I read once that your gut feeling is the sum total of everything – everything you know, everything you’ve ever been taught and everything you’ve ever experienced – boiled down to a yes/no, right/wrong choice and impetus to act. I absolutely agree.
Recognising: Recognising there is an issue is a critical skill. You don’t even need to know what the issue is, you only need to recognise that there is one. For me it’s a gut feeling of anxiety, butterflies, nerves or even sometimes a physical reaction (sweats, shaking hands, etc) to an interaction or a situation, which says “something isn’t right here”. It’s a physical indicator of your intuition and is enormously powerful and informative. It varies dramatically in intensity – from “hmmmm – not so sure about that” to “if I don’t do something about this I’m going to explode”. Recognition can be trained with time and practice.
Questioning: Once you’ve recognised there is an issue, you can analyse it by questioning:
- What am I feeling nervous about?
- Why did that situation make me feel uncomfortable?
- What is it that didn’t sit well with me?
Choosing: Based on the intensity of your gut feeling and tempered by the answers to your questioning, you can choose how you act. This is a critical point. You can choose how you act. You can choose to confront, let it slide, do something, do nothing, ask for help, draw a line in the sand, run, fight, hide…Then you can choose when to act – immediately, in an hour’s time, in a day, if it happens again. Just remember that not choosing is a choice too.
Finding a resolution: This is not about problem solving – that’s up to you and how you work best. It’s about the steps that lead up to it. A genuine resolution might come immediately or it might take hours, days, weeks, months, years. You’ll know when you find one because that very same feeling in your gut – the anxiety, nerves, butterflies, whatever it is – will vanish. You’ll know you’ve found a resolution. With choice comes the responsibility for outcomes. Positive or negative. But at least you got to choose.
