Gut Feeling

Merry Christmas Cavenders!

I am a total thinker- i over obsess about every little situation, about everything going on in my life constantly. I analyze, i weigh out pros and cons and i try to figure out what is the best decision. Yet recently ive come to realize that maybe, in matters of the heart, one should trust their gut.

I went to meeting a few months ago with someone i know from a former job, and before the meeting, my gut was twisted in a knot. I had hot and cold flashes, my nerves were up in the air and i didnt know why. I had weighed out the pros and cons of this meeting, i figured out what it would mean to me if i went and what it would mean if i didnt. Yet my gut was acting up.

Ultimately, my gut was right. The lunch, even though it was fun, it was tough. It was very strange to me- i was not easy around this person. I felt cooped up, twisted, wound up so tight i couldnt breathe. Yes, the conversation was fun and it was a short-lived 30minutes but on the inside, i felt watched, uneasy and completely lost. Was my gut telling me this all along?

Gut feeling is a small part of what nature left us - our instinct. Gut feeling prepares us for the worst, gets us to bolt when it gets dangerous and tells us to take a leap of faith when the time is right. So how come we so rarely trust it?

We have grown up to think everything over, to ponder pros and cons of everything we do - did we loose our ability to trust our instincts? When we think everything over a hundred times, does it really get better? Do our decisions come easier when we thought out every angle? Can we ever figure out every angle? Life is so compliacted and we complicate it even more by bringing too much thinking into it. When we think everything over all the time we loose the sense of what is real and what is not. We loose grasp of the real situation and we block out our instincts only to replace them with toughts.

The problem with our thoughts is that they are always connected to the past, to what we have lived and to where we stand in our lives. Our thoughts and ideas are not realistic but flawed by our perceptions of what is around us. Our instincts, however, are pure, they are raw, they are unpretentious. They dont care who we are or what we do in our lives- they react to our surroundings.

Comming back to my meeting- looking back, maybe it was good that i went. I realized that maybe this person doesnt belong in my life. On the other hand, did i really need this tightness in my chest ? Did i need to feel the way i felt? Should i have listened to my gut? Should i have followed my instincts and run the other way?

Maybe its time that we trust our guts, that we trust what mother nature gave us to protect us. Trust your gut!