The compass of the entire universe is within you.
—Wayne Dyer
You’d be surprised to know how much time I spend during therapy sessions and lectures pointing to my belly. The belly plays such a critical role in intimate relationships that we are going to dedicate an entire lesson to the vital data that comes from… the belly. I’m talking, of course, about intuition, or gut feelings. There are certainly times when you need to rely on your head in order to think your way through a situation. And there are certainly times when you need to rely on your heart in order to feel your way through a situation. But you may underestimate the value of relying on your gut in order to sense your way through a situation.
As adults, we take in great quantities of external noise about who we “should” be and how we “should” live. Our world is chock-full of judgments and opinions and advice. This noise can be so loud, in fact, that it is nearly impossible to hear ourselves from within. But I don’t think we start off unable to tune in to ourselves.
I remember playing Chutes and Ladders with my daughter Courtney when she was about six years old. She pulled a fast one, moving her piece an extra spot in order to avoid a dreaded big slide that would knock her from nearly the finish line to nearly the start. I watched her do it, and I could see her choice written all over her sheepish freckled face. I was at a parental crossroads as I contemplated my next move. Luckily, I was experiencing a moment of mama-clarity. I took my turn, quietly and with a neutral face, as I could tell that she was standing at her own crossroads. Within a minute or so, she said quietly, “Mommy, I cheated a little.” I asked her to take a deep breath and be still for a moment, and then said, “Courtney, I’m so glad you’re telling me this. Tell me, how did cheating feel in your body?” “Bad,” she said. “Where did you feel that bad feeling?” “Right here,” she said, pointing to her belly.
I talked to her for a moment about “green light” feelings and “red light” feelings. “Green light” feelings tell you that the choices you’re making are healthy and aligned with the person you are and want to be. “Red light” feelings tell you that the choices you’re making don’t serve you very well and probably aren’t best for you. The sense she got in her belly was clearly a red light feeling.
Did I punish her? Nope. Any desire to teach her some abstract (and external) lesson about how she should behave was trumped by my desire to strengthen her ability to tune in to herself, as I trust that she came into this world with an internal compass. Her life will afford her many moments of choice, and I won’t always be there to praise her “green light” choices and give consequences for her “red light” choices. What will always be there is her gut.
It’s called a “visceral” feeling or reaction for a reason. Your viscera (stomach and intestines) have nerve cells (neurons) that send data, via a lightning-fast neural pathway called lamina I in your spinal cord, up to your brain. Most of us think of the brain as the central processing unit that tells the rest of the body what to do, but this finding affirms what we intuitively know: We obtain valuable information from the bottom up! It’s the sense you get that someone is looking at you. The chill in your spine when someone is being dishonest or malicious. The twisting-up feeling you get when you’re saying yes but you really mean no. It’s the feeling that Courtney had in her belly when she cheated at Chutes and Ladders.
Beyond the brilliant biology of gut feelings, there’s something else at work. Let’s look at the Dr. Wayne Dyer quote from the beginning of this lesson: “The compass of the entire universe is within you.” Entire books have been written about this idea of collective wisdom or the intelligence of the universe. Each of us is connected to that vast collective wisdom, and we can source it for comfort and guidance.
I have been a provider and consumer of traditional psychotherapy for many years, and it has benefited me tremendously. Since I was in my twenties, I have also dabbled in spirituality—read a book here, attended a workshop there. In recent years, I have become deeply committed to bringing my spiritual self into everything I do, and I can say with confidence it has been nothing short of life-changing for me! By widening my lens to honor what is beyond the world of our five senses, I am better able to handle stress; I feel more connected to my husband, friends, and family; and I trust life a whole lot more than I used to. Whether or not you integrate religious or spiritual practice into your life today, I suspect you have had experiences of tapping into whatever it is that is bigger, wiser, and older than we are. I feel connected to this big universal energy frequently because I value making time and space to consciously connect—but long before I valued “seeking,” those experiences found me anyway. I am guessing they find you too.
I remember being on vacation with my family one time when I was going through a difficult breakup. I walked down to the rocks on the lake while everyone was sleeping. The moonlight on the water sparkled like diamonds. I cried for a while and then felt strangely calm—held, safe, and connected to something bigger and wiser than me. I was both heartbroken and safe. Similarly, when my dad passed away a few years ago, trusting something bigger than I am helped me ride huge waves of grief while also experiencing the joy of memories of him and a renewed gratitude for life. For me, holding on to both/and—in this case, grief and joy—is much easier to do when the dialectic is supercharged or wrapped in connection to greater mystery and wisdom. Sometimes that gut-level knowing guides our actions (trust this person, quit this job, and so forth), but sometimes that gut-level knowing just reminds us that we can endure a particularly dark chapter.
Regardless of whether you think about your gut feelings as pure biology or as biology mixed with something divine, your ability to listen to and respect your gut impacts your love life from the first date on. It’s a big part of why I am suspicious about relationships that largely exist in what comedian and author Aziz Ansari calls “phone world” (2015). Especially as you’re getting to know someone, one-dimensional, screen-based communication compromises your ability to make use of your most powerful relational tool—your gut. It’s very hard to sense, in that deep visceral way, how you feel with someone unless you are both in the same space at the same time. In our high-tech, fast-paced, information-heavy digital age, we must remember and honor our oldest and wisest tool of discernment.
One of my clients was in a long-distance relationship with a guy she really liked. He cheated on her a few months into the relationship. Both of them desperately wanted to stay together, and they were trying hard to rebuild trust. Despite hours communicating via text and FaceTime, she could not let him back in. There were multiple factors at work, but at some point I reflected to her how truly difficult it must be to rebuild trust without being in the same space at the same time. His words were sincere, his behavior was congruent, but she could not feel him. Her head could take in his words. Her heart could be full of love for him. But without being able to involve all of her senses, it seemed her viscera simply could not cooperate. I felt grateful that she took her emotions seriously, as agreeing to rebuild with a gnawing feeling inside would have felt like a dishonoring of self. They ultimately made the courageous and difficult choice to let each other go.
Sadly, even though we are gifted deep inner wisdom at birth, it is all too easy to lose contact with this potent data source. The noise of the external world gets so loud. We are told in a myriad of ways that we need outside sets of rules to follow, and that, if left to our own devices, we will be out of control, dangerous, and destructive. As children, we are told in so many ways (by parents, schools, and religious institutions), “I know better than you what’s best for you.” Dating and relationship books that offer rules and formulas for success are both seductive and risky. What if following someone else’s recipe requires you to further disconnect from your compass?
If you identify as a “people pleaser,” you likely ignore your gut feelings on the regular. Symptoms of ignoring gut feelings include resentment; slow, simmering anger; a sense of internal flatness; and boredom. There’s a gender socialization piece here as well. Girls and women (more so than boys and men) are praised and rewarded for being nice, agreeable, and accommodating, which may make it more natural to ignore our internal signals to act otherwise.
I get it. Gut feelings can be quite inconvenient. I was recently asked to do something at work. I really wanted to say yes because I could tell that the person asking really wanted me to say yes. Unfortunately, I could feel, clear as can be, within my gut that my deepest truth was “No, I am not able to do that at this time.” I tried to look at the situation in different ways, using my head (What if I… Maybe I could…). I could also hear a variety of internalized and old stories from the outside world playing inside my head (A good employee would… You should… People will be mad if you don’t…). Despite all of this internal drama, my gut would not relent. Every time I imagined saying yes, my gut tightened in a familiar way. So I said no, and I survived the consequences. If I had made the choice to be a people pleaser, I would undoubtedly have experienced the symptoms of having ignored a gut feeling: resentment and dread. Yet, saying no was tough because it meant disappointing someone.
I was recently teaching the idea of listening to your gut to a group of students, and a guy asked me the above question. Basically, he was asking whether you can justify any behavior by claiming that it was your gut feeling. No. It doesn’t work like that. Wanting to punch someone in the face is a reflection of being emotionally triggered: fired up, set off, upset in the moment. When triggered, it is hard (dare I say impossible?) to access deep inner knowing. Emotions swirl, and the internal buzz drowns out intuition. Intense negative feelings are a cue to stop and begin an all-hands-on-deck effort to slow down and quiet down before making a next move. From an empowered (not triggered) place, you can then be curious about your reactivity, asking, “What is the story I am telling myself about the situation?” This question invites depth—depth that reaches down to your gut, the root of knowing. From that deeper and quieter space within, multiple paths emerge, indicating next steps you might want or need to take. In all likelihood, none of those paths will involve punching someone in the face.
I remember putting our wedding invitations in the mail and promptly freaking out. Sweaty palms, racing heart, and thoughts like, “What am I getting myself into?” flooded me. Was this anxiety or a gut feeling? Sometimes it is hard to tell.
Yet, if you can bring some awareness to your reactions, you can learn how anxious feelings and gut feelings show up in their own ways in your body. Discerning the difference can guide your course of action. To me (and many others), anxiety feels like tightness in my chest and pressure in my head. Anxious, frantic thoughts and stories flood and swirl around in my brain. By contrast, data that comes from my gut feels more raw, primary, and unfiltered. And what’s become especially noticeable to me is how I feel when I ignore my gut. That feeling is a low, slow tightening or twisting of my insides.
In this case of the wedding invitations, anxiety would have been nervousness about the magnitude of my decision to marry Todd. A gut feeling would have been a deep inner knowing that I was making a “red light” choice. Ultimately deciding that my freak-out was a result of anxiety led me to work on calming myself down and talking with people I trust about how nervous I was feeling. If I had decided that my freak-out was in fact a gut feeling, it might have led me to reconsider marrying Todd.
When my clients are sitting with this question, we work together on quieting their bodies and minds so they can carefully attend to what is happening within. Sometimes, a client’s relationship doubts are a reflection of fear-based old stories about the self (“I can’t believe that someone would really stay with me. I’m worthless.”), but sometimes a client’s relationship doubts indicate that something truly is amiss in the relationship. A sense that “something doesn’t feel right” certainly warrants exploration. For a summary of the work of this lesson, you can go online and download the handout “How to Listen to Your Gut and Why” (at http://www.newharbinger.com/35814).
Brave relationship choices require trusting the vital information that comes from your intuitive knowing, your gut.
Family Voice
Write a journal entry about how your family of origin related to your gut feelings. In what ways did your family honor your inner knowing, giving you the message “You are wise and your inner voice should be honored”? In what ways did your family’s dynamics take you out of contact with your inner voice, giving you the message “We know what’s best for you”? This is complicated, of course, as all kids need guidance, instruction, and support from the adults in their lives. But some parents find ways to celebrate their child’s inner wisdom while also holding boundaries and setting limits. How did your parents navigate this?
Listening from Within
It’s important to be able to discern anxiety versus intuition, so practice tuning in to yourself. The next time you are approaching a decision, quiet down and pay attention to your insides before making your choice. Learn—or, more accurately, remember—how your gut feelings talk to you. What is your gut saying to you as you stand at this crossroads?
First, practice pausing and listening to your intuitive voice with small decisions: “What do I want to order for dinner?” “Should I go out or stay home tonight?” Can you hear the voice that speaks to you from underneath the “should”? In what ways does it speak differently than the voice of shoulds? How do you feel when you obey the voice of should? How do you feel when you honor your gut-level feeling? How are those two feelings different?
As you feel comfortable listening to your deep knowing when you make small decisions, try listening to your deep knowing as you face large decisions as well: “Do I want a second date with this person?” “What would it be like to ask the person I’m dating how serious she wants to be?” “How well is this job serving me?” Try to listen for the voice of should and the voice of your gut.