When I sit down for my meal, I find myself sometimes reaching for more: more salt, more black pepper, more lemon, more EVOO, something... before I even taste it.
Then one day I had an epiphany: The plate didn’t need anything. I did.
So I asked myself, Savitree, what do you need? And the answer came back quietly: nothing.
Then what’s this need you’re making up?
And why does reaching to make things “better” leave you needing for more?
The reaching stops.
I noticed that when my nervous system is calm, when I’m not searching, I don’t reach. Instead, I trust, I taste, and I respond. And because I’m not distracting myself looking for more, I taste everything.
Receiving is often the only condiment necessary to make things good.
And when something is honestly missing, it becomes clear what it is, and it usually only needs a dash of one thing. The solution is often that simple, and it’s no longer a reach.
The Adjusting Hand
Our hands tell us much about what’s going on with us. The Adjusting Hand is the reflex that fixes a thing before we receive it.
We imagine that the food is the problem, that it will be bland, or not enough, so we keep fixing it by reaching for more, to embellish on it.
This is external referral. Our culture trains us to outsource “enough” with the next tweak, the next authority, the next upgrade.
In food, it might live in a bottle of Tabasco. Or an extra drizzle of EVOO.
In writing, it lives in another paragraph. Another adjective.
In speaking, it lives in more words. More explanation.
In life, it lives in another project, another idea, more gadgets, more supplements, more to-dos.
With each reach, our body keeps a ledger. It gets the message: what I have isn’t enough.
And it triggers need, looking outward, reaching for a fix. This is what’s behind the rushed lunch, the 3pm crash, the restless bedtime, the morning dread. The tight shoulders. This is the receipt.
The signal goes both ways:
Your need causes you to reach. You reach, and your need amplifies.
You stop reaching, and your need settles. Your settling eases you forward.
Start letting your body’s first signal be the authority.
Instead of preempting, let the first bite tell you what it needs. Lunch without multi-tasking gives you attentiveness, allowing you to receive; to taste your food and see what it actually needs, if anything. It gives you presence, the ability to slow down, and listen for the signals.
This is how your warm, sit-down lunch becomes a powerful place to stop the Adjusting Hand in its tracks and shift you from external to self-referral mode.
It’s easy to dismiss lunch when you’re busy. Yet the busyness is what’s locking you inside the joyless grind.
When you read, watch, work, or get swallowed up in intense conversation while eating, instead of tasting the food in front of you, you’re tasting what you’re multi-tasking. Instead of putting the work down, you add more to the food to drown out the noise, inadvertently amping it up. Enter indigestion: the 3pm shut down, the 9pm wired. The overwhelm, the frustration, the exhaustion.
That’s how lunch, the minimum viable act of self-referral, is the Trojan horse. It only looks benign. It’s not. It rewires your nervous system. It teaches presence. Patience. Trust. Signal literacy.
The upgrade to sovereignty
Here’s how to practice trusting what’s in front of you.
Command the First Bite Rule. Instead of starting with the salt, start with one bite. Chew 30 times. Yes, thirty. No swallowing after just two chews. Taste. Break it down. Then decide if it needs a tweak. The pause is the practice.
Sit down and stay seated. Take your lunch warm, on time, without screens, feet to the floor, spine tall. Treat your lunch as the Trojan horse that it is.
Name the urge before you act. When the hand reaches, say it out loud: “The Adjusting Hand.” Naming interrupts the reflex and delivers signal literacy.
Practice return rate over perfection. The miss is not the problem, the delay in return is. This is the 90/10 rule.
Run the evening audit. Ask yourself these 3 questions before bed:
- Where did I reach to fix before receiving today?
- What did I let be enough?
- What would I change at the next meal?
The salt (or ketchup or hot sauce) isn’t what’s in question here. What’s in question is trusting what’s in front of you.
You’ve cooked up something nice. Instead of reaching for more, receive it first. Actually taste it. More often than not, what you’ve got doesn’t need more. The dream was never in more. It’s inside what already is. You’ll see how downright enjoyable it is, the moment you stop reaching.
Eat warm, breathe slow, keep a rhythm.
— Savitree
This is such an interesting read. We are so programmed that it takes a reminder like this to slow down and ask questions of ourselves.
Interestingly, the salt thing — reaching for it before even tasting the food — has always annoyed me. As a chef, I find it disrespectful. Not just to what I’ve cooked, but to anyone who has cooked. If someone takes a bite first and then decides they need to adjust something, I’m fine with that. But grabbing the salt shaker on instinct, before even giving the food a chance? That’s a different thing entirely.
I’d never thought about it from the perspective you suggest. That’s a new lens for me.