S<\/span>o many of us struggle to find our true calling and path at any age. We spend hours, weeks, or even years ruminating, weighing the pros and cons of steps we can take and changes we can make to get closer to that elusive sense of purpose. But all too often, we wind up anxious and stressed instead of finding answers, riddled with analysis paralysis.<\/p>\n I know this from personal experience. In the first ten years after college, I tried out over ten different roles and professions, from baker to tenant organizer to senior associate of investor relations. None were a perfect fit, but I had no idea what would be better.<\/p>\n Now I know what the issue was. I was trying to figure it all out in my head. Most of us go there when we have a problem to solve because our culture encourages us to remedy everything with logic, reason, and analysis.<\/p>\n But our heads are just one source of innate wisdom. Our bodies are another. They constantly read our current situation and offer nearly instantaneous wisdom and guidance based on information they\u2019ve incorporated from within and around us, past and present experiences, instinct, and intuition.<\/p>\n The problem is we usually aren\u2019t paying attention to them, or we don\u2019t know how to interpret what they\u2019re telling us because our culture is disconnected from the wisdom of the human body. I explore this idea in my new novel This Animal Body.<\/em><\/p>\n Reconnecting with my own body\u2019s wisdom has helped me find my unique purpose and realign my career with my strengths and passions \u2013 helping others heal from anxiety, find their calling, and thrive. I\u2019ve done this as an author and coach for the last fourteen years and have never looked back.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how you can tap into your own body\u2019s wisdom:<\/p>\n Because our culture trains us to ignore our bodies, the way they speak to us can feel like a foreign language. My favorite place to begin with any foreign language is to learn \u201cyes\u201d and \u201cno.\u201d You can do this with your body by pausing in situations that bring up stronger-than-usual feelings, either positive or negative, and noticing what sensations you feel in your body and where you feel them. Pay particular attention to your core, as in my experience, most people feel things more easily in the belly, chest, throat, or shoulders. The sensations you notice in positive situations when doing something you like are how your body says \u201cyes.\u201d The ones from negative situations you can\u2019t wait to get out of are how your body says \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n Once you know your baselines, you can track your body\u2019s responses throughout the day. When do you notice your \u201cYes Body\u201d sensations? What\u2019s your best sense of what your body is saying yes to?<\/p>\n When do you notice your \u201cNo Body\u201d sensations? What\u2019s your best sense of what your body is saying no to? It\u2019s helpful to take notes so you can track patterns over time. Asking these questions for at least a couple of weeks can lead to profound insights and help us get in the habit of checking in with our bodies more.<\/p>\n Speaking of habits, most of us spend 99+% of our time in our heads\u2014planning, preparing, remembering, worrying, ruminating, or otherwise paying attention to our thoughts. Shifting attention from our brains to our bodies as a practice can not only help us tune into their wisdom, but also reduce anxiety and build the habit of being more present to what\u2019s happening right now. You can do this with a body scan, yoga, or walking meditation.<\/p>\n One of my favorite methods is sit outside and alternately focus on each of my senses\u2014what I\u2019m seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling on and under my skin. The key is to notice when you\u2019ve gotten wrapped up in your thoughts again (it\u2019s inevitable and not a sign you\u2019re doing anything wrong), then gently return your attention to your body.<\/p>\n There are a lot of nuances to what our bodies can tell us beyond simply \u201cyes\u201d and \u201cno.\u201d Observing carefully and taking notes over time can help us expand our vocabulary. By being curious, we can learn the difference between common misinterpretations, such as fear versus an actual \u201cno,\u201d or what\u2019s habitual and familiar versus a true \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n Experiment with making decisions based on your body\u2019s wisdom and track what happens.<\/p>\n Start with small experiments, where you decide what to eat for lunch or how to spend a free evening based on what your body says yes to. Write down your decision, what body sensations led to it, what happens in terms of external results, and how you feel. Work your way up to bigger decisions with more at stake. Over time, you\u2019ll gather evidence about what happens when you listen to your body and likely learn to trust it more as you see what happens when you do.<\/p>\n Some of the decisions I\u2019ve made based on my body\u2019s wisdom felt scary and involved huge investments of time and money\u2014like moving across the country back to my hometown, buying and renovating a house, or changing careers and getting credentialed as a coach.<\/p>\n Many contradicted conventional wisdom, logic, or the advice of those around me. All of them resulted in greater freedom and fulfillment and took me closer to what I longed for, even if I had no idea how they would at the time.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the beauty of our bodies\u2014they know things our brains don\u2019t. I\u2019ve found no better way to create a unique and meaningful life that allows us to contribute our greatest gifts to the world than by incorporating that wisdom into all we do.<\/p>\n Try listening to your body\u2019s wisdom, not your mind\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15010,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[186,188],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-summe-2024","category-spring-summer-2024-columns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14936"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15272,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14936\/revisions\/15272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Learn the language of your body<\/h3>\n
Observe your body over time<\/h3>\n
Practice moving your attention from your brain to your body<\/h3>\n
Study your body\u2019s responses like a scientist<\/h3>\n
Meredith Walters<\/a>, author of This Animal Body<\/a>,<\/em> has wandered in forests looking for animals and magic and writing stories about what she found. Her life adventures have included volunteering for a nonprofit in Mexico, studying literature at UC Berkeley, getting an MBA, and working for a social enterprise startup. Her short story collection, The Adventures of Little One<\/em>, was published in 2018. Today Meredith lives in Atlanta, Georgia, working as a life\/career coach, helping others rediscover their lost magic and once again writing stories about what she finds on her wanderings through the woods.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"