That time I crashed my bike -- and more on being "book smart"

Tamara with a bloody nose after crashing her bike.

“You’re book smart but you lack common sense.”

Anyone else heard or been told a version of this line? 

Well, welcome to the world of my inner stories and how this line popped into my brain so fucking loud a couple days after crashing my bike and my face on the back of a camper van. 

Mind you, no one said this to me. I yelled it at myself as I was beating myself up emotionally. Ouch.

The accident was due to a mix of old ice on the shady side of the road, brunch mimosa, and distraction from a buzzing smartwatch. I’m fine. Nothing was broken–just whiplash, bruises, crooked handlebars and a massively wounded ego who triggered some old shame wrapped up in this idea of being book smart but lacking common sense.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

WTF even is “common sense”? 

Why is it so often framed in opposition to “book smart”? 

If I lack common sense, where did it go? And how do I get it back?

Online discussions define common sense as the connection of learned experiences and intellect to make ‘good’ decisions. If common sense comes from learned experiences, what are we to do when we learn to override our body’s experiences? How do we separate out the overanalyzing brain from the body’s felt sensations?

How do we (re)learn “common sense”--that ability to connect the brain to real time embodied experiences and then make a ‘good’ decision--when variations of trauma protectors come in to shift us into relative safety? The overanalyzing in the brain and the disassociating from the body are connected to our lifetime realities of emotional and physical abuses, relationship and educational dysfunction, sexist and racist systems and values.

In my own journey of shifting out of my dominating (book smart) brain, I’ve been learning how to get back into my body. I've been learning how to create awareness of my body’s true felt sensations and how these are separate from emotional reactions and thinking thoughts, both of the latter which tend to rule the roost. 

Overing is a result of learned mind-body disconnection. We learn to cut ourselves off from our felt sensations and physical, embodied experiences and needs in order to please others, to strive, to achieve, to belong.

This is why when I first start working 1:1 with clients, we start with an exercise in how it feels to be in your body when you’re experiencing a neutral state, a positive memory, and a worst memory. Then we use this to guide decisions. It's powerful and uncomfortable even. 

Many of us start patterns of disconnecting from our bodies early on in childhood. Not only did I learn quickly that sticking my nose in a book as the predominant way of knowing, but it was also a way to escape, to cope. I would read under the bed covers with a flashlight until my mom would wake up and take them away. 

My childhood coping and connecting through fiction turned into an adult who just wanted to stay safe in the hallways of academia so I could read and hide away from the ‘real’ work of learning how to be human. Because being embodied feels messy, uncontrollable, embarrassing, shameful, performative, and so much more... 

All throughout the educational system, we are trained to override our body and felt sensations, stuff away the big emotions, and let the brain (and other people's brains) drive our decisions. A regular story I share in workshops is how often people realize they have learned to override the need to pee or eat, so they stay sitting in meetings despite. Because. They don’t want to interrupt. They don’t want to feel embarrassed for having a body with needs. Or some external authority had said no. Fuck, I peed my pants in 3rd grade because the teacher said it wasn't bathroom time but sit at your desk and fill out your worksheets. And yet, every time I share this pattern, we all laugh uncomfortably and with a bit of shame and self-pity because we know just how true it is.

There’s another path, though. 

Even if the path of overing started a long time ago. Or for some clients, it started as a part of higher education or professional socialization. Regardless of when it started, it might even feel like the only path at this point. 

Cultivating awareness and learning how to reconnect into your body is about a reclamation of your inner wisdom to shift out of overing your body at work and in your relationships. It’s a shift into intuition, gut response, body wisdom - ultimately (re)learning self-trust through your body.

Here’s one thing you can do today to move toward this new path and get back in your body this week: Pick one of these tools (external pdf) and try to use it each day.

Need some extra accountability? Email me and tell me which one you picked.

I'll be sharing more about overing and tools for creating a new path throughout March. And in April, I'll be hosting the next round of the free Grow Boldly workshop series where you'll learn even more ways to shift out of overing. You can sign-up for that free workshop series here.