About Trusting Your Gut

On 11th January 2019 I read an article by Liz Ryan on how to trust your intuition. Her articles are always good and she adds a lot of value. This was also not different.

(In the post below, words 'Intuition' and 'gut' are used interchangeably to mean the same thing)

She wrote about ten ways to listen to your gut while making any decisions. As children we always trust our gut feeling, but we lose that ability as we grow older, rather we unlearn it by suppressing our gut feelings in favor of intellect. The ten ways to ensure that your gut is active in decision making are:

1. Pay attention to the way your body reacts in different situations. Noticing your emotions and body reactions is the first step to re-establishing the connection with your gut
2. Learn to listen to the signals that your gut is sending you. Ask your gut to take your decisions and relax as you let your body make decisions for you.
3. Spend as much time with people who reinforce you
4. Day dream. (Note: I do it a lot). Don’t try to censor ideas that your gut tells you.
5. In the evening reflect on your day and try to answer the question, what was my body trying to tell me?
6. Identify the difficult moments in your life when you listened to your gut and made decisions.
7. Always listen to your body before making any decisions
8. Venture into unknown experiences whenever you can.
9. When you have free time, sit quietly and ask your body what should I do now? Listen to its suggestion
10. Stop and listen when your gut sends you a message. Pause in the middle of any important activity and take input from your gut. Your gut is never wrong.

The three suggestions that stood out for me were, one, whenever you are about to take a decision, confer with your body and take its concurrence, two, when you are sitting idle, ask your body what should I do now and do what the body says and three, every time you tend to  become analytical stop the brain-work and listen to the body.

Nice article to close the day.

Listening to my gut has made me hopeful and optimistic. For example, after writing my test for job interview in SAIL in the year 1987, a very prestigious company, I knew in my gut that I was going to get the job. There was no concrete reasons for that confidence. The process had only begun. There were at least three steps before the concrete job offer - I had clear the test first, then there was a group discussion followed by a final interview. Somehow I knew that I was going to get the job. It was not a kind of peripheral knowledge. It was a deep belief that I was going to get the job. Over the next three months, I saw daily signs that I was going to get the job.

Finally I did. When I did I was not elated or anything. I knew that I was going to get it. The offer letter was a confirmation of something that I already knew.

This has happened again and again. I remember this incident that happened in the year 2000. I was working as an academic and at the age of 36, I wanted to change the direction of my career and move into the area of information technology. I did not have ANY experience in IT till then and others would have balked at the idea of a career change into a totally unrelated area at that age. While coming back from my first interview for a prestigious IT firm in Bangalore, I knew a car with the license plate number 333. Immediately I knew that if I kept serendipitously seeing this number everyday, I was going to get the job.

I just knew.

Over the next 50 days, every day I saw a license plate number 333. As I kept seeing, my confidence and belief that I was going to get this job increased. I was destined to get it. It was just a matter of time.

The advantage of my gut feeling in both the above cases was that my strong belief in the ultimate outcome, increased my confidence and I behaved as if I had already achieved the goal. For example in the former case, I, normally a very shy person very scared of attending interview and group discussions, aced both. I was scintillating in group discussion and effervescent in the personal interview. In the second case of transitioning to the IT, one of the steps in the process was for me to take a session on an IT topic to professionals. I am normally an average public speaker at best, but in this case I was so damn good !!

Because I knew I was going to get it. I behaved as if I already got it.

In addition, listening to my gut have helped me take some tough decisions. In 1995, at the age of 32, I took a no pay, two year sabbatical to pursue MBA program. Logically, everything was wrong about that decision. 32 was the age when people 'settle down' and start looking at a long grind in their current jobs. I was married at that time. I was getting good pay and perks in my company. The path forward after MBA was unclear and at the age of 32, in a paradigm of 'age' and 'fitment', moving to a new career in India of those times was almost unheard of. But,  after listening to my gut, I decided to go for the program and that opened up avenues that I could never have imagined.

After MBA I went back to my job. Then in 1998, at the age of 38, my gut told me that it was time for change. My gut told me that I had to leave the current job if I have any hope of improving my station in life and working to my potential. So when I got a job in Bangalore, offering 20% of pay that I was getting in SAIL, into an unrelated area of academics, I took it. Letting go of 80% of your pay for an uncertain future is not an easy decision, but I had one friend, my gut. My gut told me that everything will turn our well in the end.

And it did. I made friends, I learned new technology, I changed my career from academics to the most satisfying career of ERP consulting and I have been doing it for the last 19 years. I have travelled the world, I have made many friends and have learned a wrote. I discovered my passion for writing and blogging. I discovered Social Media, doors opened for me when I least expected....

All because I decided to follow the gut.

The point is, all those decision looked wrong at the time I took them. But in hindsight, those decisions proved to be the right ones for me and exposed me to new vistas and opportunities which I would not have got had I not followed my gut.

There is one more huge decision that I made after following my gut. I am still waiting for time to prove me right.

There are at least two occasions when I did not follow my gut. In both cases the gut told me to take control of some very fluid situations. But I intellectualized, considered all the risks and then walked away. Those two decisions proved to be the absolute wrong ones and the effects haunt me even today. 

I regret not following my gut in those circumstances.

I made the mistake of allowing my head to take over my heart. I am not wired for that.