psychology
5 gut feelings you should never ignore
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Psychology: Gut feelings can deceive us, yes – but sometimes they also point us in the right direction. In these cases we should by no means suppress them.
When our rabbits used to roam free in the garden, I often asked my mother if they could accidentally eat something poisonous. Finally they happily gnawed their way through flower to leaf lettuce beds. She always replied: “They’re listening to their gut instincts”. Rather, it was and is probably their learned nose that lets animals decide between poisonous and edible. Nevertheless, this sentence stuck in my head. Sometimes it’s good to listen to your gut instinct. In nature, it may even save beings life.
Only nowadays – in most cases – our everyday life has hardly anything to do with nature and our gut feeling is no longer what it used to be. In the last few years, people and the media have always pushed us to leave our comfort zone. Not only success awaits in this new territory, but also love, happiness, money and health. Well, for the latter one should surely overcome the weaker self from time to time and crossing new borders is part of life too. But: With the belief that we have to leave the comfort zone, we have also learned to often fight against our gut instincts.
That’s what makes it mean: the stomach is not an easy companion. He doesn’t give us the right advice per se. Rather, it can often be influenced by fear and thus prevents us from new experiences that could actually help us further. The new job, where the gut feeling says we should stick with the old one, can turn out to be a dream job – if the feeling is based solely on fear of change. But if this is based, for example, on the new boss, the mood at the interview and in the new office, the gut may be right.
How do we get out of this maze now? When I answer this question, I often think of the control center from the animated film “Everything is upside down”. In this case, situations are often discussed from the personalized feelings. It’s worth it: because before we simply suppress a gut feeling, it’s definitely worth listening to. And to analyze whether it is the baseless fear of something new or the need to avoid eating the wrong plant. Because: if something really doesn’t feel good, then I think of my rabbit lady. And she got damn old because of her gut feeling.
5 gut feelings that we shouldn’t suppress
“It’s too much for me”
Burnout is not an award for being a: e good: r employee: in, friend: in or partner: in. Everyone has individual limits. In the job as well as private context, we tend to exceed it for others, although our guts have been rebelling for a long time. Stop! Whoever wants to do everyone justice forgets himself.
“I cannot imagine a future with her: with him”
Your: e partner: in is diligently forging future plans and wants to move in, does the thought of sharing apartments give you a stomachache? With regard to partnerships, we have all too often forgotten how to listen to our gut instinct – and rely on the ideal social image of love at its expense. If the: the supposed dream prince: essin in front of you does not match your lifelong dream, you will be unhappy. Out of consideration for other feelings, your own should never be suppressed. When it comes to love, it’s really worth following your gut instinct.
“Somehow that makes me angry”
“It hurt me, but …”, “I don’t understand why he: she did it, but …”, “He: she definitely had reasons” – do these sentences sound familiar to you? Anger is a feeling that we don’t even allow ourselves these days. At most, you can paraphrase it with words when something is pissed off at us – but only with the well-known “but” that signals that everything is not that bad. Every anger has a reason. And if we swallow it, we just get real stomach ache.
“I want more”
Another gut feeling that we suppress in a flash. Sounds kind of selfish after all. And “want”, who says something like that at all? If at all it means you want to … end, end, end. When our gut instincts tell us that we want more – be it from life or from people, something is obviously out of balance. And while we have learned to always meet the needs of others, our gut instinct comes in to keep us from giving more than we are currently getting back.
“IM right, here”
Not to forget: there are also good gut feelings. And they usually happen when we are with the right people or in the right place. The secret: savor it to the full and, above all, notice it. If you only feel “right” when you are on vacation, for example, something is obviously going wrong in everyday life. Here, gut instinct can lead us to an all-round happier life – and show us that there is no one, socially correct path for everyone, but for everyone: n their very own.