Read more about living boldly in Braving It!
Sometimes, a choice seems perfect…
- He/she says all the right things.
- The job in Chicago has great benefits, good opportunities for advancement, and the company will pay for relocation.
- The apartment is close to work, spacious, and available for the right price.
Still, for some reason, we hesitate.
When we hesitate, there’s a reason
There’s the temptation to say, “What is wrong with me — this is so perfect!” But beautiful someone, when we hesitate, there’s a reason. Something is going on intuitively that we need to trust and pay attention to.
You know how we tell our kids that if they ever feel uncomfortable in a situation — afraid, queasy, weirded out in any way — they must trust that feeling and walk away, or say no, or call us, or all three? Lately with my own kids I’ve started to shorthand it: “Trust your gut — it never lies.” And it’s true that our brains sometimes rationalize, “reason” things out, or make excuses, but our stomachs can’t do these things. Which is why when our guts are talking to us, they are telling the truth.
Genius
Our intuition is a form of genius and listening to it means that we respect the limits of the supercomputer in our heads. As the master craftsperson of our own lives, sometimes we need to put the tool (brain) back in the toolbox and just trust our guts.
RELATED: Positive Psychology: What is Intuition and Why Is It Important?
Inside out
The need to listen to our own internal nudges is more important today than ever, with the mind-blowing number of external stimuli coming at us every hour of every day. Looking across a variety of estimates, in 2021 the average person was exposed to 6,000 to 10,000 ads every day. And that’s just ads…doesn’t count videos, texts, games, apps, emails, and everything else. All coming from outside of us. All with the intention of motivating actions, some of which are in our good interests, and some diametrically opposed to them.
This means we pay attention and honor our inner promptings…
- We listen to ideas and suggestions from people we trust, but make our own decisions based on what’s right for us.
- We live by our own values and conscience, regardless of what we’re being tempted to do from the outside, whether that’s by people or ads or anything else.
- We trust our instincts when we feel that an idea, person, or course of action isn’t right for us.
- We believe our hearts when they’ve been broken, not allowing anyone to convince us that abuse or a painful experience “wasn’t that bad” or “was such a long time ago” and we should “just get over it.
- We can be okay even when the people around us are not.
This is just a partial list, but when we do these things and others like them — when we trust our intuition — not only do we live bravely, we are happier, healthier, and saner for it.