Why I Trust My Gut More Than My Brain

Have you ever experienced that sensation where your brain is telling you one thing, but your gut just says something different.  Maybe all the logic points to one course of action, but you just have the terrible feeling where your body seizes and won’t move forward.  Maybe it’s in your gut or your chest or your right elbow… but somehow, some way, you just know that things aren’t quite right.

This is your intuition, and I believe it’s smarter than your brain ever will be.

The Subconscious versus Conscious Mind

Intuition is really the wheelhouse of the subconscious mind.  That feeling we get in our gut or our heart or our bones, that’s the subconscious mind speaking up in a way that we can listen to.  The very definition of the subconscious mind is that we aren’t aware of its thoughts, but it is thinking all the same.

And most of the time, it is noticing far more than the conscious mind ever will.  This is because we get millions if not billions bits of information coming in every day through our eyes and our ears and our fingertips, etc.  Our brain filters these bit of information so that we don’t experience sensory overload, and only presents a fraction to our conscious mind.

But all the other bits don’t simply disappear, the brain has still registered them, and they end up in our subconscious, where they’re still processed, even though we are unaware.

This means the subconscious mind knows a heck of a lot more about what’s going on than the conscious mind.

Energetic Connections

I spend a lot of time talking about the energetic field and how we are all connected on an energetic level.  This is also the domain of the subconscious mind (probably because it would overwhelm our conscious mind!)

Through this energetic connection, we can gain a better feel for another person’s intentions, or for our potential safety, or if there are other concerning factors we need to be aware of.

So it’s once again the subconscious mind, which communicates to us through our body, which knows a heck of a lot more than the conscious brain.

So if my gut (or my heart or my right elbow) tells me something isn’t quite right, I listen.

The One Time I Don’t Trust My Gut

Of course, nothing is every 100%, and here’s what gut feelings really tell us: something isn’t quite right here.

A message from the gut simply tells me that I need to pause and take a closer look.

Sometimes I discover there are more factors that I wasn’t aware of that need to be considered — maybe I need to do a little reference checking on that new business partner, or maybe I should have a look at if there’s something unexpected with my car before I drive it down the highway.

But sometimes my gut is alerting me to one other thing: the presence of fear.

Fear is, as Frank Herbert said, the mind killer.  And it’s also the intuition killer.

As we know, our cavemen brains are wired to be afraid of change, and the messages we get from our subconscious are no different.  So, as I’m going through my life, making decisions, moving forward, etc, when I get a little pang from my gut, I pause.  I check things over.  And sometimes I realize that I’m experiencing some fear of change, or of putting myself out there, or of progress.

And when that happens, I tell my gut to shove it!

No, just kidding, but I accept the fear, and make a conscious decision to move forward anyway.

Gut Over Brain, Most of the Time

Especially as I continue to do the work of uncovering my authentic self and releasing my blocks, and building my ability to connect and hear my intuition, I listen to my ‘gut.’

But it’s really the combo of the two that is most powerful: the subconscious mind is always paying attention, it’s always processing all of the information, and often picks up on subtle signals that our conscious mind does not.  Then we can use the conscious mind to evaluate what the subconscious has drawn our attention to.

I hope this has helped you better understand and connect to those messages your gut (or your heart or your right elbow… wherever these things show up for you).  The longer I live, the more I know they can’t be ignored!

What about you?  Have you had an experience where you subconscious ‘saved you’ and altered you that something was just “not right”?  Tell me about it!  I love these kinds of stories.

Until next time,
2-3 Love, my friends!

Cover Photo by nicollazzi xiong from Pexels