When Following Your Intuition Sucks

Two minutes before writing this, I was kneeling on the bathroom floor of our favorite neighborhood coffee shop, breathing deeply through my nose and into my belly, trying hard not to lose my shi*t.

Nope, not horrific menstrual cramps — I was just locking horns with the hard lesson I’ve had to learn since I’ve begun to practice listening to — and heeding — my gut instincts.

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People call it different names, but we’ve likely all heard about ‘intuition’ or ‘gut instinct’ — the inexplicable, nagging, sinking feeling we get when we’re faced with a decision — a job opportunity, a romantic partner, or business deal — that checks all of the logical boxes, but something, a teeny, tiny, nagging something — just feels a bit off.

It can show up as a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, or goosebumps on the back of your neck. It might be a heavy feeling in your chest or your diaphragm, or perhaps just a vague sense of general unease.

And all you want is for that nagging feeling to just go away, damn it, because it is really cramping the exciting plans and expectations that you have, and if that nagging feeling just went away, you would be free to pursue the exciting job opportunity / partner / business deal, the one you just know will bring you exactly what you’ve been looking for.

But sometimes, we side-step the bad feeling — either on purpose, justifying it (“I’m just nervous, I’m always nervous when I’m stepping into new territory, so this is probably normal”). Or, we side-step it because we’ve left ourselves no choice — for example, you take the apartment you have a weird feeling about because your old lease is about to expire and you don’t have time to find anything else.

Or, you get the procedure done from the doctor who you had a bad feeling about, and when they do it poorly, it costs you and your husband a trip to the emergency room and a $2,000 bill, after insurance kicks in.

And, yes, these are personal examples of my husband and I from the past two months — ones that have cost us a few thousand dollars, not to mention some real-deal stress. Oh, we also now live in an apartment that has brown water and frequent sewage gas coming up from the pipes (we’re working on that one).

Yes, in the rear view mirror, we are able to see that there were definitely some moments of immature decision-making; but more clearly, we are both able to recount (with painful ease) the moment in each of those situations where we felt that nagging feeling that something was just off — and chose to bulldoze right through it.

In the scheme of my life, these painful lessons were just two of many big, important lessons I’ve learned in the course of the last year — a year when I was searching relentlessly for my thing, my path, my purpose. Opportunities — exciting, beautiful ones that checked all of my logical boxes, have shown up at my doorstep again and again and again and again — but each of them came with the nagging, quiet, tug of that gut instinct on my elbow sleeve, whispering: “hey … are you sure this is the right thing, right now?”

Most of those times, I noticed the tug and heeded it, saving myself — and others — a lot of time, energy, money and emotional investment. Other times, I noticed the tug and ignored it, costing me those precious resources, and more.

The opportunities and tough lessons sprinkled throughout this year have felt a bit like some perverse bread-crumb trail being sprinkled in front of me, and I can’t ever see more than a single step ahead. Sometimes, all I can see is my own feet; I’ll close one door, only for another to fling open unexpectedly. And so I course-correct … on and on and on.

By the way, this is exhausting.

And where did that ding-dang bread crumb trail lead me? To the thankfully-clean bathroom floor of our favorite coffee shop, breathing hard through my nose, trying to cope with the loss of another beautiful, exciting, promising opportunity.

My husband (who has been equally committed to developing a relationship with his intuition after those costly two months) and I have spent several hours over the last two days in deep discussion about this opportunity — he had a bad feeling about it, and I was steadfastly ignoring my own bad feeling. I had spent the morning thinking about it, talking about it, doing breath work and meditating on it, for God’s sake — asking myself, asking my intuition: is this situation a yes? Is it right for me?

I was so sure that it was a yes — from the outside, this business opportunity seemed like the natural next step for me. There were so many things about it the checked the (now, very long) list of logical boxes I have painstakingly acquired after a year of finding out, through tedious trial and error, what works for me and what doesn't.

And here it was — another glittering opportunity, the steps laid out perfectly in front of me — all I had to do was sign the contract and start walking.

But as I sat across the table from my husband, I heard it — from some dark, dusty corner of my abdomen, my instincts, quietly but persistently, asked me that old, loathsome question:

Are you sure this is it?

I looked that question straight in the face and defiantly tried to hold its gaze, just as I had so many other times this past year … but I dropped my gaze first.

I could feel the eyes of that question boring into the top of my head; it had stopped asking me, and our silence was now full of the answer we both knew, but I couldn’t bring myself to say aloud.

Because if I said it aloud, that meant that I would have to surrender this vision I had for myself, doing the business I was pretty sure I wanted to be doing at the place I was almost certain would be a good fit.

I would have to deal with the crushing disappointment of being so close … again.

 And, worst of all, I’d have to surrender the certainty of knowing where I was going next.

Now let me just say: I hate — I mean, I really hate — not knowing where I’m going next. And it has been one freaking long year of not knowing where I’m going next.

And so it was that I knelt on the bathroom floor of our favorite coffee shop, a mere two minutes after admitting aloud to my husband that yet another opportunity — another path that felt exciting and promising and nearly certain … was just another ‘no’.

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Before I was able to collect myself off of the bathroom floor, I had to remind myself of a few things.

I thought back to all of those situations from the past year in which I had heeded my instincts — situations that felt so promising in the moment, and turning them down felt scary, uncertain, and risky — the same situations that, weeks or months later, I was able to look back on and fervently think to myself, “thank God I didn’t do that thing”.

And when the feeling in my chest felt like too much, I was reduced to whispering these two words to myself, again and again, like a lifeline:

“I trust, I trust, I trust, I trust, I trust, I trust, I trust, I trust, I trust.”

I declared my trust for the part of myself that is clearly wiser than my logic brain, and never stops looking out for me. I thanked it for never letting me down, because — whether I like it or not — when I do listen to it, it doesn’t let me down. Even when doing it sucks, I never end up regretting listening to my intuition.

I internally gave thanks for my husband, who is level-headed, patient, and cares enough to continue diving in with me head first to figure it out, no matter how long it takes.

I stood up, took another deep breath, washed my hands and walked straight back to that cafe table. I sat down and started to do the thing that my intuition has been practically screaming at me to do for almost two years now, something that terrifies me, the very thing I’ve been hiding from most:



“Write.”

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