It Felt True. But Did That Make It True?
Why can something feel completely true before you’ve checked whether it is?
1 — THE EXPERIENCE
“I feel uneasy.”
2 — THE FIRST EXPLANATION
“Something’s wrong.”
3 — SOMETHING DOESN’T QUITE ADD UP
Experience is real. Its explanation is not automatically fact.
4 — INVESTIGATE
- What actually happened?
- What did you experience?
- What did you experience it as meaning?
- What did you already know or expect?
- What was happening in your body?
- What else could explain it?
5 — UNDERSTAND
Your experience doesn’t arrive with its explanation attached.
The brain receives sensory information from the body and world and must make sense of it using what it has learned before.
That’s where prediction, past experience, language, bodily state and context become important.
6 — EXPERIENCE
Instead of automatically:
“That’s what this means.”
you develop room for:
“That’s how I experienced it. What else might I need to know?”
7 — UPDATE
What do you know now that you didn’t know then?
What might your brain have available to predict differently next time?
Your first explanation may still be possible. The difference is that it is now one possibility you have investigated—not an automatic conclusion you had to accept.
What will you investigate next?
One experience. One investigation. A different possibility.