Trust Your Gut: Use Your Intuition to Make Better Career and Life Decisions

Trust your gut. It knows what your head is yet to figure out! Our intuition is incredibly powerful. It can lead us down a path far beyond our wildest dreams if we learn to trust it.

This is your journey. You are meant to trailblaze it. Even that crazy dream you have tucked down so deep that you forget it ever existed. It is yours to claim. Your intuition may have been speaking in a quiet whisper, without words while your mind seems to always yell. Which will you listen to?

Trust your gut. It knows what your head is yet to figure out! Our intuition is incredibly powerful. It can lead us down a path far beyond our wildest dreams if we learn to trust it.

This is your journey. You are meant to trailblaze it. Even that crazy dream you have tucked down so deep that you forget it ever existed. It is yours to claim. Your intuition may have been speaking in a quiet whisper while your mind seems to always yell. Which will you listen to?

Have you ever wondered how it is that some professional women are so good at what they do? How do they make challenging tasks seem so easy? Often it is because they are connected to and have learned to trust their gut. They follow their intuition. They trust their inner voice, having found it to be invaluable in determining the future of their career and professional relationships.

They know that trusting their intuition can help them make final and ground-breaking decisions. They are positive leaders who draw from their hearts without allowing their emotions only to control their executive decisions. They are true leaders. A true leader knows that they must rely on a balance of their intuition, experience, and knowledge.

These women approach important tasks with a clear mind. They do not cave to negative self-talk or self-doubt. They know that the deep-seated feeling in their stomach is the perfect indicator of whether they have made a right or wrong decision. They never question it and will follow it when making crucial career choices.

When it comes to touchy and delicate situations, leaders who trust their gut can ‘read the room’ and use their insights to lead their teams to success. They have empathy and an untarnished perception of other people’s feelings, which helps them make good choices. You too can learn to trust your gut and join the ranks of the most successful women leaders.

Take a Step Back

There is an oft-repeated story about the CEO of one of the Fortune 500 businesses who, when faced with a significant business decision, would take a stroll, barefoot. We can’t say for sure what went through her mind, but we know that those walks were intended to help her step back from the market research, data, and analytics and to allow her to see more clearly from the fog. That way, she could rely on the age-old signal — her gut.

It is easy to get caught up in data or to be consumed by a new idea, but intuition is your deeper intelligence that can read the market. We make better choices when we integrate intuition with thinking. Whether the choice you have to make is who to hire or what direction to take, you will always benefit from stepping back.

A survey of the leading U.S. executives done by Deloitte found that leaders who can tap into their feelings, instincts, and experiences when making decisions or managing crises had the best results. Scientists agree about the importance of ‘gut feelings’ in decision-making. Neuropsychologists have found that our stomachs are like a ‘second brain.’ They host a vast network of neurons, which means that even though the gut will manifest as a feeling, it is influenced by thought processes too complex to explain. It is the result of an automated process in which your body makes a decision based on your memories, past lessons, preferences, and needs.

Harness Your Intuition

If gut feelings are that important, how do you rely on them to become more successful? How do you harness your intuition to make smart career choices? Here are three tips:

• Understand how your thoughts and emotions interact
• A gut check is valuable in making the final decision on a difficult issue, but it pays to understand the emotions connected with decision-making. Whenever we are making difficult choices, distractions, doubts, and worries are bound to show up — what if I didn’t consider all my options? What if I make a mistake? What about competing priorities?
• TAn old-school approach suggests suppressing these emotions and relying on logic, but according to science, that is unrealistic. PsychologistPaul Ekman found that emotion and cognition are tied together. They coexist in regulating behavior and processing information when we face challenges. In other words, your emotions and your mind are in a tango.

The better approach is to be self-aware about your emotions when making a choice. Reflect on your feelings and accept them. If things look difficult in the moment, take a walk and feel the grass under your feet and the wind in your hair. Check in with yourself before making a choice.

Focus on Your Values

Few things are as important as leveraging your core values when deciding the right path for yourself from a number of options. There will always be many voices telling you the easy thing to do, but once you go by people’s ideas, it is hard to return to the right path. You may need to make a U-turn and go back to the place you took the wrong road in the first place.

In the military, during combat, aviators are often encouraged to simply look out of the window. In those highly volatile situations, a decision can mean the difference between life and death. Listening to your gut can save you. Looking out of the window is a way to practice ‘situational awareness.’ It is about assessing the situation with their eyes rather than their instruments.

You may not be in combat, but sound decision-making will demand that you look out of the window. That is the leadership equivalent of tapping into values like integrity, honor, courage, honesty, and diversity. Always ask yourself, ‘does this choice align with my values?’ You need to feel in your heart that a decision is the right one for you.

Understand Fear

Fear is powerful. If a bus is approaching you at a high speed, it is fear that makes you get out of its way. However, not all fear motivates you to work in your best interests. There is a huge difference between your gut and what fear may say.

According to research by Harvard scientists, fear can push you to pick an option to avoid a threat, punishment, or rejection. Conversely, intuition has a pulling energy connected with it. It moves you toward what is ultimately good for you and fosters ease and contentment.

As a rule of thumb, your intuition will pull you toward something good. If you feel pushed away from something, that may be risk aversion or fear talking. Stop and consider the actual risk. Use your intellect for the analysis and your gut for the big picture context.

Ultimately, career choices are not a zero-sum game. You need to make them with a balanced mix of intuition and reason. By tapping into your gut, you have an incredible opportunity to choose right.