Saturday evening I spoke for a fundraising dinner in the little town of Red Bluff. I had planned and prepared my program and was ready to give the presentation. There was a testimonial right before me, and as I listened to this dear survivor of domestic abuse, I knew my prepared program was not what I was supposed to do. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I needed to change that talk and speak on forgiveness. So I did.
As I was thinking about today’s blog post, I realized how powerful this concept of going with your gut can be in the area of our communication. Let me ask you this…Have you ever had a nudge to speak with someone, but you resisted? Have you ever shut down that small, quite prodding and just ignored it?
Usually, your self talk will be something like this:
- She’ll think I’m crazy.
- He doesn’t really want to know this.
- Who do I think I am to tell her this?
- She already gets lots of positive feedback, mine wouldn’t add much to the conversation.
- I’m embarrassed to let him know how he has affected me.
and my favorite,
- I’ll feel like an idiot!
But I’m going to suggest today that there are 3 really good reasons you should go with your gut, your intuition, your heart.
1. There’s a whole lot of stuff we are not cognitively aware of going on out there which our unconscious is responding to – so we’d better pay attention. David Epstein wrote in his book, The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance
Well, it turns out that baseball players don’t really watch the ball coming at them – there’s no time. What they have become expert at, is reading the body of the pitcher – the minuscule body movements are what tells them where the ball will end up. Obviously, they were not expert at reading a softball pitcher’s body and suddenly they became just like the rest of us.
2. The more you respond to your intuition, the more often you will hear it. I’m sure there’s science about this somewhere, but I have experienced that the more tuned in I am to my heart, the more clearly I hear it. Whether this is to take dinner to my neighbor, have a conversation with my husband, contact that client or switch into the right lane of traffic, I generally try to act on the feeling. I don’t know why, but it usually ends up being a very needed action.
And most importantly of all…
3. Someone needs what you have to say. Believe me, if you are feeling a prompting to speak, someone needs to hear you. I love the story of the woman who was at the end of her rope, barely hanging on to her will to live when a stranger blessed her with a smile and a warm greeting. That’s such a minor thing to do, but reaching out, even to a stranger, will have an impact far beyond what you will ever know.
When I think about how we communicate, I’m convinced we can have an even more positive effect on people if we pay attention and respond to our gut. There are a millions cues being thrown about all the time. We don’t see them, but we’re receiving them. Our gut, our heart, our intuition is receiving them.
So the next time you get a “gut feeling”…Go for it! And enjoy the positive results that can happen.
Question: Have you ever gone with your gut and something amazing happened? I’d love to hear your stories! Just leave a note below.
Sometime I feel led to do something and I try to take action and get discouraged when I don’t see a response, but just because I don’t see it doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth doing. I loved the baseball/softball story. So interesting. I am going to keep trying to listen to my gut.