Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.
― H. James Harrington
Our ability to learn is based on feedback.
If I bump my head on a cabinet, the pain lets me know to duck next time… or to change the layout of my cabinets! If a conversation sparks my interest, that spark lets me know to pay closer attention. If I feel awful whenever I spend time with a particular acquaintance, that awful feeling tells me to search for the cause of the trouble and address it, or to reconsider spending more time with him.
There is a whole field of study of psychophysiology and biofeedback that is dedicated to helping people learn to control aspects of their physiology, including certain brainwaves, in order to achieve greater relaxation, lowered blood pressure, and other psychological and health benefits.
But we don’t need that level of sophistication in order to make use of biofeedback. Our own bodies, and many common devices, give us plenty to go on… if we pay attention. This holds the key to taking charge of much more of our psychological and physiological existence than many of us know.
For example, how do you know when you’re angry? The common answer is, “Well, because I feel angry!”
But there’s something else that happens besides the emotion or reaction of anger. We have physical sensations – our muscles tighten, our heart rate climbs, our breathing changes, our teeth clench… The specifics will vary to some degree for different people, but the more aware we can be of the physical sensations that accompany feeling angry, the easier it will be for us to sense that emotion coming on, and the better able we will be to catch it before we feel too consumed with emotion or overwhelmed by our fight system to think straight.
Panic attacks are often preceded by a shift in breathing as much as forty-five minutes before most people are aware of any feelings of panic. Becoming more aware of our breathing can help us catch those shifts and gently deepen our breathing long before our shallower breathing would have triggered a panic attack.
Situational awareness is noticing what’s going on around us, paying attention to our perceptions. When we tune in to our surroundings, we can more easily notice signs of potential danger. We might be driving and notice a car that’s weaving ever so slightly, and know to keep some extra distance in case they’re texting, or they’ve been drinking – or they’re maybe just a rotten driver.
When we don’t pay attention to our own physical sensations or perceptions, we can be easily blindsided – by our own emotions or reactions, or by external threats that seem to come out of nowhere.
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