Trusting your gut.

Have you ever noticed how being true to yourself is often aligned to being true to God? In my life when I am deeply honest with myself and listen carefully to my heart I usually find that I have peace with God. Most of my anxiety comes from ignoring what I know in my soul; ignoring what my heart is telling me; and not being honest with myself. I am not talking about right or wrong or what I want-- I am talking about trusting my gut instinct about life decisions, about what I feel in my soul. I am talking about being honest with myself about what I feel inside my heart.

Have you made a decision that you knew when you were making the decision that your heart was telling you not to? I have. Sometimes it requires massive courage to listen to your gut and make the decison not to do something just as it requires the courage to do something. These are opportunities to learn and grow. At the same time, hopefully we learn to notice that feeling and pay attention to what our heart is attempting to tell us. I am learning to pay attention to my gut feelings. That doesn’t mean that I make decisions based only on my gut feelings, but it does mean that I do not ignore my gut feelings.

Last night my wife and I decided against a house we were planning to lease. The house was in a lovely neighborhood with magnificent views of the bay and San Francisco. The house looked great on paper and had much of what we wanted but there was something that was not quite right in my gut. I am not sure what it was but it persisted. Was it just simple anxiety and procrastination? No. After a fifteen-minute conversation with my wife she too admitted, "I’m not feeling it." Once we moved past all that we could see and the "shoulds and coulds" and moved into what do we felt the decision was easy. We passed on the house. The sushi dinner afterwards tasted great. I had peace with God-- and myself!

What is pressing on you that you are "just not feeling"? Ovid, a 1st Cenutry poet says "What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct." I learned early in my advertising career that people make decisions based on feelings and back their decisions by reason. I have made sound decisions based on reason, but I don’t recall ever making a sound decision by going against my gut. At the same time I have made some bold moves based on my gut rather than reason. "Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway" George Santayana

Pay attention to your gut. Listen to your heart it will tell you what to do.