Follow the Chills: How I Learned to Trust My Body More Than My Brain

There’s a moment, just before a great idea lands, when the energy shifts. It’s small, almost imperceptible—a sharp inhale, a glance across the room, the tiny ripple of goosebumps up your arms. It’s the feeling of something real emerging.

I didn’t always know how to recognize that feeling.

In my 20s, I approached work the way I had approached school: with discipline, structure, and the belief that the right answer could be found through research, analysis, and rigorous thinking. I had done well academically—meticulous in my arguments, exacting in my attention to detail. I carried that same precision into my early career, working as a lead inventor at What If, a creative consultancy focused on innovation.

One of my first major projects was with MTV, a brand at that time that was synonymous with cultural edge, and the task was a dream come true: understanding what we called Generation Innovation, a deep dive into the way youth —millennials, at that time—were shaping the world. The assignment felt big, electric. We were talking to early YouTubers, indie designers, social entrepreneurs, bloggers-turned-brands, people whose influence was still emerging but would later shape entire industries.

I wanted to do a great job. I threw myself into the research, gathering every possible insight, combing through interviews, structuring a narrative with military precision. I wanted my work to be undeniable.

Then I presented it to Enda, the Director on the project.

Enda is one of those effortlessly creative people, the kind who could conjure an idea mid-sentence and spin it into something brilliant. He has a swoop of hair that sits like a silver wave caught mid-motion, bright eyes that gleam when he’s onto something, and a kinetic energy that make him pace the room when he thinks.

We were in a small conference room on Second Avenue and St. Mark’s Place, the kind of space where the walls were covered in Sharpie sketches and kaleidoscopic Post-its, where the steady staccato of taxis and arguments of passersby rattled against the windows. I laid out my research—insights, data, frameworks—all carefully mapped and color coded.

He listened. He nodded. “It’s good,” he said. “It makes sense. It’s correct.”

Then he paused.

“But I don’t have chills yet.”

I remember blinking at him. Chills? That wasn’t a metric I had ever considered. I had spent weeks ensuring everything was airtight, every insight backed by research, every argument flawless. Since when did physical sensation determine whether an idea was good?

I went back to work.

The next day, I revised, tightened my arguments, made sure everything was even sharper. I presented again.

“Yeah,” he said, scanning the wall. “It’s better. But I still don’t have chills.”

I was frustrated. How do you force chills? How do you engineer feeling?

I started watching him more closely. In our brainstorming sessions, I noticed when he would stop pacing, when his breath caught mid-thought, when his entire energy shifted to a standstill. I started paying attention to the moments when I felt something—the ideas that made my own heartbeat pick up.

And then, I did something radical: I stopped trying to be right.

I stopped obsessing over perfect insights and let myself follow instinct instead. I focused on what felt real, not just what made sense on paper. I rewrote. I let go of the careful, measured language and leaned into what made my chest tighten, what sparked an oof reaction deep in my gut. And most importantly, places where I would giggle to myself and think “that is just weird.”

And then, in one of those final sessions, he stopped mid-step.

“I have chills,” he said.

And in that moment, I realized I did too.

"Yeah!!!!" I screamed, as if the chills had cracked something open inside me, as if a dam of energy had finally burst free. It wasn’t just a realization—it was a full-body aha, the kind that makes you want to jump on a table and declare victory over the forces of mediocrity. I clutched my chest and feigned fainting like a dramatic movie heroine, half-laughing, half-breathless.

The energy on the project shifted. It was like a pressure valve had been released—ideas started pouring out faster, connections forming that hadn’t existed moments before. I had permission to feel—not just to think. To be wildly wrong in the spirit of discovery. To let it rip and go to unexpected, unpolished places, where magic and meaning hide in the rough edges.

It was then that I got it. It wasn’t just about strategy anymore; it was about work that was alive, kinetic, undeniable.

What we created was no longer just a well-researched document. It was something that moved people. The way we framed it, the way we told the story—it stopped being a report and started being something visceral. We made it impossible for the executives we were presenting to not feel something. And that changed everything.

The Science of Chills

At the time, I didn’t understand why this shift worked, but years later, I started to dig into the neuroscience behind it.

Chills—those spine-tingling, hair-raising moments—are part of our body’s physiological response to deep emotional resonance. Studies show that when we experience something profoundly moving—a piece of music, a powerful speech, a truth that lands with precision—our brain floods with dopamine, activating the same reward pathways as love, thrill, and even euphoria.

It’s why a sudden revelation in a conversation can make you shiver. Why a song can send electricity through your skin. Why a great idea doesn’t just sound good—it feels like something shifting inside you.

And yet, in business and creativity, we’re often taught to ignore this. Strategy, logic, and data rule the conversation. But the most powerful ideas aren’t just intellectually sound—they create emotion. They make us feel something first and make sense second.

How to Follow the Chills

Over the years, this has become my guiding principle. Whether I’m writing, pitching ideas, or giving feedback to my team, I no longer just ask: Is this smart? Is this clear? I channel Enda and ask: Does this give me chills?

If I’m working on something and it feels flat, I throw it out. I stop optimizing for correctness and start chasing resonance. And when I’m evaluating someone else’s work—especially junior people who are still trapped in the perfectionist mindset—I tell them: Don’t just aim for logic. Aim for the feeling.

It's my biggest piece of advice for people starting out in market research or innovation —don't listen to what people say, whether it's a client or a consumer, listen to how they say it. Follow the emotion, follow the places where the feeling lives -- and create a safe space for people to tell the truth. The deepest insights live there.

If you’re not sure how to start doing this, begin in your personal life. You may not be able to feel it automatically—it takes attunement and doing your own work to feel your own feelings. You can’t fully feel the emotions of others if you haven’t learned to feel your own. What’s helped me the most is deepening my own emotional work—exploring the depth of feeling, the fullness of experience. The more you attune to your own sensitivity, the more you become sensitive to energy, ideas, and inspiration.

You begin to feel a great idea, not just think it.

Notice when you get chills in conversation—when someone shares a deeply personal story, when a moment feels divinely orchestrated, when something is so true it lands with weight. Pay attention to what stops you in your tracks when you’re reading or watching a movie. Notice the songs that make your skin prickle. Savor the meal that makes your body melt.

Because once you start following the chills, you stop second-guessing. You stop over-explaining. You stop making things that are simply “right” and start making things that are real.

And that’s where the best ideas live.