How To Follow Your Gut Feeling No Matter What
Trust is a tricky topic. Many of us lack a firm belief in the reliability, truth, or strength of someone or something. How can you be truly sure of it? Is there really a feeling in your gut or are you just hungry? In all seriousness, the more we become in tune with our instincts, the more decisive we will be. Learning to trust yourself and your choices will help you trust others. Many of my friends admit that they have trust issues. This often stems from someone they trusted hurting them. I can relate. I’ve had people I love and trusted deceive me. In order to forgive and move on from traumatic trust experiences, I’ve put more energy into learning to trust myself. The reality is that we cannot control how people treat us, but we can control our reaction. As well as what we decide to do next. Day by day, I’m learning to trust myself more and in return I’m getting better at trusting others.
We’re all one decision away from getting closer to the life we desire. Albert Einstein once said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the ration mind is a faithful serving.” Our intuition is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. It’s that initial sensation you feel when you experience someone or something. I’ve noticed that the more I pay attention to my instinct, the better I get at using it to make choices in my life. Intuition is the combination of our spirit, emotion and logic. A challenge I often face is making reasonable decisions but not over thinking them. I aim to lead with how my decision makes me feel. Then I seek reasons that support it. I’m not always correct. Although, 9 times out of 10 times my intuition is the right decision for me.
In order to follow our intuition, we have to practice taping into both our implicit and explicit memory to guide us. Our explicit memory is knowledge we acquire over time, such as what you have studied or been taught. Implicit memory is effortless, such as remembering song lyrics or knowing when to cross the street. Your intuition is your internal GPS, it will tell you to leap or to be still.
Here’s five tips on how to get better at tuning into your intuition:
1. Don’t let your rational mind out think your initial gut reaction. Too often, we ignore red flags and it comes back to bite us. Find the balance between intellect and instinct. Intellect can be found but only instinct can be felt. Practice knowing when to use each method.
2. Pay attention to what you ask for in life. Life will give you what you ask of it. Maybe if you complained a little less and practiced gratitude more, your life perspective would improve. Life often whispers to you. If you don’t get the whisper the first time, then it will get louder until you make an action.
3. Tune in to your physical sensations. Does this decision make you feel reluctant? Or do you feel a sense of openness or relief? Consider your initial feeling, before making a logical decision.
4. Take action! Bring yourself closer to the things you want. If you feel the desire to act on something and it’s within reason, go out and do it. I felt the desire to start a blog for a while. Then one day I just went for it. I had no idea what I wanted to write about or how to build a site, but I made the necessary right moves until my blog was live. Have the guts to follow your belief. Don’t let fear stop you from taking the first steps towards what you want. Immerse yourself into something before cancelling it out as a possibility.
5. Remember that you can always make a U-turn in life. I vividly remember sitting in a top accounting firm with my navy blue suit interviewing for an internship any business student would kill for. The last question the interviewer asked me was about my passion for the industry. I paused and thought for a second. In that moment, I realized that this wasn’t my passion at all! I wasn’t completely sure what I wanted to do with my career, but I knew this wasn’t it. I didn’t want to work for an accounting firm, no matter how prestigious it was. That summer, I decided not to move forward with a high paying accounting firm. Instead, I took an unpaid marketing internship and I loved it. The moral of the story is you can always reverse an excuse, break a lease, or walk away any situation that doesn’t feel right for you. Don’t let other people’s opinions stop you from doing so. A couple of gut feeling questions that I ask myself are, “What do I want? Does this feel right or wrong? How will this benefit my life purpose?
Trust your gut,
Sade