The Art of Trusting Your Gut

For last week’s podcast episode, I talked to Danielle Linneweber, who left the corporate world to find a more meaningful career. While Danielle and I live very different lives, we have a lot in common in terms of our attitude and approach to life. 

Danielle and I would both describe ourselves as a very rational, analytical people who generally prefer facts and figures over spiritual concepts. However, like me, Danielle has also been on a self-discovery journey, which has opened her mind to the importance of things like purpose, meaning and believing that things happened for a reason. 

During our conversation, we talk a lot about the importance of trusting your gut. I’ve been thinking a lot about that since. 

I’ve always been someone who makes decisions mainly with her head. Most of the time, rational wins over emotions. However, learning to be more aware of my emotions and my gut feeling has also been a huge step on my journey ­– maybe even the one who kick-started it all almost 13 years ago. 

Back in 2007, I took a course at university called Professional Development. It was this class that introduced me to the concept of professional and personal development. For one of the assignments, we had to choose an area we wanted to gain skills or improve in, and then work towards that throughout the semester. I chose decision-making as my area to work on.  

At the time, I was thinking about staying in New Zealand instead of returning to Germany at the end of the semester as planned. That was a huge decision for me, so learning about effective decision-making seemed like a good idea. 

I quickly realised that most content available for people who want to learn to make better decisions was/is targeting people who feel they need to be more deliberate and rational in their decisions instead of being impulsive and spontaneous. However, my problem was the other way around. I was overly analytical and not very good at taking my emotions into account – I wasn’t very good at listening to my gut. 

Since then, I’ve learned to trust myself and my gut more and consider my emotions when I need to make big decisions. However, thinking about this again after talking to Danielle made me realise that I still get this wrong all the time. 

I can easily think of a few big decisions where I didn’t listen to my gut – and it turned out to be a mistake every time.  

Probably the biggest regret I have in terms of not listening to my gut is the publishing deal I signed for my book last year. I remember being excited about the fact that a publisher wanted my book. But I also remember this weird feeling in my gut that something about it wasn’t right. I couldn’t explain it. It just was this feeling that it seems too good to be true. 

At the time, I told myself to ignore it. I told myself that I was just being negative and expecting the worst when I should just be happy and excited. I also remember feeling like I don’t have much of a choice as a first-time author without any real following. So I ignored my gut and signed the deal.  

Now it’s 15 months later, and, while I’m still very proud of the fact that my book was published, I wish I had asked more questions has gotton to know the publisher a bit more before signing a deal. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate everything the publisher has done for the book. However, it has since become clear that we have very different ideas of what kind of marketing would be needed for a book like this. Right now, my book is out there, but no one knows about it. I was prepared for negative reviews, but I wasn’t prepared for no one knowing it exists. It’s heartbreaking, and I’ve more than once thought to myself ‘I wish I had listened to my gut and asked more questions’. 

Another example is when I had my first van, and it started showing signs of rust. My gut was telling me it’s going to be an issue, but I listened to the so-called experts and ignored my gut. And we all know how that one ended (van written off within 18 months of buying it). 

There are countless other examples of situations where I didn’t trust my gut and ended up regretting it – including a range of small everyday decisions as well as a few bigger ones. 

So why didn’t I trust my gut? 

Self-doubt and the wrong habits! That’s what it all comes back to. I didn’t trust myself enough to go with what I knew in my gut would be the right thing to do. Instead, I let rational, logic and sometimes peer-pressure drive my decision-making. In other situations, I just responded in the moment without even stopping to consider that maybe I should listen to my gut.

And I think it will happen again. Even as I write this and vow to myself to listen to my gut in the future, I already know it’s only a matter of time before I will be in a situation where I won’t. Why? Because listening to your gut is a lot easier said than done. 

No matter how determined I am right now, I know that in the moment when the pressure is on and I have to make a difficult decision, there is a good chance that rational and logic will win again because it’s so much easier to justify. I mean, which sounds better to you: (1) I made that decision because the facts suggested it would be the right one or (2) I made that decision because it’s what my gut was telling me. 

We live in a society where rational decision-making is considered the “right approach” and what we should all strive for.

From a young age, we’re asked to rationalise our decision, we’re urged to be considerate instead of impulsive, and we’re taught to follow reason instead of emotion. 

It’s hard to just forget all of that, no matter how much you believe in the importance of trusting your gut – and no matter how much evidence you have that rational decision making does not always lead to the best outcome. 

So where does that leave us? Well, I for one am hoping that awareness is the first step to improvement. I hope that my renewed appreciation for the importance of listening to my gut will help me remember to consider it when the times comes to make important decisions and that it will give me the confidence to listen to what my gut says.. 

Trusting your gut is an art form. It takes years of practice to get good at it. So time to start practising. 

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Listen to the podcast episode that inspired this blog post.

For this episode, I’m joined by Danielle Linneweber. We talk about Danielle’s journey of leaving the corporate communications world to build a more meaningful career, whether you can really love your job, working with a life coach, trusting your gut, being childfree by choice and a bunch of other things. 

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