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I’ve always considered myself a self-aware person.
Give me enough time after something happens and I can normally explain it. Why I became impatient, why I pushed myself too far, why I opened the laptop again when I was already tired, or entered the market before I was supposed to.
The problem is that I’m much better at understanding myself afterwards.
The more interesting part is what happens in the minutes before.
Before the decision, my attention has usually already narrowed. I become restless, my thinking speeds up, and I start looking for something to fix, do, or control. This has been my default mode for years and one of my biggest life projects.
By the time I consciously decide to act, my body has been moving me in that direction for a while. It’s quite challenging.
But the more I started noticing this in myself, the more I could see how challenging it is for my coaching clients, too.
A client might describe an impulsive decision as something that appeared out of nowhere. But when we go back through the trading session recording (I often ask them to do this), there are changes in breathing, a move closer to the screen, and a tensing of the body…
That’s the story:
The behavior comes last, but the signs are there before you understand them.
That gap — between the body registering something and the mind making sense of it — is where interoception lives.
I’ve written before about interoception as the ability to catch activation before it takes over. But there is another part of the skill that deserves just as much attention:
Once you notice a signal, how do you know what it means? And the right thing to do next?
That is what I want to explore today:
How the body starts influencing behavior before you consciously notice it
How curiosity helps you stay connected to yourself under stress
How to interrupt an urge before it becomes a decision
Let’s go.
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