“If we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgments.”
– Malcolm Gladwell
It’s hard to know what to trust these days, whether it’s the news or the latest way to eat so that a virus or bacteria won’t take you down. It happens, and mold can kill you. Life is scary in lots of ways, and we are facing challenges that we have never had to face before, every day, as a collective and each of us individually.
The ability to trust yourself is one of the most important qualities you can develop, alongside compassion for yourself and others. And yet, the way most people develop in our present culture is to trust their gut less and less as they become more civilized, tamed, colonized, educated, brainwashed in some instances, and basically conditioned not to trust their most true selves.
The book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell points to the power of “thin slicing”—which is what Gladwell calls our first subconscious, split-second, knee-jerk reaction—-and that it is our most intellectual and accurate observation, the one we should trust. In other words, a “gut” feeling may be more than the signal from your gut. It could be the whisper of your true self to pay attention. It could be an opportunity hone the accuracy of your inner compass.
There is a powerful connection between your gut an your brain. The enteric nervous system is a vast network of neurons that line your intestinal tract and carry messages from the gut to the brain, and back, including the heart. Research shows that there is a direct line of communication between the brain and your enteric nervous system,or what is called the gut-brain axis. This line of communication links the emotional and cognitive centers of the brain with peripheral intestinal function.
That’s why the gut is also known as “the second brain.” It’s a knowing, an intuition that is felt. The composition of your gut flora can change the signals that are sent from your gut to your brain, so it is true that an aggressive pathogen like Candida or Lyme can literally change the way you think. Part of becoming masterful at listening to the gut is making sure you care for your physical gut, and your health in general.
In addition to physical influences, the reality is, as I mentioned above, that we are trained not to listen to those feelings, and even to not feel them if we are numbing enough. Both men and women alike, though in different ways, are trained to not pay attention, by not being connected to the body and more connected to concepts of should, and ideas of what success or happiness looks like.
Yet all we need is 2 seconds of awareness to tune in to our inner knowing, and we can make decisions that are truly of our own making. Says Gladwell, “The power of knowing, in that first two seconds, is not a gift given magically to a fortunate few. It is an ability that we can all cultivate for ourselves.”
How do we do that? We need to get good at connecting our cognitive functions with our emotional body where the gut feelings arise. We need to be able to avoid an amygdala hijack, a term coined in Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence.
We avoid this hijack which causes us to make decisions based on fear, by becoming adept at the 2-second pause.
We become adept at the 2-second pause by practicing remaining connected to our breath in our body over and over, whether through meditation, love-making, gardening, dancing—-anything that requires our attention and allows us to breathe in an embodied and conscious way. You turn to your body to know, and you feel the pleasure of your body fully in order to know.
We cultivate this ability by making distinctions between how we feel and the story we tell ourselves. We question our minds and return to our gut, and we go with the truly good-feeling path. What comes from our true selves feels good, and never causes us to feel bad about ourselves.
When you are in need of guidance, the voice of your true self will show you a better way, without making you wrong for the decisions you have made. You are in law school and have paid a lot of money, but you are really not happy. Your mind says “I should stick it out and become a lawyer because that’s what everyone else says I’m good at” becomes “I am not drawn to study the law. I am pulled in another direction, and my heart says to go with nursing. I love taking care of people. “
You immediately feel better when you admit this to yourself. But then your mind says, “I have already paid so much money,” and your gut says, “I will find a way. Money isn’t everything.”
What do you go with?
What part of you makes your decisions?
One choice is based on fear, and another on love.
Trust the pleasure in your body aligned with your mind. It can help you make decisions about addictive behavior, and turn away from choices that cause pain in the body. Go with the pleasure, and make choices that lead you to feel good.
Cultivate feeling good.
Trust your gut. It’s subversive to the culture of numbness. That’s good for everyone.
