Your Gut Feeling Is Data, Not a Verdict

Not even six months ago, I wrote a beautiful personal story about how I followed my intuition and left a 12-year career in sales. Twenty years in total in corporate, actually. I started working in offices at 19 and made my soulful exit at 39.

That story then supported an outreach campaign that can only be described as me contacting every networking group, expat community and organization standing even slightly adjacent to mental health to ask whether I could speak to their people about intuition.

To my delight, and perhaps through some administrative oversight, quite a few said yes.

I have now delivered ten events to very different groups of people. I’ve watched rooms become silent while people tried to notice what happened in their bodies. I’ve heard people describe relief, tension, warmth, anxiety, absolutely nothing and, occasionally, a signal so immediate that one participant said, “Intuition happens in two seconds.”

I then watched what happened in the seconds that followed.

The explanations arrived. The objections. The reasonable arguments for why what they had just felt could not possibly be trusted.

After several months of this highly scientific process, aka me asking people to close their eyes and then asking slightly intrusive questions about what happened inside them, I feel I have gathered enough data to make a bold claim:

Your gut feeling is data, not a verdict.

This is slightly inconvenient because “Trust your gut” looks really good on the sticker attached to my laptop stand.

When I started speaking about intuition, I thought that a lot of the work would be helping people notice what they felt. And sometimes it is. Some people notice nothing clear at all, which is a perfectly acceptable outcome of sitting in a room with a stranger asking you to feel something.

But quite often, people do notice something. Then, almost in the same breath, they explain why they can’t possibly do anything with it.

In one exercise, I ask people to bring a real decision to mind and explore two possibilities: what I really want and what I think I should do. We’re simply noticing what comes up. Nobody needs to resign, end a relationship or move to Bali before the workshop finishes.

Still, the negotiations start quickly.

Yes, I felt relief when I imagined saying no, but they really need me.

Yes, I tightened up when I thought about staying, but leaving would be irresponsible.

Yes, I know what I want, but now isn’t the right time.

I’m very familiar with that last one. “Not the right time” can remain an entirely reasonable explanation for an impressive number of years or all your life.

And the objections are valid. There are bills, children, commitments, consequences. The interesting thing is whether we’re considering those alongside what we want or using them to make sure what we want almost never gets considered.

You can be exceptionally good at analyzing a decision and still leave yourself out of it.

I have also felt very certain about some terrible decisions. Twelve years in sales gave me plenty of opportunities to confuse a strong feeling with a good idea.

End of quarter. Target not quite there. A client who might sign if I gave them a discount or accepted a condition I knew would become a problem later.

Everything in me wanted that signature. I could explain why making an exception was the commercially sensible thing to do and I could explain it very convincingly. I was in sales, after all.

Then they signed, I felt better, and the terrible condition remained in the contract for considerably longer than the relief remained in my body.

Looking back, I don’t think that was intuition. I was afraid of missing my target and very interested in anything that would make that feeling go away.

This is where “listen to your body” needs a little more explanation.

What, exactly, am I listening to?

The part of me that has noticed a problem? The part that wants approval? The part that would agree to almost anything so I can stop worrying tonight?

Feeling something strongly doesn’t settle those questions.

It’s also why I’m more careful now with the idea that expansion means yes and contraction means no. You might tense up because something doesn’t feel right. You might also tense up because you’re about to tell someone no for the first time in your entire relationship.

And relief? I felt plenty of relief after signing those contracts. It told me the immediate pressure had gone. It said very little about whether I’d made a good decision.

So what do we do with the feeling?

I find it useful to think of intuition as possible early recognition: perhaps I’ve picked up on something I haven’t yet put into words. Perhaps my values are at stake here.

Someone’s explanation doesn’t quite match their behavior. A situation feels familiar, although I can’t immediately say why. I’ve agreed to something that makes complete sense on paper and I notice I’m already dreading it.

There may be something worth investigating there. There may also be an old expectation or fear colouring how I read the situation. Calling the feeling “intuition” doesn’t tell me which.

So I want to know more: what happened just before I felt it? What am I expecting will happen next? What do I actually know, and what am I filling in?

In my sales example, one useful question would have been: If I had already hit my target, would I still think these were good terms?

I suspect I would have found the answer quite irritating because I’m suddenly feeling a major irk.

That’s the sort of curiosity I mean. Give the feeling some attention and check it against what’s happening. Sometimes that means asking another question, getting more information or allowing the immediate pressure to settle before deciding.

And yes, sometimes the practical objection that arrives after the first feeling is good judgment. We don’t need to dismiss our ability to think in order to listen to ourselves.

Admitting what you want can feel like a very expensive exercise

I think one reason we stop listening is that we’re afraid of what we’ll have to do once we’ve heard ourselves. What we’ll have to do is damn uncomfortable.

If I admit I don’t want this job anymore, what then? We have a mortgage. I worked hard to get here. People were very impressed when I got it. Am I now supposed to announce that, actually, I’d like something else?

It can seem easier to remain vaguely unhappy and extremely busy.

My own story has a clear ending: I left corporate and became a coach. Convenient for an article. But I wouldn’t want someone reading it to think that hearing themselves properly must also end in a resignation. Although, funnily enough, plenty of people have concluded that they should quit their job during my workshops. This is true.

You can admit you don’t want to continue like this before you know what you want instead. You can take that seriously while still needing the salary.

Perhaps the first thing you do is stop saying “it’s fine” when you talk about work with someone you trust. Perhaps you ask what could change in your current role. Perhaps you notice that you want to refuse a request, and give yourself until tomorrow to answer instead of agreeing before the person has finished asking.

Small enough to try. Significant enough that you’ll probably have feelings about it.

Then there’s something real to explore. How did the other person respond? How did you feel afterwards? Did you spend the evening wanting to send a follow-up message explaining that you’re actually very helpful and they should please continue thinking well of you?

That last part matters too.

The people I work with often understand themselves very well. They can tell me why they overwork, why disappointing someone feels unbearable and where they learned to be the person who handles everything. Yet they can still find themselves saying yes to another request while wondering how much longer they can keep doing this.

In coaching, we can work with that exact moment: what they noticed, what they feared, what they did next and what they might be willing to try differently. There is a lot to learn from asking for something you need and finding out what happens, especially if you’ve spent years deciding in advance that you shouldn’t.

So I still want people to listen to their gut. I’m just simply more interested now in what happens after they hear it.