Trusting Your Gut

I recently had to say no to a large financial decision I had spent months working towards. When I got the call with an offer, my entire body yelled NO WAY. But it’s what I wanted, right? I got off the phone after making a plan with my broker to discuss it further in a few days. My body would not stop saying “absolutely not” to me. However, it was the responsible action to dig deeper into the offer and try to see what my next steps would be. I sat on those feelings for three more days. I looked into the offer and spoke with my trusted circle of advisors/friends. My body would not stop saying, “this is not the offer you want”. I spoke with my broker again, and in that conversation, I realized what was happening. I did not trust my broker. The person who brought the offer to me. During that call, where his job is to bring me to the table, he spoke down to me, he didn’t speak about my motivation to get this offer in the first place, and he attempted to guilt me into moving forward because he deserved the money he would receive from me taking this offer. I’m sorry, what? I hired this man to work for me to get me the best deal. 

Two days later, I put in writing that not only was I not accepting this offer, but I was also firing my broker. It was at this point he continued his incredibly disrespectful and unprofessional argument against me, personally. But my body didn’t wait for all of this to happen before it told me this was not the right financial decision for me. It told me immediately. And in the past, I might have confused it with fear or anxiety about my ability to make a financial decision in the first place.  With experience, I now know the difference.

5 Things I do That Allow Me To Hear My Intuition

1 - I made many good and bad decisions, including with money, purchasing, and selling large investments. I make a lot of decisions in my business that gives me experience in making decisions that feel good and decisions that feel bad. 

2 - I practiced setting boundaries in all areas of my life. And stuck to them even when they caused immediate pain but long term happiness. 

3 - I take myself seriously. I have worked on understanding that I deserve the dreams I have for myself. I deserve the life I want to have. So I take caring and loving myself seriously. I also take who gets to love and care for me seriously. I take care of myself physically, emotionally, and mentally. I treat myself preciously as in I know I deserve to be loved and care for, by myself and others. Doing business with me is important and I take that seriously. 

4 - I have sat in the discomfort of creating and holding myself and others to my standards. When I have to end a relationship, whether, in business, romance, or friendship, I sit in that discomfort. I do not hide from the hardship or feelings those decisions bring to me. I use to run away from those feelings by finding new lovers (or going back to unhealthy ones), spending too much money, or drinking too much. After a while, I learned that hiding from this discomfort didn’t help me have the life I wanted, and so I practice sitting in my feelings when I make these hard decisions to uphold the standards I have for my life. This allows me to practice knowing the difference between which emotions I am feeling. Fear, anxiety, nervousness, or a clear signal to move on.

5 - I understand the importance of my greater purpose. I have a purpose in this life, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about my purpose. I have spent a lot of time making plans around that purpose, and I do not take for granted the steps needed to live that purpose. If decisions do not meet my greater purpose, I do not move forward with them.

Listening To My Gut

My body didn’t say no after I realized my broker spoke condescendingly to me or after I read the offer. It told me no immediately upon hearing about the offer. There were several reasons to take that offer regardless of how my body told me, and sometimes we do have to do uncomfortable things to get to where we want to be. There is certainly a difference. I heard my intuition prior to making a decision and prior to doing all the things I need to do to make a big financial investment. And when all was said and done, I listened to my gut. Even when the pen-to-paper evidence told me something else initially. 

We can’t underestimate what we unconsciously know about our business. But let’s be clear, we know these things because we spend so much time on our business, because we understand our business so well, and because we know the kind of life we want for ourselves. Being able to trust your gut instincts comes from the work you do before you make big decisions. It comes in being disciplined in who you are and what you want from your life. Many times our unconscious thoughts about ourselves and our worth can show up at the worst times, sabotaging the life we say we want. 

Slow Down. Take Action

You deserve the success that you can envision for yourself. There is a reason your mind keeps coming back to the same big goals, the same big vision. You can get there. The world might be throwing you all kinds of challenges, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t supposed to achieve your dreams. Think through ways you can be more in flow with your intuition. What do you keep resisting? What do you keep fighting against? How can you eliminate those things from your life? 

The stories we tell ourselves about our worth impact us positively or negatively. We all ignore parts of our story that we don’t like. We all dissociate when it comes to the uncomfortable storylines within our lives. We tell ourselves stories about why we don’t have money or know how to make decisions and why we don’t deserve to know and realize our worth. We allow our mistakes to play a big story in our heads. Many of us allow our shame to play a big role in our decision-making process. Our shame and feelings of unworthiness will block our intuition. We will confuse fear and anxiety for when our bodies are saying yes or no.

Try These Exercises

Take out your journal, set a timer for thirty minutes, and write all of your feelings about why you do or don’t deserve to be financially stable, wealthy and to accomplish the dreams you have for yourself and your life. 

Thirty minutes to journal can be a long time. But your brain will only give what you want to know until you put the pressure on it to give up the gems. It might take a lot longer to dig deeper into what you have been hiding from yourself. So if after ten minutes you think I have nothing else to say, stay at the paper with your pen in hand, and you might surprise yourself with what you learn next.  

What did you learn about yourself during this exercise? How could knowing this impact how you make decisions? What were the hardest things to write out about yourself?  

Create five positive affirmations out of your most challenging feelings. For example, “other people need the money more than I do” A positive affirmation to that defeating statement is “I am also deserving of wealth.” 

Find three ways you can take action from what you learned that will impact your life positively.

Try This One Too

Body scan. Lay down in a comfortable position. Start at your head and relax each part of your body. From your neck to your toes. Take deep breaths before you move on to the next part of your body. Once you have completed this exercise, think about the big decisions you have to make. What happens to your body when you think of each decision? Where in your body do you feel it? What are you experiencing?

Your mind is constantly giving you thoughts, but your body is usually telling us how you really feel. Spend time really listening to your body. Learn what happens when you are excited about something and what happens when you don’t want to do something. Take what your body tells you seriously. Respect your feelings.

Slow down. Take action. Trust your gut. 

Respect your feelings. Remember you are worthy of your dreams.