ve decided that this year I'm going to work smarter and harder on things that matter most, I'll heed the advice of wise mentors even if (especially if) it pushes me outside my comfort zone, and I'm going to pay attention to and act on my instincts.
Listening to and acting on your instincts was the first key habit I listed in another popular post, 10 Habits to Keep You Out of Trouble. There, I wrote about a couple of incidents in my life (and there are many more) where listening to my screaming instincts would have saved me mountains of grief and inconvenience.
An anonymous reader commented on that post, challenging me about a "conflict" in my theory. "What if your instinct is not to eat breakfast?" they asked. This indicated to me that the reader hadn't understood what I meant by the word instinct. If you don't feel like eating breakfast, most of the possible explanations are physiological or habitual, not instinctual. In fact, I often talk to breakfast-skipping coaching clients about the need to eat breakfast even if they're not hungry, as they need to retrain the body to activate hunger cues for this much-needed meal.
So what is an instinct? I like this excerpt from the Online Merriam-Webster dictionary definition: the "tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason."
The key here is "not involving reason." When it comes to these inner impulses or "knowings" that may carry a power to save, protect or bless us in some way, the key challenge is to recognize and value the feeling before the rational mind storms in and convinces us to listen to reason, to take whatever course of action is most practical and logical.
Women are apparently more instinctual than men. I enjoy financial guru Dave Ramsey's advice and he often tells men: "If your wife tells you that there's something wrong with a person or situation, because she has a ‘feeling' about it, listen to her, no matter how good it looks, and run away from the deal!"
If you'd like to connect more to this strange yet often uncannily accurate form of wisdom, here are some situations where attention to your instincts can be powerful:
1) Act on your hunches
Hunches can come as a quick flash of insight, or may sit on your heart (or in your gut) for a long time, even on a daily basis, urging you to do something in particular.
2) If you sense something is off about someone, don't ignore it
our initial reaction to a person is usually right, and be careful about glossing it over if it doesn't make sense. An example would be meeting someone who everybody "loves" yet you feel something isn't quite right.
3) Watch out for exciting situations that don't feel quite right
I once had dinner with someone who wanted to work with me. I was initially really honored and excited that they would even be interested in associating with me, yet as dinner went on I found myself getting uncomfortable about the way they were talking about our partnership.
4) If your instincts are screaming, turn around and run (even if it's highly inconvenient or embarrassing)
Look back over your life—can you think of times that your instincts were telling you "no, no, NO!!"but it was too inconvenient or potentially embarrassing to act on? The classic example is the bride who suddenly feels/knows she's marrying the wrong person, but the dress has been bought, the party has been paid for, and everyone is waiting at the church
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