Step inside The Intuitive Advantage, a ten-part look at how intuition, AI, brand and experience are set to reshape 2026. This week, in part four, Future Platforms CEO and MAD//Fest host Livia Bernardini turns her attention to the intuitive system that detects the edge before the mind catches up. My favourite of our thinking organs: the heart.

Welcome back! By now, December has happened. Some of us hosted. Some of us travelled. Some of us attempted heroic cooking. Some of us wisely avoided it altogether and booked a pub.

I did a bit of both: hosting, airports, and that peculiar airport-lounge state where time dissolves and all plans feel simultaneously urgent and irrelevant. The pause we just had turned out to be the perfect prelude to start the new year with a little more positivity and intentionality.

If you caught Part Three [LINK], you will remember we explored the early signals your body notices before your data does. The red flags and green lights that land before dashboards stabilise or language catches up.

Today we follow that same thread, but we go one layer deeper. To the intuitive system that detects the edge before the mind catches up. My favourite of our thinking organs: the heart.

When the Heart Makes the First Move

We tend to assume emotions start in the mind: that your heart races because you feel fear, your palms sweat because you feel anxious, your breath shortens because you feel stressed. But the James-Lange theory of emotion tells a different story: the body speaks first. Your heart rate spikes, your breath shifts, your muscles tighten, and only then does the brain decide what the sensation means. However, those meanings are flexible, and you can reinterpret them.

A study from the University of Rochester demonstrates this beautifully. Students about to give a high-pressure presentation were split into two groups: one was told to calm down; the other was told to interpret their racing heart as excitement. Same physiology, completely different outcomes. Those who labelled the feeling as excitement performed significantly better. The insight is profound: when you shift from a threat mindset to an opportunity mindset, performance follows the story you choose. The heart makes the first move, and leadership often works the same way. Silent signals register in your body long before you can explain them.

The Traders Whose Heartbeats Beat the Market

Behavioural economist John Coates discovered something similar when studying traders in the City of London. The most successful were not those with the best academic pedigree or the flashiest predictive tools, although many were excellent storytellers. They were the ones with the strongest interoception, the ability to read and trust their own physiological signals. Their heartbeat often registered the edge moments before the markets moved. They were not guessing; they were sensing it, and they had learned to interpret those internal cues well enough to act on them.

Coates became so fascinated by what he observed that he stepped into academia for several years to study the biology of risk taking in depth, before returning to entrepreneurship to focus on wearable technology for traders. If markets move on emotion, leadership does too.

How Your Body Reads a Room

You don’t have five senses; you have dozens. Atmospheric sensing is the mechanism that lets you read emotional temperatures before they’re measurable. Hospitality is a masterclass in this. The best waiters can tell when a table needs pace rather than presence, when a family is overwhelmed before they say a word, when a birthday surprise will land, and when tension is gathering quietly around a room.

Creative and Tech culture has its own weather systems. Walk into a meeting and you can feel when morale is thinning, when a team is aligned or merely being polite, when resistance is rising under the surface, or when a sprint is brittle despite the roadmap gleaming with promise. These micro-cues are where trends begin. By the time language arrives, the moment is already moving.

This is why intuition matters so deeply in user research. Surface comments (“I don’t like this icon” or “I’d only pay £40 a month”) rarely reveal the truth. What matters are the needs and emotions underneath. When we worked with Virgin Active, speaking to gym-goers was about understanding their inner landscape: shifting goals, ingrained habits, moments of self-consciousness and choice overwhelm. Seeing members in context allowed us to focus on what mattered most: creating an experience that built members’ sense of agency and empowerment. 

A piece of feedback once shifted my leadership forever. A senior colleague told me that my energy had become the team’s bellwether. When I was energised, the team felt unstoppable; when I was drained, the atmosphere sagged instantly. It wasn’t criticism (it was care) and it was true. Since then, I pay close attention to the energy I bring into any room, not to perform positivity but because my emotional signal lands before my words do. Presence shapes the room as much as strategy.

When We Sensed the Atmosphere Shift

We saw this powerfully when launching the global Virgin Active app in South Africa with a new loyalty programme. The numbers looked brilliant: gym visits were rising, engagement was high, leadership was pleased. But something felt wrong: the atmosphere in the clubs had shifted. Members were rushing in for their second visit of the week, doing the bare minimum, leaving quickly. It felt transactional, mechanical. Rewards were being redeemed at higher rates than projected, creating long-term sustainability challenges, and more importantly, extrinsic motivation was drowning out intrinsic motivation.

We introduced dynamic goals and randomised rewards. People returned to more natural rhythms, still using the clubs more than before but exercising because they wanted to, with rewards as pleasant bonuses rather than obligations. The body sensed it first; the numbers caught up later.

The Signals That Matter in 2026

Atmospheric sensing is commercially powerful because emotional shifts precede behavioural ones. Three signals I am looking at in the new year:

Embedded physical intelligence is reshaping experiences.

Intelligent environments respond to presence, but the question isn’t whether the tech work. It’s whether the atmosphere feels comforting or unsettling. Leaders need to sense the emotional impact, not just the feature set.

Cybersecurity is becoming a trust signal.
There’s a growing, felt unease about AI safety and data breaches. People increasingly choose products that feel secure, even if they can’t articulate why.

Retail is becoming theatre.
Stores are shifting from transactional spaces to experiential ones. A customer might browse for an hour, buy nothing, then purchase everything online that night, all because the atmosphere was right.

What Happens Next

Your intuition is a live information system. Much of it comes from interoception, your ability to read internal signals such as breath, gut, heart rate, and the subtle shifts that accompany meaningful decisions. This capacity is not fixed. It can be strengthened. And when it is, your intuitive signals become clearer and easier to trust.

The pause we just took over the holidays matters. Distance creates contrast. Stillness sharpens attention.

Before we move further into this series, I want to share the New Year tool I promised earlier on. You can download The Year Compass for free here [LINK https://yearcompass.com/]. It was first shared with me by the wonderful Emma Sexton a couple of years ago.

It is a simple reflection guide that helps you look back with honesty and gratitude, and step into the year ahead with intention rather than urgency. I hope you find it as useful as I have.

As you move back into meetings, plans, and decisions, notice how your body responds in different environments. Pay attention to what is not being said in a room. Track the small changes in your own energy. Your body often senses direction long before your mind names it.

Next, in Part Five, we will shift from sensing signals to shaping them. We will explore the subtle behavioural cues that reveal where products, categories, and customer journeys are heading long before anyone names the trend.

Till then, let your heart lead the way.

CLICK HERE FOR PART FIVE!