Taste Steers Your Mind

Keywords

Binge, picky, discriminating, worry, lazy, unfulfilled, vacant, bloat, dissatisfied, refined

Sensitive Palette

When your mind is steered by taste, you might like to “spice things up” and try new flavors. You may also prefer the consistency of limiting your diet to a few of your favorite dishes.  You have “a sensitive palette,” able to discern flavors and detect subtle tasting notes.

 Get Satisfaction

Your food choices may be adventurous or conservative. You may be picky or willing to try anything. You may feel unsatisfied or unfulfilled in life.  You can be difficult to please or easily satisfied. These dynamics are also true when it comes to your actions. You may feel resistant to exertion.

Driven To Distraction

Whether you're in a conversation or doing your work, concerns about food may distract you. When you feel hungry, you find it difficult to concentrate on tasks or think about anything but your next meal. You may even blank out or check out during conversations. You know you have to watch out for overeating, especially when you enjoy the taste of food.

Dining Meditation

A simple practice to improve your relationship with food is to eat undistracted by other activities like working or watching TV. Make sure to chew thoroughly. Pay attention to every bite of your food. Notice how it makes you feel as well as your food’s flavors and textures.

Why Understanding Your Senses Is Valuable

As part of the animal self, the senses are driven by pleasure and pain, appetite and distaste, craving and revulsion. They move toward what they desire and away from what they dislike.

One sense may dominate or a few may conspire to rule your mind.  This can lead to feelings that your life is out of your control and your senses drag you hither and fro.  May you numbly aimlessly wander through your day as the senses seek to satisfy their appetites.  Anxiety, depression, hopelessness, restlessness, insecurity, and sensitivity are symptoms of your senses steering your mind.

The results of this quiz can help you improve your relationship with your senses.  Like a horse-whisperer subtly communicates with a horse to steer them, you can learn to guide your senses through self-empathy.  As your senses relax and trust your conscious guidance, they operate as a powerful team that you rein in the direction of your choosing.

I logged my experiences and shared the practices that taught me how to improve the relationship between my senses, mind and will in my new book, Rein: Harness the Wild Power of Your Senses.