecessarily reductive. Not just pointless but self-indulgent when the simple fact is, you need to get moving.
And you do. But you need to keep moving. So this is about doing something properly, and doing it once. Or (only) once more, at least.
In any case, it stands to reason you don’t want to worry about what everybody else is doing when everybody else is unfit, but as we transition from these purely thought-based exercises into the physical, the logic, the necessity of this approach will become clear and not a test of whether these ideas survive contact with reality but only to underline how every other approach doesn’t.
Today, we’ll revisit the idea of feeling our way into alignment (with the principle).
Feeling our way into what is.
An idea that can seem equally pointless, because we well know that feelings are as likely to lead us into trouble, and certainly will if they're calling the shots.
And have— the angry email, the ill-timed laugh, the impulse buy.
In modern life, we’re moved by whatever feeling is brightest, loudest, most immediate. Comfort means go. Resistance means stop.
But you don’t steer a ship toward a lighthouse. The lighthouse is the warning.
A mistake that will always land you on the rocks.
So which is it? Trust your feelings or don’t?
The answer is both. But it’s less a question of how and more a question of when.
Specifically, waiting until:
AFTER THE FACT
The point at which your body becomes a true North Star.
The body is not telling you what to do — it is telling you what just happened. So you wait. Yes, exactly like the angry email, or impulse buy, or other things we might come to regret. We sleep on it and in the cold light of day, we realise: Whoa. Better not.
And for the same reason.
Because you will be better for it.
We understand this in most of life and see anger as information, not instruction, a signal, not a command. But when it comes to our bodies, our habits, and our daily actions, we lose this distinction completely.
But “It seemed like a good idea at the time” is not a strategy. And because your feelings can’t always be relied on in the moment, you go back to the principle.
You train not because you feel like it, but because your structure tells you you must.
Then you feel great. Aligned with the principle. In line with what you are.
You might doomscroll because that feels better (than training), but then your behaviour matches the incentive structure of a platform designed to maximise engagement duration, not the needs of a nervous system designed for interaction with a physical world.
So you’re aligned with Zuckerberg’s business model.
And so on:
How do you feel after eating too much?
Like shit. Probably not a good idea then.
How do you feel after eating crap?
Like shit.
How do you feel after no exercise for a couple of days?
All—just like a hangover— crystal clear indication as to the physiological wisdom of your actions.
It’s not just New Year’s resolutions but essentially every fitness, dietary or broader self-improvement endeavour, fuelled and funnelled by the same contrasting messages.
Push through
—or—
Listen to your body
And while both are sometimes correct, they are also the reason most of these intentions are now coming to the same ragged end Because the problem isn’t discipline, or willpower, nor insensitivity or distraction —at least directly— it’s seeing the distinction between sensation and story.
A sensation is just a piece of data: comfort, reluctance, fatigue, urge, boredom, hunger, restlessness.
We add the story: I should train. I shouldn’t train. I deserve a break. I need stimulation.
The body always tells the truth. Our interpretation of it is almost always wrong.
Muscle burn can be damage or stimulus—the same signal can draw opposite actions. But it's not merely that fitness and diet culture either ignore or distort these cues.
You can— and I would argue should— learn to ‘hear’ your body, but only after affording it some opportunity to know what it’s talking about. Recalibration: Eat real food only. Slowly. And exercise— roughly analogous to your hunting of said food—. for a start.
Long enough for your body to start talking sense for a change. Following this reset, a student of Leftfield Youniversity once reflected that she hadn’t really eaten simply because she was hungry for years. And she wasn’t kidding. So it’s possible you wouldn’t know hunger if it slapped you in the face.
And it would need to.
You exist in an environment saturated by advertising and other psychological prompts. Where any urge to eat is confounded by dictates like time (midday), place (kitchen), occasion (watching a movie), emotion (boredom), and every combination thereof. Your body doesn't know what any artificial light is, much less blue light. Berries are meant to taste sweet. Carrots taste sweet, but not next to engineered hyperpalatables.
Modern life collapses all distinctions. An eternal sensory overload that doesn’t blur but obliterates. We are pushed and pulled by an unceasing series of psychological and physiological fishhooks across every area of life, in every possible permutation —from the insidious algorithmic feed to the more innocuous climate-controlled interiors— united only in that they are profoundly inhuman
Where is the reference for any reliable reading? Where body and mind are concerned, you don’t know which way is up— which is the point.
Not navigation but manipulation.
So sensation cannot be instruction. If it were, exercise would be impossible. The first exposure to almost any training stimulus feels wrong. That is precisely why adaptation occurs. The organism is registering a mismatch between its current capacity and the demand placed upon it.
Feelings are instruments. But instruments require calibration.
And calibration can only come from a stable reference point — your structure, your constraints, your architecture.
Which is why the argument keeps circling back to things that feel almost offensively obvious.
Your foot
Gravity
Load
Recovery
Time
Not because they’re profound—but because they’re undeniable.
So instead of reacting to feelings that are hijacked by every going concern except yours: feeling → decision
You instead act according to principle: principle → action → feeling → understanding
You want to listen to your body, but only when you’re in dialogue with it— speaking a language it understands. Things like:
Tension and time —not exercise or ‘reps’
Food, not foodstuffs
Sunlight
Weather
Heat. And cold
Sleep
Expose the organism to conditions it evolved to interpret, and its signals will stop contradicting reality. With enough exposure to things your body and mind can’t fail to respond to, you ground and recalibrate your feelings. You educate and anchor them.
And then you begin to trust them.
UNTIL ONE FINE DAY
You won’t have to battle the moment. You stop arguing with it. Which is not to suggest it will always be easy.
But it’s an ease nonetheless. To discover that much of what you thought was preference was misinterpretation. Not because it makes your life better in a general, boring ‘health’ sense— although of course it does —but in an I can't believe I lived without it sense.
And you can’t unring that bell. The idea of needing to force or even coax yourself to do what’s required to produce this better state is absurd. You couldn’t stop if you tried.
But trying to describe this without your direct experience of it is like trying to describe the colour red. That’s a reality that awaits on the other side of insight.
For now, I hope you’ll recognise that, we humans— you — are not uniquely cursed to live in opposition to what we are.
But there’s only one human who can do anything about it.
And it’s not me.
Enjoy your weekend
- OLI