“I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.” --Albert Einstein--
We’ve all had it. Something that is just unexplainable, impossible to put into words, but your gut is trying to tell you something. It feeds into our decision making. Do we go with sheer logic? Our gut feeling (or intuition as it can be called? A combination of both? Or do we seek the advice and decisiveness of someone else? After all a problem shared is a problem halved and a decision made by someone else can absolve us of any responsibility.
It is a tough one, and from my experience, the longer you go without listening to your gut, the harder it is to start. However, I am here today to share how I started, and how I am continuing to become more in tune with my gut – from an intuition base, we still disagree from time to time on spices and apparently dairy products……
My experience and advice also stems from meetings with a Psychologist. Noticing that I struggled to make decisions and tended to air on giving the benefit of the doubt rather than my own gut feeling, I didn’t know where to start. The advice (which I paid for at an hourly rate by the way) was this…. start small. Worth every penny (and I mean that).
Where I started was a weekend not long after a break up. The dust had settled and after any situation where an aspect of your reality is shattered, which could be in relation but not limited to, a break up, a death, being made redundant, fired, or some kind of malevolence, you are faced with a rebuilding process as the walls regarding what you knew come tumbling down.
This was mine, and as I sized up a weekend where lockdown inhibited me from the crutches of friends and family, I was at a loss as to what to do with myself. This is where conversation with the Psychologist really helped and the reframing of the situation as an opportunity to learn more about myself rather than an opportunity to waste some perfectly good time off work.
“Instead of having a plan, wake up and just let your mind wander. Let ideas come into your head and let them float away. Pay attention to the emotions and the sensations that arise. Experience sensations as if it is your first time, the taste and warmth of your morning coffee, the texture and taste of food, the fresh air and warmth of the sun on a walk”.
They had me until they mentioned the “warmth of the sun”. This was Aberdeen in September; of all the sensations I could be experiencing I can assure you that wouldn’t be one of them!
And if that sort of almost mindful meditation isn’t for you then you can always apply the following:
“If it isn’t a fuck yeah, it’s a no.”
--James Smith’s Not a Diet Book—
That rule is good not only for food cravings, something your gut often tries to warn you off. It certainly tries to remind me that the guilt I will feel afterwards well outweighs the enjoyment of a family bag of chocolate buttons (out of the freezer of course) at 10pm at night. It is also good for many other situations where your gut is warning you. So, if your gut is warning you is it really a fuck yeah? That’s up to you and of course the situation, however I think it’s certainly a good internal conversation to have.
Before I wrap this up, I want to add one final aspect to this blog post. We have had my personal experience and the advice of a professional, therefore, finally, I’d like to add a little bit of science.
If I were to tell you that your stomach communicated with your head you wouldn’t exactly be blown away, but bear with me…. The system that does this though is called the Enteric Nervous System and its primary function is to take care of food digestion. However, a study by Hibberd et al., (2020) found that a neuron named viscerofugal found in the gut wall relays sensory information up to our brains from within our stomach.
Often our conscious can be preoccupied with other things going on at an instinctive level so our bodies pick up on other information or signs and deliver this message to the brain through the spinal cord making our conscious mind aware that there is something else to the situation.
Thank you for indulging me if you are still reading but it adds more to the story than just intuition. It takes me back to the quote that started this post. If you don’t know the answer, maybe you can feel it.
So, in summary:
· Your gut feeling is more than just intuition, it’s science
· The longer you go not listening to it the harder it is to start (trust issues)
· See it as an opportunity to learn more about yourself
· Start small
Thank you for taking the time to read this,
Lee
References
Hibberd, T. J., Yew, W. P., Chen, B. N., Costa, M., Brookes, S. J., & Spencer, N. J. (2020). A novel mode of sympathetic reflex activation mediated by the enteric nervous system. ENeuro, 7(4), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0187-20.2020
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