Trusting our Gut & God

We’ve all heard that it’s important in many situations to be able to “trust our gut” or “intuition” regarding many decisions in our life.  These feelings can cause us to decide not to date someone or to move to a city that we’ve just visited that we know is our new “home”. Sometimes, we’ve forged ahead with a decision although there is that internal voice/feeling saying…no…don’t do it!


As a child we heard the phrases, “Look before you leap. Stop and think. Don't judge a book by its cover."  Instinct, or intuition, remains in us as adults, but is usually underdeveloped. Instinct is insight based not on reason, but on awareness. When we allow it back into our consciousness, we can become more effective in many areas of life.

We need to increase our self-awareness and when we suppress our feelings, we actually hinder this awareness.  Acknowledging and identifying our feelings is the beginning of this process. Asking ourselves, “How am I feeling now, about this situation or person?”

We also need to be aware of others’ feelings and motivations, by being a good listener…not just to the words…but to the nonverbal communication.

"He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened."

-- Tao Te Ching

When I married my first husband, I had that internal voice, but I was 29 years old and my biological time clock was ticking…I wanted a child!  There were other instances where I wanted to give the person the benefit of the doubt and buried that voice that was nagging me.  Of course, there are situations that I went with my “gut feeling”.  One such instance, was when my son was a baby and was ill with a fever of 103.  I had traveled by plane to visit my mother-in-law and she didn’t think he needed to go to the hospital, but I insisted and he had pneumonia.

These feelings seem to emerge from our inner being, but actually begin with a perception of something outside—a facial expression, a tone of voice, a visual inconsistency so fleeting you're not even aware you noticed.

I believe that intuition is a combination of our brain’s stored knowledge from past experiences and also our emotional state of being.  We’ve heard the term “paralysis by analysis”…if we try to make decisions without heeding our emotional feelings, then we tend to take too many details into account and take an hour to decide which detergent is best to buy.  Or on the converse, we can make bad choices, if we only let emotion guide us, especially in areas we don’t have much expertise or knowledge of.

Many of us believe what we want to believe…denial.  It is possible to justify just about anything: the brain is great at coming up with reasons.  As parents or the spouse of an addict, our emotions…fear, guilt, anger…tend to guide us because we are so vested in the outcome.  Many of us have built up experiences of dealing with some of the issues from our childhood, but they were also experiences that were driven through emotion.

When we’ve been lied to, stolen from, cheated on, it is difficult to trust again.  Trusting ourselves and God is a good place to start!