How many times have you heard someone say, “I have a gut feeling about this?” Or do you say it to yourself when something just feels right? Our gut feelings are powerful, and they are most often a mix of our intuition and our insight. Insight comes from wisdom you gain daily in your life. We are born with it, and those who know how to listen to it often make fewer mistakes and have more success in their lives.
“When the neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) in your gut fire up, you may feel a queasy sensation, often called ‘butterflies,’ ” writes Alexandra Mysoor in Forbes magazine. “Pay attention to those. It’s no accident we use the terms intuition and gut feeling interchangeably, because science has now shown us that our gut has a brain of its own, a second brain so to speak. In fact, our gut has an entire network of neurotransmitters called the enteric nervous system.”
Every day you’re faced with hundreds of choices. They start in the morning when you’re still in bed and end when your eyes close for the night. Each decision is positively informed by experience, need, desire and your intuition. On the negative side, those same decisions can be equally influenced by fear, anxiety, prejudice or depression. The trick is to make each decision based on the positives, not the negatives.
Many of our daily decisions are routine. Brushing your teeth, making breakfast, socks on first or pants? These daily decisions, I hope, are rarely influenced by anxiety. But how to deal with a negative person or situation at the store is another story. That’s where you need to learn how to differentiate among anger, frustration and possible prejudices, and your gut feelings about that person and their whole story — not just what’s happening in the moment.
To access your intuition, first you have to acknowledge it exists. It’s not a woo-woo thing; it’s a power you were born with. You’ve experienced it often in your life starting from early childhood. What prevents us from accessing our gut feelings? Sometimes it’s our parents who unknowingly taught us not to listen to it. A child may say, “I’m scared of that man” — perhaps a neighbor or friend — and the parent tells the child, “Don’t be silly, there’s no reason to be scared of him!” The child then feels foolish, doubts his or her feelings and tries to forget them.
In my case, my mother told me if I crossed my eyes, an icy wind would come along and freeze them that way. My gut told me she was full of it. My heart and head told me to listen to my mother, but my gut told me the truth.
Many of our parents discredited our intuitive feelings unconsciously. That’s one way we learned to stop listening to what we already knew to be true. We had to manage the anxiety of going against our parents, the feelings of appearing ignorant in that situation and the fear that they may be right — that an icy wind may actually blow up and freeze eyeballs when they’re crossed. That’s a lot for a little kid.
You may laugh at someone talking about intuition. It may seem illogical. Phrases like “Use your head” and “Just the facts, ma’am” become ways of dealing with the world. Then, you start ignoring your gut. That’s when you get in trouble.
Let’s say you have a problem with a negative employee. Take the time to ponder the root of the problem. If it’s an employee who’s been late for work regularly, try to get past your anger and frustration and remember anything good that person has done. Has he or she performed well at work other than the irritating lateness? Feel what your gut is telling you. Is this person a good person? Are his or her intentions positive? If your gut tells you there’s something of value to be had with this employee, consider having a conversation about the reasons for the lateness and hopefully rectify it. There may be home issues that keep this person from being on time. Flextime may be a solution.
There are times you can feel tension and anger between your employees, or between an employee and a customer. While they’re pretending everything is fine when you approach, you feel the negativity in your gut. You can ignore it and hope it goes away, or you can diffuse it by asking what’s going on and offering possible resolutions.
Your gut will tell you when a project you’ve been working on is going south. Once most of us have invested a lot of time in a solution, we keep going in that direction even if it’s not a good idea. Time and effort equal success in our minds — but in reality, if you feel the direction is wrong or something may trip up the final achievement, it’s time to stop.
Something we’ve all experienced is anxiety blindness. You know the feeling when you’re late for work or an appointment and you can’t find your keys. You start looking for them with hope, which often devolves into anger, frustration and anxiety about being late. You can’t see what’s in front of you because you’re blinded by anxiety. The best way to get through this is to breathe. Stop for a few moments and take deep, long breaths. This isn’t easy. You’re in a hurry, and stopping and breathing is completely counterintuitive to crisis mode. But air in your lungs, in your heart and body allows your brain to process better. Then you’ll be able to see what you’re looking for or access another solution.
I’ve worked for a few large retail corporations. I know what it’s like to keep going at an insane pace to get the job done. Many times, however, I didn’t take time to think things through because sitting and thinking didn’t feel proactive. It was all about doing — not stopping and thinking.
To be truly successful, sometimes you have to stop and think. Unplug from electronics, even for five minutes. Go for a walk. Think about your work project and, if you find yourself distracted by other thoughts, allow them to flow through — then go back to the problem. Thinking plus listening to your gut allows wisdom to work its magic. Unplugging and breathing gives your brain the room and air it needs to problem solve. Looking at your accumulated prejudices and anxieties clearly will help you take actions and make decisions based on the truth, and not be ruled by old thoughts and beliefs. You have an enormous power in you. Use it with intention and your life, business and the lives of people around you will be significantly improved.