coming to your senses.

"Culture wants us to come to consensus... Nature wants us to come to our senses."

This framing that Martha Beck presented in a recent interview with the To Be Magnetic podcast landed just right for me.

Because here’s the truth—so many times, we hide our true selves, tell small lies, or don’t fully express ourselves in order to “fit in” with the culture and expectations around us. We learn this at such a young age… “If I don’t cry or make noise, the adults around me are happy.”

When your true nature and culture are at odds, you sometimes end up selling out your true nature in order to be accepted.

I never realized how many little lies I tell just for the benefit of other peoples’ comfort. I never realized how many things I did that I didn’t want to just because I felt like I had to. I never realized how much of myself I actually hid from people.

All of those little moments of self-abandonment build up and get stored in your body, whether we realize it or not. It’s those little micro moments that accumulate and lead to feelings of anxiety, stress, loss of self, etc.

When you learn to pay attention to your inner truth, when you pay attention to what makes you feel good and what makes you feel bad, you trade consensus for your own senses. And in that space is where you discover your true nature. It’s where you discover your core essence.

It’s like a plane. By just changing its course one degree at a time, it’ll end up in a completely different place than if it had stayed on course.

I know, I know. I make it sound too easy. Because the truth is that it’s not easy at all to clear out the chatter of a culture that you’ve been living in for your entire life.

One small way that you can start implementing this one degree change is by noticing and taking awareness of fear or anxiety that is arising on a day-to-day basis. If you’re having a fear when there’s not something frightening you immediately in the room, then it’s just a story that you’re telling yourself. It’s a lie—it takes you out of reality and into fiction.

Take note of those moments. And when they arise, come to your physical body. Feel your bones on the chair that you’re sitting on, feel the air of the room around you.

When you’re able to drop into your senses, you immediately leave the anxiety spiral (which lives on the left side of the brain) by flipping your attention to the senses (which live on the right side of the brain). This flip turns on creativity, flow, and grounding.

By activating all of your senses, you literally turn off the brain wiring that creates anxiety and instead turn on the wiring that creates imagination.

In other words, you become you again.

We always have a little story in our head. I don’t want to be on this meeting, I need to go to the grocery store, the car needs service, etc. The culture around us is anxiety-based and tries to spin our anxiety faster because it gets our attention, time, and money.

But there is a solution. And it involve training your brain to imagine a fiction that brings you into harmony instead of a fiction that brings you into stress.

here’s a short practice that Martha led on the podcast:

1. Think of something you love to taste.

2. Think of something you love to smell (that’s not food).

3. Think of something you love to feel with or on your skin.

4. Think of something you love to hear.

5. Think of something you love to see.

Then really immerse yourself in those lovely senses and picture all of them unfolding around you.

For example: It’s golden hour and you’re sitting on a smooth wooden chair, feeling the texture, and there’s jasmine blooming all around and you’re about to eat a bowl of pasta and there are binaural beats playing as you watch the sun set.

Lovely fiction is better than anxiety fiction.

The takeaway? Turn on your inner senses to go back to your heart. In there, you've got all the confidence and wisdom and love you'll ever need, despite everything that culture tells you and tries to sell you.

So my promise going into 2025 is to notice more of my little lies and stop telling them. To notice where I’m coming to consensus and try to come to my senses instead.

It all starts with awareness. That’s the only place that change can occur.

xx

Court

I don’t know why, but whenever I think about the five senses, I think of myself as a starfish and each sense that I need to tap into is a different limb. Plus, we’re all stars. Don’t forget that.