The Awareness Gap: When Effort Isn’t the Problem

It’s easy to assume that if we aren’t getting the results we want, whether in work, training, recovery, or life, it’s because we aren’t trying hard enough. More discipline. More volume. More grind.

Often, effort isn’t the missing piece…awareness is.

We can’t change what we can’t sense, and if our awareness of our own internal state is incomplete or inaccurate, we’ll make decisions based on the wrong information. We’ll push when our body’s quietly asking for rest. We’ll back off when we still have capacity in the tank. We’ll misread fatigue as laziness, hunger as boredom, or nervousness as danger.

The gap between what’s happening inside and what we can actually feel is the awareness gap, and it’s a major performance limiter.

The Science of Not Noticing

Self-awareness is a biological skill as much as it is a mental one. When it comes to noticing what’s happening physically, the technical term is interoception. This is our ability to sense and interpret the signals our body sends about its internal state.

Interoception runs on a network of sensors throughout the body that feed data to brain regions like the insula and anterior cingulate cortex. These areas integrate physical signals (i.e. our senses) with emotional context, helping us know when we’re hungry, overheated, stressed, in flow, etc.

This “sensory system” is similar to all the others that relate to our health–it can be trained or neglected. If we spend years overriding subtle cues in the name of productivity, aesthetics, or toughness, our nervous system adapts. It turns down the volume on those internal signals and we stop noticing. When we stop noticing, we lose the chance to respond in a way that supports performance and overall health.

Cost of Disconnection

When the awareness gap is wide, our body and mind start running out of sync. Our training plan might be telling us one thing, while our physiology is living in an entirely different reality.

This disconnect has real consequences. Without accurate internal feedback, pacing becomes guesswork, whether that means our actual splits on a run or the amount of work we expect ourselves to complete in a given amount of time. Recovery suffers. Emotional regulation gets harder because we’re reacting to situations without recognizing the biological shifts driving those reactions.

On a deeper level, chronic disconnection changes how safe our nervous system feels. When the system’s signals go unheard, it doesn’t stop sending them; it just reroutes them in less precise, often less helpful ways. That’s when fatigue starts looking like irritability or anxiety starts showing up as tight shoulders and shallow breath without a clear “why.” We might feel off but don’t even know where to start to overcome it.

Why We Lose the Signal

Modern life makes it unusually easy to lose touch with internal awareness. Constant stimulation, performance tracking, and multitasking push attention outward. We’re trained to check the clock, the watch, the phone, yet not the pulse in our neck or the rhythm of our breathing.

Over time, external metrics start replacing internal sensing. We don’t ask, “How do I feel?” We check what the app says. While data can be useful, it’s not the same as embodied awareness. Data can tell us what is happening; awareness tells us how it’s happening and the why behind it.

When the two don’t align, our decisions can start to feel strangely hollow. We can hit every metric and still feel off.

Closing the Awareness Gap

As with many of the other topics we’ve discussed, the awareness gap is reversible, but it requires consistent, specific input. The nervous system responds to what we repeatedly pay attention to.

Even dedicating a few minutes each day to tuning into a single internal signal without distraction, such as our breathing, our heartbeat, or even the subtle pull of gravity on our body while sitting, can help us retrain our awareness. The key is to just notice how our body feels without trying to control it or force outcomes.

This isn’t mindfulness for relaxation’s sake. It’s neurosensory training. Each time we bring awareness to an internal state, we’re strengthening the brain-body connection that lets us register change before it becomes a problem.

The Competitive Advantage of Feeling More

For athletes, leaders, and anyone who operates, or wants to operate, under high demand, closing the awareness gap is a direct route to better decision-making. It’s the difference between reacting to our state and actively managing it.

When we can sense subtle changes early, we can make small course corrections before things spiral and require a massive, effortful shift. We know when to push, when to recover, and when our limits are real versus when they’re just a protective reflex.

In a world obsessed with doing more, the real edge might come from noticing more. That is to say, awareness leads to efficiency, and efficiency allows us to “do more” with less effort. 

References

1. Craig, A. D. (2009). “How do you feel—now? The anterior insula and human awareness.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

2. Critchley, H. D., & Garfinkel, S. N. (2017). “Interoception and emotion.” Current Opinion in Psychology.

3. Mehling, W. E., et al. (2012). “The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness.” PLoS ONE.

4. Paulus, M. P., & Stein, M. B. (2010). “Interoception in anxiety and depression.” Brain Structure and Function.

5. Farb, N. A., et al. (2015). “Interoception, contemplative practice, and health.” Frontiers in Psychology.