Trust your gut?

When my daughter was a little girl she asked me an odd question.
One of many to burst out of her bright-eyed being.
“Daddy, if I jump off the roof of our house and land on my feet, will I be okay?”
Not surprisingly, it was a very high roof.
I suppressed my amusement and asked her what she thought.
She answered that her gut told her that she’d be fine.
Afterall, she had never seen or heard anything to the contrary.
Plus cats fall from high places, and they just walk away.
I proceeded to paint her a graphic picture.
Something about blood and death.
Bones shattering and arteries exploding.
She was appalled and, thankfully, she believed me.
Most of our gut instincts come from our beliefs.
Stories told to us by people we trust.
Others come from our narrowly perceived experiences.
They’re all designed to simplify our assessment of life.
Our intuition once told us that the world was flat.
Because, in our immediate environment, the world is flat.
But on a grander scale, it is much different.
Gut instincts are assumptions and predictions.
A subjective form of information processing.
They are not infallible.
They arise in a particular place and time.
Created from memories and animated with narratives.
What was intuition in 1950 is no longer intuition.
Your intuition when you were 14 is not your intuition today.
On the one hand, your intuition is designed to protect you.
To keep you safe and comfortable.
“It’s not worth it.”
“He doesn’t seem trustworthy.”
“That doesn’t feel like a practical decision.”
But your gut also wants you to grow and thrive.
To jump off of roofs and land on your feet.
To write your book.
Sing your song.
Open your heart.
And dance your dance.
Learning and growth come from trusting your gut.
Mine told me to write a movie screenplay.
And I followed that feeling into a new world of possibility.
One filled with passion and insight.
Serendipitous encounters and soul-enhancing relationships.
So should you trust your gut?
You should definitely listen to it.
And then, if you discover that it’s not going to kill you, you should probably jump.
Because you may not land on your feet.
But you will walk away.
A more bright-eyed and resilient and human being.