Episode Transcript
The Processing Feedback Immerse card states, “Difficult feedback may cause your palms to sweat, your chest to tighten, or your stomach to drop. Those reactions hold information you can learn from.” And the card invites you to practice what’s called the dive, which you can do by bringing the feedback to mind, noticing whether a feeling arises in your body, and if so, going beyond the surface by asking, “Why am I feeling this?”
Now, let’s go a bit deeper into some of the data behind this card. 1924, philosopher named Robert Givler published a book called The Ethics of Hercules. In it, he wrote something that was radical then and honestly is still not common enough now: “Ethics and physiology can no longer be studied apart.”
He wasn’t just talking about ethics in some abstract sense. He was talking about our ability to make decisions, to grow, to become better human beings, and his core argument was that the body is not separate from that process. It is central to it. A century later, I think we’re still catching up to that idea.
We live in an intellectually focused culture that tends to treat the mind as the problem solver and the body as something that just kind of carries the mind around. But when it comes to processing feedback, especially difficult feedback, the body often speaks first. We got the sweating palms, the tight chest, the stomach that drops.
These aren’t inconvenient interruptions to your thinking. They’re data. That’s what the dive is designed to help you access. By intentionally moving between body and mind, noticing what you feel, then asking why, you can begin to develop what researchers call emotional intelligence. And a piece in the Yale School of Medicine highlights, “Emotional intelligent workers are,” quote, “experiencing less burnout.
They also perform better.” Many people chase both of those things, less burnout, better performance, through longer hours, harder effort, more discipline, but the research points somewhere quieter. It’s pointing inward. It points to the body and to our understanding of emotions, which again, the corporate world, many situations we’re in, many environments we’re in, often tries to get us to ignore or stuff down.
That’s card 01 of the Processing Feedback suit. The next time difficult feedback lands and you feel it somewhere in your body, don’t rush past that feeling. That’s the invitation. Go beyond the surface. Ask why. Take some time to move that data between your body and your mind. What you may find in that process may be more useful than anything your mind comes up with on its own.
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