Follow Your Gut
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Some call it female intuition–that feeling in your mind that something is wrong or right–like second sight. For men, they just say it’s gut instinct or “go with your gut.” In multiple choice questions, usually the first answer that pops into your mind is the correct one. Faced with a situation where you are forced to make a spur-of-the-moment decision, you do it- “off the top of your head.” All of these things are about trusting your feelings because you can’t explain how you “just know” something.
Many successful people “trust their gut” when investing their time and money which doesn’t mean you don’t check your facts and figures. Go with your gut, but use common sense. You can and must weigh your pros and cons, but if you come to a crossroad, that’s when your intuition kicks in. Things could look good on paper, but if your gut tells you its wrong, there might be something to that feeling in your stomach.
Intuition is your sub-conscious trying to remind you of an experience or behavior you’ve forgotten. Haven’t you ever met someone and instantly disliked them for no apparent reason? You think “I didn’t like his or her vibe,” but it might just be their body language that sets off that inner voice. It makes you cautious about putting your faith in that person.
These feelings are not all negative either. Have you ever felt a flash of recognition on meeting someone and liking them right away? It’s not always romance either. You just feel a kindred spirit–an instant camaraderie –that can’t be explained. There’s something to that old saying “birds of a feather, flock together.” Think about it–your friends, lifelong friends, are probably very much like you. There may be other friends who come into your life for a while, but they spin out of your orbit after a while. Very few people have more than one or two lifelong friends.
If you are a reader, a collector of facts and ideas, knowledge is stored in your brain. You may not recollect the exact words from those archives, but that stirring in your head lets you know you feel “some kinda way” about the person or situation.
If you are a person who meditates, spend some time doing that to clear your mind and help you make a decision. If you just go to sleep for a while, you will notice that when you wake up, a solution to a problem may come to you. Think about it. When you are deprived of sleep, you drag through the day, sometimes fumble your words and/or forget your keys. If you have enough sleep–they say eight hours–your brain is rested. Somewhere during the sleep period your sub-conscious figures out your problem and presents you a solution.
So don’t over-think–trust your gut in decision-making.
Norma Jackson