Where does intelligence lie? In the brain? Yes and no. If you want to hack or disrupt undesired, default ways of thinking and acting, you need to develop and apply both your 'conceptual' and 'embodied' awareness to your change efforts. Thinking alone just won't cut it. Understanding intelligence is often limited to our conceptual awareness as experienced through cognitive capacities, rational and abstract thought, analytical thinking and a capacity for language and metaphor. This is only a part of the story of intelligence. Many of us are numb, to some degree, to the domain of intelligence that is our body, a source of knowing beyond the familiar pathways of our gray matter. ‘Embodied awareness’ is the ability to consciously sense into your internal sensory experience, including your emotions, but more deeply. It is about developing a vocabulary for the layers of sensation. A subjective, felt sense of who you are. Our 'distributed brain' is made up of our brain + the vast neural networks that extend from the brain all the way to our peripherals and back up again. Your body IS your brain, and your brain IS your body. Think about that. Sense into that. That is the intelligent thing to do.
Otherwise, you will keep getting the same results, no matter how smart you think you are.