Do You Trust Your Instincts?
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This post was originally published on Forbes.com.
Instincts, intuition, an inkling, a spidey sense — whatever you call it, it’s that feeling you have in your gut pushing you toward or away from something. Do you recognize and trust yours?
Whether you’re cognizant of it or not, as you’ve been progressing through your career you’ve been developing not only your domain expertise but your instincts as well — how you assess people, feasibility and approaches. Years of learning, making mistakes, experiencing success and trying things have honed your reflexes and created a sort of beacon for you. The value of this capability may not always be as clear to you as the skills you can list on your resume, but both types of intelligence are needed to succeed. In fact, the more senior and experienced you are, the more likely you are to regret not paying attention to your intuition.
It’s easy to focus just on data — the return on investment, key performance indicators, schedules and deliverables that turn our attention to what we can measure — and overlook our sense of things. And it can feel like something as vague as “your gut” is not to be trusted and can steer you wrong. But when you disregard your instincts, you are ignoring a valuable channel of information that can help you shortcut decisions and get you on the right path more quickly in a way that works for you as an individual. The reality is that your instinct is better honed than you may believe.
So how do you get better at using your intuition?
The first step is to pay more attention to your inner voice, which is a practice you can develop. When you’re mulling something over, listen to what your body is telling you. Do you feel anticipation and excitement? Or do you have an uncomfortable feeling in your stomach? If you’re feeling tense, which course of action would allow you to exhale?
If you’re having a hard time connecting with these sensations, here are a few things to try:
Change your environment. Instead of your busy office, find a quiet place to reflect, preferably outside in nature.
Get into a creative or physical flow. This could mean exercising, gardening, cooking, meditating or drawing. Something that gets your mind into a non-work, non-problem-solving state.
Ground yourself in the moment by counting down your senses. Stop what you’re doing and notice five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell and one thing you can taste (if possible!). The more present you are, the more able you are to “hear” what that sixth sense is trying to tell you.
As you become more attuned to your intuition, the next step is to trust yourself enough to act on it. Taking that leap of faith becomes easier when you realize that you’re not the same person you were when you were first starting your career. Not only are your hunches much more developed and likely to guide you in the right direction, but if you need to course-correct, you have the hard skills and expertise necessary to do so. The more work and life experience you have, the more you can trust combining your instincts with your factual knowledge to make your final call.
Over time, the practice of getting in tune with and listening to what your inner voice is telling you will become second nature — and a valuable asset as you face new challenges and enter uncharted territory.
© Jennine Heller and J Heller Coaching. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jennine Heller and J Heller Coaching with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. • Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels
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