Your Head Knows the Right Answer. Your Body Knows the True One.

Someone leans into your doorway at ten to five. "Could you just take a quick look at this before tomorrow?"

And before a single word leaves your mouth, something happens. A small drop in the stomach. Shoulders creeping up towards your ears. A breath that stops halfway.

Then you hear yourself say, "Sure, no problem."

Your head gave the right answer. Your body had already given the true one, about half a second earlier, and nobody was listening. Least of all you.

Last month I asked you to open your calendar and your bank statement and look at the list you are really living by. If you did those twenty minutes, you probably ended up with the question most people end up with: "Okay. I can see the gap. So how do I work out what I actually value?"

The honest answer is that you probably will not think your way there. And the reason is quite beautiful once you see it.

Why thinking hands you the respectable list

Ask a capable person what they value and their head goes to work straight away. It is good at this. It has had years of practice at producing the right answer, in interviews, in performance reviews, and in rooms where the right answer kept you out of trouble.

So it answers with the values that sound right. The ones that would look good on a slide. Integrity. Family. Growth.

None of that is a lie. It is simply the version your head has been trained to produce, in exactly the same way it was trained to say "sure, no problem" at ten to five.

The head is brilliant at explaining. It is not always the first to know.

Your body usually gets there first

There is a study I love on this, and I say that as someone who has worked in clinical research for well over 20 years and does not fall for studies easily.

In the 1990s, Antonio Damasio and his colleagues at the University of Iowa gave people a card game. Four decks, face down. Two of them paid out big, exciting wins, and every so often a loss that wiped out far more than you had won. The other two paid out small and steady, and quietly came out ahead. Nobody was told which was which.

The researchers also measured tiny changes in sweat on the players' skin.

What they found has stayed with me for years. Players' bodies started reacting to the risky decks, a little stress response each time a hand moved towards them, before the players could say anything was wrong with those decks. People began drifting towards the good decks before they could explain why.

The body had worked it out. The head caught up later.

Damasio called these signals somatic markers. His wider argument, in his book Descartes' Error, is that feeling is part of how good decisions get made, not something that gets in the way of them. (Researchers still argue about exactly how much that one card game proves, which is fair. Science should argue. But the basic pattern, the body registering something before the words arrive, is one most of us have lived many times over.)

You have had these signals all along

You already know this from your own life.

The way your jaw sets when a particular meeting invite lands. The lightness walking to the car after a conversation where you said exactly what you meant. The kind of tired that has nothing to do with sleep, after a whole day of agreeing with things.

Those are not moods. They are information. Often better information than the tidy answer your head is getting ready.

So why do we not listen?

Because most of us were taught not to. In a family where feelings were inconvenient. At a school that rewarded sitting still and getting it right. In a first job where the right answer mattered more than the true one. In a meeting where your idea only landed when someone else said it twenty minutes later, and you smiled like it did not sting.

Overriding the signal became a skill. And a skill you practise every day gets very, very good.

Your body never stopped talking. You just got excellent at talking over it.

This is also why the gap survived

In last month's post I said the list you chose and the list you run are not stored in the same place. This is what I meant.

The list you chose lives in your head. It is the one you would say out loud. The list you run lives much lower down, in the patterns your body learned in order to keep you out of trouble. The quick yes. The being useful so you get left alone. The staying late so nobody can say you did not care.

So when we try to sort our values out with head-level tools, a worksheet, a vision board, a list of fifty words to circle, we end up editing the list that was never in charge.

That is why I will not hand you a values list to tick. And it is why the values work I do starts somewhere other than the head.

The pause before the yes

Here is one small thing to try this week. It takes no time at all, and you do not have to change anything.

The next time someone asks you for something, before you answer, notice one thing. What did your body do first?

A drop. A lift. A tightening. A softening. Just the first thing, whatever it was.

You can still say yes. This is not about saying no more often. It is about finally letting the first answer be heard, even if only by you.

If you like, jot it down at the end of the day. Who asked, what they asked for, what your body did. By Friday you will have a small, honest record of what your body has been saying while your head was being polite.

And if nothing shows up at first, that is completely normal. A signal that has been talked over for twenty years tends to be quiet. It gets louder once it realises someone is listening.

What noticing can and cannot do

I want to be straight with you about this.

Noticing is not the same as clearing. Some of what your body tells you this week will be simple: that meeting drains me, that person does not. And some of it will lead somewhere older, to a pattern that has been running since long before this job. That is root-cause work, and it is where the real change happens. It does not happen in a blog post.

But you cannot work with a signal you have never heard. Hearing it comes first.

If you want to do this in a room

On Sunday 18 October, Cathy Tescher from Ikigai Wellness Studio and I are running Aligned Within, a half day values workshop in North Sydney for ten people.

Cathy starts us in the body, so there is something listening before we do any thinking. Then I take you through the values work, including the honest part. Then Cathy helps you move whatever came up, so you head home lighter than you arrived.

👉 Save your spot

Please book by Sunday 11 October if you can, so we can confirm numbers and order lunch.

And if one morning is not enough and you would like to go deeper, send me a DM on Instagram at @tracyganducoach and tell me where you are up to.

Your head knows the right answer. Your body knows the true one. This month, give it a turn to speak.

You got this.

Tracy Gandu · Leadership Coach and Trainer · The Soulprint Leader Reset™

Tracy Gandu · Leadership Coach and Trainer · The Soulprint Leader Reset™

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