I make decisions for people all day, why can’t I make a decision for myself? The power of trusting your gut.
I like to say that if you slice the body in half while standing up, from the middle of the top of your head all the way down through your nose, neck, chest, stomach etc and then you open the body up, the side profile of your gut and brain look almost identical. What this means is that there’s something to trusting your gut. More than people realize.
I was recently with a client. A very successful client in a very high powered job. On paper, he has everything going for him. He appears confident, he’s educated, he’s well-spoken and he’s living a great professional life. Cool job, travels, work hours are flexible, feels valued at work, feels like he’s on the right path.
He’s a consultant. Which means he hears the pains of someone else’s business, develops strategies to fix it, and then executes these strategies with his clients to make whatever the problem was, run better. Whether that be finance or HR, or opening other locations, or marketing. Consultants are like business architects. He’s also really good at what he does. Naturally gifted. He’s handsome and charming and he’s one of those people who didn’t have to try very hard in school.
But in his personal life, he’s so paralyzed with “making the wrong decision”. Every little decision is excruciating. He’ll be standing in Nordstrom agonizing over buying the “right” shoes and need to call up a few friends to help him decide what shoes to buy. He recently invested in some fine art. And the gallery had different color schemes of basically the same sculpture and similarly, he felt he needed to “phone a friend” to help him decide which piece he should purchase.
He doesn’t trust his gut. But why? His job is to gather research, and then form a very strong analysis of very large companies with very large sums of money behind these problems and then direct them to the “correct” decisions to make the company more profitable, and run more efficiently, essentially. He makes very important decisions all day.
He said to me “it really struck me when you pointed this out. I didn’t see these two parts of my life as being so opposite. You’re right, in my personal life, I’m struggling with decision making. When in my professional life I make weighted decisions for my clients all day long, why?”
It could be what we call “decision fatigue”. If you’re the one in charge all day, at the end of the day making even small decisions for yourself may seem too taxing. But there’s more than that. something deeper. This client lacks inner trust. He is unable to access that inner wisdom when it comes to himself. He is in the process of “getting to know himself”.
He doesn’t quite know who he is, what his likes and dislikes are, he hasn’t learned to listen.
Some of these “gut feelings” are physical. They feel like actual butterflies in your stomach. Some people experience a “dropping” like a softball gets lodged in your middle body. Some people sweat, and may feel tightness all over or their fists ball up. Some people can feel their heart racing. Whatever it is for you, this is your body and brain trying to alert you to listen.
The best way to listen is to slow down. The listening happens in the pause. You feel the gut, and then you pause. See, we all have this inner wisdom, the question is, “do I access it or do I ignore it?”.
Decisions you make define you. When we learn how to trust our gut and access our inner wisdom, we no longer seek approval from others. We stop “people pleasing” and we stop trying to impress others and we just “do what feels right to us”.
The gut-brain connection is real. When you’re going about your day, sometimes you don’t even notice it. We are continuously making unconscious observations. We often make decisions based on these unconscious observations and then wonder “wow, how did I KNOW that was going to happen?” A lot of people call this phenomenon a “sixth sense” when in actuality it’s the gut feeling that swayed you to make the decision that you made to stay out of harm’s way and do what was right for you in that moment.
The opposite of listening to your gut is anxiety. Worrying about what may or may not happen. Focusing on the past or the future. In my client’s example a lot of the focus on “making the wrong decision is about outward approval seeking. Instead of choosing the shoes or artwork based on his own taste or instincts, he’s worried about what other people will think. Will someone else like or dislike this? Instead of “will I like or dislike this?” He doesn’t trust himself.
When faced with making a decision, when we’re swayed by “what will other people think” or we ask other people’s opinion and then go with that option, we oftentimes feel regret because we’re not staying true to ourselves or “trusting our gut”.
The truth is, the world would be incredibly dull and boring if we were all the same. Following your gut also brings out your uniqueness. It allows us to live in full authenticity and full color by following our gut instincts, choices and passions despite what other people may think. And in this client’s case, his professional clients appreciate his decision making and instincts. He’s got what it takes. He just needs to learn how to apply the same decision making capability to his personal life.
For me, when I personally broke out of the mold and started trusting my instincts, my entire world shifted. I used to do this too. For a while I didn’t consult other people for their opinions like my client but I worried a lot about it. I thought I needed to live in the “right house” in the “right neighborhood” and my kids should attend the “right school”. I believed that I needed to befriend people that didn’t really feel like a good fit to me. I oftentimes felt like I was living someone else’s life according to someone else’s standards.
Today, my life looks much different than that. I do things because I want to personally and professionally and that’s about it. I live with my own inner compass, wisdom, intuition and trust my gut. When making difficult decisions I try really hard to sit in the quiet and listen to my gut and tune out all the noise.
What happened when I stepped into my own power was that it made a lot of people uncomfortable. “Wait, she doesn’t conform anymore? She’s doing what?”. A lot of people continue to have a lot of opinions about how I’m living my life. And honestly there are days when I think conforming is probably easier because then I don’t have to deal with the haters. But it was also killing my soul.
I choose to be comfortable with making other people uncomfortable. I choose me. I choose living life in full expression and I invite you to join me in the revolt.
Amy Wilhelmi, LMFT