Trust your Gut

Hindsight – how I wish we could have it on the front end of situations instead of going through hardships to figure out what you shoulda, woulda, coulda…but I guess then it wouldn’t be called hindsight   Today was a day when hindsight made it very clear what I shoulda done differently in a situation – let me explain: 

 

There are so many times in life when we must make decisions – so we consider all the info we can get on the matter and try to make the best choice we can.  But sometimes, we can’t get all the info we would like and we are still forced to decide – those are the scarier decisions to have to make.  But as my life has gone on I have come to realize that all the info or not, the most important decision making tool you have is learning to trust your gut instincts. 

 

Throughout my life I learned after going through numerous decisions where I didn’t trust my gut instincts because of facts that seemed to point to everything being fine, or peer pressure from others who told me that surely this was the best decision, and every single one of those times I didn’t trust my gut the results were also disastrous.  In fact, those times became so obvious that I finally started forcing me to follow my own gut instincts.  When I didn’t feel good about something, even if I couldn’t explain why, my husband would tell me to trust my gut – because he had experienced firsthand the problems down the line when I didn’t. His ability to recognize the accuracy of my instincts is what helped me to start to recognize it more myself.  He is always right – when I didn’t trust my gut things always went wrong.  So more and more I was able to gain faith in those instincts and as I did I made less mistakes. 

 

It’s amazing how quickly we can sometimes forget lessons we should know so well by now. Yesterday, I was looking at a few papers to clean my office and found a journal from the time we were dealing with a nightmare situation with a landscape job in our new home in Bountiful. We went into a situation that my gut told me to steer clear of and I didn’t do it.  I let pressure from another person who was telling me to give it a little more time, stop me from following my gut instincts. And the results were disastrous; causing all kinds of problems, stress and delays and extra expense. The landscape was not done properly and was a total waste. 

 

At the end of the day it is my fault for not trusting my gut from the get-go.  All my past experiences had taught me to trust my gut above all else.  I should have already learned that lesson well enough not to ignore it.  But clearly, I messed up and had to be reminded the hard way.  It’s never much fun to have to learn the hard way! 

 

Well, hopefully my admission of stupidity and not going by the lessons I have already learned to always trust your own gut can help some of you reading this to not make that same mistake I did.  Learn from my mistake and adopt these two rules in your life: 

 

#1. Don’t forget the lessons you have learned in the past because it is no fun to relearn them the hard way.  It’s the worst! 

 

#2 Trust your instincts.  When your gut doesn't feel good about something then walk away, no matter what other people say and no matter what the facts on paper show.  And when your gut does feel good about something then have the courage to go for it, no matter what other people say and no matter what the facts on paper show.  Go with your gut!

 

Con amor,

Vero