Trusting Your Gut
How much should you trust your gut instinct?
So many times, we look back on events at work and say “I had a feeling that was going to happen”. Are any of these familiar?
➡️ Someone joins the team and leaves 3 months later.
➡️ You sign up to a new supplier and they don’t deliver.
➡️ A new client doesn’t pay you on time, leading to a lengthy and unpleasant experience of getting your money.
➡️ Recruiters: You have a candidate who pulls out from the interview process.
One of the difficulties with a ‘gut feeling’ is that it can’t be quantified - and, of course, we’re not always right. But as you learn from each thing that happens, you start to develop more intuition that is based on this experience.
The challenge is always going to be: How much should you trust your gut feeling, especially when you are collaborating with others to make decisions and they DON’T have the same gut feeling as you? Or when someone else tells you they don’t think something feels right, but you DO?
When I work with people who are struggling with dilemmas like this, it is helpful to learn more about the actual feelings themselves. We say ‘gut feeling’, because it is often a PHYSICAL sensation that someone experiences in their stomach / gut. But there can be different types of intuition. For example, some people might confuse a ‘gut feeling’ with an anxiety that they are feeling somewhere else (a tightness in their chest perhaps, or a weight on their shoulders).
Working through the physical sensations, and learning about which things trigger which physical response, can actually be really helpful in understanding people’s intuitions and instincts - and by doing so, it can help people to figure out what the right thing might be to do in different situations.
If you feel that your ‘gut instinct’ is often right, then with some work you might be able to really fine-tune it so that you feel more confident acting on it in the moment. This is very hard to do by yourself, but by working it through in Purpose sessions you could unlock all kinds of potential. Please get in touch with me for a private chat (with no commitment needed) about what Purpose sessions are and how they can help you in your personal and professional development.
