Myth #2 - Always Trust Your Gut

This is part two in a series on the myths we are taught about happiness.  You can read part one here.

Intuition is an extremely powerful tool.  Especially as women, we are taught to harness this ‘super power’ at an early age.  But what happens to your intuition when you experienced trauma?  At any level?  How is our intuition – that gut feeling – formed in the first place?

Brain growth occurs most rapidly in childhood, but it is very much a lifelong process.  When our brains process a situation, an emotion is attached to it.  The brain’s neurons are connecting all the time, forming positive and negative associations with all the things we experience in life.   These associations can skew intuition.

In fact, the more negative associations, the more our intuition can get skewed.  Why?  Subconsciously, we’re not acting out of intuition anymore, but fear.  These fear-based reactions feel very real.  Too real, and so it’s easy to get them confused with intuition. 

Again, like with Myth #1 – Just Be Positive, the solution is to make an unbiased assessment of your life. You must learn how to objectively view the situation and also how to use critical thinking, rather than that which is emotion-based, in decision-making. Then, you will have the ability to distinguish fear-based thoughts from intuitive perception. And that, my friends, is the far more powerful tool.