Women are familiar with intuition. Often alone to know things without any prior supporting information. Sometimes we visualize a result, sometimes we hear what appears to be a silent answer to a question, sometimes physically feel do the right thing and sometimes just to know without knowing how we know.
Intuition is also called instinct, and the good news is that men, teens, and children can use instincts just like women to be more confident and make good decisions. Since women are the biggest cheerleaders for the safety of their loved ones, let’s make sure we’re clear about how gut feelings work and how to use them to our advantage.
About intestinal feelings
- Survival instincts we were born with
- Your job is to keep us alive
- They are personal to each individual
- There is no need to compare as they may be the opposite of someone else’s gut feelings.
- What may be safe for you may not be safe for your friend, coworker, and vice versa.
- They are good or bad (indifferent can be put in the good category)
- You have them on every person, place and situation in your life.
- The key is to hear them, feel them, see them and follow them when they are stronger.
- Following them is always a great idea, but rarely done.
Examples of gut feelings
- You meet someone for the first time and you like them instantly
- You meet someone for the first time and you don’t like them without knowing why
- Someone tells you something and you have the feeling that it is not true
- You have a decision to make, and although the information points to one option, you feel that the other is the best.
- You know something is going to turn out a certain way without evidence to back it up
- You have a creepy feeling about someone and you know that it is not safe for you to be around.
Recognizing your gut feelings
You may not have realized that you always have gut feelings about everything in your life. To test this, think of someone you love and observe the first feeling or sense you have on that person. Next, think of someone taking your power or weakening you and observe what they feel, hear, or feel. Although these feelings may come from meeting these people, this exercise demonstrates just how opposite gut feelings feel.
A vital part of living emotionally secure is knowing what and who makes you strong and what or who makes you weak. Obviously, you cannot live your best life by immersing yourself in that which weakens you. Gut feelings are the perfect way to determine where you should be, what you should do, and who you should allow in your life. My article on personal security secret n. 4 for Women on Personal Boundaries is a must read if this interests you.
How Using Gut Feelings Creates a Safer Future
By acknowledging gut feelings and realizing how often you have them, yours will be precisely tuned. This is the absolute best way to live safer, but you must follow them too!
Example: You and your daughter are entering the grocery store. A woman at the store gives you a bad feeling, and you may find that your daughter is also uncomfortable. The woman asks you a question. Do you ignore your bad feeling so as not to offend her and answer her question against your better judgment? Remember, although she may not be killed with an ax, her instincts are the survival instincts she was born with! Also, if someone gives you the creeps, if anyone should be offended, it must be you.
And that it should you do? Pretend you didn’t hear the question or apologize and walk away quickly, pretend to receive a phone call, etc. Your safety and that of your daughter are the most important, period.
You might answer the woman’s question and nothing bad happens. That’s great, but what about next time? What did you just show your daughter to model later? It’s probably important to be courteous at all costs and that other people are more important than you. These are subliminal messages, for the most part, but crucial to personal safety. Consider that this situation was a questionnaire that prepared you or your daughter for a larger exam in the future. You will pass? It will?
Why We Often Ignore Our Gut Feelings
The example above illustrates why we so often put ourselves in emotionally and physically dangerous situations by ignoring our gut feelings. We, as women, are taught to always be courteous and to help others. That’s great, but we make ourselves so vulnerable that we don’t have any protection! We worry so much that we don’t like people or offend someone that we bypass our survival instincts in favor of our delicate self-esteem.