Your Gut Is Talking, But Are You Listening?

If I told you that I knew someone who could accurately predict whenever you were about to get into some trouble, would you listen to them?

We all have that friend in each of us, and its called our intuition. Our intuition has developed over generations to help us survive so that we continue our species. However, our cognitive brain and thought process often gets in our way. We think that because we can't rationalize what we're feeling and we can't identify the reason we are feeling insecure, therefore we must be crazy.

You're not crazy - at least, not for listening to your instincts. Your intuition has developed to keep you alive, it works faster than the cognitive brain, and it doesn't require justifications, or reasons why it feels the way it does.

So how do we know when our gut is talking to us?


Gavin de Becker, in his book "The Gift of Fear" tells us that our intuition is talking to us through various "Messengers of Intuition." I've added a brief explanation for each one.

The Messengers of Intuition

• Nagging feelings - Reoccurring feelings that make you uneasy. The inner voice that tells you something is wrong.
• Persistent thoughts - Thoughts that inexplicably repeat over and over, re-enacting a scenario in your head.
• Humor - Particularly dark humor. When people make jokes about injury, violence, or death. This is typically a method of communicating true concern without feeling silly or being laughed at afterwards.
• Wonder - You start to speculate as to what could happen or what is actually happening.
• Anxiety - When you are in an unpleasant state of inner turmoil usually accompanied by nervous behavior.
• Curiosity - Typically the initial reaction to a feeling that something is wrong.
• Hunches - You just absolutely know something is going to happen.
• Gut feelings - An uneasy sense of danger.
• Doubt - When you begin questioning or over-rationalizing a reaction or feeling.
• Suspicion - When you develop a vague notion of something bad is going to happen.
• Hesitation - The brain taking over physical control of you, forcing you to stop and action. Gives you more time to realize respond to an event. If you find yourself hesitating, remove yourself from the situation.
• Apprehension - The anticipation of misfortune, future trouble, or evil.
• Fear - Something that causes feelings of dread or apprehension

Whenever you get one of these messengers, make sure to answer its call. Don't hang up, don't ignore, pick up! Your intuition is always going to be a response to something in your environment. You may not be able to understand what is behind the feeling, but remember that your intuition has your best interest - you surviving - at heart.

Think of your pet dog or cat. You ever notice that sometimes they will begin to growl or puff up to make themselves look bigger? They are responding to their intuition. We often think that animals are more intuitive than us humans, but that simply isn't true. We have the same instincts that they have, but we humans tend to ignore those messengers that warn us about some impending danger that is awaiting us. Why do we ignore these messages?

As humans, we have the same survival instincts that animals do, but we also have something that prevents us from listening. We have a tendency to judge our thoughts when our survival instincts are trying to warn us. Since we can't see any overt danger, we often ignore the warning, marking it up to silliness. We attempt to make rational judgement calls about what we are experiencing, doubting our own survival instincts. We don't want to think that something bad will happen to us, so we tell ourselves that no one truly wants to cause us harm - or we think that we are invincible. Understand that in order increase the likelihood of us surviving a violent encounter, we must learn to trust our gut.

With our tendency to judge our own thoughts, we also judge the actions of others. Interestingly enough, we are usually more willing to trust the intuition of others. If someone else says that they are having a strange feeling about something we are more likely to listen to them and their intuition. We see a stranger walking towards us, we judge those actions as well, again not wanting to believe that people are willing to harm us, even though our intuition is sending us messages trying to warn us.

All those nagging feelings, suspicion, and even fear is something that you want to make sure that you listen to. Now that you know how your gut talks to you, listen to it. Don't ignore it, or you may regret it later.