When Pain Warps Your Timeline

When Feeling Good Becomes the Goal Instead of the Compass

Have you ever heard someone, maybe yourself, say “I checked, and my body said no.” When it comes to making an important decision?

Larry and I were talking on our drive home after the Looking at 2026 call about a pattern we’ve seen again and again, not just in others, but in ourselves. When faced with decisions, even important ones, people often choose based on pain avoidance. The deciding factor isn’t what’s best long-term, but whether something feels comfortable or uncomfortable in the body. That choice feels reasonable. It’s also quietly costly. This will often evolve into a Catch-22 situation, always feeding itself into unending circles that have us spinning on our wheels and not getting anywhere. An example of these spinning wheels when we fall for the body decision making by avoiding pain is when the “higher” self will place us in super painful situations in order to shift us to do something else. Like poverty and bad credit ratings, for example, used to stop us from a shopping addiction. Left field! I know.

The Body Is Brilliant — and Not in Charge

I’ve spoken at length about why body-based resonance and dissonance are not enough to “truth” something even though our body is excellent at finding what is true and what is not. Sensations and emotions can be influenced by unconscious programs, fear responses, or the body’s own agenda. However, even though the body is excellent at seeking comfort and relief and we can use that tendency to find what is true from what is false, the body is not designed to evaluate long-term outcomes that include life changes. The body is designed for the here and now comfort cue, illustrated sometimes by the saying, short term pain for long term gain used to push through discomfort in order to achieve, perhaps, better physical fitness. Body says NO, but WE know better.

Another dramatic example is substance addiction: the body prioritizes numbness or pleasure despite the soul knowing the long-term consequences can be catastrophic. The body will tell the person that the truth is that if they have a few drinks, their pleasure and comfort will increase. Yup, it’s true! A short term pleasure for a long term pain, again an instance where the body doesn’t see long term results as relevant.

A quieter example is turning down a better job because being the new person feels uncomfortable, even though staying put limits the person’s growth. The body is telling the truth when saying that staying with what is familiar is less stressful (in the short term - the body can’t see long term).

In both cases, comfort wins. Wisdom loses.

Why Feeling Good Was Never Meant to Make Life Decisions

I use bodily sensation as a guidance system in very limited ways. It helps me find lost objects or navigate while driving without an address. For that, it’s precise and useful.

But it does not work for life decisions. Change is uncomfortable. Growth disrupts equilibrium. New directions activate fear and uncertainty in the body. If comfort were the deciding factor, no meaningful transformation would ever occur.

Short-Term Comfort Is Not the Same as Long-Term Wisdom

The phrase “the path of least resistance” often gets misused. What people actually follow is the path of least discomfort. Because change triggers resistance in the body, the mind, and even our co-creators, choosing comfort often results in staying still. The familiar feels safer than the unknown, even when it leads nowhere.

“I wanted to move to a high-frequency community, but it rains there all the time and my body can’t stand the rain.”

Basing the entire decision of where to live on their body comfort, disregards the entirety of their experience and relationship with their community. Figuring out when it’s fear of pain, or rain, making the decision, or an intuitive guiding system is a fine line. Let’s learn how to discern what is what when it comes to body discomfort.

How the Nervous System Prioritizes Relief

The body is wired to reduce pain and avoid stress. Discomfort signals danger. The instruction is simple: stop, withdraw, avoid. This system is essential for survival. It is not designed for strategic decision-making. When the body leads, long-term considerations disappear.

In our present society, we are taught and wired for instant gratification and endorphin hits. Breaking through the discomfort of change is not something that is encouraged or taught in school. And even the places that teach it, like boot camp in the armed forces, it is done in ways that also include brain washing and following orders that push us past our humaneness. Or cramming for final exams, harsh and hard and uncomfortable, but teaches short term memory of useless data over long term wisdom or discernment.

In other words, our society does not teach us any high-frequency reason or way to push past discomfort in order to see a clear long term road ahead.

Wisdom Sees Further Than Sensation

The body can provide valuable data, but only when framed correctly. Sensations help refine questions. They do not provide answers. Wisdom holds context. It sees timing, consequence, and trajectory. When wisdom leads, the body eventually recalibrates. We have to take this into consideration when dealing with body discomforts as we make our long term decisions.

One of the reasons why bodies react so heavily to long term decisions that require change is another aspect of society that is encouraged to disempower us. That is the aspect of teaching people to make decisions on their own (or their spouse if they are married), not as a group or tribe. Group or tribe decision making is so corrupted in society that we have been taught to distrust it absolutely. Huge financial and intellectual investments go into manipulating decision making of leaders and groups of people, making them think they are making good long term decisions when in fact the decisions were made for them. And yes, those manipulations are all comfort/discomfort based. All our bodies are involved in this; emotional, mental, ego, energy as well as physical.

I am not giving us an “out” or “excuses” for letting the seeking of comfort and pleasure be our main decision making tool. I am bringing this information into our awareness so that we can understand what is happening and we can pivot from our previous disabling habits and into empowered ones. Let’s understand what we are doing and not fall into the blame-game here.

Why Listening Only to the Body Shrinks Futures

Somatic information is useful, but it must be interpreted, not obeyed.

Periods of high stress, fear, or loss are especially poor times to use bodily sensation to guide decisions. Emotional processing comes first. Otherwise, fear quietly becomes the decision-maker. And if there’s something more limiting than choosing comfort, it’s choosing from fear. Making long term and life decisions is by default a stressful time for our bodies.

So, who is in charge?

The body is an extraordinary instrument for navigating a physical world. It is fast, sensitive, and deeply invested in survival. But it was never meant to be a long-term strategist.

When we hand authority to comfort or pain avoidance, we don’t stay safe. We stay small, through thousands of reasonable-seeming choices that favor relief and pleasure over direction.

Discomfort, fear, mental spinning, and emotional exhaustion do not automatically mean we are doing something wrong. They often mean we are doing something new. Whether it is wrong or right needs further work and exploration.

The mistake is not feeling these signals. The mistake is letting them decide for us before we can figure out what they are saying.

When the body is under stress, the task is not to reorganize our lives around eliminating those sensations. The task is to restore clarity, process the charge, and step into a wider field of awareness where decisions can be made with context, timing, and purpose intact.

From that larger awareness, the body can be met with care rather than obedience. Comfort can follow. But it does not lead.

Our mission and long term goals don’t respond to how comfortable we feel and how much pleasure we are getting moment to moment.

High-frequency reality responds to who is in charge. Make sure it’s you.