Part of a series about the secret questions we ask ourselves, often without saying them out loud.
Why didn’t I trust my gut?
Perhaps you’ve asked yourself this afterwards. You look back and think you knew. There was something you noticed. A feeling you had. Something that didn’t quite sit right.
So why didn’t you listen? But did you know at the time that it was your gut?
Perhaps you questioned it. Maybe there was no obvious reason for the feeling. Maybe you told yourself you were overthinking, being overly cautious or making something out of nothing.
Maybe there were perfectly good reasons for doing what you did. It’s very easy to look backwards with the benefit of knowing how things turned out and decide that you should have trusted yourself.
But what if it wasn’t that simple? What if, at the time, you simply didn’t know what you were noticing?
We can talk about trusting our gut as though it is always clear. As though there’s a little voice inside us that knows the answer and all we have to do is listen.
But sometimes there isn’t an answer. Sometimes there’s just a feeling. A hesitation. A sense of unease. A pull towards something. Or perhaps simply a quiet I don’t know about this.
Would it be OK to notice that without immediately needing to explain it?
You don’t necessarily have to know whether it’s instinct, fear, experience, intuition or something else. Perhaps you can simply be curious.
What am I noticing?
And perhaps even:
What might this be wanting for me?
Not necessarily telling you what to do. Not giving you a guaranteed answer. Just something worth noticing. Because maybe trusting yourself doesn’t always mean confidently following your gut. Maybe sometimes it means being willing to hear yourself, even when you aren’t certain what you’re hearing.
And perhaps that changes the question. Instead of Why didn’t I trust my gut? Maybe you can wonder: What was I noticing then? Without judging the answer you gave yourself at the time.
You were working with what you knew. You were making sense of what you could. You were being human. And perhaps that’s worth trusting too.
If you found this post interesting and it sparked something you’d like to talk about, reach out. I’d be happy to listen.
If you’d like to keep the conversation going,
I’d love to write to you.
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Kettle on. No rush.
Just between us
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