Learn to Thrive

THE WEEKLY THRIVE ED 1.2

The Weekly Thrive

Welcome to the second edition of The Weekly Thrive. We’ll be discussing more about how the body is intelligent and the systems that help keep it running. I also included a change log at the bottom so you can see what’s new on the website front.

A few quick notes:

Let’s jump into things. As always, please reply with any thoughts, feedback, or constructive criticism. I respond to every reply.

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One thing to think about: The unconscious supercomputer

“How do you feel right now?”

I despise this question for it’s percieved simplicity but disguised depth. Most reply with “Good” or “Fine” or “Just Peachy”.

It’s difficult to gauge how one feels in any given moment, and yet you’re feeling something, aren’t you? You might not be aware of it, but your insides are continually in motion.

Your blood is pumping, your heart is beating, hormones are being secreted, food is being digested, neurons are firing, muscles are contracting—there are so many things happening under the surface that we take for granted every single day because they just “work” and it’s only when they stop working that we get upset.

Any movement of your body is accompanied by movement in your body, which scientists refer to as [[interoception]]. It results from the internal movement of bodily systems.

All this visceral motion gives birth to the basic spectrum of feeling called [[affect]]. Affect ranges from pleasant to unpleasant, calm to jittery, and includes a neutral feeling situated in the middle.

“Interoception is your brain’s representation of all sensations from your internal organs and tissues, the hormones in your blood, and your immune system.” (Barrett, 2017, p. 56)

Most of this happens under the surface of conscious awareness, which explains why the majority of people are unaware of how they feel in any given moment.

We discussed in last week’s newsletter how the body is much more intelligent than we give it credit for, but how smart is it really?

Dr. Paul Conti, who I first heard on this episode (My Notes) of the Huberman Labs podcast, is a Stanford trained psychiatrist specializing in mental health. In it, he refers to our unconscious as the supercomputer that runs every facet of your life.

When people think of the unconscious, they assume it’s a hidden part of your brain lurking in the recesses of your mind that you don’t have access to. Your unconscious is really just the vast deposits of information that you’re not aware of.

Think about about it like this:

The body is so much smarter than the mind.

If you had to do all of this on your own you wouldn’t last a day, let alone a lifetime. It is because all these things are happening wthout conscious awareness that we are able to think, build, and create.

Most of us are familiar with our working memory being able to hold 5-7 bits of information at a given time. This works out to be about 40 bits of information at a time.

Meanwhile, our sensory organs (vision, hearing, smell, touch, taste) continually process stimuli from our environment at a rate of around 11 million bits per second (every second, every day, all-the-time!).

Over 90 percent of this is visual stimuli, but the vast amount of that information is unavailable to us. It would overload us, but one way we can tap into this is through intuition. We’ll dive deeper into that another time (as this is getting a bit long).

Want to learn more crazy statistics? Check out this post: The Art of Possibility - In Favor of Fireflies.

One thing to write about: Raising Interoceptive Awareness

By paying attention to the signals our body gives us, we can raise our intuition and access more of these vast deposits of information.

One way to do this is by practicing Interoceptive Journaling. Here’s a few prompts to get you started (courtesy of [[Anne Laure]]):

What this is doing is raising your kinesthetic awareness, or bodily intelligence (BQ).

We’ve been misled into thinking that IQ is the most important factor in measuring intelligence. It’s not. There are three main types of intelligence: EQ, IQ, and BQ.

Authors such as Brianna Wiest, Martha Beck, and Lisa Feldman Barret (just to name a few) have noted that intuition is gained as a result of accessing unconscious information.

Daniel Kahneman tells us that intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse, conscious reasoning, or needing an explanation. It is often related to unconscious cognition, a gut feeling, or inner insight. (digital notes: [[LN 📘 Thinking, Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman]])

[[Brianna Wiest]] describes intuition as the calming force within you that is ever-present and ever-guiding you towards where you are meant to be and how “Your life enriches as you expand your ability to describe and understand the processes and intricacies of what it is to be alive” (source p i.70, digital notes: [[The Pivot Year (books)]]). Your job is to learn how to pay attention. There’s more here than you realize.

[[Martha Beck]] calls it “Jumping the Track” which includes seeing the world not as mere physical objects but energy signatures that attract and repel. (source p i.165, digital notes: [[LN 📘 (732) Martha Beck on The Tim Ferriss Show#Jumping the Track]])

Joy, happiness, pleasure, suffering, despair—these aren’t physical things, they are energetic states. These states are a result of interactions between you and every other thing around you.

What I’d like you to do is reflect more intensely on how you feel in any given moment. Conduct daily “body scans” by noticing tension or tightness and considering where they might be coming from.

The more you do this, the more you’ll begin to develop your ability to discern your feeling states and raise your kinesthetic awareness (which also raises your emotional intelligence).

One thing to act on: Feel it going forward

As you approach the rest of today, pay attention to how your body feels in different contexts.

Notice the signals its giving you and see what happens when you do. Reply to let me know what you learned.

Question to get you thinking: When you walk into a room, what physical cues tell you about the ‘vibe’ before anyone speaks?

Change notes (2025-09-03)

– I’d love to hear from you - please reply to this email with any thoughts, feedback, constructive criticism, or anything you’d like to see more of. I read every reply.

See you next week! Ethan

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