I have sometimes had a gut feeling about something which I have ignored, and then paid the consequences later on.
There is something about the whole gut feeling thing that I think is well worth our exploration, in terms of what gut feeling really is. What I want to know is there really something in it or is there nothing in it? So, I am going to be embarking on the quest to gain a healthier gut, and I’m interested to know whether by having a healthier gut it will improve my gut instincts!
What is really is a gut feeling? For some people they think that gut feeling is a different way of being able to tune into a situation or even to be able to make evaluations about what you should do in your life. Now, sometimes we talk about gut instinct and sometimes we talk about gut intuition and these are two very different things.
Your gut instinct is more like an impulse. Your instincts are things like fight-or-flight; these are the things that are built into you as a human being and typically we use our gut instinct when we’re making a decision out of fear. This is incredibly useful and tends to keep up safe, but it’s not going to be a useful thing if you want to start using that gut feeling to make sound decisions.
Gut intuition is more about taking real consideration over something. The word intuition is more focused on considering all of the factors rather than just impulsively doing something. We’ve all gut intuition, but to access it you’ll need to start really tuning into all of your senses and taking in all of that information from the world around you. Sometimes all of your senses start working in collaboration with each other and creates almost like a sixth sense. Our sixth sense might be another way of referring to gut intuition. Once you’ve taken in all of the information and weighed up the pros and cons you can start making an informed decision about what you should do next.
In order to improve your gut intuition you need to start knowing the difference between what your gut instincts feel like and what your gut intuition feels like. This is because when you come to make a decision which is perhaps bypassing your logical mind, you need to be sure that you’re using the correct one! You don’t want to be using your gut instincts for decision making – you want to be using your gut intuition.
Aborigines believe that humans have three brains – the brain you have in your head, your heart-brain and your gut-brain, and maybe there’s something in that? We know that your brain and your gut are quite intricately connected; have you ever had a bad thought and then noticed that it’s literally giving you a funny feeling in your tummy?
So here’s a few things that you can do to start improving your gut intuition.
You need to get good at quietening your crazy, inner self-talk so that all of the jibber-jabber that goes on in there starts to settle down and become more still. It’s very difficult for you to tune into your inner feelings if you are too busy listening to your inner thoughts. There are a few different ways that you can do this – like through meditation! Meditation helps you to be present in your body, it helps you to notice the sensations of your body and to really help to quiet your mind.
Another useful thing to do is to be around people. Being around people doesn’t just improve your social skills but it also helps you to fine-tune the skills that you use to be able to really tune into the little clues that people give away about what’s really going on for them. For example, does their physiology seem congruent with what’s coming out of their mouth? As you start to develop those skills by being around people more, you’ll be able to start relying on your intuition much more going forward.
It’s also really important that you begin to just pay attention more! Very often we’re so busy thinking about what had happened in the past, or what could happen in the future, we forget to be here in the present moment. When you’re really tuned in and grounded at the moment it helps your brain and your body to work much more in sync with each other.
If you start to implement these small changes you’ll be able to ‘hear’ your gut intuition, and overtime fine-tune it to serve you better.
By Gemma Bailey
https://www.peoplebuilding.co.uk
