Stop and Listen to Your Gut

Stop and Listen to Your Gut By David Allen Ibsen

The mind can assert anything, and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept.—D.H. Lawrence

The author D.H. Lawrence was right. We can rationalize our way into virtually any decision, but it is our gut instincts that often hold the answers to true success.

We’re taught in school about logical, well thought-out, and fact-based decision-making. There’s usually a “right” and “wrong” answer to a college test question. These thought-out decision-making habits are then reinforced in business as we are trained in the “right way” to talk to a customer, and the “wrong way” to present in front of a large group of people. We’re taught that “The customer is always right” and to “listen to your boss.”

Yes, thinking things out is a practiced habit of decision-making. It is a back-and-forth analysis, a system that can be skewed towards one decision or another if we apply our own bias to the analysis.

However, skewed analysis often happens when we over-think a decision, or when we start the decision-making process with a predisposed desired outcome.

Consider the habit of developing lists of “pros” and “cons,” a commonly regarded “foolproof” decision-making process. Maybe you created a list of eight reasons in the “pro” column to use your credit card to pay for that new camera you want to buy. and only four in the “con” column. Where’s my Visa card?

Instinct, on the other hand is an untaught ability. It may deliver a more reliable and unbiased result.

A research study from Leeds University Business School published in the British Journal of Psychology in 2008 applied some science to the idea that "gut feelings" are in fact not in our gut at all, but in fact are a specific brain activity.

According to the researchers, intuition represents one of the ways our brains store, process, and retrieve information. The researchers analyzed a wide range of previous studies and concluded that intuition is the brain drawing on past experiences and current external cues to make a decision; the process is so rapid that the reaction is subconscious. It is part of the brain that allows us to make fast, instinctual decisions.

In essence, when we “go with our gut,” the brain is not giving us a chance to talk ourselves out of a decision.

Consider when gut decisions come to us: when we react immediately and instinctually under pressure, or when we set aside the hard thought of evaluating pros and cons. We just let our body and our brain free itself up to allow instinct to take over. Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness.

Consider the example of a long-time client of mine. Eileen is a serial entrepreneur—the founder of four technology start-up companies over the years. She makes decisions every day that can make or break her company.

Admittedly, Eileen has made her share of good and bad decisions. One day she decided to analyze the good and bad choices, examining how she came to these decisions. She realized that when she made decisions by listening to her gut, she had a far better success rate than when she followed a strictly logic-based decision process. Going with her gut worked when she had to make split-second decisions, as well as when she allowed her gut to marinate on an idea for a while, and catch up to logic. She began to lead with her gut, and she saw an improved success rate in her decision-making process. She has created a well-bred instinct that meets reason halfway. As she puts it, “Calculation never made a hero.”

Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself. —Oprah Winfrey

So the next time you are faced with a decision under pressure, take a second or two — and only a second or two — to evaluate whether you can hear your instincts telling you what to do, pulling you towards one path or another. They may be quietly whispering to you, but they are always worth listening to. Stop, take a breath, and filter out the rational noise. Hear that beautiful voice: your inner thoughts giving you true wisdom.

Call it a “gut check.”

Author David Allen Ibsen is CEO of Five Meetings Before Lunch, a market-driven business strategy company, with over 25 years experience helping emerging companies and established brands build effective strategies and programs when they’re ready to launch, pivot or grow. He also is Editor-in-Chief of the online magazine FIVE THôT at the intersection of creativity and commerce.

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